Dreams
At Waking's End
Dreams are real events that are lived just like any other experience. These lived experiences are wide open, not rigidly subject to psychological defenses, societal norms, or even the law of physics. The possible and impossible merge. At its best, the resulting amalgam can provide startlingly creative solutions to problems as well as the discovery of deep truths that can guide us in life and beyond.
“Let us learn to dream, and then we may perhaps find the truth.”
Chemist August Keule
Practice: Dream Incubation
Think and clearly consider a pressing problem in your life (e.g., related to studies, relationships, work) and write it down on paper as a brief phrase or sentence. Place what you wrote by your bed, or under your pillow.
Arrange objects connected to the problem by your bed, if possible. Just before going to bed, review the problem again for a few minutes. To prepare to record any dreams, keep a pen and paper near the bed. Once in bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image. Also, visualize yourself dreaming about the problem, awakening, and writing your dream on the bedside note pad. As you drift off to sleep, tell yourself you want to dream about the problem.
When you wake up, lie quietly before getting out of bed. Note whether there is any trace or wisp of a recalled dream and invite more of the dream to return. Write down what you remember, even if it’s just fragments or seems trivial. Then consider the messages in the dream images and action and consider how it could relate to the problem at hand.
Why Dreams?
Dreams open up our imaginations, and if we listen and understand we can gain creative insights. Dreams also speak to us honesty, disrupting fixed positions about self and identity and helping unlock blocks causing unhappiness. Dreams can have a diagnostic function, too, sending us signs about risks and dangers: telling us to change jobs or relationships, or to go the doctor to check up on some part of us needing attention.
Free.
A few minutes to prepare for sleep and to record dreams after you wake up.
None. If overworked and exhausted, you may need to first catch up on your sleep.
“Those who lose the Dreaming are lost.”
Australian Aboriginal Proverb
Resources
For thousands of years many cultures believed dreaming to be a higher state of consciousness than the waking state. Dreams were a deep reservoir of wisdom and truth, intertwined with creation stories, healing traditions and death rituals. But it wasn’t until the 1900s that dreams, through the work of Freud and Jung, became the subject of serious scientific inquiry. These early modern dream explorers built complex psychological systems and stressed the need for a professional class of analysts to assist in dream retrieval and interpretation.
Around 50 years ago, however, a new current in dreamwork sought to bring power to the people. Prominent names in this movement have included Fritz Perls, Henry Reed, Montague Ullman and Gayle Delaney. Their teachings and clinical practice show that only the dreamer has the key to accurately interpreting the dream, and also that groups of supportive laypeople can create powerful settings for a dreamer to explore dreams and find new perspectives and life purpose.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung