In his book Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language, Jungian analyst and Episcopalian priest John A. Sanford writes: “There lives within us what seems like an unconscious source of wisdom which helps us to see ourselves in a different perspective from what we had before and seems to work toward the healing and wholeness of the personality. This wisdom uses dreams as communications, and it enables us to understand consciously those symbolic messages.”
It wasn’t until I was in my late 30s and met with a Jungian therapist for help during a difficult period in my life that I became aware of dreams having meaning. Before that when I remembered a dream, I didn’t think much about it. Dreams were just something that happened sometimes when a person was sleeping.
Learning about how dreams speak to us through their symbols and stories has been life-transforming for me. Although what a dream is saying is not always clear to me, I honor each one by writing it in my dream journal. Dreams can have various levels of meaning. Sometimes I have an initial sense of a dream’s possible message, and a day or two later a thought will come to me that perhaps the dream meant something in addition to that first impression. And sometimes a different meaning from what I first thought will come to mind. I have learned from reading the writings of Jungian analysts, who have had years of experience doing dream work with their clients, that what I have described is common when trying to discern a dream’s message. Those times when something “comes to mind” or “a thought comes to me” are the times I am most able to hear my inner voice, the source of wisdom of which Sanford writes.
The title Sanford chose for his book is significant. Many dreams appear in both the Old and New Testaments and in sacred literature of other faith traditions. And yet most people, including clergy, do not accept the importance of dreams even as they consider the Bible to be the basis for their religious beliefs. It’s as if people choose which of God’s words they want to believe and decide to ignore the other ways God speaks to us. In so doing, they severely limit their ability to grow toward their Creator-given potential.