Reconnecting with your inner voice - through dreams

Dreams

We all dream every night, even if we don’t remember our dreams. This part of our sleep cycle is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. REM sleep is not the only time when we dream. But dreams as most of us experience them, the visual, motor, emotional and bizarre dreams come from REM sleep.

Where do dreams come from? Ancient people believed dreams were sent down from the gods. Aristotle believed that dreams have their origins in recent waking events. Freud located the dream in the brain. Within man himself. His theory was that dreams were unconscious wish fulfillment.

Today’s brain imaging machines have contributed a neuro-science approach, some of which say that dreams have no specific function but are simply a by product of the way the brain works. But most current theories acknowledge that dreams help with emotional processing, memory consolidation, performance and creativity. Dreaming has even been described as overnight therapy giving us an opportunity to process and even resolve emotional issues. They allow us to reprocess upsetting memory experiences and themes and to heal emotional wounds.

At another level, dreams offer us the chance of fusing and blending the ingredients of sleep in creative ways. They are capable of divining solutions to problems, coming up with new knowledge and even inspiring the composition of brilliant creative works.

Famous examples of breakthroughs in dreams

Famous examples of breakthroughs  which came to people in a dream include Einstein’s theory of relativity, Dmitri Mendeleev’s composition of the periodic table of elements and Niels Bohr’s conception of the model of the atom for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in Physics.

Creative examples include Paul McCartney’s song “Yesterday”, Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” and Stephenie Meyer’s teenage romance story “Twilight”.  All of these people credit their dreams as the inspiration for their creative work.

Lucid dreams are generally included in this category. This is when an individual becomes aware that he or she is dreaming and is able to control what they dream and manipulate the experience. Only about 20% of the population are natural lucid dreamers, but we are all able to increase our ability in this area if we consciously choose to do so.

Precognitive dreaming

Then there is another level of dreaming which the literature is very silent about but which many people report. Precognitive dreaming. Where do prophetic dreams come from?

If our emotional processing dreams come from the individual subconscious and our problem solving and creative dreams come from the collective unconscious, do our prophetic dreams also come from the collective unconscious, sometimes also called the transpersonal realm? There is no denying that such cases exist. Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own death by assassination 3 days before it happened. Jung had three catastrophic dreams which foretold the outbreak of World War 1. And the famous case of the Aberfan disaster in 1966.

The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan. 144 people were killed, 116 of them children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 10 because the debris buried the primary school in the town. This incident was studied by psychiatrist John Barker because he was struck by reports of precognitive dreams and premonitions in the town. There were also cases of coincidences and synchronous events occurring such as a school bus being delayed by fog and reaching the site after the tip fell or people stopping to have a cup of tea before work which spared their lives.  Barker collected 76 replies to his appeal for premonitions of the event including dreams, visions and premonitions. Of the 60 plausible premonitions, there was evidence that 22 were described before the event. Barker became convinced that precognition was not unusual among the general population and that it is more common than we think.

The collective unconscious

The notion of the “collective unconscious” was postulated and named by Psychologist Carl Jung. Sometimes referred to as the “objective psyche” it refers to a segment of the deepest unconscious mind which is genetically inherited and not shaped by personal experience. Made up of a collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with, it is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience.

This is the aspect which all humanity shares and which we sometimes tap into unconsciously in times of crisis. It has guided various civilizations spaced by time and distance to create very similar things. We can tap into this collective unconscious for ideas and theories beyond our limited selves. Taking heed of things which we all share because we are all ultimately One. And it is this One – the part of us which is connected to the Whole – that we learn to trust. It is beyond personal knowledge, education and experience. It harbours the intelligence of the human race. And we go to it in silence asking to gain the wisdom we need to steer our little lives along the right course to our ultimate destiny.

Who we are doesn’t really change, we just forget who we really are. So “finding oneself” is about submerging beneath the din and clamour of everyday concerns and re-uniting with the simple blueprint of our lives.

Our individual unconscious lies above the collective unconscious. Jung considered what was shared at this deep level of the unconscious was content, ie access to myths and legends and knowledge which resides at this level.

However it can be said that our deepest abilities also lie at this level which we can access by choosing to let go of our individual wills and using our free will to access the abilities which lie further down and are accessible to all humanity. Content is applicable to the more superficial unconscious levels to which we contribute ourselves. Content is personal - Ability is transpersonal.

It is believed that the collective unconscious contains archetypes which are universal symbols or themes that are present in the myths, legends and religious traditions of every culture. The central archetype is the Self. And it is accessed from this level.

Inspiration and intuition are also accessed from there. It is where ideas, art, poetry, movies, philosophy, music, inventions, revelations and all new creative things come from. We are rewarded with talent, intuition and insight. Creative people say they were inspired, they dreamed it, it came to them in a flash. All these come from outside our own minds. When we get our mind out of the way, we become conscious of what we were not conscious of before.

There are many ways to access this collective unconscious. One major way is through the world of dreams. Jung believed that our dreams had important symbols in them, and could lead us to be more whole as a person. Dreams are trying to communicate information to us. They can tell us something about the development and structure of the human psyche. They can reveal much deeper and broader elements than we are aware of consciously.

Working with your dreams

1) Notice your dreams. Keep a dream journal. Write down your dreams as soon as possible after waking up. Include sensory descriptions and emotions. Note recurring themes or symbols. Piece together the intuitive meaning of the dream.

Keeping a dream journal can also help to initiate lucid dreaming. Trying to remember your dreams in order to write them down helps you to become more aware of dream content and can enhance more awareness while dreaming.  

2) Use mindfulness and meditation.

A) Mindfulness techniques can help to quiet the mind in order to become more attuned to what is behind your thoughts and feelings. Focus your attention on a single point, your breath or a visual object. When your mind wanders, gently bring back your attention to the chosen object.

B) Meditation can help to take you further down to the collective unconscious and access inspiration, intuition and connectedness with others. There are various forms of meditation but a simple method is to close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath. Make no effort to control the breath, simply breathe naturally. Notice as the breath moves in and out through your nostrils. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath.

In summary, keep a dream journal and practise daily mindfulness and meditation techniques to help you access the deeper parts of yourself beyond your thoughts and feelings.