Journey to Ixtlan: Dreams and their Meaning

We spend almost a third of our lives asleep. Given an average life expectancy in the United States of 78.2 years that works out to be 26 years of our lives in which, for most of us, we are essentially completely unconscious, unaware, and only superficially interacting with our environment. Surely an activity which consumes one-third of our lives has an important role far beyond simply resting us up so that we can dazzle everyone in the board meeting tomorrow morning with our PowerPoint presentation? Upon closer reflection I believe that it will become exceedingly clear that this is not, in fact, the function of sleep and that its real importance is in what it allows our psyche to do - an activity that is profound and directly relates to the entire purpose of our existence.

At first glance it appears that the purpose of sleep lies in the activity itself: in the slowing down of the circadian rhythms, the lowered heart-rate, deeper breathing, and physical regeneration which takes place during those 8 hours or so. But those functions are purely physiological and, I believe, not the primary purpose of the activity for the real objective lies in what happens to the psyche as a result of that state, namely: dreaming.

Dreams are the medium through which our Unconscious is able to communicate with our Waking Consciousness in the manner that our Mind understands: through imagery and emotion. Oftentimes our dreams will be vivid or disturbing enough that we remember them after waking and the jarring that occurs as a result of the dream may stay with us long afterwards. In those cases, the Unconscious has managed to bridge the gap between it and it our Waking Consciousness and convey its message in its own language: through symbolism and imagery.

The Unconscious, the living consciousness that exists below our Waking Consciousness and which possesses an intelligence and awareness of staggering implications, directs our lives in a manner and to a degree that we are oftentimes completely unaware of, for our Waking Consciousness is but a small piece of the puzzle that is our Psyche. Wired into the Collective Consciousness that we all share, it has access to information and a level of understanding that our Waking Consciousness is not only not privy to, but oftentimes incapable of processing because of its own shortcomings and biases. Our Mind is capable of processing and analyzing data, generating conclusions based on pattern analysis, and attempting to make some sense of the phenomenon we experience. But its tools are limited in their scope and its only source of information is our sensory perception - useful but hardly a lot to go on.

Our Unconscious, however, operates at a level far deeper than our Mind and has access to information through the network of the Collective Consciousness that, when presented to the Mind, oftentimes seems so insightful that it borders on prophetic. The boundary between our Unconscious and Conscious Mind, which has only been widened and solidified by centuries of Rationalism and Industrialization, however, makes it difficult to tap into that source of wisdom. It is the function of dreams, therefore, to bridge that gap and allow the Waking Consciousness to connect to the brilliance of the Unconscious so that it may receive that wisdom that it truly needs to make good choices and further the individual's development.

In order to communicate with the our Consciousness, the Unconscious generates dreamscapes, dream characters, and story lines that have an individualized, personal meaning for the dreamer. There are, certainly, common themes and symbols that appear in dreams across cultures and throughout time, and they are discussed at length by Jung in Man and his Symbols and his other works, should the reader be interested in further study in dream symbolism. For most dream analysis, however, the imagery is highly personal and intended to mean something to the dreamer - the target audience.

Through dreams, the Unconscious is able to show the dreamer his fears, his insecurities, issues that he's facing that he has been avoiding, and, at the same time, the wisdom of how to overcome those obstacles and move towards the goal of a better balanced, healthy, self-actualized individual. In a sense, the dreams contains the problem and the solution although oftentimes deciphering what those are can be quite challenging and can take serious self-analysis and reflection.

Most of us may often wonder if what we dreamt was 'real' in an objective sense or if all the characters and the dream itself were simply a product of our 'imagination' and, in due course, simply subjective. Modern man would answer that all dreams are simply imagination and do not 'exist' in the sense that we understand anything to exist. I disagree with this view. Dream-reality is, I believe, another layer of reality in this unbelievably profound Universe, and may not be any less 'real' than the reality you experience reading the morning paper. That's not to say, however, that all the characters that appear in dreams are the actual people, or that the things that happen in the dream actually took place, rather that dream-reality is a mixture of those two possibilities and one must have the awareness and presence of mind to distinguish which is which. In most cases, I believe that the dream characters are not the 'real people' they appear to be but rather representations of something in our lives or in our psyche that manifest in that manner because of the symbolism that they hold for us. In the end, however, the symbols and the meanings they hold for us are what is important and whether or not they are 'real' is largely irrelevant.

As an interesting note there is an old Taoist story about Chuang-tzu who dreamt that he was a butterfly. When he awoke he wondered if he were a man who had dreamt that he was a butterfly or, rather, if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

The other question oftentimes raised is whether dreams emerge from the individual's Unconscious or from the Collective Unconscious. The answer, I believe, lies in the proposition that the two are not separate entities and that an individual's Unconscious is similar to a single wave in an ocean - somewhat separate and yet composed of and inextricably tied to the whole. As such, the wisdom of our Unconscious emerges from that Sea of Consciousness and is, therefore, truly powerful.

Interestingly enough, in "primitive" societies where Man's psyche is not as fractured and out of touch with the Unconscious and whose internal boundaries and more permeable and less rigid, the attention they give their dreams greatly exceeds our own and, as a result, they are far less psychologically imbalanced. They listen to their dreams and live their lives accordingly with the end result being far fewer Prozac and Ambien prescriptions. Perhaps "primitive" Man knows something we've forgotten.

Remembering dreams can be challenging, however, even for the avid dreamer, and in most cases our interaction in dream-reality is reactionary and largely unconscious, at best. As a result, we spend 26 years of our lives relatively unconscious, even if we do listen to our Unconscious and apply the lessons in our life - which is more than most people ever do. And yet it still seems that those 26 years are wasted, to a certain degree, because our Consciousness is in something of a coma for the entirety of it. Herein lies the benefit and power of lucid dreaming: the act of gaining Waking Consciousness in the dream-state and interacting directly with dream characters in dream-reality in the same manner as one interacts in daily life. A difficult feat to accomplish, however, if one succeeds in learning the art of dreaming as don Juan referred to it, the potential for accelerated self-discovery and enhanced experience is impossible to overstate.

For an excellent introduction in the techniques of lucid dreaming I recommend Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self. It's a fascinating read and will outline practical steps to learn the art of dreaming.

In closing, dreams are perhaps our most powerful tool for self-discovery and for tapping into the wisdom of the Collective Unconscious. To ignore their meaning and power in our lives only serves to keep us stuck in our old patterns and devoid of the wisdom that we need to understand ourselves and our the circumstances of our lives. And in the process we may find ourselves exploring the boundaries of a world beyond our imagination.

Good night. Sweet dreams.