A Return to Dreams

(If you are looking for my digital designs, please go to my RSCreations Blog.) 
 
Have you dreamed recently? Do you know what your dreams are trying to tell you?

If you think that you don't have the time or interest to keep a record of your dreams, consider this.

What if I told you that dreams are one of the most powerful gateways to your growth as a human being and that, by ignoring them, you are essentially refusing your own inner self’s helpful messages? 

If you dismiss your dreams as just so much rehashing of today's events in your head, then you are saying no to your own intuitive power-from-within, whose important purpose it is to help you understand, and redirect your life. Towards what, you may ask? Towards the fulfillment of your best personal and spiritual growth. 

That’s what our dreams are composed of, glimpses into our attitudes and beliefs that are either in balance with, or opposed to, who we are meant to be. Like a light piercing the darkness.

They act as our inner guideposts on the growth journey. Yes, those guideposts are in metaphorical language, but don’t let that stop you. This symbolic imagery language is uniquely your own and with some guidance, you can learn to recognise and interpret those symbols.  You own your dream imagery just as surely as you do your unique way of interacting with your world.

In fact, there is a direct correlation between your personal dream symbols and the manner in which your life experience has shaped the attitudes and opinions you hold towards the world. Also how they are now as your daily life unfolds in this present time. In other words, if you are out of balance, your dreams will tell you.

Dreams are very personal, important parts of us and, as Stephen King states, “The most important things are the hardest to say. “

I would add that they are the hardest to share and admit to as well. It’s one thing to have, remember, and record your dreams, but yet another thing entirely to share them publicly.

We all think dreams are strange and funny as they prance about in their symbolic nightly costumes. For many of us, that makes them safe to share. Until we are told or we may realise on our own what those symbols represent. Then it’s not so funny anymore because we are the ones dressed in the strange garb our unconscious has chosen to parade in front of our cold, logical, conscious - and critical - mind.

It takes courage to look at your dreams because they are telling you plainly how things are in your life, in your psyche.

Do you dream of warring factions? Then you have internal conflicts in you that need to be addressed. Do you dream of a shadowy figure chasing you? Then one of your shadow elements is ‘loose’ and needing your attention.  

For months I have been looking, in books and on the internet, for a safe venue to share my dreams.  But I have come to admit in this quest that there is no ‘safe’ venue anywhere when it comes to dreams.  If I am to open myself and ask for help in understanding my dreams, then I must prepare to be shown things I may not like or want to see, or have others see as well, that belong to me. 

It’s like deciding to feed wild birds in your backyard.  Be prepared to also be inviting (what some may consider to be) the shadow aspect of nature: the predators that prey on the pretty birds.  I watched the other day as a Sharp-shinned Hawk swooped down to attack, kill and eat a European Starling that had come to my feeders. Upon seeing the scenario unfold, I felt horrible for that bird and moved to scare the hawk away. But it dawned on me that this was, in effect, what happens in nature. By stopping it, I was depriving the hawk of food in the middle of harsh winter conditions, so I walked away.  The thought came to me, something I remember reading: “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are only consequences.”  

I can no longer keep my life in compartments, trying to control what people see of me or don’t see, in order to reap as much approval from my tweets as possible. Life is not a ‘like’ competition with only the good, the sweet and the innocent taking centre stage.  Neither is the psyche’s goal to be viewed as ‘totally awesome’ with a pink glow in the background. 

  

Dreams show us both sides of the life coin, flashing the real denominations making up the personality, in real time. There is something in each of us that seeks to balance out what we think we are and want the world to see – the persona we show out there – with the true self that we really are, deep down. Dreams show us our unconscious complexes and our shadows and are, as Jung put it, “an attempt at healing” the rifts we’ve created in our psyche since birth. Nature is always needing to balance and inside, we are no different. After all, we come from nature, so we are like her.

 

In my seeking I have found a forum where dreams are shared and discussed openly. I want, in turn, to share this site’s address with you here because I know that more benefit will come if I do than if I try to keep it to myself.  Besides, I had a dream last night that showed me I couldn’t continue to try to hide things to myself.

Jerry Gifford has created a friendly place on the web to show that following one’s path to wholeness and individuation need not be dismissed as some impossible reverie. Rather, it can be a rewarding way of life, accessed by anyone interested in the process - deeply rewarding, both psychically and spiritually.

His extensive website covers hundreds of pages and is a font of knowledge for anyone interested in finding out what dreams mean and how myths shape our lives. Please go to this address to meet Jerry and his impressive work on dreams, among other things:

 

http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/

 

Now, I must return to deciphering my dreams.