Those Nightly Dreams Are More Than You Think…

Have you ever wondered about those mysterious images we see in the middle of night? They often seem like a movie script running through the background of our mind. Time and again, I have heard people say, “Oh, they are just the mind sorting out events from the day.” Or “It’s just gibberish, non-sense of the mind.”

It is what I once thought as well; until I encountered a series of dark events in my life and something within me begged for self-inquiry. I was led down a solitary path, a path which called my name from the depths of my being. It forced me to turn inward and quite frankly… it forced me to inquire everything: Every truth I ever lived, every belief I ever felt, every behavior I conducted, and every attitude I maintained towards life.

“Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse” (Jung, 1970, para. 317).

The psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, Dr. Carl G. Jung said these words long ago. Dreams are messages from beyond. They come from the unconscious as an attempt for us to integrate their symbolic meanings into our conscious lives. They come to restore balance. When our ego-consciousness strays too far, the unconscious steps in to balance us, or in other terms, self-regulate. And this is exactly what dreams are for. They are an attempt at self-regulation, of balancing, and re-centering the core of who we are.

We each like to believe our egos have life figured out, but what we all will one day discover is life goes its own way. It has its own flow, its purpose and direction beyond the way we are told life should be. It is quite normal to find ourselves straying from who it is that we are from time to time. The conditioning all our lives from our parents, teachers, friends, and society itself has consistently showed us an avenue for each of our lives. But there is always another route, away from the pressures of conformity. It is one’s own way. When we first have this realization, this is when the path of individuation truly begins.

Every truth and belief we possess is contained deep within our psychological structure. These truths and beliefs influence the way we operate internally. Subsequently, this influences how we move about externally in the physical world. As Dr. Jung stated, “…when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations…” Well, this is when dreams begin.

Dreams are from the unconscious, that otherworldly dimension within, and outside, each of us. They come to show us the unbiased truth when we have drifted too far from our authenticity. They seek to promote the wholeness of personality and for each of us to become the entirety of what we may become and attain to in this life. Just as every plant, tree, and animal seeks to grow the highest, become the strongest, or even become the most adaptable to its environment so too is that desire for growth within each of us. Dreams show us fears we possess, the reason(s) one is held back in life, corrections to truths that are no longer valid, and all the more. The beauty is they are available each and every night if only we can learn to understand their primordial symbolic language.

When I first encountered the path, I was lost and did not have the slightest idea of what it was I was encountering. I felt I was falling apart from the inside out. Nonetheless, something within me had to persevere and understand what it was I was encountering. And what I came to discover, it was none other than contact with the unconscious. The unconscious desired for me to provide balance to my life. It needed me to live the potential that laid hidden and locked within my depths. The way through was working with dreams.

I have now been recording my dreams for well over two years. The patterns observed, the foreshadowings seen, and the compensation to my daily wakeful life provided everything I was missing all along. To provide understanding with how dreams operate here are two corresponding dreams I had some time ago:

I dreamt I received an email from a man. As I opened the email within the dream I read the words, “Not with eyes open as you all do, but with the heart open do I now see.”

To preface, dreams relate to our present day lives and what it is that we are unconscious of. They seek to make us conscious. I awoke from this dream and was blown away that such beautiful words could come from a place deep within me. I was not sure what to take from this inner guiding man’s words at first, but I as sat with this dream throughout the day it led me to investigate what I believed seeing with the heart truly means.

To move with the eyes only is to use the traits of masculine reasoning, understanding, judgment, intellect, action, and so on. And this was the only way in which I was taking life on. It is the way I had so often lived my life. I was rationale, conservative; always playing it safe. To move with the heart is to move with that feminine dimension and trust the deep feelings which arise, those gut feelings. It is to move with intuition and to trust that there is something beyond guiding us towards our potential, if we can only have the courage to place our fragile safety driven egos to the side and branch out into the unknown.

At that present time of my life when that dream came forth, I was serving in Afghanistan as a private military contractor providing security for various government personnel. Prior to this I served for eight years in the U.S. Army as an investigator conducting sensitive investigations worldwide and dabbling in battlefield forensics from time to time as well. Another high stress government job, mixed with those recent four years in Afghanistan and I found myself broken and beat down. I was tired and worn. My life needed change. And something deep within me knew it. I knew it was time to move on, the intuition had surfaced. I knew, deep within my being, this chapter of my professional life had been served and was now over. But what was I to do? There were bills to pay, mouths to feed, a home to upkeep, but nonetheless, I had to answer the call and trust that deep-seated intuition which came from my heart that there was a new life for me to live. I chose to trust the heart.

I made the difficult decision, and without having the slightest idea what I would do next, I drafted a resignation letter to my company, and submitted it with an effective date of 30 days out. I walked to my boss’s office and handed it to him.

I was scared. I was fearful wondering what in the hell I would do next. How would I meet life’s demands of bills and what not? I began to question everything, even submitting the resignation letter.

The unconscious took notice and it sent forth another dream that night:

My company had called me into the office. I walked into my boss’s office and then he looked at me, smiled, and handed me a piece of paper. I took it and read, “Certificate of Achievement, for actions well performed.”

I awoke from this dream and smiled as a tear ran down my cheek into my slightly graying beard of the 32 year old man I then was. This dream was not only relevant to my current profession coming to an end. To caveat, this dream is what is known as a complementary dream. The unconscious saw my reservations in deciding to submit the resignation, and it provided the dream imagery in its symbolic manner saying, actions well performed, in that trusting my heart and intuition, and subsequently submitting the resignation paperwork, was in fact the proper action for me to perform. The dream was an affirmation that my conscious activity was correct.

One of the hidden beauties in life is the circle of life and death. But even if that death be to an old job, a new one must come to be once the old passes away. But these new doors, the ones we never see, only become visible and open to us when we muster the courage, go beyond the fear, and decide to enter into the unknown, the beautiful place where anything can happen.

This is what Joseph Campbell meant when he said,

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” (1991, p. 78).

In that moment, a new life began to unfold for me. And what I discovered was, it was a life that was perfectly in accord with who I am. I just had to chisel away at my inner core. I had to find courage to do what I would have never rationally done before. I had to move with the heart and trust it with all I had. And the moment I did, I watched all the doors begin to swing open. I saw new bridges in my dreams to walk across, ones of beauty leading to a new chapter in my life. And it was the unconscious, through her messages of dreams, which provided the ability for me to live the life that had always been waiting for me.

But I won’t lie. A dark, solitary road had to be walked first.

With love,

Mark

References

Campbell, J. (1991). A Joseph Campbell companion: reflections on the art of living. Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Jung, C. G. (1970). The collected works of C. G. Jung: Civilization in transition (Vol 10). Princeton University Press.