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.