Lesson 2: Laying the Foundations
Introduction: What is a dream? If in dreams we are receiving information about important issues in our lives, then why is the dream scenario so opaque and hard to understand? And why does the dream tend to vanish like a vapor as soon as we wake?
Foundations of Dream Work
People in primal cultures believed that the Great Spirit sent dreams to guide and advise them both in their daily lives and when they felt called to something greater – a vision or spirit quest. They believed that the dream world was at least as significant as the waking world. People used their dreams for personal guidance and some people in the tribe, like Black Elk, the holy man of the Oglala Sioux tribe, dreamed dreams that carried significance for the entire culture. People of most ancient cultures used dreams for guidance. The Egyptians and the Greeks believed that dreams were messages from the Gods and Goddesses and had places in their temples where people could come for sacred dreaming.
Carl Jung believed that dreams were constructed by the Self – the inner spark of the Divine, the source of healing and wholeness for the individual. Sincere students of dream exploration come to see the process as a sacred one – a communication with Soul. Famed Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, in an interview recorded as “Dreams: Language of the Soul” (Sounds True Recordings ISBN 1-56455-052-4), says that when we comprehend a dream or a symbol from a dream, when we have that “Aha! I’ve got it!” feeling, for that moment we know who we truly are, beyond our ego voices and our complexes. Then later when we walk out the door and find ourselves in a situation that feels alien and disturbing, we can speak our authentic truth because we are grounded in our authentic being. She tells us that dream work is the Soul work that carries us to psychic wholeness.
When analyzing our dreams, on one level we look at them as stories, personal myths, that are played out in the psyche, and that is a very useful approach to understanding the dream message. However, it is important to realize that the dream exists on another, more important level. The dream is an actual experience of the psyche, different from but equal in value to our conscious experiences. Jungian analyst James Hillman cautions us against trying to be too analytical of our dreams and to simply honor the experience.
Preparing for Dreamwork
To begin dream work, it is best to keep both a dream journal and a daily log or diary. In the daily log, you record your events of the day, and in the dream journal you record the dream that occurred that night. While working with a common dream, refer to your log, which tells you what was going on in your conscious world that day. The dream then will tell you how the unconscious sees the events of the day, where your energy is moving and where it is stuck; where you are in balance and where you are out of sync with yourself. The end of the dream will tell you in what direction your energy is currently moving.
