The source of dreams
Over coffee we may hear, “I dreamed about you last night. It was the most amazing thing.”
This is our sixth post in our workshop on dreams. Should we share our dreams over coffee? Generally we need to realize that our dreams are precious, a window into our inner world. Share your dreams with caution. I suggest telling our dreams only to individuals or groups you can trust to respect your confidence. They need to be people who will not depreciate them or get high on the power trip of telling us what they think they mean.
Generally others do not know what our dreams mean. We are the best judge of the right interpretation, for we know when something clicks and we sense that we have found a missing part of ourselves. Sometimes people look to me as we work on a dream to tell them what it means and I try to remind them that when it clicks they will know it is their new discovery for the day.
Just for the record, this new piece of ourselves that we have discovered is not always as socially acceptable as our public image might wish. We may discover that under our gracious quiet smiling exterior, that we have a lot of hostility, sadness or erotic energy. We may find, for example, that we have a lot more anger than was acceptable in our families in our growing years.
This is a good time to mention that dreams have their own point of view. We like to think that in the Board Room of our mind that we are the chairman and we are in charge, but that is often not the case. Sometimes another part of ourselves takes over and has the last word.
Jung tells us that dreams are not garbage left over from the day, they do not arise out of our ego, but they come from what he called the Objective Psyche. This means that there is another part of ourselves, of which we know very little, which has influence in our affairs and which in fact can, and frequently does, get the upper hand. A few examples of this loss of conscious control are when we are caught in a mood, have problems with our sleep, or run into all kinds of interpersonal problems.
Any comments?