Dreams are given as messages to balance and guide
Dreams and dreaming have a relationship to us, whether we want a relationship or not. They range from the most terrifying to the most profound healing. Everyone dreams and most have a curiosity about them, but cannot understand their message. You may have heard the ancient Hebrew saying, “A dream uninterpreted is a letter from God unopened.” This God can be our deeper self, our higher self, or any way we consider the wisdom of our life. Generally, people sense a message in a dream, even if it is a feeling or an intuition.
How do I understand the language of dreams?
Dreams are not just a technology of symbols but relationships to various parts of ourselves. Symbols are an essential understanding, but the process of connecting to dreams and integrating them into your personal life is the point. The dream arrives from some unknown place in our mind and body. We can’t make them go away unless we are overly drugged. We are different when we wake from a terrifying dream or a healing dream. It changes us. Just as an encounter with a terrifying person or a healer. This is connecting to a living vitality within us. These encounters can benefit us profoundly, as we begin to interact with a dream, relate to it, and gradually learn how it teaches. Just as you would relate to someone or something externally. As you relate to it, it relates to you. As we begin to understand this language, the dream world becomes an ally. Just as it has been an ally for people since the beginning of mankind.
Dreams are more than symbols
C.G. Jung wrote, “ A dream is too slender a hint to be understood until it is enriched by the stuff of associations and analogy and thus amplified to the point of intelligibility.(Collected Works, 12, para. 403).
Associations: random connections to anything in the dream; whatever comes up, memories, feelings, images of any kind.
Analogy: comparisons, partial similarities with anything that comes to mind.
Amplified: made larger until it is useful and understandable. This can be done by writing, and expressing through any form of art. This provides a personal connection to the dream that is then embodied.
This quote means the process is as important as the content. The relating, feeling, imagining, discussing, communicating with the dream, painting the dream, dancing and expressing in any way is the process part. From the process comes the content and from the content comes the process.
For example, I had a dream of a dog running up the hill toward me, she enjoyed running to me, she loved me and I loved her. That was the dream. Without wondering about the symbolism, my first association was being with my dog as a child and the closeness we felt. The first analogy is that the dog in the dream was not my dog, but had the same attitude. Then to amplify the dream I wrote it in my dream journal and then I went back into the dream by remembering the look on the dog’s face and could then re-experience the joy between us. Just those simple reflections and feelings bring me to deep satisfying feelings of love, belonging and connection with myself without yet going to the symbols, a healing of sorts. The relationship with the dog in the dream was alive. As my experience with my dog as a child was alive. Relationships make us who we are.
Continued in the next Post: Dreams and Dreaming, Balance, Part two
