Something is trying to reach you

Dreams have been one of the most extraordinary aspects of my own healing.

For years I dismissed them as little more than the brain's nightly housekeeping, random images stitched together while consciousness rested.

Then I started paying attention.

The more I listened, the harder it became to believe they were random at all.

There is one aspect of us that is constantly trying to organise reality. It categorises, labels, predicts, judges and constructs explanations. It builds frames of reference, belief systems through which it comes to know and understand reality. 

It builds theories about the world.

There is another aspect that simply experiences.

It doesn't know concepts.
It knows sensation.
Relationship.
Presence.

It is immersed in raw experience. 

Imagine eating a strawberry.

There is the sweetness.
The texture.
The moisture.
The fragrance.

That is direct experience. 

Those are the facts.

Then you say:

"That was a sweet strawberry. It must be ripe."

The words are not the strawberry.

They are your description of it. 

The theory of the facts. 

The map is never the territory. The theory is never the experience.

The part of our psyche that generates the theory wants to preserve it. It tends to filter out data, experiences and perspectives that threaten its existing frame of reference, especially the foundational beliefs upon which so many others are built.

Enter the Dream 

I’ve come to see dreams as an opportunity for the body to pass us messages, allowing us to hear from our natural intelligence while the ordering mind sleeps. It speaks through symbols, motifs, archetypes and metaphor. Through story rather than statement. Through imagination rather than explanation.

It is almost as though the dream speaks in a language the ordering mind is less inclined to intercept.

It seems our dreams are trying to bring us into closer contact with reality so that we can update the way we see ourselves and the world. 

The difficulty is, that the brilliance of the dream is often what makes it so hard to perceive.

For instance, the dream borrows characters from our own life to represent archetypal energies often within ourselves.

I once dreamt my mum was hosting a podcast with Kanye West.

I woke up thinking: "What on earth was that?"

It felt completely absurd. But the dream wasn't asking me to think about Kanye.

It was asking me what Kanye represented.

After sitting with the symbols, I began to see Kanye representing unapologetic artistic and vocal expression, while my mum represented the deep feminine wisdom of the body. The dream was helping me see that I needed to reconnect these aspects of myself: my voice and my sacral energy. They had become disconnected through a protective frame of reference held by my ordering mind, one which told me it was not safe to express my emotions and sensuality through my voice.

Over the last ten years I've spent a great deal of time unpacking my own dreams, and the dreams of clients I've worked with. Along the way I've immersed myself in Jung, Campbell, symbolism and narrative structure.

Until recently, symbolic interpretation benefited from years of study.

I would like to preface that you do not need AI, or years of study, to benefit from your dreams. Simply writing them down and contemplating them gently can allow much of their richness to permeate.

However, AI does provide us an opportunity for symbolic reflection. I believe that if we are to use AI, it should only be to make us more human, not less. This is one area I think it can aid that. 

AI cannot tell you what your dream means. But it can help you notice patterns, ask better questions and reflect on symbols you may have otherwise overlooked.

If you note down your dreams, the following prompt can help AI offer a symbolic reflection for you to contemplate.

Here is a useful prompt:

Here is a dream I had. Please help me reflect on it by identifying the individual symbols, recurring motifs and overall narrative arc. Rather than telling me what the dream means, ask me thoughtful questions that help uncover my own associations with each symbol and what the different characters may represent within myself.

I have found even the intention of being more readily open to listening to your dreams, can bring more of them into your life. I believe they can offer some of the most targeted, salient and deeply personal wisdom available to us

Our life isn’t here to make our dreams come true.

Our dreams are here to make our life come true. 

Until the next time,

Peace and love

Alex