I often have unpleasant dreams just before waking; and if I try to go back to sleep after one such, I simply return to the dream.
At one level, I take this to be telling me "You have had enough sleep: time to get-up!"
But if I set aside the specific content of the dreams, and instead consider what the dream makes me think-about and how it makes me feel; I can often recognize that the unpleasant qualities of a current dream derive from unhappy aspects of past times, decisions, situations, relationships, or the like.
The dreams are about "unfinished business" from my past.
The "rawness" of such dreams, their power to evoke sharply unpleasant feelings; is, in particular, a response to highlighting my own defects, weaknesses, errors, and sins relating to particular events or eras of earlier life.
Underneath these dreams is an insight that much of those problems I experienced from bad situations and events and people; was rooted-in - or at least made much worse - by problems in myself...
The unpleasant dream nearly-always draws my attention to negative aspects of myself - aspects that (it seems) need to be recognized and acknowledged...
My bad character traits and selfish, short-termist mistakes; that require to be registered as indeed... bad character traits and selfish, short-termist mistakes.
And I need also to note that these problems remain; as evidenced my my continued inability to come to terms with the situations and events...
It is this persistence of the problems - and the attempt to deny my own part in the matter - that gives bad memories their continued raw power to annoy and irritate!
Of course, this can be considered at the psychological level - with the "therapeutic" aim either of stopping the bad dreams, or else of stopping their power to annoy, irritate, induce misery etc.
But this is to miss the point; which is that these dreams are spiritual phenomena; if we are able to recognize the fact and to respond spiritually.
From a spiritual perspective; these dreams are doing an important job; and that job is open-ended - so we should neither expect nor want such dreams to stop!
(At least, not if we want to make spiritual progress throughout our mortal lives.)
The dreams need to continue because our defects of character, the errors and selfishness of our past sins, are not finite! There are more genuine and significant problems about us than could possibility be dealt-with. There is always "room for improvement".
The matter of acknowledgement and repenting is always good-for-us; but does not have any end-point - we are never finished with repenting so long as we are alive: there is always more such work to do.
However; I am not suggesting that this ought to be a full-time occupation or anything like it!
That would be a lop-sided, unbalanced, distorted life. And a life that seems extremely unlike that of Jesus Christ during his years of ministry - which was a life which had many aspects and facets; many positive, loving, and creative; as well as those that were negative, sorrowful, and reactive.
But I am suggesting instead that for some of the time, and some-times more urgently than others, and some-issues more urgently at some times (when some specific unrepented actions/ attitudes/ sins etc. are - here-and-now - e.g. blocking spiritual progress or causing us to advance in evil) - we ought to give attention to our unfinished business.
So there is a question of priority, or even necessity, about the particular issues that each of these dreams are raising for our attention and consideration.
After all; dreams (largely) come-from us; therefore usually have meaning-for us.
In sum - when we have such dreams - it is probably worth thinking about them in the spirit of learning from them... Rather than simply forgetting about them ASAP; or "curing" the bad memories with a strong cup of coffee!
2 comments:
For a time, a good few years after the death of my parents, I would have dreams in which I was with them. Inevitably some misunderstanding would arise in these dream-dealings, perhaps fairly trivial, though sometimes more important. In the dream itself - as I recall -and certainly on waking I would be desolated by the thought that *now I would never be able to get this sorted out*, because I knew that they were dead. I take it that this is the sort of thing that you're talking about. I wish someone had been able to ward me that this sort of thing might happen.
@Christopher - Yes, that is the sort of thing.
Although the meanings of my dreams of this kind, are buried in all sorts of complicated "settings"; travelling (especially) and preparations for travelling", living in seedy-big or claustrophobic shared accommodation, trying to do some job that I can't, or acting in a play I don't know - or such like. I can only discover what is important about such dreams by ignoring the setting, and focusing on my own responses and feelings in the dream.
"now I would never be able to get this sorted out" _ what I am suggesting here is that such dreams are a first and partial step in sorting-out such things - we can, at least, sort-out *our* side of the business.
I think that such dreams can be regarded as setting us one of the spiritual tasks of the "old age" phase of life; and we are therefore lucky (in the long term) to have them - so long as we make the best of them.
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