Recently I had a dream in which I wept in one section, and laughed big belly laughs in the next. I’ve had both of these experiences in other dreams many times in my life, but I don’t recall another dream that featured both. They are apparently opposite emotions, but are actually separated by a very thin veil, in my experience.
When I was first trying to understand my dreams, probably in my teen years, I read somewhere that emotion in dreams came to balance out the apparent opposite emotion in waking life. So if I’d been blue for a long time and I dreamed of laughter, it would lighten my mood. And if I wept in dreams, it signified that I’d neglected some burden in my waking life, like some giant scale that had to be balanced.
I no longer understand laughing and crying in dreams as literal balancing, though I’ve certainly experienced emotional relief from expressing my feelings in my dream. I’ve thought a lot about Jeremy Taylor’s projection that laughter, especially, but also tears, are markers of surprise in a dream, a place where some new understanding has awoken. In waking life, we laugh at the punch line of a good joke, when we’ve been led to expect one thing and suddenly another viewpoint is presented that also fits the story but was utterly unexpected. Tears can mark surprise as well: When an understanding I may have had at some shallow level suddenly rests in my body, when that understanding carries grief, then tears find their way into my dreams.
Sometimes, I wake up laughing. Sometimes the dream still strikes me as funny, but often I don’t see the humor in it. These dreams usually have images that I have to work a little harder to understand, since they come from the very edge of my conscious awareness. One of my dream sisters said that laughter in dreams for her is a moment of enlightenment, which makes a lot of sense to me, since enlightenment is bound to be surprising.
Whatever it means for you, I wish you some literal laughter in your day!
2 thoughts on “Laughter and Crying in Dreams”
Just after I learned my ex-husband had been killed on his bicycle, I attended a kundalini yoga class where we were told to laugh very loud and actively for over 3 minutes. I learned how similar laughter and crying is on the physical level. It became a wonderful practice, slipping back and forth between the two bolstered up by the ruckus laughter of people around me. It really felt like it brought something deeply injured in me back into balance.
I can’t, at this moment, recall laughing or crying in a dream, specifically, but it seems so likely. I’m curious to read through some dream journals to see if I can locate any examples.
I don’t remember ever laughing and crying in the same dream. I’ve wept in rage or hideous grief (dreaming one of my kids had died, for example), and I’ve laughed over silly puns. And I’ve been transported with joy, but that never seemed to elicit either reaction. Hmmm…