I've kept a dream journal for over twenty years now and am constantly fascinated by the things they show me. Of course, the culture is divided over the idea of whether dreams actually mean anything. If you're of a strictly rational frame of mind, you'll probably dismiss them as little more than day residue, while those with an interest in depth psychology, will want to explore them further. I fall into this latter camp, though from a more poetic, and romantic perspective than from the therapeutic angle.
I treat dreams as an extension of waking life, treat the situations and the characters I encounter, as if they do in fact mean something. This is not to say they do, or that they prove anything. It's more that I simply allow myself to live as if they do, and in doing so, this lends a certain glamour to life.
I'm not sure if I like the word "analysis", though in some sense, remembering and pondering our dreams is inevitably a form of self-analysis. At one level I think they offer a window on the unconscious mind, giving symbolic hints regarding the issues currently occupying it – evidence therefore of a cognitive processing of personal significance that goes on without our direct awareness. But I've also noticed how our dreams also seem to know when they're being attended to, and will modify the images they deliver, the stories they tell, almost in a spirit of cooperation. If we're careful then, this allows us a window of opportunity for a deeper dialogue.
There seems to be an intent, a direction in which the dreams are drawing us. We notice this over a period of many years – not so much in the actual circumstances of our lives, but our psychological disposition, namely the relationship between ego and unconscious.
This is what the Jungian analysts might describe as a process of individuation, a balancing out of the psyche, a state where the egoic mind and the unconscious, begin to work more in harmony than in opposition. The process involves a study of one's dreams and a search for resonant associations. But as lay dreamers, I think we need to be careful with the word "process", and avoid making a quest out of it.
I see establishing a relationship with dreams less as a self development goal, one that moves through various levels of awareness, with a clear end-state, and more as a slow deepening, a softening, which is a thing that has no actual conclusion. In this, I've found it's often enough to pay our dreams the respect of simply listening to them, even if we've no clear idea what they're saying.
But what's also curious is that when I am most connected with my dreams, when I am attentive and listening, I am also at my most creative in terms of the art I pursue - in my case poetry and fiction. But to recall dreams nightly, as one sometimes does can lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed by them so, in recent years, I've begun to render the dreams more manageable by breaking them up into chapters.
The lunar period – the synodic month – gives us a convenient time period to work with. I've also created a kind of mythic journey around each lunation, which the dreams can use if they so wish. This provides a symbolic lexicon the dreams can adopt, and which may add a little to our mutual understanding. Again, this is not to say it means anything, nor do I propose it as a method for others, but by allowing myself to believe in it, it gradually allows us to take a different perspective on life, especially when we realise our dreams are indifferent to our usual worldly concerns.
Insights begin to coalesce around repeated motifs, from one lunation to the next, certain characters appear repeatedly, some wearing the guise of people I know or have known. And these people are symbolic in the sense of representing the emotions aroused when I encounter them in waking life. Other times the dreams are more clearly archetypal.
The archetypes are a special case and deeply interesting. They tend to appear in the more numinous, more memorable dreams, though this does not mean they are any more understandable. We take note of them, pay them the respect of pondering their mythology, and how it might pertain to our life situation. Mostly they're enigmatic, speak in symbols, allegory and metaphor. But sometimes... the archetypes can be startlingly literal.
I have read that dreams are rarely verbal, but my own dream characters do occasionally speak. The current lunation began with a background anxiety around a medical test I was to have, and a particular dream in which a surgeon appeared – a friendly, fatherly, protective kind of figure I would have described as Mercurial. He said he was sorry to have deceived me, that actually things were a bit more serious than he'd led me to believe. I wondered about that, wondered if it was the unconscious mind granting me the time, ahead of time, to deal with the eventual result of those tests, which landed this morning.
His message was to let go of everything that was vexing me, that the diagnosis would give me permission to shut the world out for a bit, to recalibrate. This is not to say the dream was prophetic, though some might interpret it as such. I suspect instead the unconscious had been gently preparing the ground for the possibility all along.
But the point I think I'm driving at here, is that we can live with or without our dreams. Indeed, there are some of us who claim never to dream. But life is richer, more interesting, more meaningful and yes, occasionally more frightening, if we choose to live with them. Our dreams need not be literally true in order to be profoundly real. By living in conversation with them, we sometimes find ourselves unexpectedly prepared for life's inevitable encounters with suffering and mortality.