Something that has been very powerful for my own personal growth the last few years is keeping a dream diary. I wanted to encourage anyone reading this to start writing down your dreams when you can remember them and really exploring them. It can be an intense and transformative process.
When I remember a dream, I grab my phone and write it down in a notes app. Later in the day, I might free write about the dream or pull a tarot card or just think about the dream and linger on the images and symbols of it. I have one document where I collect all my dreams. It's fascinating to look back on them and see how certain images and themes recur over time.
I am very interested in Jungian psychology, which is influenced by the work of Carl Jung. I believe dreams can be many things. I've had dreams that almost seemed like premonitions because things in the dreams happened in real life. I still don't know what to make of it. I've had dreams that felt like warnings about particular people, almost like my intuition was trying to tell me to avoid them. And I also have dreams that I think are trying to tell me things about myself. Overall, I believe our dreams are not random or meaningless. They can guide us on our journey through life. They should be listened to.
Jungian psychology sees dreams as powerful sources of healing. Our dreams are a doorway to our unconscious and, when we work with our dreams, we can come to know and understand ourselves better.
One book that can give you a step-by-step guide for working with your dreams is Robert A. Johnson's Inner Work. Johnson writes about Jungian psychology in very acessible language. His book, Owning Your Own Shadow, is also great. I believe both are available on Kindle Unlimited right now.
Here are some quotes from Inner Work:
"If we go to our own dreams and sincerely work with the symbols that we find there, we generally learn most of what we need to know about ourselves and the meaning of our lives, regardless of how much we know of the psychological theories involved."
"Put your faith in your own unconscious, your own dreams. If you would learn from your dreams, then work with them. Live with the symbols in your dreams as though they were your physical companions in daily life. You will discover, if you do, that they really are your companions in the inner world."
"If dreams only served to affirm our pre-existing opinions and assumptions, they would not contribute to our psychological growth at all. Assume that your dream has come to challenge you, help you grow, wake you up to what you need to learn and where you need to change."
"Dreams are aimed at the unfinished business of your life, showing what you need to face next, what you need to learn next. In the inner life, we never reach the point at which we can stop learning and start resting on our laurels."
"When you have begun to experience your dreams, you sense that there is an enormous power and intelligence behind them. You feel that your dreams are revealing layers of your soul that you never knew, touching on themes that are so important that your whole sense of life and its meaning begins to be rearranged."
Another Jungian writer I love is Marion Woodman. Here are some things she's written about dreams. These quotes are from Conscious Femininity:
"But it is the soul that is calling out in dreams and the soul communicates through symbols. If we meditate on these images, they reach us on all levels: imaginative, emotional, intellectual. Our whole being, including our body, resonates. We feel ourselves whole."
"The healing dimension of the unconscious is available to men and women who are willing to connect with powerful images from poetry, myth, personal dreams and personal experience. Images ignite the body electric that connects us to our inner reality."
"What a person needs is a bigger framework than the smaller personal framework, because a personal framework can become too humdrum. We need to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. What is the purpose of life, why should we keep going? The images in our dreams give us that meaning, and at the deepest level they are connected to myths."
"As I go deeper into dreams, I realize that the voice that says, "I am unlovable," is in the cells. Therefore it's at that cellular level that the transformation has to take place."
Do you work with your dreams? If you do, what is your process like? Have your dreams helped you?
How do you see your dreams? As premonitions? As a deeper part of you revealing itself?
Dreams are the only things worth chasing, Freedom is the only thing worth fighting for,
Rights are the only thing worth living for. Yet women all over the world are willing or brainwashed since birth to throw that away to be subserviant to a manlet. To be a doormat to raise his children.
At times I feel sorry for my own kind.