“I am no longer being woken up by zombies coming to get me, in an apocalyptic world. My sleep is better.”
‘What do you see now?’
“Some unsettling incongruous domestic situations but nothing terrible. Nothing that kicks me out of my sleep.”
This indicated to me that my client’s level of threat-perception was lessening. I don’t know much about dream interpretation, so I do not attempt to go deep into that, but I know that they can release energy and reveal messages from the subconscious, inside the safety of sleep. They can erase unnecessary emotional files stored in the primitive brain and prioritize what is relevant and important.
A friend dreamt of working with elephants in a forest repeatedly. This seemed completely random to her. She sold solar panels for a living and had been planning on taking a sabbatical, which commenced 3 months into these recurrent dreams. She booked a one-way ticket to Thailand and the day after she arrived, she found out that a new orphanage for elephants had opened that very day in her neighbourhood. What are the chances? Of course, she volunteered there for months and loved it.
As per Ayurveda, there are seven types of dreams:
- those based on what was seen
- heard
- reflected upon
- desired
- imagined
- those foretelling something and
- those caused by illnesses or possibly predict specific illnesses
They intrigue me as they are communications from a deeper self that has access to everything that we cannot consciously know. Psychologists have dwelt upon them for centuries. The basic idea behind Jungian dream theory is that dreams reveal more than they conceal. Jung did not believe that dreams need to be interpreted for them to perform their function. They operate as safety valves for the psyche. They are worthy of attention as they are an important source of information about vanished people, places and experiences in our lives.
Freud called them, via regia, the royal road to the unconscious, but a strong force within us strains to conceal our dream messages from us in ingenious ways such as obscure symbols and the ethereal nature of dreams by which most of them, we forget. It’s a good idea to write them down while we still remember them. Another good reason to get a new notebook 😉
As I venture into the world of Hypnotherapy, I find a deeper learning, connection and understanding of the inner worlds of others and myself.
Resource: Benefits of keeping a dream journal