Of all the practices we can undertake to listen to what our soul is trying to tell us, few are as direct about it, biblically-founded, or as controversial as dream work. Our tradition is filled with stories of meaningful dreams and visions and yet has also held them at a distance, warning the faithful against seeking wisdom from them. (In this, it’s a dramatic departure from not only the Bible but also from the examples of the other Abrahamic faiths, which have continued to value dreams.) Today I’d like to re-introduce dream work as a sacred practice, talk about why it’s had such a rocky road in a lot of Christian history, and why I think it’s useful.
Contemporary dream work works under the following assumptions:
- Dreams are natural and spontaneous and are not determined by our conscious intention;
- Dreams compensate for imbalances in our conscious awareness;
- Dream symbols transcend simple one-to-one correspondences and emerge from deep and ancient parts of the human psyche (think of such common, primal, motifs as being chased or losing one’s teeth); and
- Dreams can be best understood by amplification of the symbols through personal inquiry, study of myths, fairy tales, and legends, and so on; these symbols “mean more than they say” and are “a perpetual challenge to our thoughts and feelings” (Jung, Collected Works XV par 119).*
Put in plain English, this means that dreams arise spontaneously from parts of ourselves that are not accessed through our waking thought-life. They offer perspectives that balance out that waking thought-life. They do this through the language of symbols, which have both personal meaning and wider cultural or even universal significance, and which therefore need to be carefully thought-through in order to be understood.
While we don’t associate dream work with Christian practice, it has a strong biblical basis. Most famously there were Joseph, whose dreams and dream-interpretation skills drove his whole story, and his New Testament namesake, who received critical information about his life and his role through dreams. And there are many, many more examples throughout the Scriptures.
Some questions to guide dream work are:
- What happened in the dream? Who was present? What are the major symbols?
- What are your feelings about the dream?
- What associations can you make? (For example, if a snake appears in a dream, what other examples of snakes can you think of that might be relevant? e.g., the snake in Genesis, or playing with garter snakes in a back yard, and so on)
- What amplification can you discover? (What can you learn by following the associations that might inform your dream?)
- What can you create to keep the dream alive? (Once you discern a message or theme, think of a way to remember it, such as reflection questions to ponder throughout the week, a drawing to capture it, or a physical action to remind you of it)^
Since learning the technique of dream work, I’ve found it very impactful and informative. The idea for this series was actually reinforced by a dream. I had been considering the idea of exploring practices designed to help us listen to the soul as one option, then had a dream sequence in which I was descending into the depths in various ways. Exploring the specific symbols reinforced both my need to turn within and that this would make a valuable blog series.
It’s also fascinating to see what symbols or motifs recur in my dreams, or to see how my dreams change over time in ways that reflect a healthier (or not) mindset. For example, I used to have a lot of classic anxiety dreams—not being able to get where I need to go, being chased by an animal, taking a test for a class I forgot to attend—but now when those set ups appear in my dreams, I manage them. This happened just last night; I had a dream in which all three of those setups appeared: I fell while crossing a busy road—but I got up. Then I was confronted by a vicious dog—but here it was chained and couldn’t get to me. And there was a test at the end, but I was prepared and took it successfully.
If dream work has such a strong biblical basis, and can be personally beneficial, why has the Church held it at arm’s length? I think there are a few factors that went into this. First, and least complimentary to the tradition, there was unquestionably, starting in the second century, a desire to rein in the more experiential manifestations of early Christianity for the sake of law and order. And, as the Church hierarchy became more established, there was a desire to uphold the Church’s prerogatives and authority, which can be undermined when the rank-and-file are empowered to seek and see God for themselves. A concern for orthodoxy is understandable, but struggles to play nicely with the unpredictability of the unconscious. But more helpfully, we have to recognize that there is also a danger in being too interested in one’s spiritual experiences. As I’ve previously noted about this:
Religious experiences can inspire, connect, and transform unlike any other; they can also puff up, distract and delude unlike any other. And, mental illness can often manifest in false religious experiences, with tragic effects. This means that we, both as individuals and with our communities, need to exercise a lot of discernment in sorting through how to apply and act on spiritual experiences.
Connected to both of these broad concerns is traditional teaching on humility. While humility is a genuine Christian teaching, the way the tradition has often talked about it has skewed our perspective on sin, emphasizing sins of pride and arrogance. And certainly, few things can puff up one’s ego as much as having a meaningful dream or vision. C.G. Jung refers to this phenomenon as ‘inflation’, and it’s the reason why St. John of the Cross warned his readers about getting caught up in seeking mystical phenomena. But it’s instructive here that in Jungian thought, the opposite of inflation is not ego deflation; what we might think of as deflation, thinking too lowly of oneself, is actually just a different manifestation of ego inflation: Both put ourselves and our experiences too close to the centre of things. Chances are we’re not the greatest thing in the world; but neither are we nothing. To think so is a complete rejection of our status as beloved creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And that is blasphemy! So the proper teaching of humility does not tell us we’re nothing or ‘keep us in our place;’ rather, it tells us that we’re the main character of our story, but that everyone else is the main character of theirs.
The point is, the Church’s ambivalence towards dreams and dream work is not baseless. But neither should it be prohibitive. Fears of inflation or loss of institutional control can never override those wonderful words of the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2.28).
Dream work is like any sacred practice: we do it, find meaning in it, but don’t take it too seriously on its own. Any meaning we make must be integrated into the whole life of faith, which includes the reading of the Scriptures, the prayers and teaching of the Church, the wisdom of respected elders, and a lot of personal reflection. Yes there can be danger in it, but there’s danger in anything and everything! Even drinking too much water can kill us; but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stay hydrated! And when it comes to hearing the soul speak, most of us are far closer to dying from thirst than from over-hydration.
Matthew Root 