WHY DREAMS MATTER?

We are already drowning in information. Why do the seemingly random images of dreams matter and what can they do for us? 

In this overwhelming cacophony of information we are exposed to every day, wouldn’t it be amazing if you had a personal guide, a master storyteller who could reach into the vast stores of information and choose something specifically just for you based on what you need to know right now? In your dream life, you already have a guide and all you need to do is find out how to listen. 

Dreams are more salient than most of the information we encounter everyday in the Information Age. As miraculous as the technologies of our times might seem, we already have within us a vast intelligence that is more intimate and ancient than an AI algorithm.  The dreaming mind is not a new technology. It is older than the oldest civilization. And yet, we are still discovering its capacities.

Like AI, dreams are curating information and generating content, and shifting our perceptions as we participate. But unlike most of our modern information streams, the dreaming mind has no hidden agenda other than restoring sanity. It is not secretly selling something or adding extra hype, or changing the quality of our attention. Much of the information that dreams offer is in our scope of control, it is for our wellbeing and it may be entirely life changing. 

Even though dream material can seem nonsensical at first glance, dreams offer creative synthesis on a level beyond what we are capable of in waking awareness. Of all the information we encounter through the day, dreams may be one of the most practical, immediate and salient information streams available because dreams redirect attention towards the wider and wilder truths that we are generally missing. Unlike AI, Dreams respond to prompts we don’t know that we should be asking. 

WHAT IS THE PRACTICAL VALUE AND RELEVANCE OF DREAMS? 

 I see the miracle of dreams almost everyday. As a psychotherapist and dream consultant, I have the incredible opportunity to tend dreams with people around the world. I have seen dreams change peoples lives fundamentally. Dreams can help people to: 

1) Resolve recent and childhood trauma
2) Grieve death and loss
3) Heal psychological splits
4) Release excessive guilt 
5) Discover hidden allies or adversaries
6) Shift career paths 
7)  Integrate hidden emotions
9) Address conflicts and communication challenges
10) Complete practical decisions
11) Discover creative inspiration
12) Design a new life path
13) Support the growth and development of products, projects, companies, families and communities
14) Discover spiritual and existential meaning 
15) Explore the deep field of reality
16) Heal intergenerational family trauma  and connect with future possibilities

There is real work in dream tending, its not a magic trick. But when it is done effectively, there are often exclamations, tears, big visible shifts in mind and body. It is a privilege to witness the dawning awareness of something stirring in the depths of the psyche, something that seeks integration and acknowledgment. One client breathed out a long exclamation: “daaaaaaaang!” just after hearing his dream spoken back to him with added emphasis. Others laugh or cry or suddenly shift their whole orientation to challenging situations. It is a privilege to help dreams awaken. Even when they seem nonsensical at first, dreams usually bring an illustrated teaching which is specific to each persons situation, and it reveals truths which we would never otherwise see. 

AWAKENING MYTHIC CONSCIOUSNESS 

Much of what we think of as real, isn’t. What we perceive in the waking consciousness is a tiny fraction of reality, already subject to our biases and unconscious filtering, it is shaped by our expectations and beliefs, and it is affected by the quality of our attention. It is highly influenced by the social effect of the people around us, it is altered by the unconscious defences. And all of this happens without our awareness and even before human attention is further altered by algorithms. In this sense, the waking mind is just as much of a mirage as a dream because it is only presenting a small and distorted version of reality as if it is a whole truth. 

Dreams present a more multidimensional perspective than the limited information that we usually treat as facts. Dreams add layers of emotional experience, subtle situational awareness, and living symbolism. Dreams can show us the same situations that we are already facing, now overlayed with emotions and unconscious experiences, poetic imagery and other aspects of the deep field of reality that is otherwise unacknowledged. In integrating all of this together with waking life perception, we can see a more complete picture of what is happening in and around us. 

In the unconscious world of dreams, we can think in bigger proportions, we can learn and synthesize the content of waking life. Research has shown that nighttime dreams help with memory consolidation, thought integration, emotional processing, facing difficult experiences, problem solving and preparation for future challenges. Dreams provide a unique environment where we can explore our experience without the constraints of limiting beliefs. This allows our minds to make connections and associations that are virtually impossible in ordinary, waking consciousness. 

Much of our lives, we spend unaware of the mythic story that we are living. Birth, death and the journey in between is a grander narrative than we recognize most of the time that we are in it. Often, we miss the shadow dance that is happening under the surface of the conversation. And we are mostly oblivious of our own deeper motivations. Dreams can help to point us back towards the spiritual or existential meaning of the lives we are already living. Dreams can help us to see things in true proportion and they train us to track multiple levels of reality simultaneously. Usually when we integrate whatever we are unaware of, we help restore wellbeing. 

Dreamwork is an ancestral technology. All traditional cultures work with dreams because it is a part of the basic human operating system.  Like poetry and ritual and storytelling, the dreaming mind is supersaturated with meaning, it can express many things simultaneously. A deeper, more nuanced perspective is catalyzed through the natural intelligence of dreaming. 

Research is showing that all mind states require altered realities. This is not just occurring in nighttime dreams or psychedelic experiences. What we think of as ordinary waking thought is a kind of dreaming. Most thought requires us to imagine what we cannot see, to fill in the blanks and think beyond the limitations of what we know already Without the imaginal dreaming mind, without the ability to construct virtual worlds and to perceive beyond concrete thought, there is no art, there is no science, there is no true human consciousness. 

In the Information Age, it is becoming more difficult to tell what is a real need or a real identity or what is actually important or what is happening in our own body, precisely because we are increasingly disconnected from what has salience. Dreams matter because dreams can help bring us back to what matters, actually. 

It takes attention to tend and befriend our dreams, to metabolize them fully, to know them intimately. It takes time and humility to find what is hidden in the content of the dream, but it’s worth it because, unlike most of the information we come across each day, dreams can give us something more than they take away. As we engage the dreaming mind in both nighttime dreams and daytime imaginings, new possibilities are awakening, problem solving is happening. And there are prescriptions for practical actions that we engage in our daily life. 

There is a reason why dreams are a part of the fundamental operating system of human beings. We need to engage in wider awareness practices like dream tending to help us think more coherently. Every night, we are in the presence of a master storyteller who can reach into the vast stores of mythic consciousness and bring forth a living wisdom that is created just for us. And all we need to do is learn how to listen.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah Haggerty