Dreams

I am no expert on dream analysis, so the purpose of this blog is not to educate, but rather to hopefully open some interest into your own dreams and maybe shed some new light onto how dreams may work and how they may be of service to you.

My own understanding of dreams comes from my interest in Jungian analysis. In Jungian analysis dreams are seen as symbols sent to you from your unconscious which are to be played with, explored, pondered and which can have multiple meanings. It could be said that your dreams are a gift to you from your unconscious, a gift which can help you gain perspective or shed some light on any matter of things, from current, past or future dramas, or even workings of your own psychology. A dream is a bit like your inner Yoda sitting you down and telling you a story about yourself which is of service to you either now or in the future. Dreams can work in any number of ways, as stories, symbols or even as puns (for example if you dream of many meals it could be interpreted as ‘you are making a meal of things!’)

Dreams do not work in right or wrong or black or white, they work as I said, as symbols which can have multiple meanings. It’s not the symbol itself that is important but what the symbol represents to you. For example my own association to teeth my be very different from a dentist’s association to teeth. If a dentist dreams of teeth it could relate to his livelihood and how he relates to that, whereas if I was bullied for having bad teeth or if I was obsessed with having white teeth or if I had my teeth knocked out and had false teeth my own association would be very different.

Dreams are there to help us, they are always on our side because they are gifts from yourself to yourself. Have you ever dreamed something and then have that same thing happen the next day? Have you suddenly remembered a dream from years ago and wondered why you are suddenly now remembering it? You may have dreamed of an image or an animal and then saw that image or animal the next day. When this sort of thing happens to me I wonder why I am seeing this image at this moment of time, what was I just thinking about and what does this image represent to me and what did it mean in the dream? Did the story of the dream relate to what I was just thinking about? By looking at dreams this way, they can be seen as really wonderful tools or maps for our lives. Again, it’s not that we are looking for right or wrong answers but rather for new perspectives and insights to help us in our lives.

In Jungian analysis it is also said that everyone and everything in the dream is you. I found this quite strange when I first heard this and was a bit reluctant to accept it: am I really the man with the machete who is chasing me through some Amazonian jungle?! Am I really the Amazonian jungle?! What does that mean?! But if dreams are symbols and things to be played with maybe it might be useful to imagine for a moment ‘what if everyone and everything in the dream was me?’ If I have recurring dreams that I am being robbed, I might ask myself: ‘What part of myself is robbing from myself? Am I in some way stealing from myself?’ What does it mean to steal from myself?’ It might mean that I don’t give a relationship a chance, or I block myself from writing a story I want to write because I assume it will be rubbish. In this way it could be said that I am stealing from myself if I do those things. So the dream could be helping me to not sabotage myself. I might ask what it is that I’m stealing from myself in my dream. If I’m stealing my clothes that would have a different meaning probably than if I was stealing my kettle!

So if everyone in the dream is you, then a dream is a sort of map of yourself, a map of your inner and outer world. Your dream is in a way showing you to yourself. So if you dream that you are a waiter and you are waiting on your mother in a restaurant for example, you might explore the pun – are you in some way waiting for or on your mother, or are you in some way waiting to mother yourself? What does a waiter represent to you? What restaurant was it? How are you serving the mother side to yourself? How are you serving your real mother? Again it’s not about finding the correct answer, as there isn’t one, but rather to use the dream to help explore yourself, in this case your relationship with the part of you that ‘mothers’ yourself and possibly with your real mother. How does this moment in the restaurant relate to what happens later in the dream? Is the way you are waiting on your mother effecting you in some way – how does the dream conclude? Can you get any meaning from what you gather about the restaurant scene and what happens later in the dream?
I heard an analogy that it’s as if you have directed the dream yourself. The dream comes from you, so everything will have a meaning which you can understand. So if you were the director of the dream, why did you choose these characters, why this setting, why this sequence of events? What are you trying to show yourself by directing this dream this way? In story and joke telling we tend to tell things with a beginning, middle and end, and the order of events gives the story its meaning. Dreams work in the same way. You may dream you are at home, then you are kidnapped and then you end up lost in some jungle; this would have a very different meaning if the story were reversed, that if you were in a jungle, were kidnapped and then taken home. Again why might you have directed this dream this way? Why this setting, sequence of events and why the characters? What might this dream, the way you directed it be trying to help you to see either about your inner or outer world or even both?

Dreams also have a different relationship to time than we do in our waking lives. I had a dream last year about a rather dramatic and difficult experience and six months later that very experience happened almost identically so the dream had allowed me in a way to prepare for that moment and handle it better that I might have had I not had the chance to ponder the dream when it happened.

Dreams can have a recurring theme, and can be repeated in more and more obvious ways until you wonder why you keep having this dream! It could be like a bright  neon light saying “stop running away!” Or “stop robbing yourself!” Again dreams are always on our side because they come from ourselves. Finally we can also get meaning from how we relate to situations in dreams. For example we might be in the middle of a tornado with cars flying past us and about to crush us and we are casually sipping tea on a deck chair; one way to interpret this could be that you are in the middle of a dangerous storm, (either real or psychological) and are completely in denial about how bad it is.

As I said at the start I am no expert on dreams, but I am interested in them. I like to write my dreams down, keep a journal and ponder what myself might be telling myself, and more often than not they are of great help. Sometimes they inspire stories, other times they help with relationships, either with myself or with others and sometimes they help to give me psychological balance. Dreams always offer new perspectives, allow for growth and psychological and spiritual development and are always a gift from yourself to yourself. Since we cannot control them, when they come and what happens in them, maybe it is worth thinking for a moment about why we dream, why we dream what we do and what the dreams might mean? How can your own dreams be of service to you?

If it’s of interest to you, why not have a go at writing your dreams down. Ask yourself if you directed and wrote this dream and if everyone in the dream is you, what would you be trying to tell yourself? What are you trying to help yourself to see? You may be surprised at how awesome, clever, funny, cunning and magical dreams can be. Sometimes they are insanely obvious and other times they are an impossible riddle. But the main thing about looking at your dreams is that it’s a beautiful way to develop a better relationship with yourself. By listening to your dreams you are saying to your higher self or your unconscious: ‘okay, what is it you’re trying to tell me?’ Write them down, watch the patterns, see what comes up, again a dream is a gift from yourself to yourself so why not accept it and see what it is offering you?

(For a more in-depth and expert exploration of the meaning of dreams it may be of interest to read the book: ‘Dreams – a portal to the source.’ by Edward. C. Whitmont)

by Harry ter Haar