Dear Amily,
I hate to imagine all the boring reading you needed to go through in order to write this paper.
May I suggest that you turn more to Karl Jung than to Freud. Freud has a very high place as the father of psychoanalysis, but that is where it is beginning to
stop. He began it, but his actual analyses aren't as acceptable any more.
I'm glad I don't need to wallow in Freud's analysis and explanations.
From my reading and personal dream-watching I have reached a few guidelines that
work for me. The first is that if a dream is strong, and clearly remembered, it means something important enough for me to contemplate it further.
The second is that dreams always seem to greatly exaggerate in order to get your
attention. In other words, when you dream that you are spitting out all
of your teeth you probably should have your teeth checked. There is likely one
thing that needs some attention.
Neat explanations for your dreams may come from others, but if they don't feel right to you, then they haven't really explained the dream accurately. It is *your* dream. Your inner being made it, and it knowns what it is about.
When you think about or keep track of your dreams you will remember more of them
. If you ignore them you will not remember them. Many people who think they don't dream just don't remember their dreams.
Dreams come in series. If you write them down you can see over a period of time
how one relates to the next and the theme develops. If you take one out of context it will not make the same sense, and of course, that's only reasonable.
Dreams may occasionally be about the future. I have sometimes suspected that a
strong case of de je vu is because you dreamed of meeting the person or being there, but have forgotten the dream, only slightly remembering it when the thing finally happens.
Dreams can be extremely useful to fiction writers. Robert Louis Stevenson said
that he mined his dreams for his stories.
In my dreams I often find myself in a house. This house is often my own inner self. In my dreams I explore and find upper unexpected areas that are under construction. Once I found a rack with many kinds of costumes. Once I was in an ancient building in a personal library with a high ladder to reach the topmost wonderful books. Sometimes I also dream of the foundation rooms. Often of what is
behind doors that I just discover are there. I think these have to do with my
own inner self, too.
Once I went very far down into a hidden room at the end of a series passageways
and chambers in the earth. There was a rotund little oriental man in a grey business suit. He was laughing and laughing with joy, and in the back of his throat I saw an eye. His feet were nearest to me. They were lovely round and rosy feet, like a childs, and seemed very lovable. At that time I was using the I Ching on occasion, for assistance in thinking my way through some things. I came to the conclusion that this person represented "the Sage" of the I Ching.
Twice I have dreamed that I was myself, but looking through the eyes of another
person going about their life. Once it was of a person I think was one of my own ancestresses here in North America in the 1700's. Once it was the man in the
ancient library, above. I think he lived in the early 1500's and suspect I know
who he was and why I dreamed about him and that he was also a relative. Both of these have central positions in our family's life and why we are in Canada today.
Once I dreamed of a lake of boiling water. People, including me, were being whipped down the hills around the lake into the water and I saw people in agony being boiled alive. In my dream I knew I was a Baha'i, and I shouted out "the Greatest Name" which is used for protection in deep peril. "Ya Baha'ul'Abha".
Then I too had to run down the hill and into the water which, to my astonishment
I found to be luke-warm. I think you can see that this dream was to do with the
difficulties of life in the world today and how the Faith helps me through.
I'm convinced the dreams are much more and much less than we've been told, sofar
. One of my favourite books about Jung is his "Memories, Dreams and Reflections
." It's an autobiography and a fascinating book. I hope some people here will
be privileged to read it. The whole of life had has much more to it than Freud
ever dreamed. Jung taps into some of it. I have read that psychiatry is still
in its infancy and I think that's true.
What are we to make of a mathematicians and physicist's world of eleven dimensions, each as close to the other as clothes hanging in hangers in a closet, so that sometimes they touch each other. What are we to make of thelatest from them that all of us who have ever lived have had doppelgangers exactly like us in every way, who live(ed) on a planet exactly like earth
at a certain incredible distance from here and who evidently live out the
critical points of choice in our lives, but they take the other path, the one we
didn't take? Some think that every possible such other path has been played out somewhere for each of us.
I hope this is of some interest to you. I would be interested in learning about
the meaningful dream experiences of some of the rest of you, if you care to share. Don't share the ones you didn't come to any understanding about because
they won't tell us much. But the ones that you feel you did plum, please share
those.
Warmly, Mary.
