Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (21 page)
Read Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. Online
Authors: Thomas Bien
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exactly what happens when we allow ourselves to be aware of dreams.
A dream is an excellent subject for meditation. When you meditate on a flower, you are not attempting to analyze the flower as a botanist might, naming and classifying it precisely, detailing its anatomical structures and their purposes. You are simply
being with
the flower, allowing the flower to be deeply present to you and you to it, in such a way that you appreciate the flower and become one with it. Treat the dream the same way. Enter into the dream world, be with it. It is more like trying to taste a dream than like trying to figure something out. A few minutes spent doing this is useful, though of course you can meditate longer and attempt greater depth if you wish. The attitude is one of
respecting
rather than dissecting the dream. This is the main thing and the most important thing, even if you do nothing else. Remember Your Dreams
From sleep research it is clear that we all dream every night. Most, though not all dreaming, occurs during the phase of sleep in which our eyes move rapidly from side to side, called, appropriately enough, rapid eye movement or REM sleep.
If you do not remember your dreams or do not remember them often, it is usually enough to formulate a clear intention to begin to do so. It helps also to strengthen this intention by taking some action to show the unconscious that you are serious. Set a pad and pen on your nightstand, and jot down whatever you remember
immediately
upon waking. If you think you can put it off until after you shower and dress, you may discover that the dream evaporates in the meantime. So jot it down right away. If you do not have time to write the dream out in full, then just note enough to give your memory a handle on the dream so you can recall it later in more detail.
If you don’t remember your dreams, record whatever you find yourself thinking about when you wake up, since this may relate to what you were dreaming. If you only remember parts of a dream, record whatever fragments or images you can remember, even if they seem silly, absurd, or meaningless at first. The conscious mind uses labels such as 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 130
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silly or absurd to reject perspectives foreign to it. But sometimes a silly fragment of a dream that you almost forget turns out to be very important. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,” said Christ. Psychologically, this means that the very elements of ourselves and our experience that seem to lack value can often prove to be the most valuable in the end. This is especially the case with dream contents. Note carefully those discrepant, odd little details. By respecting this material in its entirety, you are sending a signal that you are ready to listen and learn.
Another way to help you remember dreams and also to dream more vividly is to make it a practice to meditate at least briefly before going to sleep. Breathe in and out calmly as you review the day’s events, letting them settle down. Ask that you have wise and helpful dreams. Ask to remember them. Understand the Alternative View
Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. And dreams are a powerful tool for getting in touch with aspects of ourselves that normally remain hidden. One of the things that makes dreams a royal road is that they have built-in safeguards. If you are not ready to confront certain unconscious contents, then you will forget the dream. While you may encourage yourself to remember your dreams, you should not force the process. If you have tried unsuccessfully to encourage dream memory, back off a little bit or take a break from doing dream work for a couple of weeks before gently trying again. Do not try to override the safety feature.
Freud believed dreams always contain a hidden wish. The wish is hidden in such a way that you have to decode the dream to find it. He was especially fond of finding hidden sexual wishes in dreams—which may tell us more about Freud and his time than it does about dreams. While it is sometimes true that dreams contain wishes, and while it may be worth inquiring into what wish a dream may contain, it seems forced to try to view every dream that way. Similarly, while sexuality is a vital and important aspect of our humanity, it is overly reductive to view every dream in this light.
To understand how a dream might represent a wish, consider that the outcome of the dream plot may in some way be desirable to you, 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 131
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even if it is something you would normally say was not desirable or even awful. For example, a young woman client was overly close with her mother. She said her mother was absolutely wonderful, and she never voiced the slightest negative feeling about her. One night she dreamed that her mother died in a horrible auto accident. This dream contained the young woman’s aggression and hostility to her mother, of which she was totally unaware. At first, she resisted this interpretation fiercely. But eventually, she came to accept it, and with her acceptance, she came to a more realistic view of her mother. Her relationship with her mother improved, becoming less one of dependency and enmeshment, and more realistic and mature.
Jung felt that dreams try to communicate their meaning clearly and directly. He repeatedly quoted the Talmud, that “the dream is its own interpretation.” We find this assumption more helpful. The symbolic language of dreams is a natural one. Intriguingly, people have sometimes been able to understand dreams under hypnosis that they do not understand otherwise. It is true that when we are awake, we do not always understand the symbolic language that dreams speak. But if a dream’s purpose is to help us get acquainted with ourselves, to move us in the direction of wholeness, why would a dream then disguise itself?
Jung’s view is both broader and more compelling than Freud’s. The main thing to understand about dreams, according to Jung, is that
dreams are a complementation or compensation for conscious attitudes of the
dreamer.
In other words, our conscious awareness is often one-sided in some way. One-sided awareness causes problems in our lives if it is not corrected. Dreams provide this correction to the limitations of the conscious point of view. Thus a man who underestimates his father may have a dream in which his father is twenty feet tall. A woman who rigidly denies validity to anything spiritual may have dreams full of numinous symbols and images. One can only understand these images, however, with reference to the conscious attitude of the dreamer. Dreams may also complement our conscious attitudes by representing an unacceptable wish, but that is only one way of many. In trying to understand a dream, the first thing to ask is,
How is the
content of this dream different from the way I usually see things, or from the
way I have been seeing things lately? In what way does it correct some kind of
one-sidedness in me?
This is an important principle. If you have a dream, and you think that you already know what it means, you are probably wrong. This is 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 132
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not because the dream is trying to disguise its meaning, as Freud maintained, but because we tend to interpret dreams in terms of what we already believe. The challenge of working with dreams is to be open to a different point of view—one that, in its own way, is as valid as the way we usually see things. If you have a tendency to see yourself in a critical light, beware of interpreting dreams as critical. You are probably just seeing them in terms of the same old conscious attitude. On the other hand, if you tend to see the world in self-aggrandizing ways, take a closer look at dream images that seem only to duplicate this point of view. Try to be open to another way of seeing things. The mythologist Joseph Campbell said that myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths. This means that dreams come from the same place in us that myth comes from. They originate in the part of us that thinks, not in terms of Aristotelian logic and rational syllogisms, but in terms of
story
and
symbol
. Jung’s work with dreams shows that they often bear close relationship with myth (and myth with dreams, for that matter). To mention just one example, the circle is a universal symbol of wholeness or completeness. Understanding this, one becomes alert to round objects in dream material, using this knowledge of the general meaning of the sacred circle or mandala as a background against which to understand our own individual dreams. THE EXPERIENCE (BEVERLY)
Some years back, I had received a promotion to a position that was to turn out to be an improvement, but a job that I would ultimately leave within a short period of time. But I was temporarily very pleased.
However, I dreamt that I was riding on the tail of a kite, along with my supervisor and my coworkers. I was flying high, but was certainly in a precarious position. This dream was clearly warning me to be careful of my inflated happy feelings about my new position. The dream was correct. Become Aware of the Symbols
Dreams speak the language of
symbols
. When we begin working with dreams, we have to learn this language. The meaning of dreams seems 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 133
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concealed or hidden only because we don’t know the language. The circle, as mentioned above, is a universal symbol. But many symbols are more personal. An example would be the woman who dreams she is drowning while her husband is trying unsuccessfully to take her photograph. In other words, the dream is saying something like,
“I’m in a struggle for my life, I can’t breathe, and he doesn’t get the picture.”
Jung made a helpful distinction between symbols and signs. A sign is something that just stands in the place of something else, as the word
lake
stands for the body of water. When we say the word
lake,
we know clearly what is intended. A symbol, on the other hand, can never be fully explicated or understood. We can say, for example that the word
God
is symbol of wholeness and transcendence. But we have not thereby expressed everything that
God
means. God is ultimately ineffable. Because of the symbolic nature of dreams, you should not approach dream interpretation allegorically, as though each element stood literally and specifically for something else. Since symbols do not simply stand in the place of some other thing, it is not usually helpful to try to decode a dream by looking it up in a dream book. For one thing, the meaning of a symbol is something that points beyond itself, as the word
God
does not literally point to an old man with a beard up in the sky, but something transcendent and ineffable, beyond comprehension. For another thing, as in the drowning woman’s dream, the symbols may also be personal rather than universal. To understand such symbols, you need to know a lot about the dreamer’s life and situation—variables that no dream book can capture.
To keep from getting lost in working with a dream, always remember that a dream
complements
your conscious attitude in some way. A dream tries to give you an alternative point of view, one that completes what is lacking in your conscious awareness. In some way, every dream is a challenge. If you interpret a dream only in terms of what you already know and believe and understand, look more deeply. Remember that dream language is symbolic, not literal. It is not a matter of substituting one thing for another thing. For this reason, the meaning of a dream retains a “something like this” or “as if ” quality. It is not literally saying that the husband cannot take a photograph, but something like,
“He doesn’t get the picture; he doesn’t see.”
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Dreams and Mindfulness
Working with dreams is a powerful way of bringing mindfulness to aspects of ourselves and our lives that we may not otherwise acknowledge, bringing new vitality and wholeness. We suggest approaching dreams as a mindfulness practice rather than as an intellectual puzzle. While the meaning of some dreams will become clear, some will remain mysterious. Whether dreams are understood or not, it is helpful to work with them, to hold them in mindful, meditative awareness as you would other important parts of your life and experience. If you try too hard to figure dreams out and press that knowledge into the service of your conscious self, the unconscious may retreat before the violent, grasping attitude of such an approach. But if you approach dreams with gentleness, patience, persistence, and respect, they will bless you. How to Work with Dreams
Here are twenty ways in which to work with dreams to understand and integrate their message. When you work with a dream, you might like to review this list and try a few of these approaches. You will probably never want to do all of them with one dream.
1. Maintain a receptive attitude:
Respect, don’t dissect
. This is essential. Take a meditative attitude. Do not try to force meaning to emerge. Do not try to decode anything. Just hold the dream in awareness and see what comes. If you try to force an interpretation, your effort will be frustrating and, most likely, incorrect.
2. In working with your own dream or another’s, first say, “This is a wonderful dream.” This is not an empty ritual, but a way of cultivating the proper attitude. To contact dreams is to contact the deep wisdom in us. Jung said: “Together the patient and I address ourselves to the 2-million-year-old man that is in all of us. In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams.”
3. Write the dream down in detail. This is already a gesture of respect for the dream. Also, those odd little details and aspects that 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 135