dreams

As Jung put it, would you not wish to converse with a two-million-year-old sage who knocked at your door, who knows what nature knows and perhaps the dreamer has forgotten? So each night, then, this source of natural sagacity comes to us and invites a conversation. Seen this way, how could we not pay some respectful attention to such a summons?

It is for this reason that sleep paralysis is also known as a “night-mare”. The word mare comes from the same root as the German Mahr and the Old Norse mara, referring to a supernatural being that lies on peoples’ chests at night. It is thought that the original source of the word mare is the Indo-European word mar which means to pound, bruise or c

This inner world is just as real, perhaps even more than the tangible world, because our presence, our choices, our being in that outer arena is governed by the psyche’s agenda, not the ego’s. Our dreams are not here to comfort us or make life easy. That is why so many of us pay so little attention to them. Rather, they ask of us attentiveness, res

Finally, dreams are usually about the inner world. The dream maker is mostly interested in us. In waking life, the external world demands our attention; we turn our faces outward to interact with others, accomplish tasks, and achieve goals. However, the dream maker remarks primarily on things happening in the interior. We are often tempted to see d

In The Out-of-Body Experience I suggested a perceptual model of reality whereby human beings, and probably all conscious animals, exist in two states of awareness. There is the “waking state” – that is, the perceptual world shared by other consciousnesses and proven to be consistent and real by the simple fact that other consciousnesses seem to see

One study of dreams concluded that if we live to eighty years old, six years of our life will have been spent dreaming—not sleeping, which is a far higher percentage. Six years dreaming! Apparently, dreams are tied to our nature and its effort to process, metabolize, correct, and heal the fissures that lie within each of us.

Both dreams and symptoms are examples of the transcendent function at work.

Jung asked us a telling question: What supports you when nothing supports you? What can you turn to when your instructions from the world have led you astray? What can you count on when the world you built is no longer livable? Then, in that darkness, a light flickers and the dream appears.