How To Interpret Your Dreams
Having studied the works of Carl Jung and many of his understudies, I have come to realise the importance of our dreams and the workings of our psyche.
This contemplation breaks down remembering our dreams and how to begin working with them for our inner development.
Listen Here
Transcript
00:15 – Intro
I’m out of the country at the moment in Turkey, and I tend to find when I leave my homeland that I dream more, maybe it’s the different climate and the warmer weather, but the dreams that I have a more vivid and I tend to be able to interpret them and the symbols better. So that’s led me to do this. contemplation today after quite a big dream last night.
00:44 – Carl Jung
Maybe as well, I’m studying the work of Carl Jung again, and some of his understudies, which is completely mind blowing. So this is why I’ve ended up doing this contemplation today.
00:58 – Everybody Dreams
We all dream every night. The difficulty in remembering them is why many people say that they don’t dream. It isn’t that they’re not dreaming, it’s just that they haven’t got the techniques to be able to remember them. Or they’re not setting themselves up right before bed, maybe they’re drinking alcohol or eating heavy meal and, and never actively consciously looked to remember the dream.
01:25 – History
For thousands of years, humans have considered dreams as a mystical tool for their inner psyche. Of course, we have moved away from this in the age of materialism, because there is no way to measure a dream. And so they are seen as you know, pretty useless to modern science.
01:43 – Jungian Dreams
Nonetheless, many psychologists particularly from the Jungian lineage value dreams is a tool that the psyche uses to communicate with that individual. Carl Jung believed that dreams were the inner landscape of our unconscious mind, that which the ego consciousness, cannot know or cannot grasp. And so, when we sleep and the ego is quietened, and naturally through physiological means, you know, certain parts of the brain shut down. And the, the unconscious mind manifests itself through its language of dream.
02:26 – Symbology
The language itself being symbology and imagery. Nonlinear communication, like symbology, you know, can’t be interpreted the same way for everybody as we do with written linear language. Which is why in general, most books on dream interpretation are pretty poor. A symbol to one person means something completely different for another. If you take a cross for Christian, for example, it’s going to have a completely different meaning than, for a Buddhist.
03:02 – Archetypes
The symbols in dreams are also archetypal in their nature, which is also a Jungian idea. Daemon’s, heroes, Gods visit us in the form of people, situations from our recent past animals as well.
I had a dream a few days ago, where a friend of mine came to me in a dream and reminded me to be fearless in self expression. I know why this happened. And it was a guide a spirit guide, whether you believe in them or not, sort of label things as spirit guides just through my education and knowledge base. I got told to be fearless in self expression after questioning the release of an article because it pressed a few buttons with people.
03:53 – Complexes Loosen
By working with dreams, in this way, the complexes in our inner psychologies will begin to to loosen up, you can get wisdom, creativity from the depths of your mind that would not be considered by your everyday ego consciousness. You can get clarity around daily issues, crises, just troubles with the dualities of life.
You know if you if you walk in the path of enlightenment, it’s very difficult sometimes to bring that down to the world and into the world and live a life grounded. So sometimes it can help with that as well. That’s what I use a lot of my dreams for is I set an intention before I go to sleep. I’ll talk a little bit about that at the end.
04:42 – Ceremony – Remembering Dreams
So to begin remembering dreams, I’d suggest creating an evening ceremonial type practice. See such practices as working with the soul. The soul and psyche of actually the same word etymologically. So there’s no need to to separate them, they’re the same thing, eat a few hours before going to sleep so your body’s not busy digesting heavy foods during the night. Quiet the mind down half an hour before you plan on nodding off.
And pick something like set an intention that you’d like clarity on, it doesn’t matter what it is remind yourself of the topic as you start to not often and asked for guidance from your soul or your higher mind or whatever that means to you. And you want to label it just as guidance from it. Then upon rising note down what you remember from that dream. So that that’s sort of how to begin remembering them.
05:41 – Working With Dreams (1)
And once you get into the habit of doing this, a few things you can do to begin working with the dreams is number one, make notes on the on the what of the dream rather than the why of the dream. So more on the content rather than interpreting straightaway, go into detail about the colours and textures. What you could sense sort of around you.
It is of the ego to just want to interpret what’s going on, you know, just wants to know things. So treat dreams as divine and give them the respect they deserve. You know, before trying to make sense of it get as much of the dreams detail on a piece of paper in as much detail as you can, you know, what colour stood out? Who was there? What was said rather than just trying to interpret it off the bat.
06:33 – Working With Dreams (2)
Number two, use a technique called active imagination. I spoke about this in contemplation six. Basically having a dialogue with the entities within that dream and writing those down. This makes you aware of the shadow elements of the psyche, the energies that are going in around there, and generally are unknown to the conscious mind until you shine that light of awareness on them.
06:57 – Working With Dreams (3)
And number three, draw an image or make some art on a piece of paper to create an objective and sort of symbolise it objectively. Meditate on the symbol ask your your soul your higher mind for any guidance that it can offer in interpreting what you’ve drawn. Sometimes you can you can draw on one piece of paper that the one side of the dream, the positive side and then you can do the negative side to create the duality and then merge the two. And then that merging of the two images and the two symbols that you’ve created. Sometimes it tells its own story. So that’s that’s something else as well.
07:41 – Dangers Of Inner Work
This type of work can get very deep after integrous efforts on your behalf. Make sure that you’ve got a solid meditative practice. The inner worlds are fraught with dangers if you’re not grounded to reality. You know, psychosis is a real possibility.
08:00 – Robert A Johnson
A mentor of mine, a virtual mentor of mine, I’ve never met him. Robert Johnson believes that psychosis and addictions are often often caused by people trying to drown out that which is too good to stand. And neurosis in this manner is a spiritual experience that isn’t being handled correctly. So when we can contextualise these issues as spiritual experiences., it gives a certain viewpoint that everything’s actually working for you. But either way, take working on your psyche and your dreams very seriously.
08:39 – Jung Quote
In closing, I’d like to finish on a quote by the master that is Carl Jung, who I believe is one of the enlightened mystics of our time. The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul opening into the cosmic night, which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness and which will remain psyche no matter how far ego consciousness extends.
Project Sovereign
🌍 My website / blog – https://www.projectsovereign.org
💌 (Sign up to my private email list)
🎙My podcast – https://projectsovereign.org/category/podcast/
📸 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/project.sovereign
🐦 Twitter – https://twitter.com/projectsov
📘 Facebook Private Group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/pathtoselfsovereignty