The Night Journey

Research indicates that we all dream whether or not we remember our dreams on waking. Remaining open to the wisdom of the dream is the challenge. We are prone to say, “I know exactly what that was about”, or “That was strange, I have no idea what it was about” and then race on with our waking journey. However, it is when we are able to pause for a moment, and contemplate a dream from the position of “not knowing” that we open the possibility of actually letting the dream speak to us. It is through contemplation that acquiring some new bit of deeper understanding, and sometimes even an epiphany, occurs.

“Contemplate your dream and let it contemplate you.” -Harry Aron Wilmer in Practical Jung

Meaning

Is it a train barreling down on me or is it the light at the end of the tunnel? Or is it something more illusive holding deeper meaning. It is so easy to jump to conclusions about our dreams just as we do in waking life events when our thoughts and interpretations race ahead of internal knowing. Be still and re-experience the dreamscape for a while. Give the dream a chance to speak before talking back to it with manufactured interpretation.

“The dream is its own interpretation.” -The Talmud

Nightmares

Sometimes dreams issue a wake up call delivered in the middle of the night, sometimes with the intensity of a nightmare. While the meaning of a dream is rarely what it seems at first, “[Dreams] have a superior intelligence in them… which leads us. They show us where we are wrong; they show us where we are unadapted; they warn us about danger; they predict some future events; they hint at the deeper meaning of our life, and they convey to us illuminating insights.” (Marie Louise VonFranz as quoted by Jill Mellick in The Art of dreaming.)

Searching

I recently had a dream that I was driving a car full of businessmen to meet my father on my parents’ farm but we were lost, had missed our turn, and were traveling in circles. In my searching for the way through my dreamscape I bumped into a friendly man in a field. He was looking through binoculars and searching the horizon. He held his binoculars aside and said to me with humorous self-deprecation, “I am searching for my feminine side, I need to find it before my mother does.” While this dream gives me quite a laugh, the dream images are still working on me as I journal this dream fragment yet again and continue in peaceful contemplation.

“A dream tells you where you are, not what to do; or, by placing you where you are, it tells you what you are doing.” -James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld