THE DYNAMICS OF DREAMING

Are You Brave Enough to Tackle Your Subconscious Mind?

Finding the courage to face yourself in a culture of distraction

In Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung expressed the heroism he perceived in people brave enough to take on the raw subconscious material revealed each night in their dreams.

“It takes a lot of courage to take the unconscious seriously and to tackle the problems it raises. Most people are too indolent to think deeply about even those moral aspects of their behavior of which they are conscious; they are certainly too lazy to consider how the unconscious affects them.”

Those words from Jung in 1964 are as true today as they were then. With all the advances brought on by the last half a century, I’m not sure if humanity has progressed psychospiritually as a race, or if we’ve only succeeded at creating more masterful distractions for ourselves.

Carl Jung was a psychoanalyst, but he also revolutionized the art of dream interpretation, which he greatly valued in his practice as a therapist. He wrote profusely about the nature of dreams and wove it into his teaching and training methods. What was it about dream analysis that intrigued Jung to the point of placing so much importance on it?

Jung realized that our psychic dreaming dramas contained far more relevance than the mere steam of psychological burn off from a day in the grind of life. He knew that the information presented in our nighttime dreams brought to light all the underlying dynamics and operations of the dreamers psyche that he/she was not conscious of.

Here, was the doorway through which the subconscious patterning of unconscious, often damaging or limiting behaviors could be found. In the dreaming mind, one could actually meet the drivers of their own tendencies towards procrastination, fear of failure, stunted communication, or troubled relationship dynamics.

Even more critically, perhaps, a person suffering from more specific neurosis or phobic disorders such as agoraphobia or claustrophobia might gain crucial insight into the sources, as well as potential solutions, of such debilitating conditions.

Dreams themselves, are living transformational devices. We can impregnate the mind with a directive to receive information that may both heal and guide us before we sleep. Given time, we can learn the very fascinating multi-dimensional language with which our dreams communicate to our waking minds.

Dream symbols carry multiple levels of meaning.

You can have a dozen analysts working to interpret a dream and end up with a dozen unique interpretations. What is critical to the translation of any dream is the direct, authentic input from the dreamer. Without participation from you, as the dreamer, nobody else is going to come up with an accurate “take” on what your subconscious is meaning to say.

There is nothing light-weight about your dreams. They contain everything within you that you need to face in order to become a more mature, wiser you. Jung wasn’t kidding when he said it takes “great courage to take the unconscious seriously.” What it also takes is willingness.

Some of the most influential leaders and teachers in the history of humanity demonstrated how important it is to brave up to the unconscious drivers of the subconscious mind.

Imagine a world with no Jesus or Buddha.

What if Jesus didn’t do the things he did, such as trekking into the desert for 40 days in order to face his inner-demons. He didn’t avoid the darkness that lay beneath. Instead, with absolute purpose and intent he went deep into the wilderness, and refused to leave it until the last temptation from the underlying fear-based drivers in his mind were called out. He left nothing hiding in the shadows of his subconscious mind.

I suspect that Buddha was up to the same thing when he sat his bum beneath the Bodhi Tree and refused to leave until he reached the state of enlightenment. When the demon Mara came to tempt him by sending his three daughters, and later an entire army, to conquer the consciousness of the Buddha, the Buddha did not move.

Mara was playing on the underlying drivers of fear and seduction, but the Buddha knew this. These were the moments he had been waiting for — the challenges to his inner-spiritual stamina.

When it comes to the psychospiritual maturation of each individual mind, there is no alternate road to self-knowledge — no road that does not include delving deep into the subconscious terrain of your own inner-world. Jesus and the Buddha knew that. They battled the darkness and left a breadcrumb trail for the rest of us to follow, if we’re brave enough to weather the storm.

What is amazing to me is the sheer thickness of our collective unconscious interpretations of life and ourselves. We’ve been shown the way by masters throughout the ages, yet still we do not seem to understand. One only needs to look around the world for an immediate inventory of our predicament. We are still at war — within ourselves and with each other.

As a species, we have not given enough importance to the demonstrations and wisdom of those who have understood peace. It’s as if we have not been able to hear them when they say that love and compassion are everything, that there is no higher service than caring for your fellow man (or woman).

Why does it seem so hard to embody? Why do we collectively make a living hell of a world that could so clearly be a living heaven if we so chose to set our sights on that goal?

Time, it would seem, in conjunction with the basic functionality of our brains, has played a trick on us.

Dr. Joe Dispenza, who’s expertise is the intersection of quantum physics, neuroscience and epigenics, describes 90% of what we do each day, as habitual. He describes the idea of “you” as a habitual construct — a redundant set of unconscious automatic thoughts, behaviors and emotions that are acquired through repetition (memory).

According to Dispenza, these memory circuits in the brain, when not acted upon can be rewired and can actually create new circuitry, which in turn produces an entirely new set of actions. A familiar past will create a predictable future. But when we cease to operate on the same old memories, the future becomes an open book of possibilities.

This is the science behind freeing the human mind — a potential road map for a way in which we can begin to change our individual and collective outcomes from war to peace.

But can we do it? Will enough of us get really interested in creating an entirely different tomorrow?

Although it would seem that time, in conjunction with the basic functionality of our brains, has played a trick on us, I’m willing to bargain its a trick we can overcome. To learn to overcome it, however, we’ll have to turn up the volume on our collective spiritual development. There’s no way around this. We have to grow up as a species. Our human collective is a conglomerate of individuals, so each of us has a responsibility to do our own consciousness homework.

I can’t learn to love and respect my foreign neighbors in other countries until I learn to love and respect my neighbors across the street. I can’t love and respect you until I can learn to love and respect myself. That means I have to find my way to forgiving every little twinge of imperfection about me and learn to fully accept myself as I am. When I can witness my own struggles with compassion and understanding then I can love the one struggling no matter what her journey looks like or who she is.

Growing up spiritually isn’t about being perfect — it’s about being authentic. Authenticity means that you do you the way that only you can. It means that you synchronize your mind with your heart and bring your heart to the world through the way that you communicate, live and breathe in this spiritually dry land. It means that ultimately you rewire your inner circuitry to operate this way.

When your heart and mind become synchronized something unexpected happens as a natural extension of this relationship. Finally working together, each harmonized with the other, absent of conflict and fear, these two essential consciousness organs bow down in service to the Soul. And it’s in service to the Soul that we finally find the meaning we’re looking for.

Consider for a moment that the Soul of you is not religion specific. It’s you specific. Alignment with your Soul is an alignment with the highest, clearest, most expansive faculty of your own intelligence. Your Soul is the rightful king or queen of the psychospiritual domain within you. Only your highest intelligence should be sitting on the throne of your mind. If it’s not, then you’re settling for less in every arena of your life.

From the alignment of mind + heart in service to the Soul, an entirely different presence begins to step forward in your life. One that does not hide or water itself down. One that gives voice to the core of existence living in you and in everyone else.

Your work, no matter what field you’re in, becomes an expression of unity and a natural tendency to care for others and the joint outcomes of your shared aspirations. You begin to respond to life more fully and more holistically because you can see all sides of a situation from a place of understanding.

You begin to experience life through a kind of holism that seeks to become more inclusive and less exclusive. Needless to say, this change makes for very creative problem solving.

In the absence of inner-conflict and narrow-mindedness, a much broader scope of vision gets activated and you find your thoughts and actions synchronizing with what’s in the highest good for everyone.

The word synchronization has never conjured so much meaning.

There is no war within yourself when all your parts are synchronized. And there is no war out there when individually synchronized humans begin to synchronize with each other.

When Jung pointed out the heroic acts of self-reflection necessary to truly dive in and play full out in this journey of self-actualization, he was indirectly slapping our impatient, hedonistic, self-centered egotism in the face.

In not so many words, Jung was defining greater humanity as spiritually irresponsible and adolescent — teenagers that don’t really want to grow up. I don’t know about you, but for me that slap stung a little.

My cheek is still ringing.

He realized that very few people would give their attention to the radical real work of self-actualization through dedicated practices such as dream-work, yoga or meditation. In my 30 years of studying and working with my dreams as psychospiritual maps of the deep unconscious, I can say that he wasn’t far off the mark.

Unless something happens to shake you up, trip you out, or drop you on your head, it’s not likely you’ll take an interest in diving below the surface of what’s comfortable. Don’t worry — I’m not singling you out. You’re in the same boat as everybody else.

Habits are hard to break.

That’s why shit happens. Something has to shake us loose from the trance induction of learned societal norms that we’ve been indoctrinated into.

For me, it was being lifted from my bed by an invisible force when I was 16. It scared the living shit out of me and made me see things differently. I couldn’t understand what had happened to me so it made me start searching for answers — for meanings to my existence that nobody else was going to give me.

I had extremely vivid dreams and began to dream the “big” dreams of life — dreams that change your entire outlook— dreams that teach you and guide you and show you yourself and life in such a way as to completely transform the context in which you live and the content with which you live from.

Dreams can do that when you give them their due attention.

You are not the you that you think you are. You are so much more… so much so, that it isn’t something that can even be spoken or accurately described.

The gateway of your dreams is a porthole into the unknown, yet unseen parts of you that must be met if you are to sync up — first within yourself, and then with other people. And as Jung said, it takes great courage to face what lies beneath your conscious awareness.

Shadows dwell there…but also great light.

Jung was right when he said that most of us have a hard time taking responsibility for our conscious behavior, let alone our unconscious patterns. So, how will we as a people, begin to take an earnest interest in what’s unconsciously running ourselves, each other, and the global community we’re living in?

The yogic saying, “The only way out is in,” speaks volumes here.

As a people, we’ve built a world of distractions that keeps us looking outward. Most people are engaged in a constant need for stimulation and entertainment, the way an addict seeks out cocaine or heroin. It’s hard to fathom the emotional global meltdown that would occur if all the cell networks simultaneously quit working.

We’re easily hooked in so many ways and yet none of it will make us happy. Our culture of hedonistic, short-sited stimulus is a temporary fix for a need to feel good, with our attention engaged and occupied in a constant scrolling of false self-images and advertising.

But our truest feel good place isn’t in the farce of impulsive clicking, shopping and social screen-sharing. Our truest feel good place is inside of us. All the outward searching is a distraction for facing who we really are, warts n’ all. It’s only when we slow down, breathe into our own seat of existence, and notice who’s here that we can finally get past the warts to what’s beautiful.

There is only beauty underneath your surface. And it has nothing to do with your life story, or who you know, or who you’ve been, or who you think you will become.

It has to do with who you are.

And that is the ineffable vastness of Self you discover through working consciously with your dreams.

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