Awakening Through Dreams

The Journey Through the Inner Landscape

Nigel Hamilton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781782200505
• eBook ISBN: 9780429911170
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Most Western approaches to dreams are limited to a psychological paradigm. Building on Jung's work, which was heavily influenced by the transformative model of alchemy, a new multidimensional approach to the process of human transformation through dreams has been developed which recognises the interrelationship of the psychological and the spiritual, and works with the mirroring body in service of both. In the approach presented here, dreams are seen as a mixture of worldly impressions and expressions of our individual spirit, which is trying to speak to us through the metaphors and narrative of our dreams. In this way, the spiritual comes through the psychological dimension. Though it may seem to be a contradiction, our dreams hold the key to our 'awakening' and, by actively engaging with them we can unlock their potential for initiating and facilitating our own unfoldment. This book is about recognising this process when it occurs in dreams, and how to work with them in the service of our growth and self-realisation.

CHAPTER ONE

The landscape of transformation

The external life is but a shadow of the inner reality.

—Hazrat Inayat Khan, 2010

The purpose and power of dreams

What are dreams? Dreams can be bewilderingly obscure and transparently clear; they can linger to haunt us and slip from our grasp. They can be a source of creativity, inspiration, guidance, and puzzlement. Dreams have the power to disgust, shock, terrify, and warn us, but they can, too, enlighten us and lead us to the wisdom that is waiting to be discovered within.

There are many kinds of dreams. There are the mundane, everyday dreams which simply reflect the day’s events. There are the symbolic dreams which mirror the inner state of our psyche,¹ including “shadow” dreams, nightmares, and recurring dreams. There are psychic dreams which predict the future, or tell us something about someone else or somewhere else, and dreams about the body which bear warnings relating to our physical health. Then there are the dreams which come from the spiritual realms—dream experiences of light, higher consciousness, sacredness—that which is beyond the personal.

We know that dreams can be a mirror of our worldly impressions and our state of mind and inner psyche. In this way, we make our dreams. But, sometimes, dreams are so potent that they make us. Remarkable dreams show us the power and potential of dreams. The nineteenth century German chemist, Kekulé had a dream whilst researching the molecular structure of the chemical benzene:

I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again, the atoms were gambolling before my eyes … My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation: long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. (Roberts, 1989, p. 75)

The archetypal symbol of a snake with its tail in its mouth is the Uroborus (Figure 1). On waking, he realised that the dream image was showing him that benzene’s structure was a closed carbon ring. This breakthrough changed the world of organic chemistry, giving us an understanding of how organic carbon chains are formed.

Figure 1. Uroborus.

J. B. Priestley’s whole life perspective was transformed by the following dream:

I dreamt that I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever.

I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again, and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. (Edinger, 1991, p. 129)

Following this sublimatio dream experience (sublimatio is an alchemical operation which we will encounter in Chapter Four), Priestly abandoned his agnostic position and was convinced, instead, of the presence of a divine consciousness behind all nature. The dream was a life-changing, transformative experience, so powerful was its effect on him.

In these cases of remarkable dreams, we can see quite clearly how important and life changing they can be. But what of more “ordinary” dreams, or dreams that we dismiss as making no sense or being of no relevance? How are we to best understand and make use of our dreams?

A multidimensional approach to dreams

Most Western approaches to dreams are constrained within a psychological paradigm—they are viewed as psychological responses, the processing of the mind. Dreams, in themselves, are seen as “unreal”—a subjectively distorted version of “reality”. Jung’s invaluable contribution to our understanding of dreams and the transpersonal field was his recognition of the presence of an inner archetypal realm in dreams, beyond the personal and emanating from a universal consciousness. We owe a great debt to Jung in widening the horizon of our dream world.

Everything we imagine or create already has an existence as an archetype² or a mental template waiting to be discovered. Seen in this wider sense, dreams are real. Dreams are rich with symbols and signs, which are unique to us and also universal in their archetypal nature. Using a framework of symbols that we can recognise, they speak of, and take place within, another reality—the subtle (non-physical) realm—but their intensity can be as affecting as any experience in the physical world. What happens in our dreams has a reality beyond the mind. Something does die in our dream death; our dream tears do heal us; our dream spiritual experience actually connects us with an infinitely greater reality than the material and transforms us.

In the psychospiritual approach presented here, dreams are understood in all their dimensions—psychological, spiritual, and physical. The transpersonal perspective, which recognises the whole person—body, mind, heart, and spirit—and is, by its nature, holistic or multidimensional, allows us to do this. It sees the world and the people in it, not just as they appear, but looks into and beyond what is on the surface, beyond what is apparent. Recognising that things are not fixed and limited to their material form, the transpersonal allows for an openness to the possibility of change and transformation. It is essentially hopeful.

From a transpersonal perspective, our consciousness can be understood as having reality at different levels or in different realms. There is the level of our cognitive reality which relates to the physical world and is a reflection of our conscious ego. These are the thoughts we think, the opinions we hold and the personal constructs we have formed during our lifetime. Then there is our personal unconscious, containing the impressions made by our personal past, which makes itself known through many of our dreams. This is what Jung called the little self (Jung, 1991).

Then there is the more subtle mind level where we are connected through our imagination with the totality and a wider human consciousness beyond our own personal limits—the realm of the collective unconscious (Jung, 1970). Between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious lies an interval, which we cross between waking and sleeping. When we dream, the little self is subsumed by the collective unconscious and a “subtle self” that is more fundamental to us than our identity or persona. In spiritual terms, this subtle self might be referred to as the soul. (In this book, the use of the term “soul” denotes this level of self.)

Beyond this, and at the same time, infusing all levels of consciousness, is the transcendental realm of spirit—an essence which permeates and animates everything else. Jung called this the Self. As our consciousness expands from the cognitive into the collective unconscious, the sense of self “thins out”. It becomes more subtle and we experience our soul. This expanding and subtlising continues until we become aware only of pure spirit, free from any personal or little self. At this point, we are realising something of the greater Self.

In looking at dreams, we can find the spiritual in the psychological and vice versa (and access both dimensions through the body) when we realise that our imagination, of which our dreams are an expression, is a bridge between matter and spirit. What we call dreams are really a mixture of our worldly impressions and our individual spirit which is trying to speak to us through the metaphors and narrative of our dreams. In this way, the spiritual comes through the psychological dimension.

Dreams can show us something of who we are in more than one sense. We can see our character in dreams—that which has formed as a result of our experiences and life context—with its strengths and weaknesses. Dreams can also show us who we are in our essential selves—that which has always been in us and is uniquely ours. Dreams are a window into our inner life and, ultimately, our soul or essence. In this way, dreams are an expression of body, mind, feelings, and essence. Furthermore, dreams can take us beyond even this—to spirit itself, which is impersonal.

On the one hand, there is the undeniable truth of dreams in that the dream images and narratives depict the ways in which we limit ourselves psychologically. The psychological approach to dreams can show us how the mind has been caught up in our own mental illusions—worldly constructs resulting from painful life experiences and the need to survive. This helps us to understand our personal, inner, world better. When we look through the psychological “lens” at our dreams, most of them seem to reflect our inner world symbolically and, as such, they require “decoding” in order to understand what the metaphor of the dream means and how it applies to our life.

However, dreams are only relatively true when seen from this perspective only, because these images and stories cover up, or hide, our sublime, unlimited potential. A transpersonal perspective enables us to become conscious of the guiding spirit—a more profound, intuitive wisdom—hidden within the code of the dream, to awaken beyond our existential state and open up to our spiritual potential. In this way, the dream is seen as holding within it, not only the psychological aspects of a person but also a hidden, yet accessible, spiritual potential and wisdom. Even dreams that seem dark and troubling can be seen in a different light when viewed from this more inclusive perspective.

Our spiritual potential begins to be revealed when the key dream images are explored more deeply. In doing so, we go beyond the symbolic consciousness of the dreaming mind and our dreams become more transparent—“truer”, in that they reveal more and more clearly what lies behind the dream and who we really are. Eventually, our dreams become visions of our deeper, inner self—our “soul nature”. Much of our suffering comes from our inability to access and express this deeper nature. We live our personal lives on the surface, to fit in with the world around us, creating a false self. Our dreams point this out to us.

Dreams can act as a guide to show us the ways in which we can express our soul nature as well as the ways in which we deny it. In our dreams, our spirit activates our imagination and guides us as to where to go (in the dream), who to meet, what to encounter, how to find the resources we lack and nourish our hidden potential. In our dreams, we can discover the gifts and qualities in ourselves that will enable us to flourish. This is our hidden treasure and it is the purpose of dreamwork to lift the veils that cover it so that we can discover and manifest it. In life, we may be thwarted but, in dreams, particularly in working with a dream in the waking state, there is a way, and that way is in us.

By taking a fundamentally transpersonal view ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• List of Tables and Figures
• List of Dreams
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Ukcp Series Preface
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One The landscape of transformation
• Chapter Two The journey of transformation
• Chapter Three Beginning
• Chapter Four Unfolding
• Chapter Five Awakening
• Chapter Six Special features of the landscape of awakening
• Chapter Seven Working with dreams
• Appendix Symbols of transformation
• Notes
• References
• Index