Image by Rolf Johansson from Pixabay
“Where do dreams come from?” is a very challenging question, as there is no one answer. Not all dreams are created equal – in other words, dreams come from a variety of sources.
SELF-CONTAINED
Many believe that all dreams are “self-contained” - that the source of dreams is our subconscious, or unconscious, mind. Many believe that dreams act like a compost pile, breaking down our inner trash – undigested thoughts, repressed feelings, societal beliefs – while we sleep. Andrew Paquette, author of Dreamer, (https://www.dream-discovery.com/r-e-s-o-u-r-c-e-s) called process dreams “ordinary” or “junk” dreams. (Over time, Andrew came to understand that there are no “junk” dreams. Even the worst nightmare or nonsensical dream contains valuable information if we take the time to decode them.)
“The dream is not compensation, but initiation.”
James Hillman, The Dream and The Underworld
Hillman describes a variety of dream sources – ancestral, mythical, and imaginal.
“As the dream is guardian of sleep, so our dream-work, yours and mine, is protective of those depths from which dreams rise, the ancestral, the mythical, the imaginal, and all the hiding invisibilities that govern our lives.” James Hillman p.202
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
C.G. Jung called the “hiding invisibilities” the “collective unconscious”. The collective unconscious is not shaped by personal experience. It is as the term “collective” implies – an oceanic-sized unconscious field of energy containing deep seated instincts, beliefs and symbols which are common to all human beings. The visible portion of the iceberg in the photo symbolizes our conscious mind. The huge unseen portion of the iceberg beneath the water symbolizes our unconscious or subconscious mind, and the ocean symbolizes the collective unconscious. The sky symbolizes superconscious realms. All of these elements are potential dream sources.
DREAMS PRECEDE CONSCIOUS LIFE
James Hillman noted that fetuses dream in utero and babies dream. He wrote, “To Plato and to some modern behavioral research, the dreams come anyway before conscious life……..Before the day world begins even factually and developmentally, the dream is at its work.” “I do not consider dreaming as a piece of the psyche like a textbook chapter listed along with memory, perception, emotion, and the like. Dreaming is the psyche itself doing its soul-work.” The Dream and The Underworld, p.201
It has been said that sleep is a little death. The veils between life and death, waking and sleeping, are a lot more fluid, and transparent, than some may think. Many spiritual teachers, East and West, and more and more scientists are recognizing that each person has a deathless soul which moves fluidly through a continuum of experiences in the visible world and the invisible worlds.
Andrew Paquette, “The word ‘dream’ does distinguish between sleep and wakefulness, but implies much that is false without including enough of what is true. Without an acknowledgement that a dream is a memory from our permanent non-physical existence, the word is misleading.” Dreamer p.272
DIVINE AUTHORSHIP OF DREAMS
What is the source of a dream predicting a future event – or a dream which contains memories of a past life?
Andrew Paquette, estimated that 70% of his dreams were what he called “normal”, meaning dreams which are self-generated, arising out of our subconscious mind, and 30% of his dreams were “given” to him, meaning dreams which originate in a superconscious realm, a place outside of our heads, which transcends “normal” consciousness. Writing about the 30% “given” dreams Andrew said, “Now that I have a better perspective, I am amazed by what these dreams turned out to be. For one thing, they weren’t dreams at all, at least not by the common meaning of the word. Instead, they are memories of real events. Sometimes the ‘event’ is a common fantasy, given life by the plasticity of thought. Other events are genuine interactions between spirits of all varieties, in various non-physical locations, some of which are not bound by linear time.” (Dreamer, p.272-273)
he Bible contains a record of twenty one “given” dreams - prophetic dreams, message or guidance dreams and warning dreams. John Sanford, “The prophet Jeremiah speaks quite clearly about the divine authorship of dreams…” “…in the Book of Genesis dreams were regarded as manifestations of divine intention, as one of God’s ways of communicating with people.” Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language p.81-82
John Sanford wrote, “Real religion is not based, as some would have it, on fabrications of our conscious mind, or a desire to prolong a childish dependence on parental figures, but upon our innate recognition that our space-time reality is affected by another kind of reality..” “That there could be a reality beyond space and time, and that the psyche is capable of contacting it, is a hypothesis strange and foreign to our materialistic outlook.” God’s Forgotten Language p.47
ANDREW PAQUETTE’S DREAM
“The angel brings me into the building. Inside, she tells me that I am asleep and my body is on earth. She shows me my sleeping body, separated from me by a kind of barrier. She tells me that my dreams are created here and then sent to me. This surprises me, because the way she describes it, many of my dreams are direct communication between this place, which I understand to be Heaven, and me on earth.
The angel stressed that what I considered ‘my’ dreams are not actually mine. They were made for me, and given to me for a certain purpose, though I don’t remember what that purpose is.” Dreamer, p.237-238
When working with a dream, we can ask ourselves – what is the source of this dream? Our soul, our subconscious mind, a superconscious realm, or the collective unconscious?
Ann Ree Colton described seven dream levels, which I will share in a future post. The knowledge of these dream levels is invaluable in helping us get a feel for the sources of our dreams.
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