Everyone dreams each night whether the dreams are remembered or not. Dreaming is necessary for psychic and physical health. Dreams are an essential part of your life. Dreams are used for different purposes in different cultures. The Australian aborigines have ‘dream time’, the Navahos believe dreams are a means of communicating with the spiritual realm. Carl Jung found that dreams were a source of guidance for whole tribes in East Africa. In the shamanic traditions of North America and Central Asia, dreams and visions were a sign of a shaman’s ‘call’. In Greek times dreams were messages of divine truth. The Judeo-Christian tradition also viewed dreams as messages.
Today dreams have become part of the field of psychology and are used in analysis. Sigmund Freud discovered a basic truth about dreams, that they give a picture of the psyche as it is. Carl Jung took this discovery further to prove that dreams also provide clues for future development. He did extensive work to support the recovery of dreams as an important part of the human experience. Freud believed that symbols disguised and distorted the truth. He saw dreams as a secret code that must be deciphered. Jung believed that dreams may be revelations of unconscious wisdom but he also believed that you understand take the symbols and messages for just what it says.
Dreams were believed to sometimes give signals of the moments in life when transformation occurs. Dreams can prepare the dreamer for the next day or coming year. They can be used for increasing the possibility of making wise choices.
The Unconscious
Dreams are products of the unconscious. Jung also thought dreams could connect with the collective unconscious of humans and consists of “latent predisposition's towards identical reactions.” He saw the unconscious as housing undeveloped, unconscious portions of the personality which are “striving for integration in the wholeness of the individual.” Jung called the collective patterns and figures from the collective unconscious archetypes. An archetype is an imprint of a definite grouping of an archaic character containing mythological motifs and patterns. The collective unconscious is the repository of human experience and has taken eons to form.
Symbolic Language
Symbolic language is a language in which inner experience, feelings, and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences or events in the outer world. Time and space are not as important as intensity and association. Symbolic language is contained in dreams, myths and fairy tales. Images precedes words in the psyche. Signs in a dream point to another reality, symbols make present the other reality.
There are always two aspects of a symbol: the concrete (conscious), and the other reality (unconscious). It bridges the two realities. Symbols in dreams, religious tradition, and literature all share the quality of presenting insights into an unseen world (unconscious).
There are personal symbols, something that has become a symbol to you in your personal experience, conventional symbols such as a country’s flag and universal symbols which come from the common experience of humankind.
Key Questions for Responding to Dreams
Respond to as many questions as you choose. Let your intuition have full rein by writing whatever comes up.
1. How am I, as dream ego, acting in this dream?
2. What archetypal symbols in this dream are important to me?
3. What are the various feelings in this dream?
4. What are the various actions in this dream?
5. What relation, if any, does this dream have to what is happening right now in my life? To something in my future? To something in my personality?
6. Who or what is the archetype in this dream?
7. What is the helping or healing force in this dream?
8. What is being wounded in this dream?
9. What is being healed?
10. What would I like to avoid in this dream?
11. What actions might this dream be suggesting to me to consider?
12. What does this dream want from me?
13. What choices can I, and will I, make as a result of working with this dream?
14. Why did I need this dream?
15. Why am I not doing this in my life?
16. Why have I dreamed of ‘so and so’ now?
Dream Task
Asking a dream for clarity. The following night after a dream, ask before you sleep, “where do I go from here?”
After working with a dream:
1. Take an action in everyday life that honors what the dream has taught you.
2. Work and use the dream as information to integrate into your everyday life.
3. Some dreams can have literal material to work with.
4. Dreams can cause synchronicity to happen in waking life experience.
Working with the Dream Symbol
Relax and center yourself. Concentrate on the symbol you wish to explore. Picture it in your mind. Maintain focus on the symbol.
Answer the following questions:
1. What experiences / associations have you had with the symbol? Look back through the history of your life for times you have seen the symbol and have been involved with it in some manner.
2. What feelings does the symbol evoke in you?
3. Free- associate with the symbol. Say the name of the symbol out-loud and allow your mind to wander spontaneously to other objects or words which your unconscious mind connects it with.
4. Draw or paint the symbol. Draw it in an environment.
5. Read symbolic dictionaries and encyclopedias for the archetypal meanings associated with the symbol.
6. Create a story or fantasy that involves the symbol.
Draw one image or symbol from your dream and ask it:
1. Who or what are you?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. What do you have to tell me?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Why are you in my art?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. What would you like to have happen?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. What more do you have to say to me?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title your art:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment