The art of understanding and finding guidance in one’s dreams is a complex and subtle practice. I specialise in working with imagery and dreams and I find that people’s dreams are as different, unique, and beautiful as their faces. Trying to understand what is being communicated from the depths via a dream is not a case of learning a set of ‘meanings’ for certain aspects which we can then put together. Each dream and each dreamer needs to be held individually.
Having said that, there is also a lot of shared territory between us in our imagery! To the extent that we live in the same world, similar images - an alchemical pattern - come forward. This creates a challenge for the reader of the dreams - as you can see I am saying two things here. First, I am saying that dreams are unique to the dreamer and we can not generalise about images and say ‘that image means this’. But second I am also saying ‘yes, actually we can sense that ‘that might mean this’. Can both be true? I think so. This is the essence of transpersonal psychotherapy.
So…where do dreams and images originate?
To think this through, you need to establish where you think imagery and dreams come from. Are images generated inside each individual psyche? In which case you are putting biology first. You are putting the brain first. You are saying that the image proceeds from the brain of the individual and that the imaginal world exists within that context.
On the other hand, if you have a sense that images exist in some way independently of the psyche of the individual and that the individual can reach in to some kind of pool of imagery (the collective unconscious was Jung’s term for this), then the images have some sort of ontologically prior existence to the brain of the imaginer. Further, the imaginer can perhaps put images back in to this shared pool - maybe transformed in some way. Interesting!
All of this is very speculative and controversial. I think it is useful to think about it, however, to help you to clarify where you personally stand in your philosophy of the human psyche. There are many intriguing questions which adhere to this discussion - for example and not least, we immediately need to ask what we mean by the brain - is
it limited to that which is in our boney skull or does it also consist in our thoughts and our impact on the thoughts of others? Is it our whole body? Is it our atmosphere, our influence? I am very open to expanded definitions of mind and brain. However the point remains that there are two ways of thinking about imagery - does it start with me, or does it start elsewhere and come to me?
The transpersonal….
The next question is - if it starts elsewhere and comes to me, why? What purpose does this imagery have? This is the essence of transpersonal psychotherapy. Once you accept that imagery does not start with you, but in some way comes to you, then you are on the road to accepting that it has some sort of life - and purpose - of its own. James Hillman wrote brilliantly on this. So did Henry Corbin.
Some other ways in to this question centre around ideas of the unconscious - the ideas of ‘thoughts without a thinker’, and I am not ignoring that whole, fascinating, brilliant discourse! Please comment with anything which is brought up for you as we open some of these ideas up. And do subscribe for more posts like this straight to your inbox!
This struck a chord with me, and as you know my recent exhibition referred to the universal conscience idea/theory that was brought to my attention by Rick Rubins book, "The Creative Act (a way of being)"
We're all made of the same stuff, so it's possible that if one engages in a creative frame of mind we can be more open to ideas...
I like your analogy of faces to dreams as individual and uniquely beautiful, and to put it from you/ me/ wherever it has come from back into the shared pool, I'm now thinking of how this metaphor also works with that which we all have in common and, transpersonally, perhaps this extends to function too - like faces, aspects of dreams can (psychologically and spiritually) help us to 'see' and 'hear' and even 'breath'. This feels exciting to me (and also shows the power of imagery). Thought provoking and kind of soul-satisfying. Thank you.