Meaning Of Dreams
(Meaning
of Dreams Pt 1)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 2)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 3)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 4)
(...Continued
From Pt 3)
Is the dream a message?
We have learned now that the
question is not so simple. When we ask "What do you mean,
when you ask if a dream has meaning?", several options
unfold that make this question difficult to answer. However,
we don't have to be fooled by the legal terms. When Bill Clinton
replied "It depends on what is, is", we all knew
what "is" was, it was sex with Monica Lewinski.
And when someone asks what a dream means, they usually are
asking if the dream has an important message for them. This
message usually takes one of these forms:
· Is the dream a message?
· A message from the
unconscious or psyche or myself-to-myself?
· A message from God
or a spiritual entity?
· A message sent telepathically
from a friend or entity?
· A message from the
future itself?
· Does this dream indicate
that I will have something occur like the dream in real life?
It may be an accident, a marriage, or some good or bad fortune.
Again, in terms of science,
there are no clear answers. Science is not capable of addressing
these questions directly. We can say through survey research
that when we look at dreams as-if they are messages, that
this is often a more satisfying way of approaching dreams
than as-if they are without a message. But new, non-representational
dreamwork that works with dreams as a process of production,
and creative expression, and presentation instead of a message
are also valuable ways to work with dreams.
Do dreams actually predict
the future?
We can ask how often dreams
actually do predict the future, but this answer will vary
widely on how literal one is being and how fixed one feels
the future really is after a vision of the future. For example,
a wild, ungrounded guy once told Jung that he had a dream
of falling off a mountain. Jung told him to avoid mountain
climbing. He didn't follow this advice and fell to his death.
But most Jungians feel that Jung was not so much looking at
the dream as a prediction about the future as indicating the
trend of this person to do things which would cause the dreams
to show him as falling, or as an careless type. If the person
persists in being careless, then these are the kinds of things
that will occur.
If we take the view that dreams
are metaphorically showing us psychological trends, like being
careless, being unkind, being generous, being skilled, and
so on, then we can say that dreams often predict the future
or are a message from the future. However, if a person is
not involved in doing their own psychological work, then they
may become superstitious about dreams and always worrying
about dreams that predict deaths, accidents and bad luck.
They can also be used by people who feel the need for power.
How many of us have had grandmothers or uncles that claim
to see all sorts of bad omens in dreams?
Many contemporary dreamworkers
feel that one can benefit best by taking these dreams as projections,
as views we hold unconsciously about others and don't usually
admit, even to ourselves. By "re-owning" these projections
(e.g. "O.K., maybe I do that sometimes too.") we
create a personal space for ourselves that is larger, more
flexible and self-aware.
At the other extreme, we can
test for the literal truth of dreams predicting the future.
That is, science has begun investigating dream psi and the
ability of dreams to see the future, to see distant events
at all times, to send and receive messages from other humans
and beings. For several years, the Maimodides Medical Center
in Brooklyn investigated the dream-psi connection. The 50+
published articles are summarized both in a technical monograph
(Ullman and Krippner, 1970) as well as two editions of the
popular book DREAM TELEPATHY with Ullman, Krippners and Vaughn,
(1973, 1989). Although it was very hard to replicate these
experiments, the researches found a lot of evidence suggesting
that we are more aware and connected during dreaming to events
that have no direct physical connection to us. Still, the
number of "hits" a person has is either small and
few between, or depends on a "wide" interpretation
("Well, ok, I wasn't dreaming about the target which
was a blue beach ball, but I did dream about the earth as
a globe...").
For those interested in finding
out how accurate their own dreaming might be, the key is to
time stamp the dream. The best way to do this is to post it
to a public forum online such as the ASD Bulletin Board or
a Usenet Newsgroup like alt.dreams or alt.dreams.prophecy
Are dreams messages from God?
At this time, looking at dreams
as messages from God or other spiritual or divine entities
is not something that science has anything to say about. However,
many people find great comfort, inspiration and value in doing
so. Each religion has had its own struggle with the meaning
and value of dreams. They have all had dream sharing at the
beginning of the religion, which is later suppressed, and
then usually recovered at a later time when hierarchical practice
and thinking give way to more liberal inclusiveness. Modern
dreamwork in spiritual traditions usually combine psychology
with spiritual techniques and belief to explore the divinity
of the dream as well as the day to day spiritual inspiration
it may provide. For example, books written by Morton Kelsey
or John Sanford use basic Jungian principles to elaborate
a path for spiritual development Christians. The meaning and
value of the dream is then aligned with the spiritual tradition
itself. And so the answer here as to whether the dream is
a divine message will depend on one's individual or group
beliefs and experiences. The "truth" (that a particular
kind of dreamwork is valuable) is passed by showing, by example,
by demonstration, inspiration, revelation.
Are dreams a message from
the unconscious?
This leaves the final category,
the view that dreams are a message from the unconscious, or
the psyche, or from oneself to oneself. Again, it's quite
similar to the spiritual path. That is, psychotherapy for
the most part is dependent upon how well the therapist helps
his/her patient or client. Notions of the unconscious, the
self, the ego, the super-ego, the Shadow, and so on, are useful
notions and theories that can't really be tested. You probably
feel that the psychological self that you have is quite real,
but you would have a hard time proving its existence. This
comes from a long philosophical tradition as well, where psyche
is located in time, but not in space. I am going on about
this because I want to show that locating the meaning of a
dream by locating it's author is no easy feat.
The location of the meaning
of the dream by locating the author has a parallel in the
history of literary interpretation. In the beginning, one
found the truth of the bible or religious text through divining
the will or intent of its author, the god who wrote the text.
What did God mean by that phrase or this chapter? With the
advent of secularization, there was a shift to the human author.
Find out what the author meant and you will know what the
book means. But over time, people found that there was a surplus
of meaning in texts. That is, people could read books in ways
the author never intended and derive useful meanings. One
could read about Capitalism and Adam Smith from the viewpoint
of Marx and derive from the book much about class struggles
that Smith never intended. Others found that they could read
a book in the context of its times and get meaning from the
book the author never intended, but included as part of the
historical context from which he/she was writing.
Somewhat later more subjective
approaches appeared. Here a person could read and book and
derive from it any meaning they wanted, regardless of what
the author intended. By the late 20th Century, the authority
of the author over the meaning and value of his/her book had
radically changed. Some even said the author's intentions
could never be clearly located, even if the author demanded
one meaning for a book.
We are in a somewhat similar
situation with the dream. The author, the ego, the I, the
thing that tells me its me when I wake up in the morning,
is more of an imaginal creature than anything else, and much
more multiple than I usually sense myself to be. Ask me the
meaning of my life at one moment, and the answer will be different
than another moment. We say these are just moods and perspectives
of the same-self, but saying this is just a conventional way
to keep the single image of the self together.
Henry Bergson explains how
this happens. We hear the tick-tock of a clock and spatialize
the event. Each tic-tock sequence is seen as the same, ticking
out even beats of time. tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock,tic-tock,
tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock,
tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock. But in fact,
each tic and tock are NOT exactly the same, and form a kind
of unique melody that is often beyond our perception. Still,
we hear and expect them as the same and create a grid that
spreads out across the universe. This grid is useful, but
an abstraction of the discreet events. That is, it is produced
as only a part of the event, the abstract part, which is then
taken back into us as a whole. Like a pearl necklace, we see
each bead of time being the same and assume that all of time
occurs as regularly as our abstraction of it. But even further,
to string all these beads together, we assume a being that
is OUTSIDE of this time viewing it all. This second self is
quite illusory, formless, indifferent, unchanging, but holds
all the (abstracted) experiences together and sees them as
one. This ego is a symbolic marker "...intended to recall
unceasingly to our consciousness the artificial character
of the process by which the attention places clean-cut states
side-by-side, where actually there is a continuity which unfolds."
12
Whatever your view of the
self and its contributions to the dream, the problem of locating
its influence remains. Again, it seems more prudent to use
the story-context approach and say that from the viewpoint
of self-influence, the dream may (or may not) contain a host
of meanings that I have somehow given directly or indirectly.
In this way, it doesn't matter so much whether the self is
an imaginal being, a fiction or a real entity. What matters
are what meanings and values unfold when we talk about the
dream as-if it were a message I am relaying to myself. This
as-if perspective can also be applied to other notions of
dreams-as-messages. What happens when we look at dreams as-if
they were messages from the unconscious, from a distant relative,
from the body?
What many dreamworkers find
is that they like to know all these perspective (and continually
add more) but that one will be their main perspective, one
will be the most profound for them, one will move them the
most. In this way, the meaning of the meaning of a dream will
be aligned with an individual's values, and yet admit other
voices.
A summary of the ways we might
see dreams as meaningful...
Levels of why the recalled
dream has meaning:
· Existential Level
- The dream has meaning because I give it meaning.
· Affective Level -
The dream has meaning because it feels meaningful.
· Functional Level
- The dream has meaning because it is useful.
· Ephiphonic Level
- I am overwhelmed by the meaning(s) of the dream.
· Pragmatic Level -
The dream is meaningful as the impact it happens to have.
· Autonomous Level
- I listen to the dream for the answer about its meaning.
· Spiritual Level -
All things have some alignment with the infinite, including
dreams.
· Relative Level -
Dreams give people more satisfaction than some other approaches.
· Testimonial Level
- Dreams are meaningful and valued by many people.
Note that it is useful at
times reverse these hypothesis. One can do this may ways.
Obviously one can use contradiction, such as applying the
existential level to a dream and saying that its is meaningless
because I refuse to give it any meaning. But we can also maintain
that dreams are meaningful and still use reversal. A dream
is meaningful because I am personally incapable of giving
it meaning, it always alludes and overflows my ability to
force meaning on it. Or a dream is meaningful because it doesn't
feel meaningful, its different than other things in my life
and this it part of its unique quality. The dream is meaningful
because it is useless and can't be commodified and used by
the ego like other objects in its power and control. And so
on. Productive reversal allows for new voices surrounding
the dream image to emerge.
It is almost as though we
should say that dreams are overloaded with meaning rather
than lacking in meaning. Or more accurately, that dreams,
by not being perfectly clear in their meaning to us upon first
inspection, offer us the opportunity to explore a wide range
of meanings and value not offered by instant clarity and understanding.
It is as though dreams are the process of meaning itself.
In their state of being not-yet complete as objects, they
are complete as moving processes. Metaphors in motion, as
Montague Ullman has said.13 Fluidic processes before the closure
of full representation has territorialized and coded the meaning
and value of the event. Just slightly ahead of being represented
and turned into a slave as a representative, before being
spatialized and abstracted across a grid of equal portions
and statistical curves. Tickity-tocklolog, tilocity, ocity,
ibility-nock, trumble, tic-tockity, smock.
(Meaning
of Dreams Pt 1)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 2)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 3)
(Meaning
Of Dreams Pt 4)
| Authors Details: Richard Wilkerson
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