Every now and then I have a Big Dream ….

I have many dreams, mostly forgotten, from which I waken with undefined feelings of loss or anxiety or happiness. Just occasionally I wake up with the story and feelings of my dream clearly remembered, so I grab my phone and write it down in my ‘Notes’ app before it fades from view. My experience has been that these dreams always announce the thing that is really happening in my life, that needs my attention.

Dreams are gifts delivered by our unconscious, heralds of Important Information that if reflected on, and perhaps shared in therapy and/or spiritual direction, may help us know what’s really going on in our journey to know ourselves and our deeper truth. In my experience, reflecting on a dream (my own, or a client’s) can bring insight and added depth to the process that nothing else can offer, at least not as succinctly or creatively as a dream can.

I had a Big Dream recently. The details don’t need to be shared here, but suffice to say it was about moving into and rebuilding a house that had been shattered by war and abandoned. My feeling was of being newly ‘at home’ in this house. It announced with symbolic precision a shift in my perception of the life I inhabit. In my waking life, I don’t always feel confident about that shift, but the dream announces what is in process, what is ready to happen, and I can have confidence in that. When I falter, or find myself inhabiting my ‘previous house’, I need to recall the dream, because it tells me what’s REALLY going on.

So listen to your dreams, write them down, look for the message in them. If possible, find someone to help you explore that message.