“All dreams reflect inborn creativity and ability to face and solve life’s problems.” —Jeremy Taylor

Do dreams come true? Or are dreams true? What do our dreams tell us?

We have all awakened with dreams that grabbed our attention. Some frighten us as when a beast pursues us or we careen down a mountain road with no brakes or free fall from a building, awakening just before smashing to the sidewalk below. Others are nested in beauty and serenity. Some revisit through the years.

All of us dream, even when we don’t remember them. Sleep experts tell us there are cycles to our sleep. Each cycle has four stages: the transition between wakefulness and sleep, core sleep, deep sleep, and REM or rapid eye movement sleep. We dream during REM sleep. We go through between four and six cycles per night. We may have a short wakefulness between cycles.

As we move through these cycles, our time in REM sleep or dream sleep grows. In total, REM stages make up around 25% of sleep time in adults. According to the Sleep Foundation, the first REM stage may last only a few minutes while later stages can last up to an hour. This is why we tend to remember the dreams that we have later in the night as they are longer and closer to our waking.

Why might we want to explore our dreams? Nightly our unconscious speaks to us. Why would we not want to listen? 

I have attended to my dreams intermittently throughout my life. They have been helpful in discerning important decisions, new directions I feel called to, how to respond to a niggling problem. Sometimes they challenge me, at other times they reassure me.

There are a few things to keep in mind as we consider our dreams. First, all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness. This is true even of those nightmares that terrify us. Our unconscious is on our side. It simply wants to get our attention.

Secondly, only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meaning his or her dream may hold. It would be nice to find some expert that we could hand our dream over to for interpretation. It is not how it works. Carl Jung said, “No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.”  We are the ones who have to wrestle with our dreams. Others can help, but only the dreamer is ‘right’ about the dream. A sense of “aha” tells us this is what our unconscious is trying to say.

Thirdly, dreams speak a universal language of metaphor and symbol. We will not get messages in script. We must lean into the symbolic language they speak. I remember a dream I had where someone sprayed bug spray in my eyes. The spray blinded me. I recognized that I was refusing to see what was right in front of my eyes.

If you want to attend to your dreams, start with keeping a dream journal by your bed. When you awaken with a dream, write it down. Notice the details, the people in the dream, and how you feel as you move through the dream. Keeping a dream journal can help you track the movement of your dreams over time.

Once you have captured a dream, here are some things you can do with it.

List the people in your dream and give five adjectives to each one. Let’s say your high school friend Pat shows up. Write 5 words that describe Pat – funny, kind, gentle, cranky, hot headed. Then look at those same adjectives regarding you. Which of them fit? Maybe you have been cranky or hot-headed lately. Is that something you want to spend time reflecting on? Or maybe you have been kind or need to be kinder. What might that tell you? Do that with each of the characters. We can also look at what our life was like when that person was present to us. Is there something about that time that is similar to now? Is there something about that time that you miss? What might that tell you?

I have dreamt of people who have recently died. I ask, what do they want to say to me? What do I want to say to them? Sometimes that can be a precious visitation from someone we love.

If I don’t know the dream character, what part of who they seem to be, might be something I don’t want to see in myself? They can represent my shadow—the things I don’t want to acknowledge about myself. Or it might be my golden shadow, the good things about me to which I am blind.

When I have a dream of an unknown baby, I ask myself, where am I experiencing new life? Or where might I anticipate new life?

After exploring the characters, pick an object in the dream, one that seems to carry energy. Imagine yourself as that object. For instance, a key shows up. I imagine myself as a key. What do I like about being a key? What don’t I like about it? What do I fear most about being this object? What do I desire most about this object? Relate this to your current life. Do one or more of the statements sound like how you feel toward a situation in your waking life? What do you think you are trying to say to yourself?

Next, look at how you felt in the dream. Were you sad or mad or afraid or confident or joyful? Where in your waking life are you feeling that? Are you surprised to recognize those feelings? Is the dream trying to show you something you would rather not address?

Finally, is there a way that you can bring this dream into your life with a ritual or an object? Maybe you can draw a key or bring out a picture of the dream visitor or bless the people who came forward.

It can be helpful to share our dreams with another person – our spouse, a therapist, a good friend, a spiritual director. Often, others can  help us see something we might otherwise miss. They can say, if this were my dream, this is what I would ask or consider. Remember, only we can interpret our dream.

If you want to explore dreams further, Robert Hoss has a worksheet on his website dreamscience.org. There are several good books on the topic including Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill by Jeremy Taylor or Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A Johnson.

Dreams are gifts to us from the spirit world, a letter from our unconscious. Dare we open them? Dare we not? You might not want to miss the message.

Mary Lou Logsdon is a spiritual director in the Twin Cities. She is on the faculty of the Sacred Ground Spiritual Direction Formation program. She can be reached at logsdon.marylou@gmail.com. We may earn a commission via some of the links on this page – at no cost to you.

Last Updated on March 4, 2024