"May Thy holy angels, O Christ, son of the living God, Guard our sleep, our rest, our shining bed. Let them reveal their true visions to us in our sleep, O high-prince of the universe, O great king of the mysteries! May no demons, no ill, no calamity or terrifying dreams disturb our rest, our willing, promote repose. May our watch be holy, our work, our task, our sleep, our rest without let, without break."
Old Gaelic Blessing Attributed to St. Patrick
The power of dreams. While the Celts, like many ancient peoples used divination to foretell the future of the tribe, the dream was perhaps the most personal means with which one might communicate with the spirit of the Divine. For centuries man has attempted to understand and to unlock the power of dreams. From the ancient Egyptians to the Celts to Sigmund Freud, man has believed in the deeper wisdom of nocturnal vision. A psychoanalyst wrote that the unconscious self is that entity of man which stands before God. So did the Celts in their practice of shamanism come to hold that the spiritual leaders of the tribe were capable of touching the face of the Divine. It is in dreaming that man is able to slip out of the bond of his reason. Dreams are not governed by logic. They are not bound by the rules we live by in our daily lives. The visions we encounter there are not restricted by the normal limits of time and space. We come and go freely in our night-time visions. We are capable of powers in our dreams that are beyond those of our waking imagination. It is precisely this lack of intellectual reason that lends dreams their power. Our hearts are open. We are free from the limits imposed upon us by our normal consciousness and, as such capable of reaching beyond the limits of our mortal understanding. The Celts knew this. They held firm to the sanctity and the wisdom of their dreams. Their Druid shamans induced altered states of consciousness in an effort to tap into the Divine power of their dreams and through this ability, they were able to lead peasants and kings and to shape the course of human history. Their dreams denied them nothing because they did not deny the power of their dreams. Like the biblical power of Joseph, I believe that the Celts power over dreams was a spiritual gift. Like Freud and Jung, I believe that our dreams speak to us as strongly as the dreams of our Christian and pagan ancestors if only we have the heart to listen to the lessons they teach. And what of this power, how do we harness this natural precognition, this intuitive force for good in our own lives? Many books have been written in an attempt to answer the question. Books with titles like, 1001 Dream Symbols Interpreted and Your Dream Symbols Analyzed endeavor to fill a need in us and yet, dream symbols remain a deeply personal language of the soul. These books attempt to categorize dream symbols and while it is not intended, they risk stripping these symbols of their intensely personal meaning. The truth of the matter is that no book can define the meaning of an individual's dream as they are the products of our own, unique culture. Every experience we store from infancy and childhood to adolescence and adulthood define the meaning of our dream symbols. While some universal imagery may be seen to exist, the dream is an individual's own, unique "soul-talk". Just as the English speaking do not dream in French or German, we dream in the language and culture to which we have become acclimated. With this thought in mind, it must follow that the answers to the meaning of our own dreams must come from within. But how do we access their meaning if not with the help of that book we found in the New Age section of our local bookstore? That which follows is a simple example to illustrate the hidden meaning of dreams, in of their deeply personal, spiritual nature. First Freud postulated that one of the main functions of the dream is to preserve sleep. It must follow then that the mind will not allow for any intrusion that prohibits the individual getting needed rest. Freud believed toward this end that dreams are comprised of both a manifest and a latent content. The dreams "manifest content" is that content of the dream as it is presented to us without interpretation. The dream's "latent content" is the hidden meaning of the dream, or the more deeply and spiritually significant "soul-talk". I would offer the following example as an illustration of Freud's belief: One night I dreamed that I was conversing with a female co-worker at the office in which I work. In the dream, the woman "V" is verbally abusing me in a manner that is hurtful to my self-confidence and my self-esteem. I am feeling the need to get away from her, even though there is something that keeps me there. I feel that I belong there and I am growing angry that she does not respect me. Her hurtful words are still with me as my dream fades and I force myself to wake to escape the abuse. In the preceding example, the "manifest content" of my dream of "V" is fairly apparent. I am interacting with an abusive colleague and I find it difficult either to leave or to assert myself. In spite of the fact that dreams, by Freud's accounting are meant to preserve sleep, I find that I must force myself awake to escape the pain that my colleague's abuse is causing me (in reality, my co-worker is one of the nicest people with whom I have had the privilege to work). But what of the latent content or deeper meaning of the dream that I have described above? What is this dream trying to tell me of my spiritual and emotional condition and how am I to interpret it? To answer these questions, I must first provide some personal background. I work for a large, urban hospital. Like many hospitals across the country, ours has been hit by "managed care" and has been forced into significant financial cutbacks. The resulting environment in this system is one of apprehension and deep mistrust and people struggle to hold onto their jobs, often by attempting to justify their own professional existence. In my dream, I am being hurt in the workplace by a colleague who has never been anything but nice to me. In fact, the co-worker "V" is an individual below me in the clinic's supervisory hierarchy - someone over whom I hold a position of authority. The day before the night I dreamed this particular dream, I had a conversation with "V" as we share a mutual interest in art. "V" was describing to me one particular work of which she was very proud. She informed me that her last name, translated from Greek means "butterfly" - a universal symbol of metamorphosis or change. In the dream, it may be recalled that I felt powerless to escape the abuse that I was experiencing in environment in which I was working. It is probably becoming apparent that the issues of powerlessness and change are those aspects of my dream's "latent content". It will be recalled that I shared earlier that I am currently working in an environment beset by stressors beyond my personal ability to control. My soul's answer to the stress which I am feeling so profoundly that it pervades even my sleep - change. In this instance, change might mean a change of jobs or a change in the manner in which I manage my own work-related stress. It is the concept of change, presented in my dream by the presence of a character whose name implies the metaphorical representation of change that is the "latent content" or deeper meaning of my soul-talk. So how, you may ask, am I to uncover the hidden meaning of my own dreams and dream symbols? How can I learn to decode the meaning of my own, personal soul-talk? The exercise that follows is one manner in which this goal might be achieved - a method that I myself have found successful and continue to use in both my personal and professional work. 1.) First, decide for yourself whether you want to do this exercise alone or with a partner. While I have personally found that having a guide can help the process along, I have also found that the material that often surfaces is often of a deep and profound nature and I am not always comfortable sharing it. Trust you instincts with regard to your partner - let your heart guide your decision. 2.) Second, let go of your rational self and its all-too-often accompanying cynicism. The activity I will describe may sound absurd at first, but it is a clinically tried and way to interpret the hidden meaning of dreams. The technique has been used by analysts for centuries from Freud to Jung - trust in it and it will yield an insight that produces a deep catharsis. 3.) Close your eyes and try to recall the dream in detail (some people who have reported an inability to recall their dreams have had luck setting a pad of paper at their bedside. Often we recall dreams as we awaken through the course of the night, only to find the soul-stories escape us at daybreak). Write down all of the images present in your dream from the seemingly most important to the least important. The images or symbols may be characters, colors, places, events - in short, everything that you see when you close your eyes. I have found that it sometimes helps to describe the dream to another person as the telling of the dream often jogs our memory. Don't be surprised if you feel a detached feeling when re-living the dream. Remember, dreams are an altered state of consciousness and as such call upon faculties beyond the realm of conscious thought. 4.) The next step is critical and may pose the greatest challenge to the reader. The dreamer begins by choosing one symbol out of those described with which to carry on a two-way conversation. The dreamer starts out by saying something/anything to the dream symbol. This can be in the form of a statement or a question, but it should be the first thing that comes to mind. The statement can be spoken aloud or to oneself, suiting the individual's personal need. The next step is for the dreamer to answer him/her self back as the dream symbol, again with whatever statement or thought that comes to mind. It is in the course of this conversation that the dream symbol's personal meaning will be revealed to the dreamer. The conversation should continue until the dreamer reaches a dead-end or a flash of insight is achieved. Dreamers will often find themselves speaking words and smiling or laughing as the meaning of the symbol and its relation to individual becomes apparent. This is often a deeply cathartic and profound experience and often a validation of the existence of a "higher self", a wise self or that self that writers have suggested "stands in the presence of God". The conversations that we carry on with our personal symbols in this exercise, according to analysts, well up from the bottom of the pool of our consciousness. While we may believe that we are making up our responses in these two-way conversations, we are in fact tapping into the deeper wisdom of the unconscious mind. It is this unconscious that Jung postulated was possessed of all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors from the beginning of time. To the Celt, dreams were nemeton, an in-between place between sleep and wakefulness in which the spirits of the departed were able to converse with us in an effort to help us to become spiritually whole. To Joseph in the Old Testament it was the place where God spoke to provide His wisdom and His peace. Here pagan, secular and Christian beliefs converge - the belief that there is a wisdom that speaks to us beyond the limitation of our own, mortal control. The most important thing for the dreamer to remember in carrying out the exercise I have described is the need to leave his/her intellectual cynicism behind. Shut it off. Open your heart and let the truth of the "higher-self" speak to you. Too often the "noise" of the daily world drowns out the language of the heart. Don't let it. Keep yourself open to the possibility that you have been given the gift of insight and that gift will serve you, just as it served ancient peoples from the Celts to the Israelites to the Egyptians. The gift is a magic that we as a species have lost from the childhood of our species' evolution - a gift that we need to recapture in these troubling times. It is a gift that was bestowed upon us at our creation; its one of the parts of us that separates us from the beasts of the field. Trust in it and it will guide you in your spiritual existence, providing you with the answers you need to become all that was intended of you. Whether it is a gift of Spirit or of God, it will serve you as it served your ancestors. Trust in it and it will guide you in all your endeavors.
First Freud postulated that one of the main functions of the dream is to preserve sleep. It must follow then that the mind will not allow for any intrusion that prohibits the individual getting needed rest. Freud believed toward this end that dreams are comprised of both a manifest and a latent content. The dreams "manifest content" is that content of the dream as it is presented to us without interpretation. The dream's "latent content" is the hidden meaning of the dream, or the more deeply and spiritually significant "soul-talk". I would offer the following example as an illustration of Freud's belief:
One night I dreamed that I was conversing with a female co-worker at the office in which I work. In the dream, the woman "V" is verbally abusing me in a manner that is hurtful to my self-confidence and my self-esteem. I am feeling the need to get away from her, even though there is something that keeps me there. I feel that I belong there and I am growing angry that she does not respect me. Her hurtful words are still with me as my dream fades and I force myself to wake to escape the abuse.
In the preceding example, the "manifest content" of my dream of "V" is fairly apparent. I am interacting with an abusive colleague and I find it difficult either to leave or to assert myself. In spite of the fact that dreams, by Freud's accounting are meant to preserve sleep, I find that I must force myself awake to escape the pain that my colleague's abuse is causing me (in reality, my co-worker is one of the nicest people with whom I have had the privilege to work). But what of the latent content or deeper meaning of the dream that I have described above? What is this dream trying to tell me of my spiritual and emotional condition and how am I to interpret it?
To answer these questions, I must first provide some personal background. I work for a large, urban hospital. Like many hospitals across the country, ours has been hit by "managed care" and has been forced into significant financial cutbacks. The resulting environment in this system is one of apprehension and deep mistrust and people struggle to hold onto their jobs, often by attempting to justify their own professional existence. In my dream, I am being hurt in the workplace by a colleague who has never been anything but nice to me. In fact, the co-worker "V" is an individual below me in the clinic's supervisory hierarchy - someone over whom I hold a position of authority. The day before the night I dreamed this particular dream, I had a conversation with "V" as we share a mutual interest in art. "V" was describing to me one particular work of which she was very proud. She informed me that her last name, translated from Greek means "butterfly" - a universal symbol of metamorphosis or change. In the dream, it may be recalled that I felt powerless to escape the abuse that I was experiencing in environment in which I was working. It is probably becoming apparent that the issues of powerlessness and change are those aspects of my dream's "latent content". It will be recalled that I shared earlier that I am currently working in an environment beset by stressors beyond my personal ability to control. My soul's answer to the stress which I am feeling so profoundly that it pervades even my sleep - change. In this instance, change might mean a change of jobs or a change in the manner in which I manage my own work-related stress. It is the concept of change, presented in my dream by the presence of a character whose name implies the metaphorical representation of change that is the "latent content" or deeper meaning of my soul-talk.
So how, you may ask, am I to uncover the hidden meaning of my own dreams and dream symbols? How can I learn to decode the meaning of my own, personal soul-talk? The exercise that follows is one manner in which this goal might be achieved - a method that I myself have found successful and continue to use in both my personal and professional work.
1.) First, decide for yourself whether you want to do this exercise alone or with a partner. While I have personally found that having a guide can help the process along, I have also found that the material that often surfaces is often of a deep and profound nature and I am not always comfortable sharing it. Trust you instincts with regard to your partner - let your heart guide your decision.
2.) Second, let go of your rational self and its all-too-often accompanying cynicism. The activity I will describe may sound absurd at first, but it is a clinically tried and way to interpret the hidden meaning of dreams. The technique has been used by analysts for centuries from Freud to Jung - trust in it and it will yield an insight that produces a deep catharsis.
3.) Close your eyes and try to recall the dream in detail (some people who have reported an inability to recall their dreams have had luck setting a pad of paper at their bedside. Often we recall dreams as we awaken through the course of the night, only to find the soul-stories escape us at daybreak). Write down all of the images present in your dream from the seemingly most important to the least important. The images or symbols may be characters, colors, places, events - in short, everything that you see when you close your eyes. I have found that it sometimes helps to describe the dream to another person as the telling of the dream often jogs our memory. Don't be surprised if you feel a detached feeling when re-living the dream. Remember, dreams are an altered state of consciousness and as such call upon faculties beyond the realm of conscious thought.
4.) The next step is critical and may pose the greatest challenge to the reader. The dreamer begins by choosing one symbol out of those described with which to carry on a two-way conversation. The dreamer starts out by saying something/anything to the dream symbol. This can be in the form of a statement or a question, but it should be the first thing that comes to mind. The statement can be spoken aloud or to oneself, suiting the individual's personal need. The next step is for the dreamer to answer him/her self back as the dream symbol, again with whatever statement or thought that comes to mind. It is in the course of this conversation that the dream symbol's personal meaning will be revealed to the dreamer. The conversation should continue until the dreamer reaches a dead-end or a flash of insight is achieved. Dreamers will often find themselves speaking words and smiling or laughing as the meaning of the symbol and its relation to individual becomes apparent. This is often a deeply cathartic and profound experience and often a validation of the existence of a "higher self", a wise self or that self that writers have suggested "stands in the presence of God".
The conversations that we carry on with our personal symbols in this exercise, according to analysts, well up from the bottom of the pool of our consciousness. While we may believe that we are making up our responses in these two-way conversations, we are in fact tapping into the deeper wisdom of the unconscious mind. It is this unconscious that Jung postulated was possessed of all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors from the beginning of time. To the Celt, dreams were nemeton, an in-between place between sleep and wakefulness in which the spirits of the departed were able to converse with us in an effort to help us to become spiritually whole. To Joseph in the Old Testament it was the place where God spoke to provide His wisdom and His peace. Here pagan, secular and Christian beliefs converge - the belief that there is a wisdom that speaks to us beyond the limitation of our own, mortal control.
The most important thing for the dreamer to remember in carrying out the exercise I have described is the need to leave his/her intellectual cynicism behind. Shut it off. Open your heart and let the truth of the "higher-self" speak to you. Too often the "noise" of the daily world drowns out the language of the heart. Don't let it. Keep yourself open to the possibility that you have been given the gift of insight and that gift will serve you, just as it served ancient peoples from the Celts to the Israelites to the Egyptians. The gift is a magic that we as a species have lost from the childhood of our species' evolution - a gift that we need to recapture in these troubling times. It is a gift that was bestowed upon us at our creation; its one of the parts of us that separates us from the beasts of the field. Trust in it and it will guide you in your spiritual existence, providing you with the answers you need to become all that was intended of you. Whether it is a gift of Spirit or of God, it will serve you as it served your ancestors. Trust in it and it will guide you in all your endeavors.
