Since ancient times people have pondered the meaning of dreams. These visitors of the night were highly valued by the ancient Greeks, as it was believed that dreams could help guide the future and offer information from the other side to help cure illness.
Asklepios, a priest and healer who is believed to have lived in the time of Castor and Pollux, wandered the countryside healing people through sacred mantras, music, dance, herbs, and dreams. His services were free, but a gift or sacrifice was expected in exchange for a cure. It was said that Asklepios became so united with the life principle that he could recall the dead from the underworld. It greatly concerned Hades to be slighted by a mere mortal and have interference with the shades that were under his domain. Hades convinced his brother Zeus that Asklepios must die, but another powerful god, Apollo, begged for mercy, and so it was that Asklepios, like Castor and Pollux, ascended to the stars to become a god, the patron of healing and medicine.
For centuries thereafter people visited the healing temples of Asklepios, where they fasted, took ritual baths, meditated, prayed, and then retreated to the abaton, the innermost sanctuary. There they slept, in a manner that was similar to being entombed in a low place, and there they waited for a healing dream. There was no guarantee, and not everyone was cured, but a sacred dream could change lives.
Merging Dreams and Active Imagination
Today dreams are just as relevant, though we have lost the art of healing with dreams. In his early work, Jung spoke of active imagination and dream analysis as two therapeutic techniques, but in later life he wrote that his dream method was based on active imagination. In the deepest sense, symbolic work (whether in the waking dreams of active imagination or the dreams that occur during sleep) becomes more than a technique; it expresses the inner-directed symbolic attitude that is at the core of psychological development.
So when it is asked, What is a dream? I answer, A dream is one of nature’s creations, a spontaneous, undisguised expression of the life force that flows in and through us. It is the intersection of the daylight world and the underworld, calling attention to what is unlived yet still urgent in us. Why pay attention to dreams? For many reasons: They are enormously helpful for loosening up the knots in our lives caused by complexes. They provide a bountiful source of creativity, renewal, strength, and wisdom. They are a direct portal to what is ripe for consciousness. The images engaged within dreams are numinous (sacred space with a divine connection), for at the core of our dream images is an archetypal energy. In dreams daemons, heroes, and gods visit us shaped like people and events from the past week.
Perhaps the most important reason for paying attention to your dreams is that they humble and relativize consciousness. Dreams reframe the ego’s perspective, denying its fantasies of omnipotence and enlarging our vision of what is possible. By showing us a mythic underworld filled with diverse possibilities, dreams open us to the vibrant mystery of being alive.
Some people insist that they never dream. In truth, nearly everyone dreams several times during a normal night’s sleep; what varies is our ability to recall the images of the dream. The most vivid dreams occur in the phase of sleep called REM sleep, which can be detected by the Rapid Eye Movement that occurs when you are dreaming. You may have noticed a dog or cat asleep with its eyes twitching beneath the eyelids. This is REM sleep, and it indicates that a dream is occurring. Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM, a condition in which the body is nearly paralyzed but the brain is buzzing with activity. Researchers using advanced computer technology to watch the dreaming brain have found that one of the most active areas during REM sleep is the limbic system, which controls our emotions.
Remembering Your Dreams
To improve your dream recall, start with a pen and notepad or a dream journal kept close to your bed. A voice-activated tape recorder also can be handy, as it doesn’t require turning on a light to record the dream. If you wait until noon to write down that “unforgettable” dream, you are likely to find that it has disappeared like vapor before you’ve even finished brushing your teeth. If at first all you have is a fleeting image or an emotion, record that. If you pay attention to what is given, the next night you are likely to remember more. If you are cynical and show little interest in your dreams, you probably won’t remember much. It is as if the inner dream maker returns the attitude you show to it. If you approach a dream with interest and curiosity, you will be rewarded with greater recall.
Jung, who wrote volumes about dreams, noted, “Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product, distinguished by qualities such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless and worthless.”26
“I have no theory about dreams…I share all your prejudices against dream interpretation as the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness. On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it…I must content myself wholly with the fact that the result means something to the patient and sets his life in motion again…for very often the standstill and disorientation arise when life has become one-sided.”27
Dreams speak in the language of symbols, so you must learn to translate dream language, but this doesn’t mean you should go out and purchase a dream dictionary. Attempting to pin a symbol down to singular meaning, such as a horse in a dream equals instincts or emotions, is not helpful. Every dream symbol is multifaceted. Like a jewel, it will reflect the light differently as we turn it about in various ways. You must interact with the dream images.
As with cinema, dance, visual arts, or poetry, each dream is multilayered and can have boundless meanings. We may never understand a dream completely from the conscious viewpoint, but the act of relating to a dream is what is most important. You can work with the images in a dream just as you would in active imagination with a complex or a mood, developing a dynamic relationship with the energies that emerge.
What Does the Dream Want?
Consider dreams as a call from the underworld, seeking not interpretation so much as incarnation in our lives. The wonderful Spanish poet Federico García Lorca used symbols to evoke mystery and wonder. In a poem called “Casida de la rosa,” he wrote:
La rosa
no buscaba la aurora:
casi eterna en su ramo,
buscaba otra cosa.
La rosa,
no buscaba ni ciencia ni sombra:
confin de carne y sueño,
buscaba otra cosa.
The rose
Was not seeking the dawn:
Almost eternal on its branch,
It looked for something else.
The rose
Sought neither science nor shade:
Bordering flesh and dream,
It looked for something else.28
(TRANSLATION BY JEREMY IVERSEN)
Like all great poets, Lorca utilizes symbols to open our experience. His readers are led to ask: What is this other thing, and how does this poet know the rose does not seek the dawn, or shade, or science? What is the relationship of flesh to dreams?
Here I have drawn upon the work of Jungian analyst Russell Lockhart,29 who points out that it is the nature of the conscious mind to ask questions, interpret, and search for logic. Yet there is another voice in us that may respond to the poem on a different level, a quiet voice that simply says, “Yes!” Poetry uses language as symbol, and symbols open up our experience to wonder and creative possibilities.
In active imagination you can take any dream as a jumping-off point and then dialogue with the dream symbols. Allow the images to rise in you again as you say the dream aloud in the present tense. At the point where the dream ends, simply wait with patient expectation. Observe what happens next. Watch the images in the dream. Stick to the image; don’t rush to interpret it. Only in this way can we befriend the dream, and get to know it as we would a person in outer life.
For example, rather than wondering if a snake has sexual connotations, bring attention to the qualities of the snake in your dream, such as its scales. Close your eyes and focus on those snake scales. What are their color and texture? Details are important in making the images come alive. What happens when you stop to face the snake? Reach out to touch it? In your mind’s eye, allow the dream image to come alive and then let it unfold before you. See what discovers you, rather than the other way around.
Psychologist Stephen Aizenstat aptly describes this approach as hosting a dream rather than dissecting it. You relate to it as living entity within the ecology of the psyche. Let go of trying to find the correct interpretation of the dream. The point is not to analyze or interpret it and thereby translate it into the ego’s language and desires. Focus on the “what” of the dream rather than the “why.” Dreams are to be related to on their own terms; they are examples of psyche speaking to itself in its own language. This is a language of metaphor and symbol, so you need to play poetically with the images in your dreams. In this manner you can re-enter the dream experience as sacred space with a divine connection.
Suppose the author of your dreams wanted to talk about old age. He would not go and write old age on the blackboard. He would create a setting, such as a rocking chair, on the stage. This is the playwright’s way of talking about old age. That is how a dream symbol arrives—in picture language.
Living with the images of the dream brings consciousness in contact with the irrational customs and desires of the underworld. The art of letting things happen is the key that opens the door to this realm. As already noted, the hardest part for most modern people is to let go of the grip of consciousness so the images are allowed to speak. We must give time and patience to the dream images, jumping to no conclusions.
I once had a client, Eve, who was divorced and the mother of two children. Her live-in boyfriend was a financial drain and would not commit to marriage or much of anything else. He was something of a sponge, made little effort to relate to the kids, and was not one to talk about his feelings. She could see no future with this man but was worried about her finances without him, even though he contributed little to the monthly budget. Then she had a dream:
I am on a horse named Coke; he was my father’s favorite horse. We are going down a hill, and he wants to lock his legs and slide down the hill. Something is wrong with the horse. I get off. He rolls three or four feet to the bottom of the hill and then dies with his eyes open.
Eve was completely baffled by this dream. At first we tried to interpret it. She was not fond of horses. “They are too unpredictable, not to be trusted,” she informed me. Rather than speculating that a horse means this or that, I asked her to recall the image of that horse and to notice what it felt like as she watched it die. As the images came back to her, they seemed to fill the room. She observed that the horse’s coat was tattered and worn. That he smelled bad, like something a bit rotten. Then she noticed that the horse died voluntarily, just rolling himself up on the ground. “What wants to die?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she insisted, but the images were active in her imagination now.
The following week Eve returned and announced that she had decided to kick her boyfriend out of the house. She had a follow-up dream:
I am at a wilderness ranch. I am playing near a pool when a dolphin swims up to play with me. I reach out to touch him. Then there are dolphins all around me. They want to play with my legs. At first their rough skin feels a bit odd, but I get used to it. Then I look out and see that there is a female dolphin that is ready to give birth. The male dolphins are there to protect her.
The first thing that jumped out in this dream was the flow of energy, as Eve imagined putting her feet in the cold water of the pool. Then something miraculous happened—dolphins appeared. “They are very protective. They want to help me,” she said with new confidence.
After she worked with this dream in active imagination, it became clear to Eve that all she had to do was take a small risk (put her toe in the water) and tremendous growth would occur. The dream generated optimism and courage in her, as she felt that something new was being born. Indeed, a new attitude toward the masculine was being formed, as Eve considered how she had been relying upon men for qualities that were ripe to be claimed from her unlived life, qualities such as financial independence and practical capabilities such as overseeing car and home repairs. She no longer needed to ride on the back of needy dependence on the masculine, an attitude and orientation to life that began with the experience of her father. His horse, Coke (no, there was no drug use in the family), turned out to be a potent symbol of the father complex. The limitations of an old attitude needed to die. The archetypal father image serves as a prototype for our capacity to feel our own worth, self-confidence, and the capacity to carry out necessary life tasks. When we consciously or unconsciously feel inadequate to this task, this is called a negative father complex. Assumptions may originate with the biological father, but they are subsequently reinforced by other relational and cultural experiences.
Over the weeks following her dream of the dolphins, Eve changed the locks on her doors so the former boyfriend could no longer drop in unannounced. Her small business continued to grow and her financial worries quieted as she realized that she could take care of herself and her children. She developed an insatiable appetite for books and films. What was most remarkable was that Eve had always enjoyed playing pool as a hobby, though a lack of confidence held back her progress in tournaments. Recall her second dream with the new birth in the pool? Dreams often make puns with words, showing us the multidimensionality of a symbol. Well, a year after having that dream, with her newfound confidence, Eve entered and won an amateur pool championship in eight ball!
Interacting with Dream Images
If there is too much of something in your lived life, your dreams will tell you. If there is too little of something, they will inform you of this. If you are overdoing or underdoing, the dream will serve as your guide. Dreams comment on somatic conditions as well as the psyche. They can predict disease and provide cures. So you will need to put some energy into interacting with your dream symbols.
If your dream includes falling, ask of your dream image, What is falling or how am I falling? From grace? From esteem? In love?
If there is an image of flying, ask yourself, What am I flying over in my conscious attitude? Am I flying off the handle? How am I inflated? What yearns to fly in me, to grow wings and take flight? Am I flying toward or away from something? Is a transcendent perspective trying to free me in some way? Experience flight in your mind’s eye and watch what happens.
People often dream of toilets. What needs recycling? Where am I wasted, overflowing, or flooded? What about my privacy? Do I need to let go of something? Imagine yourself talking in or even to the dream toilet. See yourself as the toilet. What is it like to get “dumped on”? Enter the dreamscape, watch the image, and observe what happens.
Dreams are marvelous at filling in the chinks in your personality, pulling you toward your destiny in small turns. Sometimes this is accomplished parenthetically. There are times when a dream doesn’t have the solution; it is vague and only states a problem or reiterates a stuck point. If you relate to the images as far as the dream goes, however, it may help to set the stage for later development.
A voice within you is likely to argue that all this fuss over a dream is a waste of time. Thank it politely for offering this opinion and providing practicality to your life—and then continue to listen to your dreams with high regard.
The goal is to create an experience in the here and now rather than a dry analysis of the dream. After recording a dream, you should describe it aloud in the present tense, use “ing” words, as if it were happening NOW. This will help to “dream the dream on.” Try exploring the dream landscape,30 concentrating on “what” rather than “why.” Wait for images to fill the silent space.
Inner Work Affects the Collective Psyche
Some people, or some skeptical energy in you, will argue that tending to dreams is a fool’s errand, a self-indulgent distraction from the real and urgent demands of the outer world. Your inner work inevitably affects those around you and the world as a whole. Like ripples in a pond, the energy released from making the unconscious conscious often has far-reaching implications.
I had a client who worked very hard on her dreams for six months. She hadn’t told her husband that she was coming for therapy, and she paid me out of her grocery money. One day she came in angry, threw herself down in the chair, and said, “It isn’t fair.”
I asked, “What isn’t fair?”
“I work like a dog on my dreams, and my husband, who thinks it’s all a joke, derides my efforts. He seems to be happier than I am!”
That can happen. Do not succumb to the concern that devoting time to inner work is an exercise in navel gazing or narcissism. Such comments often come from family and friends who have a vested interest in our predictability and consistency. As you retrieve unlived life, it will shift the nature of relationships—conscious and unconscious—with those around you.
Jung pointed out that individuation has two aspects: In the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship. Neither can exist without the other. No individual is a single, separate being, so it follows that “individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation.”31
You cannot predict the direction your inner work might take, but in bringing more consciousness into the world you are assisting the evolution of the collective as well as yourself. The Torah says you may pray at one altar for the fire to fall and instead it falls on your neighbor’s altar. If you invest in the marriage of the inner and outer worlds by putting honest energy into dreaming a dream on, all the people in your life, maybe the whole of humankind, is enriched, though it may not produce the result your ego was seeking. This is a saint’s task, clarifying a bit of the collective unconscious for the good of all humanity.
Once you have worked with a dream and something has moved in you, or there is some new insight concerning your habitual patterns, you will remember more dreams. If the dream repeats a theme, then your interior relationship to that experience is not finished. The dream will usually make small variations, giving you a hint of what to do. Each dream is a step in your developmental process, and if you interact with it, the next one will be different.
There are circumstances in which dreams repeat a scene or motif over and over. For example, if the person has been subject to trauma such as a war, violence, a serious accident, abuse, the death of a loved one, a natural disaster. Experiences such as these are often too far outside the bounds of our usual ability to cope and cannot be easily assimilated; as a result, they will come back as inner experience repeatedly until the person can find a safe way to integrate the dream material. A wise and experienced mentor may be needed so that the images in the dream can be assimilated in a safe manner that does not continue to retraumatize the psyche. A professional therapist can be most helpful in such situations. This applies to people who have recurring night terrors. There are experiences that shock us so badly that we can only take them in a bit at a time.
If we commit to reworking our most painful experiences, then we are less likely to pass them along as a heritage to our children or others.
In relating to a dream, always ask: Why has this visitor appeared? What do I need to learn? What am I not perceiving from my ego’s current point of view? If you spend a bit of time with the dream, you will influence the underlying patterns in the psyche—even if you cannot come to a clear conclusion. The release of energy will be good for you.
Inner or Outer Reality?
In dream work seminars, I am often asked: “Is the dream commenting on my inner life or on the external situation?” For example, if I dream of a fight with my wife, does this mean that tension is building and a quarrel with her is approaching, or is the dream about being on bad terms with my inner feminine qualities? People often get confused here, because the unconscious has the habit of borrowing images from outer life and using them to symbolize dynamics that are going on inside the dreamer.
In truth, dreams are multidimensional and make no distinction between inner and outer. The imagery in a dream can and should be applied to both domains of your life. If a man is on bad terms with his inner feminine, then he is likely to fall into a mood, and a quarrel with someone on the outside is likely to follow. What happens in inner life will draw that experience to you in outer reality.
However, from a practical standpoint, in working with dreams I always look for the inner connection first. Since our culture trains us to value the outer world, people generally jump to the conclusion that dreams are commenting directly about something on the outside. If you consider a dream as a rerun of the day’s events, then it will usually seem superficial and not worth troubling over. But then you will be missing some of the most important aspects of the dream.
Start by assuming that the dream is about your inner dynamics, not outer reality. For example, a man dreams of a plane crash and concludes that he had best not travel. But he could look at the plane crash as a symbol he is already involved with in some way: Something in his life is coming down in a destructive manner. Even when a dream makes some direct comment on an external situation, it is doing so in terms of the inner condition that precedes it.
The urge to take dream images literally is strong. Many people will try to use a dream as an excuse to blame the external person or to congratulate themselves on how right they are. But if you resist that temptation, you will have a better chance of understanding what bit of unlived life is calling for you to claim it.
I recall a client who came to me with a dream in which his sister drove a car too fast and subsequently crashed into a building. He feared that the dream foretold an auto accident and wanted to call his sister to warn her. I suggested that it would be more useful to start from the subjective viewpoint, with the assumption that the dream was symbolizing something in his own inner life, such as a runaway compulsion or moving too quickly with some enthusiasm that was about to get out of control. I asked him to talk to the inner image of his sister (not his literal sister), taking the dream into active imagination. What was he doing that might be out of control? This led to some insights that the dreamer had not considered.
Remember to think imaginally, not literally.
Here is another example: If you dream of a train, usually it is not about a train on the outside but some part of you that is train-like. Perhaps it is your determination, storming down the tracks. Maybe it is a runaway enthusiasm. Visualize your dream train. Feel its power. Notice the details to help the images come alive for you. How does this train sound, smell, feel? What do you experience in your body as you host this image?
Telos: Dreaming the Future
Dreams are often forward looking, teleological. The ancient Greek word telos relates to the pull of the future. It is a most beautiful word. Our scientific culture is so ingrained with cause and effect that we tend to want to relate to all things in such a manner. However, there also seem to be unseen forces that pull at us to accomplish certain goals.
There are dreams that foretell something about to occur outside the dreamer. For example, people will dream of disaster just before a war breaks out or someone close to them dies. The dreamer later discovers that the event actually took place in outer reality. This is rare, but it does occur.
Once you have gained some insight from the dream images, to truly benefit from symbolic work you must eventually do something different. Even when you have had a vivid experience interacting with dream images, your insight is most likely only from the neck up. You must then acquaint the rest of your body with it. An old rule in Catholicism is that a prayer doesn’t count unless your lips move—it is not enough just to recite it in your mind. The same is true with dreams. There will be no effect if you don’t put it down on paper and then do something to incarnate the images. Activate your muscles. Most people today have become so theoretical and abstract that at times they need to be reminded to engage the physical body and do something tangible.
For example, if a dream makes it clear that you feel guilty about the money you borrowed, you should go pay back the loan. Unfortunately, dreams aren’t always that straightforward. Then you must be creative and devise a ceremony to honor the dream in some small way. If you are absolutely stuck, you can go out and walk around the block; just do something, even if it makes you feel a bit foolish.
I recall a marvelous man, a Benedictine monk, who was in analysis. He hadn’t been aware of his body for thirty years. His dreams seemed to be trying to round him out, presenting parts of his life that he had neglected. He was doing his best to ignore both his dreams and my suggestions that he needed to pay attention to his physical nature. One day I lost my temper with him and told him it was not enough to have intellectual discussions about the content of his dreams; he needed to get out and do something with them.
“What would I do?” he asked with a blank look.
Exasperated, I blurted out, “Well, if you can’t think of anything else, then go look at the bark on ten trees!”
He silently stood up, cleared his throat, gathered his things, and walked out. I felt I had offended the poor man, lost my composure and pushed him too far. Then, a few hours later, there was a knock on my door. He had returned. “You have no idea how interesting the bark on trees is,” he said. “Some of it is rough, some smooth, some brown, some gray; it’s different on the north than on the south side; insects live in some of it. You know, different trees have different smells,” he said. As he awakened to the realm of the senses and his own physicality, his healing began. He started to be able to shift out of the abstract, intellectual realm in which he had lived for decades. Now whenever I see him I ask how his trees are doing, and we both laugh.
June, a woman in her late thirties, came to see me because she claimed that she could not feel anything. “Other people talk about feelings, but I have always been empty,” she confessed. All of her experience was processed as thoughts in her head. She grew up in an Appalachian family with a mother who worried constantly and was frightened of the dangers outside their small and circumscribed existence. Mom warned her children that if they left home they would most certainly fall ill and maybe even die, as the world was a threatening place. My client’s father was given to rages, which would terrify the children. June was the only one in the family who did leave home—she broke out, went to college, and became a pharmacist in a neighboring state, yet life felt flat to her. This is one of her dreams:
I am inside my house. Looking through a window, I see bluebirds outside. I am very excited and tell everyone in the house. I tell them not to walk near the window or they might frighten the birds. My youngest sister doesn’t hear me and walks by, and I am fearful she will ruin the situation, but then my husband and I are flying with the birds. It is as if we are floating with an entire flock of bluebirds. I wonder if we will fall out of the air or keep flying.
June’s feelings, like the bluebirds, were just outside the window and inviting her—spirits in flight. In response to this dream, June decided to draw the bluebirds, make up stories about them, and then talk to them. She worked hard and made slow but steady progress processing the unlived life of her family. It took considerable effort to become free of her mother’s fears and let her feelings become airborne. There followed a series of dreams with threatening men. In the dreams she ran away or tried to make herself small when these figures appeared. A turning point came when, in active imagination, she was able to confront one of these dark and cruel men. Her body shook with the energy that was released when she reclaimed her power.
Remind yourself that understanding or interpreting a dream is not often the most important thing. That is the desire of the ego. The dream allows other aspects of the psyche to have a chance to speak. Energies from the underworld attempt to address us many times each day, but generally we are too busy with our conscious agendas to hear them, so they break through at night.
Aging and Death Dreams
One of the most frequent dream motifs in the second half of life involves dying. Often this will indicate that some energy system or old pattern in you is expiring; you must not conclude that your physical death is imminent. You may be at the end of a certain era in your life and some aspect of you needs to die and transform to clear the way for further development.
Here is a dream I had about three years ago:
I drive to San Francisco in my old Volkswagen Beetle. I park it. Then I forget where I have parked it and, though I can’t find my car, I have to go home again. I walk till I am exhausted. I’m feeling desperate, then I find my wallet is gone; I remember a friend in San Francisco had a wallet stolen, and he ended up at a Bank of America branch, which is also my bank. He had no identification or money, not even change to phone someone for assistance. He got help when they phoned back to his branch and verified that he had an account and then gave him a couple of hundred dollars, which pleased me greatly in my dream. So in the dream I thought, “If I can just find a Bank of America, they will bail me out from this difficulty.” I begin walking again. I cannot find a branch of Bank of America (though, in outer reality, there are many in San Francisco). Finally I am completely stuck, and from that stuck or zero point I suddenly realize the basic life principle that I am exactly where I belong, that I don’t really need anything, not a car, not the Bank of America. I realize this with great relief and joy.
Later that night, a second dream:
I am in a city again, this time in a medieval setting. I’m trying to find my way out of the city to get to where I am going. Every street that I take leads me back to where I started. It is a bit like a maze. I take different turns and go though hours of searching (there was great detail in the dream that I cannot now recall), but no matter which direction I go, I always end up at the same point. The third time I try this, still ending up where I started, is my final attempt. Exhaustion takes over, I surrender, and it comes like a revelation to me that all streets go both directions simultaneously and always take you back where you started—it seems this is the nature of reality!
This dream expressed the condensation of months and months of preoccupation with pairs of opposites, as I struggled with a Castor and Pollux split in me. I was tired of the demands of the world, with its deteriorating cultural climate, political conflicts, and constant demands upon my energy. A part of me was ready to die, to leave the earthly world for the eternal Pollux realm on Olympus, so at one level this was a death dream. Yet at the same time I was bound to this earth by my love for those closest to me.
At the time that I had this dream I had greatly reduced my lecture schedule, and my identity was changing, as represented by the missing wallet and identification. In tending to this dream in active imagination, I struck up a conversation with the bank teller. He made it clear that not even the Bank of America could rescue me. “You are entering old age—the twilight years,” the teller pointed out. “Surrender your identity from your earlier life.” As the dream image instructed, I had to let go of trying to do anything about my situation and accept reality as it was. I needed to stop fighting both the inner and outer process, including the limitations, of growing old.
Only at the point of exhaustion did a revelation set in and the totally irrational conclusion was reached that this is wonderful! Was I gaining some piece of enlightenment in my declining years?
In the second dream all streets go both directions simultaneously and always take you back where you started—this is the nature of reality. This concept may be bad news from a conscious perspective, but in the dream it felt as if I had discovered the secret of heaven.
These dreams were important for me, communications from the underworld preparing me for the major life changes we all eventually face—retirement and, eventually, physical death. I have gradually realized that it is unlived life that has not been made conscious that accounts for the greatest part of the struggle and painfulness at the moment of death. If we work with our dreams to resolve what is unfinished yet urgent in us, then much of this pain can be eliminated.
My friend Jane worked as a chaplain at a Philadelphia hospital. In this role she was regularly called upon to sit at the bedside of dying men and women, offering them solace and comfort. She heard one theme repeated over and over—a sense of betrayal. “They thought that if they met the responsibilities of life, fulfilling the culturally prescribed things that we all feel compelled to follow, that somehow life would not run out before they had a chance to live it. Yet in those precious moments before death they realized there was no more time. It was too late, and they had missed some essential experiences,” Jane recalled.
Imagine that right now there is no more time. Then you can begin to truly live.
When I resided in India, dead bodies could be seen daily on the street or near the ghats of the Ganges, and there was much less mystery about our inevitable dissolution of form. In modern Western culture we tend to hide death as though it is something that should not be.
Dreams concerning physical mortality often show order and unity, as though the contradictions of life are resolving themselves. For example, here is one from a client of mine, an elderly woman who had been diagnosed with cancer. She was a beautiful, sensitive, and fragile person and also an artist of some talent. At the time of this dream she had already undergone one major surgery to remove a tumor, followed by radiation treatments and then chemotherapy. This dream occurred during a time of crisis, when she realized that despite efforts to battle the cancer, it had metastasized and could no longer be contained. She was terrified. Then the following dream came:
I am walking downhill to a lake. The water in this lake is very clear. I can see all the way to the bottom. The rocks are all the same size, though they are turned in different ways. To the right, a man is swimming in the water, and he seems to want me to join him. Then, to the left, I see a beautiful unicorn. It is up to its knees in the water, and it is gorgeous. The bottom part of the unicorn is dissolving into patterns or waves, while the top is like a beautiful statue. Others are fearful of this animal, but I am not. The most intense feeling is one of clarity, as though I can look right to the bottom in this dream.
This image of the unicorn was miraculous, a gift from the unconscious, but at first the dreamer did not want to accept it. The dream promised that if she could be honest about her impending death, she would see immense beauty in it. The water is so clear she can see right to the bottom of existence—every rock is in place. The unicorn is a mystical animal, a symbol of oneness and unity, sometimes spoken of as a Christ symbol. In this context it seemed to refer to a gathering of the pieces of this woman’s life into a unity. At the time of this dream the dreamer still had unlived life, and it was torturing her. The dream seemed to indicate that if she could make this conscious, she would possess clarity, completion, and wholeness. This dream attempted to inform her what the death experience could be like; her distress was given a direct answer.
The unicorn dream was wonderfully clear. What the dreamer was afraid of actually was the glory of her life. In our next session I brought a treasure that had been given to me years earlier: a narwhal horn. Though the horn was from a sea creature, it looked remarkably like our ideal of the unicorn horn—its intricate white spirals extend twelve inches from the base to a pointed tip. I asked my client to hold it while visualizing her dream images. I believe that this woman’s powerful dream symbol helped her in her passage to the next realm. In our last conversation before her death, she seemed illuminated by peace and had surrendered her fear. I shall never forget our meetings.
Dream Tending: An Exercise
If you’d like to get in the habit of remembering your dreams, try the following dream incubation.32 Eat lightly on the evening that you plan to host an informing dream. About ninety minutes before going to bed, begin preparing yourself. Bathe in a leisurely way, holding the thought that you are cleansing body, mind, and heart. Put on a clean robe or night wear you feel relaxed in. Meditate or collect your thoughts for a period of time. Imaginatively reach out to another presence that can help you in your efforts. This could be identified as your soul, a higher power, your creative spirit, a muse, the unconscious, the higher Self, your patron saint, or a guardian angel—whatever is real and vivid for you. Ask this presence whether it would be willing to assist you in your dream tending.
Now write down a number of questions or topics that come into awareness. Choose one, or let one choose you. The topic should carry energy and have promise. Rewrite the question or issue into one clear, short sentence or phrase. Whisper it or say it aloud. Then write down the answers to the following questions:
As you begin to feel drowsy, repeat your issue or question. Go to sleep with the expectation of getting new perspectives during the night. When you awake, write down everything you remember right away, before it disappears like the night stars.
A dream is more cinematic than literary, with quick cuts, flashbacks, and simultaneity of action. When we write the images down into linear, grammatical sentences we lose much of the actual lived experience of the dream. To regain the sense of a flowing, dynamic process, after you have recorded a dream to aid your memory, try eliminating punctuation, such as commas, periods, and capital letters, in the narrative. This way when you read the dream back it will have more flow and will better invoke a living process.
Sometimes I like to think of dream images as an animal (such as a cat). They are independent creatures that do not particularly care to be analyzed, interpreted, or made to walk in straight lines. They do, however, appreciate relatedness. Perhaps it wants to have its ear scratched, to be fed, to be let out to play, or sometimes just to be admired. The same is true for your dreams. Talk to your most vibrant inner figures, and see what happens.
You might also play with the dream images by changing the nouns in your dream record to verbs, action words that are in process. For example, if I dream of an apple, I might consider: What is “apple-ing” about (i.e., what would it be like to be an apple?)? Is something in me ripe? Sour? Keeping the doctor away?
When you allow yourself to get into a living relationship with the dream images and what is happening in the scene, you will find that the meaning becomes less important. Befriend the images in your dreams, and try meeting your dreams, not with analysis but with curiosity, affection, and wonder.