A popular technique for reducing anxiety is trying to get better at noticing your own emotions and assessing your own behaviors by “watching your mind.” There are various spiritual teachers who offer practices for this, and it’s a common strategy for CBT- or mindfulness-focused therapies. I’ve gotten a lot of benefit from strengthening my “observer mind” over the last many years. However, I have to say, that our waking mind — as skilled as it may become at “observing” — is still limited.
Tracking our dreams enables us to observe how we think, act, behave, believe, and feel in situations that we have a lot less control over, and in which there is much more surprise. Because our dreams are so realistic and because we are so convinced what is happening is actual, we often react or behave like “ourselves” in dreams even when the dream events are bizarre or the people are unfamiliar. We may find ourselves quite often in situations we wouldn’t find ourselves in waking life, but still reacting the way we might in more mundane situations.
When we start considering that dreaming may be an innate way of communicating with our subconscious for greater self-awareness or understanding, then we can go as far as supposing that dream characters may, in fact, be trying to show us something about ourselves by behaving as strangely as they do sometimes.
Working with our dreams (aka dreamwork) allows us to be the observer of ourselves in both a much more distanced and yet a much more intimate way than we might be able to simply from reflecting about our day-to-day activities and interactions, much of which are habitual, even if we think they aren’t.
The distance comes as a direct result of the dream “not making sense.” It takes some effort to understand and process the strange, out-of-order events that took place in last night’s dream. The intimacy comes when we realize our dreams somehow “know” our pain, and as a result, also know how to present us with just the right images and encounters so that we may know it, consciously, too.
One way dreams do this is by confronting us with desires we may feel some shame around in waking life; for instance, in dreams where the former smoker may suddenly find himself smoking a cigarette, or when the devoted husband might find himself making love to an exotic dream woman, not his wife.
However, dreams commonly present us with somewhat more ordinary scenarios that activate us, too. For instance, maybe you are someone who avoids crowded spaces, and a dream drops you in Disney World. Or you are someone who typically steers clear of confrontations, and the dream gives you a nosy neighbor who won’t stop knocking on your door at 3am. Our dreams know that we are not “past” the thing we thought we worked through long ago. Our dreams know we have some open wounds we consciously believe are good and closed.
In dreams, characters may not let you off the hook so easily. They may amp up behavior they know will likely cause a reaction in you. I would go as far as saying they want you to know how and who you are, even if you are trying desperately to hide it from yourself and others.
In fact, some of us so badly want to hide who we are to ourselves and others, we attempt to tightly control our lives; perhaps so much, we are hardly ever in a situation in which we might be triggered, overstimulated, caught off guard, challenged, etc. Dreams don’t let you get away with that.
Without surprise encounters with people and the world around us, we are less likely to know how we feel, let alone feel deeply. At some point, your observer mind may reach a threshold for observing. The next step, I’d say, is to start observing — and better yet, working — with your dreams.
One of the main reasons people choose not to remember their dreams or take them seriously is because they’re confusing. The flow of time doesn’t match up to their waking life experience or understanding. People shapeshift. They can’t make sense of their dreams and so they don’t bother remembering them.
This, in itself, is a clue to how this type of person possibly engages with life. Unable to make sense of an experience, the person might choose to forget, belittle, rationalize, or laugh it away, just as they do their dream.
A lot of people come to dreamwork because of the strangeness or mystery of dreams. You can tell a lot about this type of person, too. They may seek to understand why something is happening in their dream world, or to find an explanation for it. They want someone else to tell them what’s going on, how it’s possible, or make the dream experience fit in with their established belief systems or knowledge.
You can tell a lot about this type of person, too, by the way they engage with their dreams. In waking life, this person might be very heady; curious, yes, but not necessarily in an embodied way. Or, they may want confirmation that they are different or special.
Neither of the above is wrong, by the way. I’m trying to illustrate that dreams activate us; often moreso than waking life interactions do. And we can observe our own reactivity to dreams and dreaming as a method for increased self-awareness, and if desired, course correction.
When we record our dreams — which often take place from a first-person point of view — we can later contemplate them while awake. Studies have shown that different areas of the brain are active while in our dream states than those active when we are awake and alert. Simply put, the way we perceive, and respond to what we perceive, is different when we are dreaming because the left hemisphere — the parts of the brain used for reasoning, logic, ordering, and language — is not as online as the right hemisphere — the parts of the brain we use for feeling, creating, and sensing.
When we engage both hemispheres of the brain during a guided dreamwork session — by re-entering into a kind of liminal consciousness and feeling into a remembered dream (right brain), but also maintaining contact with our left-brain understanding, we often will make associations we wouldn’t otherwise. As you read your dream out loud, and I ask you questions about the dream, you might find yourself engaged with your senses more or suddenly aware of feelings you had in the dream but didn’t realize right upon remembering it.
And this brings me to a very important point: becoming the observer of one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions is an extremely useful skill and, depending on your orientation, a path for spiritual development. But my aim as a guide for dreamers is not to encourage them to think more, but rather to help them re-learn how to be in their senses, slow down, engage with their environment, and feel deeply.
Dreamwork also shows us how we do or don’t feel; how we do or don’t sense the world around us. Dreamwork shows us how and why we are disconnected from our heart or unable to receive love from others. Dreamwork shows us how we once were before life hardened us and could be again if only we choose to soften, even for one moment.
Choosing to remember your dreams is a kind of softening, and a possible entry way into a different way of being in the world.
