In order to understand the language, the symbolism, the imagery of our dreams, we need to first look more deeply until we find the hidden nature; and to understand the hidden nature of our dreams, we need to learn something about the nature of the dreaming self. 

The whole self is rather like an onion, it includes more than the outer skin of appearance, the body, thoughts, emotions and sensations; the self is more than the ego, more than personality, more even than individuality. It is much more than all these parts. The self includes the unconscious as well as the conscious mind. 

Think of the whole self as a circle or sphere. Forget for a moment the human form as flesh and blood and bones; just consider the self as an independent entity without a material body to contain it. Our dreams are not limited to the confines of our body and brain. When we are dreaming, our own personal sphere is much more complex, for it is on its way to wholeness. “Wholeness’ is something that we as fallible creatures, don’t really understand. But we know instinctively, at a very deep level that the wholeness is the goal – the direction in which we should be heading. 

Most of us would admit that we are flawed, in one way or another, at least to the extent that we are not aware of, or open to everything. Very few people are really whole, either spiritually or psychologically. The first step toward progress is to understand our limitations. Perhaps this is why we need to dream, to help us along and carry us in the right direction. 

Many people forget their dreams or say they never dream; but this is not the same as actually having no dreams. If you are like many others, and genuinely find it difficult to remember your dreams, you have been missing out on a chance to experience an amazingly direct method of learning and understanding things that are normally unknown to our conscious minds. When you can remember and understand your dreams, those resulting from the reassembled, re-created and re-presented impressions of normal awareness, you will then move on to impersonal dreaming., even dream messages from the human world of spirit. These are instructive, meaningful experiences; spiritual truths coming into our awareness.  

The nature of our dreams tends to vary according to the hour of dreaming, or, equally, to our mental state when we experience the dream. Assuming we all work during the daylight hours; after waking in the morning, by noon we are normally at our most wide awake. The evening sees us as wearied of the day’s coming and going – whether we lead a hectically busy life or not, it doesn’t matter. 

Everything that the conscious mind has assimilated, enjoyed, or dwelled upon, or pretended not to notice, ignored, or rejected and disowned, all these impressions are submitted by the now weary mind into the realms of the unconscious. There, they become the food for the personal unconscious, and this part of the mind functioning beneath the horizon of awareness continues to work through the night, through our sleeping hours, where we summarise, compare, identify similarities and categorising them, integrating all of our thoughts, feelings and sensations into a fresh viewpoint, a new understanding from the day. 

So if you want to remember your dreams don’t forget to take your glass of ‘dream water’ to bed, tonight because thinking around your dream images, only you can analyse your dreams effectively, because only you  are aware of your own past experiences. Remember your dream is a story, so remember your story. Think around it carefully; go through the whole sequence in your mind and write it down or draw it with every detail you can. Try to recall the theme and the emotions which carried the details along in your dream and how you felt on waking. Happy Dreaming! 

“If we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly

If we take it about with us and turn it over and over

Something almost always comes of it”

(Carl Gustav Jung)