Dreams

Dreams are a reflection of your heart, soul, and inner wisdom. This unconscious or spiritual force within you wants to guide you through the burdens of life and lead you to a life that is free. When you allow yourself to really begin to pay attention to this part of you as expressed in dreams, feelings, and meditative practices, it can become a powerful tool for healing and opening the heart in order to find greater joy and meaning in your life. I have found that integrating dream work and guided imagery (the latter a bit like dreaming while awake) has been powerful in helping clients move forward on their path. It is accessing the natural flow within us we so often forget to honor.

We live in a society where the intellect is considered more important then our feelings and dreams. “It was just a dream” or “I don’t have any dreams” are common statements. The truth is, we all have several dreams every night, though they can be easy to forget. Research has demonstrated that when depriving people of the dream state, even though allowing other forms of sleeping, they soon become extremely irritable and anxious. This suggests that dreams are an essential part of our being.

There are many types of dreams. Some are more superficial than others. For example, there are dreams that can be as simple as going over a rough day at work or conflict with a friend in an attempt to make it better. There are also wishful dreams of something we want that would make us happy—a new lover or traveling somewhere you have wanted to go.

Then there are dreams of painful memories or traumas that we are struggling to integrate. That can include early life traumas or a recent incident such as a car accident. Such incidences can be so overwhelming that the unconscious needs to repeat it in an attempt to integrate it and feel safe in the world again.

Dreams with seemingly strange symbols or situations or nightmares usually carry a deeper meaning. They are often metaphors for your life and the characters and symbols are often representative of parts of yourself. For example, a client had a dream of his or her car on fire during a time that she was feeling “burned out” by a conflict with someone. Houses, rooms, cars often represent parts of the self. A messy room might be something in you that needs “cleaning” or feels “dirty.” A scary a basement is a common symbol of something scary in the unconscious that needs to be faced. However, dreams are tailor made to you and your experiences so that dream dictionaries have limited use.

I find the most valuable way to interpret your dreams is to sit with the feelings of images or themes and allow thoughts and associations to come spontaneously from that.

An example is a nightmare of being chased. I would have a client focus on the fear of being chased in the dream, notice where it is in the body and after observing it for a while it may suddenly remind him or her of feeling the same way in a current abusive relationship. Further sitting with those feelings may lead to a sudden recall of childhood memories of fear with an abusive parent. I would then guide him or her to work with the inner child that felt the fear, nurturing and reparenting toward shifting this fear in the present through guided imagery and other approaches.

There was someone who had a dream that she had a child who she hardly knew--nearly school age now, even forgetting his name. When this person sat with it, what was felt, spontaneously, was that he represented a deeper part of her heart and self that needed attention. She then began making believe (in her waking life) that she was now attending to and loving this child from her dream, holding him and nurturing him as a child ought to be and then important emotional memories came to her. The acknowledgement of these memories and feelings felt like regaining parts of the deeper self that had been pushed away. Gradually over time she felt more and more loving in her life-toward herself and others- out of this dream and working with this important symbol.

I often have children draw their nightmares especially the monsters and ghosts. These often represent a fear of their own anger at parents, that is, the fear of making parents upset or hurt, or pushing them away (usually triggered by conflicts with parents). The monster then becomes their own anger turned against them. Therapeutically, besides guiding the parents in how to work with the child’s fears and anger, I have children draw pictures of the monster or ghost, creating stories of them and even acting out communicating with them as characters. Usually the ghost or monster becomes tamed or befriended, and the child overcomes his or her fears as a result.

Since our daily life occurrences often mirror what we need to heal, it is common for them to become a trigger for our dreams. For example, someone in her business had a very strong emotional reaction to a customer’s minor misunderstanding. She felt somewhat depressed, experiencing it as a personal attack against her. That night she dreamt of her mother being very critical and condescending to her and making demands of her, refusing to hear anything she had to say---very disrespected. It was helpful to see the source of her reaction and what more she needed to heal from her childhood from this dream. Through a guided imagery process we could work with the inner child of this dream and give her the respect and compassion she didn’t get toward releasing the effects of this earlier trauma.

Even though much of the time characters in dreams, even people you know, represent aspects of yourself, sometimes they can be warnings or information about someone you care about that comes to you psychically.

Perhaps some of the most enlightening dreams are those that are felt as deeply spiritual and healing. A client was feeling very tired, sad, and hopeless after a therapy session. During a brief nap, she had a powerful dream of climbing a mountain while holding hands with her therapist and seeing both the beauty and power of different aspects of nature itself, and reaching the top of the mountain. She awoke from this exhilarated, happy, and much more hopeful about her process. Another example is someone who dreamt of her father, who was deceased, coming to her and holding her as she expressed guilt to him of not feeling more loving toward him while he was alive. The hug was filled with enormous love, she experiencing this as his soul visiting her. He then told her that it was impossible for her to be more loving to him at the time because he could not have been able to receive more love because of his own emotional struggles. She then felt a wonderful release from her guilt.

The latter was a lucid dream, that is, being conscious of dreaming while in the dream state. Perhaps they, among other spiritual dreams are the most powerful in releasing us from emotional pain and guiding our sense of purpose in life. Native Americans rely upon conscious dreaming for their vision quests, and to serve as powerful tools in maintaining physical health, predicting the future, and connecting with the Great Spirit. They consider dreams to be central to life itself. Shamans are known to visit spiritual realms in dreams to gain healing power and insight as well. Of course using imagery with dreams as described previously comes somewhat closer to dreaming consciously so as to foster the most benefit from them.

As you work with dreams, meditation, and feelings that inner communication will become stronger for you. So when you want to “manifest” you must also listen to your inner wisdom for the blocks that may be in the way of manifesting and lessons to resolve in order to lead you on your path through meditation, feelings, and dreams.

You can induce dreams for problem solving and further insight before you fall asleep by praying for guidance and telling yourself you really want to remember your dreams. Be sure to keep a pen and pad near your bed. You may also focus on the feelings of a situation that is bothering you and ask for guidance as you fall asleep. As you awaken, focus on the feelings and images of the dream, and then write them down right away for best recall.

Dreams can be a gift to help our soul process whatever we need to process…our deepest fears and challenges and also open the door to guide us to the things in life that give us meaning and sense of purpose. It is a driving force within us that wants to find the pristine beauty of our creative force and the essence of love that we are. When we find that sweetness and joy that has been buried by the turmoil of life, we are truly free to serve ourselves and others from the heart and appreciate the infinite interconnection of all things.

Published in the Door Opener, Fall 2008