Thoughts from Tess

May 16, 2011

I Had a Dream Last Night

“I had a dream last night….” I wonder how many times I have heard that? Jung calculated at one point that he had interpreted 67,000 dreams. My rough calculation for me is about 53,000 and change, enough that it feels some days like my dream box is full.

But then, yet again, when I see the frown or delight or confusion on a person’s face and I am curious, one-more-time to hear what the dream-maker has brought this day. They are quite a resource, and one that our culture continues to ignore, discount, ridicule, or use to confirm existing knowledge so much so that they loose any possible impact.

 It is remarkable to me that each one of us dreams and yet the ego consciousness, or waking “I” is determined to make chopped liver of the dream material. Even seasoned dreamers will still say repeatedly, “this is a positive dream because…” or this is a negative dream because….”. Or “this dream is telling me to…” Actually the dream-maker lives very little in the positive/ negative world. And rarely do dreams truly implore us to do one thing over another. Sometimes dreams contain clear warnings or will have information that we need to be prepared for, but they are not negative/positive per se. The are what they are: raw nature, raw material, raw imagery.

 We have a cultural complex about dreams where we bully the dream material just like the ridicule aggressive children exhibit toward someone who is “different”. In other cultures, dreams are regularly listened to and thought about. Some are seen as markers to change rules in society or rites in religious customs, but not all have to be life-changing dreams in order to be validated.

There is a science to understanding dreams. Some dreams are terribly abstruse, but others do eventually emerge as a delightful piece of knowledge that is quite satisfying, like seeing a huge harvest moon or waking from a full night of restful sleep.

They are part of our human experience and therefore deserve to be acknowledged and in some cases, if we are patient, understood.