What do the studies of Freud, Jung and the dalai lama have in common?
Their studies found the importance of dreams in understanding human behavior.
Dream theories are abundant, each trying to explain the mysterious and often surreal nature of our nighttime experiences. Perhaps you’re working out emotional dilemmas by acting out different realities in your dreams. Maybe your brain is simply sifting through the huge amounts of sensory stimuli you accumulate each day to keep the important stuff and discard the unimportant stuff like a type of mental housecleaning. Or maybe all that neuron firing is totally random.
Sigmund Freud saw dreams as “guardians of sleep,” keeping internal conflicts at bay. He saw dreams as an important part of letting us rest and get some well-needed sleep before reality would set in again in the morning.
Carl Jung saw dreams as a journey of growth and understanding, not only for oneself but also the collective unconsciousness. Words such as “introverts and extroverts” stemmed out of his studies. Dreams were studied as ways of working through roadblocks toward different levels of consciousness.
In the dalai lama’s Tibetan philosophy, sleep is like a mini-death. It’s when the soul is in transition. Although many philosophies see sleep as an unconscious time, Tibetan Buddhism sees sleep as a super-conscious, super-aware time. A time that can significantly affect and even guide us into the next life.
Whatever your thoughts or beliefs are about dreams, there’s one thing we all have in common – we do indeed dream whether we remember them upon awaking. Our dreams quietly roll out their little red carpets to a world seemingly out of grasp yet also within reach. Dreams have the potential of offering a fascinating roadmap to deeper explorations into who we really are and where in the whole wide world and beyond we are going.
So here’s a meditative exploration to consider for this week:
Write down a recent dream. Ask a friend to do the same. Then have a cozy cup of coffee together and discuss them. Consider your dreams from a Freudian perspective, a Jungian perspective, a Tibetan Buddhist view, or simply from your very own unique outlook. That dream may hold the answer to a serious question or concern you are having right now. It might even open a new door in your thinking. A door to a world you now only dream of.
Wishing you better than sweet dreams. Wishing you an inner world of ever increasing awareness.
• Joan Budilovsky can be reached at editorial@kcchronicle.com or through her website at Yoyoga.com. She will be teaching with LaMarr Magnus a four-week course, “Adventures in Meditation,” ( EPSY494) through the Department of Education from May 19 to June 13 at the University of Illinois at Chicago .