Dreaming Psyche

My how our culture dismisses the real-ness of dreams; for no reason other than that they do not conform to the god of rationality.

Whatever we might say of dreams we can say, with a living, intuitive felt sense, that dreams are proof positive that there is more to us than our waking consciousness. Jungian psychologists like Marion Woodman held that the images of dreams are the energies of our bodies, transformed into image.

Jung was convinced that, when something within the unconscious gained sufficient energy, it emerged into consciousness, often in the realm of our dreams. And he was convinced that the deepest parts of that unconscious connected us to the entire history of life.

He was captivated by the fact that people would have dreams of mythic imagery from parts of the world that they had not and could not have been exposed to. Stanislav Grof’s work confirmed this in astonishing ways.

James Hollis reminds us that “Nature doesn’t waste energy.” So if something is important enough to gain the energy to emerge into consciousness while sleeping, maybe it’s worth considering. (Con-sider; with the stars).

James Hillman was convinced that, whatever capacity the psyche has to sense its own realness is the same capacity to grant the experience of realness to the images that emerge in our dreams. Dreams, not analyzed but understood and experienced in the body, offer images that can hold us. A dear friend and brilliant therapist, Gillian Demurtas, once said to me, “Every part of the dream image holds a piece of you.”

To interact with our dreams from this place is to experience the reality that we exist in the mind of soul. Your psyche sees you, and is weaving imagistic containers for your lived experience. You experience something of secure attachment. You know you exist in the mind of psyche, of soul.