Has life been feeling “intense” lately? How about your dreams? Are you dreaming a lot and vividly? Or have your dreams slowed down, with the dream imagery appearing less vivid? Are you having trouble remembering your dreams? Or are there too many to write down in the morning?
Sometimes our dreams match the intensity of our waking life. And sometimes quite the opposite: our dreams appear to slow when waking life feels a little “too much.” I’ve found that taking the temperature of our dreaming life, so to speak, can offer us insight on how much or how little we allow ourselves to be in our own feelings or our broader experience when the world around us or life feels chaotic, overwhelming, uncertain, busy, or out of control.
This varies from person to person, of course, but just like we might tune in to the energy of the collective using astrology, moon cycles, seasons, global events, or weather, we can also tune in to our receptivity of our own inner life by how we are relating to our dreams and dreaming during any given period.
To say it more plainly: when your waking life feels very full, super busy, or overwhelming, do you welcome your more powerful or graphic inner images and feelings or do you tune out?
Tuning out can manifest in a variety of ways — forgetting your dreams, choosing not to write them down, or deciding you don’t have time for dreams or dreamwork right now. If you identify with this, is it possible that you also tune out to your deepest feelings, fears, and desires when the world around you is screaming for your attention?
Perhaps, alternatively, you are the kind of person who spends even more time with your dreams and reflections precisely when life is too busy or overwhelming. Dreams and your inner life soothe you when chaos prevails in your waking life.
What can spending too much time in your inner life, and no time connecting to others or the physical world, tell you about how you are responding to life’s intensity? Perhaps all that journaling, dreamwork, art making, or music provide for you an escape from the deluge of your life … but to your detriment.
These are all just questions — not statements, criticisms, or judgments. And they arise from me asking the same questions about myself; wondering about my own unconscious reactivity to life, observed after the fact, through looking at how I engage too much or too little with my own inner work.
I love that simply noticing and reflecting on our own response to dreams and dreaming can offer us such insights.
In my most recent audio chat on Patreon, I open up this question and topic for discussion and share with you some of my own personal struggles with staying with my inner work when life is busy, overwhelming, or simply “intense.” Listen to it here.
I would love to hear from you how you relate to the conversation and what emerges for you personally as a result.
