Where do dreams come from?
Who are some of the most unusual recurrent figures in your dreams? Share in a comment below.
“In each of us is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.”
(CG Jung)
Conscious and unconscious
Jung revolutionised the interpretation of dreams (and psychology at the time) by creating an entire psychology of the unconscious. To him, consciousness was merely our ordinary awareness, ruled by the ego, our sense of self or I.
However, he believed that there is also a hidden part of consciousness, called the unconscious. This is where everything that's hidden, repressed, forgotten, or simply unknown lies. It can feel dark and scary but that's merely because it's unknown, outside the light of our awareness.
The unconscious is much bigger than consciousness. In fact, the whole idea of individuation is to work on making the unconscious conscious: slowly integrating what we hide or don't know about ourselves into an ever-expanding idea of who we are.
Dreamlife is your hidden life
Because consciousness is so limited, in our day-to-day life we process only a fraction of what's going on outside and within us. This is heavily influenced on our level of self-awareness, our capacity to be present, our abilities (like chronic conditions or neurodiversity), and the trauma we carry.
So much of our experience is actually lived unconsciously even when we're awake. If you've done therapy, dreamwork, or meditation, you've probably noticed how these practices increase your awareness.
And dreams are so important because they reveal to us the other side of consciousness. They're like a snapshot of our inner life, as it is, and not how we rationalise or intellectualise it to be. Dreams never lie.
The dream creator: the Self
Now, this is slightly more complicated: but if the ego is the seat of consciousness, then the Self is the seat of our whole personality, including both consciousness and the unconscious.
The Self, in Jungian terms, is both the center and the totality. It's the ideal. It's not something we can ever embody fully, because it's an archetype, so not quite human; but our journey is to slowly release ego control and contact this divine, deeper centre within us all–and to let it guide us towards who we're meant to be.
Dreams are the primary messages of the Self for us.
That's why learning to work with dreams is so important: the Self contacts us every night through dreams, letting us know what the inner situation is. Where in our outer life we often adapt to what others need from us or we behave out of childhood conditioning, the Self reminds us of who we are, what we need, and where we need to be going. You can think of it as the wise, inner figure within you, who can see way ahead and way back in life, and whose role is to nudge you towards your purpose.
And the more you engage with it, the more it will engage with you. So when you keep that dream journal, you're actually keeping an open communication with the Self, letting it know that you're listening.