Month: September 2019

I recently had this dream: “I have six dogs of various breeds and sizes, the largest about two feet tall. For some reason that seems logical and routine in the dream, I open the door of a large cupboard and direct three of the dogs to jump up into it, which they do readily as if they’ve done that often, and I close the door. Then I open the lid of the clothes washer which is in the same room as the cupboard and direct the other three dogs to jump into it which they do readily, and I close the lid. I don’t plan to turn the washing machine on; it’s more like using the washer as another enclosed space similar to a cupboard. A little later I leave. When I return home, I gasp, realizing I’d forgotten to let the dogs out of the cupboard and washer before I left and they’ve been there three or four hours. It’s understood they’re usually in those spaces for only a few minutes and then I have them come out of the cupboard and the washer. I quickly open both doors and the dogs jump out and appear to be OK. The last one to get out of the washer gets up more slowly than the other dogs, but he also appears to be OK once he’s out. I’m thankful because I feared they might have been stiff or possibly injured from being in the cramped spaces so long. I’m upset with myself for being so neglectful and I’m thankful that they all appear to be fine.”

Even as I re-read this dream, I felt the feelings I had when I first remembered it and wrote it in my journal—feelings of sadness and disbelief that I as the person in the dream did such a thing. Of course, I didn’t do it in physical reality, but what occurs in dreams seems real and therefore often evokes feelings as if the dreamer did the actions or had the experiences portrayed by dreams.

In trying to understand the reason this dream was given to me, I thought about my associations to dogs, which are positive. I then thought about what I’ve learned dogs often symbolize, two of which are loyalty and being givers of direction, such as how dogs are used to search for lost people by tracking their scent. The message of this dream seemed more readily discernible to me than that of many dreams I’ve had; it was clear my dream was telling me I was neglecting to do something.

What I was neglecting to do, however, wasn’t as clear to me. After spending some time trying to discern that, I decided to let it be and perhaps the message would come to me later. In my reading about Jungian-based dream work and in my own experience, I have learned it’s best not to try to force a meaning from a dream. And a couple of days later a thought came to me of a task I had neglected to do. Because of the personal nature of what I had neglected, I’m choosing not to share it. But I wanted to share this experience as yet another example of how dreams speak to us.

A book I re-read from time to time is Inner Work: Using Dreams & Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Jungian psychotherapist and author Robert A. Johnson. It was published in 1986—more than 30 years ago—but what he writes is timeless.

For example, Dr. Johnson writes: “If dreams only served to affirm our pre-existing opinions and assumptions, they would not contribute to our psychological growth at all. Assume that your dream has come to challenge you, help you grow, wake you up to what you need to learn and where you need to change.” These words reflect what Carl Jung observed in his analysis of thousands of dreams his clients brought to him: that dreams are given to us to help us learn something about ourselves that we don’t already know. They bring previously unconscious content to consciousness.

Even though I believe this about dreams and have experienced the truth of it in my own dream work, I have a tendency sometimes to try to find in a dream what I want to find. Rather, I need to be open to what the dream is trying to tell me, not to what I hope the dream is telling me. Dr. Johnson’s words are a helpful reminder to all of us of how to best approach our dreams.