for a dreamer

Dreams - Do they have Meaning?

Every person on earth dreams every night – every mammal in fact. It follows then that something extremely important must be going on while we sleep and dream, yet in the industrialized world, the majority of people pay little attention to dreams, and sometimes shortchange themselves on sleep because it is perceived as lost time, or at best unproductive.

How astonishing that we generally ignore this third (and possibly far more) of ourselves. An appropriate analogy to the grandeur of this mass misunderstanding is the incredible inertia in the middle ages against the idea of earth being other than flat until repeated point-blank evidence like Galileo’s observation of other planets and their moons and the journeys of Columbus and other explorers across the ocean proved conclusively otherwise. The challenge was that people’s everyday experience contradicted the idea of a spherical earth because nobody had yet gained perspective from outside of the system. Airplanes and especially photographs from space were not yet available, so there was little first hand evidence of a new paradigm that was quite a great leap beyond the old. Fortunately, people eventually began to come around, and the shift triggered an ensuing surge of exploration as the realization and acceptance finally dawned that our world really isn't flat after all.

Dreams, in the same way, encompass yet another entire dimension of experience, a world as yet unexplored by most, where a fascinating sphere of activity awaits investigation and possible harvest for greater fulfillment in waking life. The challenge is again the same — common daily experience for the average person offers little proof of this other reality, let alone the possible value of this other dimension of experience, unless one can gain perspective from outside the 9-to-5 work day framework and a scientific purely-objective system.

Dream related mental skills such as dream recall or dream interpretation and information on subjects such as the meaning of nightmares or precognitive dreams isn’t often taught in our schools, and the majority of our parents knew or passed on little about the value of dreams as we grew up. So it's no big surprise that many adults remember few or no dreams, and even more rarely contemplate or set out to interpret the guidance and mine the jewels of creative inspiration hidden just below the surface of consciousness in dreams. Basically, nobody told us or showed us how dreams can be extremely practical.

The result of where this long-standing trend of disregarding dreams has brought society is that the current misguided concepts about the value of dreams are not only crucial misunderstandings, but also represent and even bring about a lack of connection with the subconscious and our own deeper nature. This artificial rift may indirectly, or even rather directly be the source for many of our current personal, cultural and planetary social, political, and environmental challenges.

One solution towards rebalancing and integration on a personal and eventually a planetary level, is for each of us to realize and begin to investigate how our personal dreams, at very least, each night offer a direct means to explore inner reality and gain unique, undeniable experiences of deep personal value. Further, there is overwhelming evidence that they can be applied in many ways to improve waking life, supporting Shakespeare's age-old claim by MacBeth that sleep and dreams are the "chief nourishers in life's feast". Dreams do indeed offer opportunities for fun, adventure, wish fulfillment, creativity, deep personal insight and healing — and dreams offer all this at no cost and with no line-ups! 

Nightmares, Bad Dreams, or Recurring Dreams.

The above title may seem odd, if not a complete contradiction. Why would anyone suggest that nightmares or anxiety dreams might be helpful? If you're in the half of the population that has experienced an anxiety dream or nightmare within the last month, then this may even be what you're wishing you could get rid of, right? Some people who had nightmares or recurring dreams early on in life even manage to block their dream recall entirely in order to stop being upset by such experiences. This unfortunate view of "bad" dreams as things to avoid is precisely the reason for the above title and for this article. An avoidance or denial approach is much like putting a Band-Aid on a car's blinking oil light because the light seems annoying. Of course, fifty or a hundred miles later, it would be greatly preferable to have understood the warning. Obviously, it's even better not to have the light blinking, but if it does, then it's important to do something about it since it's there for a good reason. One certainly wouldn't be very wise to disable it. Though perhaps not obvious, the simple fact is that most nightmares and almost all recurring dreams are similarly trying to provide an extremely valuable service to the dreamer. If we block them, we are likely missing their immediate benefit; if we remember but ignore them, we may well be missing the vital message that they are trying to bring us about our life.

Almost everyone has experienced one or more dreams that contain anxiety or outright fear. For some, unpleasant dreams or nightmares recur repeatedly; for others, the content may change while the theme remains the same, such as scenes of falling, or of being pursued or attacked, late or unprepared for a presentation or an exam, stuck in slow motion, unable to move or scream, or naked in public, to name a few common themes. This type of experience, when unpleasant, is usually associated with lack of progress by the dreamer to recognize and solve related conflicts in life.

Though it has been scientifically proven that we all dream every night, fear of nightmares or other anxieties or misguided beliefs about dreams and the unconscious can block dream recall. This can usually be overcome by learning about the useful nature of dreams and by recognizing that the majority of nightmares, like a bitter but quite necessary medicine, represent opportunities for personal healing through much-needed emotional release. They are often indirectly warning us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that we need to remedy if we don’t want such unpleasant dreams to repeat, or worsen. Sometimes, such imbalances or patterns resolve themselves as the dream percolates into waking thought and we unknowingly respond and make adjustments in our life. But if we block, deny or ignore such messages from the subconscious for too long, then it usually speaks ‘louder’ to get our attention often by bringing related events, which I call daymares, into our waking hours. These daymares show up as sickness, accidents, relationship difficulties or other unfortunate personal circumstances that force us outright to deal with the issue at hand. Interestingly enough, such events often have repeating themes as well, such as recurring relationship patterns, for example.

Psychologist Ernest Rossi has put forth that one important function of dreaming is integration: the combining of separate psychological structures into a more balanced and comprehensive personality. Renown psychologist Carl Jung observed that portions of our whole personality which we knowingly or unknowingly judge become disowned, and are frequently projected outward in dreams, taking the form of aggressors, devils, monsters, intimidating animals or natural events (e.g. tidal waves), and so on. Jung referred to these symbolic figures as "the shadow". Whether we become aware of such elements of our shadow through nightmares or daymares, re-accepting these judged and disowned portions of ourselves is the message and the awaiting gift.

So, we truly are lucky to have such nightmares, since they provide a natural ‘pressure-release’ therapy for the psyche, and especially since they may even provide what amounts to an early cure if we listen to, make an effort to understand and then act upon the valuable insight that dreams try to bring us. The goal is still to put an end to nightmares and recurring dreams, but by evolving them into more beneficial scenarios, and not by blocking, ignoring or denying them.

Resolving Nightmares

Fortunately, there exist treatments for nightmares that do not involve medication and which have shown to be very effective. Some of the most useful techniques include dream rehearsal, dream lucidity, guided imagery and mainstream therapies such as gestalt, psychosynthesis, focusing, or other such methods.

One approach is lucid dreaming where one recognizes during a dream that one is dreaming, hence gaining a degree of conscious control. This approach is demonstrated by this woman’s dream:

"After many recurring nightmares where I'm pursued by some terrifying figure, I learned of lucid dreaming and had the following dream: 'I'm in a frantic car chase with the pursuer right behind me. Swerving into a parking lot, I bolt out of the car and run with him hot on my heels. Suddenly, the scene seems familiar and I realize that I'm dreaming, though the lot and trees still seem more real than ever. Drawing upon every ounce of courage that I have, I swirl to face my pursuer, repeating to myself that it's only a dream. Still afraid, I scream at him, "You can't hurt me!" He stops, looking surprised. For the first time I see his beautiful, loving eyes. "Hurt You?" he says. "I don't want to hurt you. I've been running after you all this time to tell you that I love you!" With that, he holds out his hands, and as I touch them, he dissolves into me. I awake filled with energy, feeling great for days.' Not only did the nightmare never return, but more importantly, I now find myself much better at facing unpleasant situations at work and in my personal life. Following what I learned in the dream, I'm much better at standing my ground and expressing my feelings when needed and appropriate, whereas before I would usually avoid or run from such situations." (M.R., San Jose, CA)