Dreams--Parables of the Night

Today’s episode is a replay of an episode first posted July 9, 2021. In those early days of the podcast, there were no accompanying transcripts. So here is your first chance to read the transcript of this episode.

This episode is about dreams. What are they and how can you go about keeping track of and interpreting your own dreams? I was first trained in dream interpretation back when I was working on my master’s degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and this was a gestalt type of dream interpretation, as popularized by Fritz Perls. Later on I spent a number of years teaching myself Jungian dream interpretation. Then when I was working on my master’s degree at Azusa Pacific University, which is a Christian university, I studied dream work through the lens of the Bible and also incorporated Jungian dream interpretation into that practice, and dream work became one of my major modalities when working with counseling clients. And then later on again, when I was working on my PhD, I studied the hermeneutics and rhetoric of dreams, because my PhD is in rhetoric, and hermeneutics is the flip side of the coin of rhetoric.

Rhetoric is the ability to persuade others of your point of view, and hermeneutics is the ability to decipher points of view. So, I’ve written a number of articles over the years about dream interpretation. If any of you would like dreams to be interpreted, you may go to my GnosticInsights.com website and send me a message using the comment form, and we can talk it over.

So by now, having listened to episodes of Gnostic Insights, you understand what a meme is in the sense that we use it here on Gnostic Insights. A meme is a basic unit of information. It’s not just the cute posters that people make on the internet. And I suggest that our personalities are largely defined by the memes that we hold on to, and it’s these memes and our reactions to them that contribute to our behaviors and to our karma. These memes constitute what could be called vibratory patterns that are held in the transpersonal field, or sometimes known as the Akashic Record or the quantum vacuum. This is a shared memory field accessed by all of us here on Earth. These memes aren’t personal within our brains, but they live in this shared transpersonal space.

So, apparently, personal memes are actually harmonics of the collective memes that we all share in common with everyone who actually holds on to that meme. The particular shadings of your memes differ slightly from the next person’s as to be expected among fractal replications of a single phenomenon, but all who hold the same meme recognize its pattern and are affected by it. So, for example, the meme of cup. If I say cup, you have a vision of a cup that immediately comes into your mind, and I have a vision of a cup that immediately comes into my mind. Mine might be a large coffee mug with pictures of kitty cats on it. Yours might be a dainty little cup made of porcelain with beautiful flowers or any other sort of cup. But it’s the idea of cupness. The cup is what holds the liquid, and it has a handle. That’s what a cup is.

So it’s the same cup meme. Plato called these the forms. It’s the same meme, but we each have a slightly different shading on our cup meme, and that holds true for all of the memes we share in common in the transpersonal field. These meme patterns are stimulated by the thoughts, encounters, and emotional reactions we experience during the day. And at night, these come down to our dreams.

Dreams are basically nothing but the nighttime resonances of the memetic patterns that we encounter during the day. They are then transformed into symbolic imagery and enacted while you sleep at night on the stage of your mind. Meme bundles stirred up by the day may be dealt with again and again until the emotional reactions associated with them are resolved. If not resolved, then these memes will continue to appear in dream after dream, disguised in one form after another. And, of course, they will come out during the day as triggers.

While we are sleeping, we are open to the leading of the Father and the Fullness of God, because our egos are asleep, and so we can align with our true Self and with the Father more easily. Our ego in sleep relinquishes the control it exerts over our waking lives, and when our hearts are quieted in the hush of sleep, our governing unit of consciousness, our Self, is better able to commune with the Father and the Pleroma.

I’m going to share with you now an article I wrote on the Simple Explanation blog on December 25th of 2014, called Dreams, Parables of the Night, and if you would like to reread this section, you can go to asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com and read it. In that blog post, I quote from an article that I wrote in 1990 that was published in a couple of Catholic magazines, and so this one is couched in the religious terminology of Christianity and Catholicism. It begins by quoting from Genesis 40:6-8.

When Joseph came to them the next morning, he noticed that they looked disturbed, so he asked Pharaoh’s courtiers, why do you look so sad today? They answered him, we have had dreams, but there is no one to interpret them for us. Joseph said to them, surely interpretations come from God. Please tell your dreams to me.

The Bible uses many examples of dreams and their interpretations. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to take another walk down this forgotten avenue of discerning God’s will.

In the book of Genesis, God’s will was often revealed through dreams and visions. It was through Jacob’s dream of the ladder at Bethel that God revealed himself to his chosen people and established his lasting covenant. A few chapters later, Jacob’s son Joseph was released from prison and raised to a position of authority in the government of Egypt by his inspirational ability to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.

In fact, from the patriarch Abraham through the prophet Daniel, dreams and visions were used by God to lead and direct his people. Early church fathers also taught that dreams conveyed spiritual messages. Saint Clement wrote that in sleep the soul, freed from sense impressions, can reflect truly on its relationship with God. Emperor Constantine credited his spiritual conversion to a dream. Saint John Chrysostom taught that God reveals himself to his people through dreams. And Saint Augustine, whose own conversion was foretold in his mother’s dreams, believed that dreams revealed both the inner workings of the believer’s mind and his or her relationship with God.

Now, by the way, having made the conversion to Gnostic Christianity, these church fathers are more suspect to me than they were when I wrote this article in 1990. At least it’s good to see that the church fathers had a streak of mysticism in them and recognized the importance of dreams. Back to the article.

Dreams, more than any other thing, entice us toward hope, wrote Bishop Synesius of Cyrene in the 5th century. And when our heart spontaneously presents hope to us, as happens in our sleeping state, then we have in the promise of our dreams a pledge from divinity.

Despite such divine authority, dream work became reclassified almost exclusively with witchcraft between the 4th and 5th centuries, which are pretty much the centuries that cut Gnosticism completely out of Orthodox Christianity.

At that time, Saint Jerome mistranslated the passage, “You shall not practice augury nor observe dreams,” in the Latin Vulgate. Modern translations have corrected this error, leaving us free to examine our dreams in good conscience for their revelation of God’s purpose in our lives.

The New Testament records that Jesus spoke only in parables to all but his closest disciples.

In the Gospels, Jesus explains that he speaks in parables so that only those whose hearts are open may understand his message and be healed.

He said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible. Nothing is secret except to come to light. Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear. And that’s from Mark 4, 21-23.

Dreams too are clothed in the familiar language of parables. Parables and dreams both offer profoundly important insights in the form of simple stories. By learning to regard our dreams as our own personal parables, we may learn from them lessons vital to our education and growth.

A dream needn’t have a particularly religious theme in order to be spiritual. Any experience that helps us grow toward personal maturity and wisdom is a step toward wholeness and holiness. While many dreams do reflect specifically on our relationship with God, most dramatize our relationships with family and friends and the important issues we struggle with daily.

Research proves that we dream for about two hours every night. The first dream occurs about 90 minutes after retiring and lasts only 5 to 10 minutes. As the night deepens, our dreams become longer and more detailed, with the final dream of early morning lasting about 40 minutes. This is the final dream that we remember upon awakening.

Many people mistakenly believe that they do not dream because they don’t remember their dreams. This misconception often stems from their fear of frightening dreams. Learning to understand and come to terms with dreams rather than ignoring them is a far better way of mastering our fears. If we begin our dream work with God’s help, we will no longer feel powerless before them.

Another common reason for not remembering dreams is our unwillingness to listen to the message. Dreams can be painful but truthful vehicles of correction. Situations or personal qualities we prefer to overlook in the daylight are often exposed in our dreams. Like parables, dreams present truths whose enigmatic lessons can only be discovered by those with an ear to hear. Untangling the messages of these parables of the night involves learning the symbolic language of dreams and recognizing the parallels between your dreams and your waking life.

The first step in remembering your dreams is deciding that you want to remember them. Setting out a notebook and pen by your bed is a good idea for two reasons. First, the notebook is a physical reminder and commitment that you intend to remember your dreams. Second, dreams must be recalled and recorded immediately upon awakening or they will be forgotten.

In addition to the images of the dream, it is a good idea to record the feelings and emotions you experienced in the dream and felt upon awakening.

The next challenge is to translate the language of the parable into a message you can understand. This is accomplished by looking at each element of the dream—people, places, objects, actions, emotions—and meditating upon what each suggests to you. Write these associations down no matter how trivial or unrelated they may seem. Once this is done, you can step back from the dream and see what message emerges.

So here’s a case study from one of my clients that illustrates the process of dream interpretation and its importance. Megan wrote,

I dreamed I was standing at the kitchen counter making breakfast for my family. I was making berry, a drink in the blender, adding more and more ingredients until the contents of the blender erupted like a volcano and spewed out a horrible green mess all over the kitchen. There was a policeman standing in the kitchen with his arms folded, judging me. I felt very guilty about the mess and didn’t know how I could ever clean it up.

Megan, a full-time homemaker, had been married to Charles for two and a half years at the time of this dream. Charles’s 15-year-old son, Barry, lives with them. Charles, an accountant, is a good provider, but quiet and undemonstrative. He expects Megan to provide a stable home and disapproves of displays of emotion. Megan’s first step in understanding her dream was to record the dream as soon as she awakened. She also recorded the emotions that the dream stirred up in her: helplessness, embarrassment, and guilt.

Next, Megan drew a line down the middle of a page. On the left side of the page, she listed each element of the dream. Across from each element, she wrote down whatever association the element brought to mind.

So, on the left side, it says dream image, and the right side says reminds me of. And here’s what she wrote.

Dream image, the kitchen counter reminds me of my workplace.

Making breakfast reminds me of providing nourishment.

My family reminds me of means everything to me.

Barry’s blender drink, blended family mixed up.

Too many ingredients reminds me couldn’t stop in time.

Erupting volcano reminds me powerful, out of control, Barry.

Horrible green mess reminds me of sickly.

Policeman reminds me of enforcing order, Charles.

Arms folded, reminds me of unfriendly, distant.

My own guilt reminds me of it’s all my fault.

Reading her dream now from the right side of the column, Megan saw the family member roles clearly illustrated for the first time. She saw herself as trying to be a nurturing mother to her new blended family. Barry as a pent-up potentially disruptive force, and Charles as an unsympathetic lawmaker. She also recognized that there was some kind of sickness present, threatening to overwhelm their home.

Megan’s dream presents the family dynamics in the form of a visual parable. She and Barry maintain an uneasy truce whenever Charles is home, but she fears the lid will soon come off. Like throwing too many ingredients into a blender, Megan fears that saying one word too many will cause a catastrophic emotional eruption. She says,

The more I thought about this dream, the more I realized why I feel so uncomfortable around Barry. He’s been so sullen and moody lately that the least little thing might set him off, and I’m really afraid of that happening. I’d like to be able to talk with Charles about this, but he doesn’t approve of such petty talk.

While Megan and Charles both desperately strive to maintain a peaceful home life, the peace lies only on the surface and does not penetrate into their hearts. Lack of acknowledgment of unpleasant emotions cannot bring about true solutions. It can only contribute to an unstable buildup of tension.

Of course, not all dreams present such clear-cut messages as Megan’s dream. Some housekeeping dreams merely deal with the leftover activities and emotions of the day without carrying particularly important lessons. The dreamer can usually feel the difference between dream parables and housekeeping dreams by the sense of urgency and importance a dream parable conveys.

Even embarrassing or shameful dreams are fit subjects for recollection and prayer. The danger in these dreams comes not through remembrance of the dream itself, but by ignoring the dream and denying acknowledgement of our true human condition.

When King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed the frightening dream of the tree that foretold his insanity and the loss of his kingdom, Daniel understood that God was issuing a warning to the king. The dream’s message indicated that the king needed to acknowledge God and not himself as the supreme ruler of his kingdom. Daniel encouraged the king to heed the message of the dream in order to avert the impending tragedy.

Therefore, O king, take my advice. Atone for your sins by good deeds and for your misdeeds by kindness to the poor. Then your prosperity will be long. (Daniel 4:24).

Nebuchadnezzar chose instead to ignore God’s warning and so continued on the path leading to his illness.

Matthew recorded a dream in the very first chapter of his gospel. It seems there was a man betrothed to a young virgin who learned the disturbing news that his beloved was with child. Not wanting to shame her publicly, he considered sending her secretly away. An angel appeared to him in a dream and told him not to fear marrying her.

For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:20).

Joseph heeded the message of his dream and took Mary to be his wife. What lessons might God be holding for all of us in our dreams? We will never know unless we listen.

If you are interested in having me interpret any dreams for you, please contact me through the comments form and we can discuss the matter. You find the comments, once again, at Gnostic Insights dot com. And if you’re finding these episodes of Gnostic Insights to be helpful in your spiritual growth, I ask you to please send a donation and it will help me to keep this Gnostic Insights program on the air.

Thank you very much for spending this time. I hope it has been useful to you. Onward and upward, and God bless.