How many of you are aware of your dreams? How many of you record them in some way or tell your dreams to someone else? Now, how many of you have heard – or said – the phrase, “Don’t worry, it’s ONLY a dream?” We have a strange dichotomy about our dreams. On the one hand, we usually find them intriguing – almost fascinating – and on the other hand, we are just a little embarrassed to admit that we feel that way. Embarrassed about the whole idea of dreaming.

It hasn’t always been that way. The history of dreams with a religious or spiritual nature goes back almost as far as the written word.  Some of the earliest records on dream interpretation were written in cuneiform on clay tablets as early as the 7th century B.C.  In ancient times, dreams, especially the dreams of rulers, were considered direct communication from the gods.  Special temples and sacred precincts existed expressly for dream incubation where people would go to receive dreams to answer questions or reveal the future.

Dreams were important in early Hebrew times as well. Here is the biblical record of a dream attributed to Jacob. 

He had a dream:  a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching to heaven; and there were angels of God going up it and coming down. And Yahweh was there, standing over him, saying, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give to you and your descendents the land on which you are lying. . . . Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Truly, Yahweh is in this place and I never knew it.”

Genesis 28: 12-13

Another Old Testament story of a big dreamer is the story of Joseph, who as a boy had dreams of being raised to prominence above his older brothers. Joseph’s problems started because he made a practice of telling those dreams to his brothers, who got tired enough of hearing them that they sold Joseph into slavery. The boy wound up in Egypt, where he was eventually raised to prominence, and saved the country from the effects of famine, because of his ability to understand the dreams of Pharaoh.

Five of the Buddha’s dreams which described his future as a wandering monk were written down in the Pali scriptures.  Muhammad received the word of his divine mission in a dream, and much of the Koran was revealed to the Prophet in dreams than came to him over several years.

Somewhere between those days and today, dreams and dreaming fell into disfavor in the West, especially with the emergence of the Christian church.  According to Dr. Robert Van de Castle in his book “Our Dreaming Mind,” this disapproval was due in part to a deliberate mis-translation of ancient texts which confused dreams with witchcraft.  Beginning in 382 A.D., St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, and mistranslated the Hebrew word for “witchcraft” – anan – as “observing dreams.” The word anan appeared ten times in the Old Testament; seven times Jerome interpreted it correctly, as witchcraft or a closely related practice such as divining; but in the other three cases, he redirected  the condemnation against dreams.  Thus, the prohibition "you shall not practice augury or witchcraft" became "you shall not practice augury nor observe dreams."

This religious prohibition, which grew in importance during the Middle Ages, has only been challenged within the last century or so when dreams began to regain support in the West as valuable tools in psychological work.  Then came the introduction of sleep laboratories, where we began to study dreams scientifically.  About 30 years ago, researchers began to study the reality of telepathic and precognitive dreams.  The contemporary interest in dreams as spiritual tools began even more recently, within the last five to ten years.

So what is a Spiritual dream? In my dream practice, I’ve noticed three main types of spiritual dreams. First are the dreams which include some religious or spiritual figure, such as Jesus or the Buddha or the Dalai Lama. Second are the dreams in which some spiritual quality is hidden in the symbol and metaphor of the event and is not readily apparent. And third are the dreams that have an intense feeling tone to them, what Jung referred to as a “numinous” quality, in which the dreamer has a transcendent feeling of connection to something larger or higher or more important than ordinary life.

In the first case, where the dreamer has some religious figure appearing as a character in the dream, it’s very common for these symbols to represent something more prosaic in the dreamer’s life, and not really be about spiritual development, so you want to look more closely. For instance, I had a dream many years ago in which Mary and the infant Jesus (an infant who was in his late 20’s, by the way) had moved into a neighbor’s garage back at the house in Iowa where I grew up. This wasn’t a spiritual dream, it came when I was doing some group therapy work, and was finding some things which were important and unexpected in the “neighborhood” of my home of origin.

However, the “Persephone” dream is also one of mine, and definitely is a spiritual dream, even though the Goddess figure which is mentioned does not actually appear.

I am a young woman who's involved with Goddess worship, and I become pregnant. I take this half-conscious journey leaving this place where I'm living and going out into the garden and then into the outside. I'm searching instinctively for the things I need to fulfill my destiny - and my child's. I go here and there, activating magical sources along the way. I eat certain berries, do certain acts, connect with certain energies, all things which are designed to activate the child with beauty and magic to make her a powerful sorceress. At the end of the night, I'm brought back - half-conscious - having accomplished all of these goals, and hungry now for certain seeds – especially the red seed of some plant that looks like a  pomegranate, which will continue the process in the fetus.

“The Persephone Dream”  C.B.

The action of the dream – taking a journey to search for the things I need to fulfill my destiny, then returning to complete the process – these are classic elements of the Hero’s Journey, and in this case, indicated a spiritual process.

The second kind of spiritual dream can be the most difficult to identify, because the reactions and feelings of Dream Ego – the “I” in the dream, the character which is observing or experiencing the dream – can mislead us. Here is a dream from one of my dream clients.

It's night, and I am a passenger in a car, driving very fast down a unknown highway.  I look to the left and see there is no driver, but I know there is a Presence driving the car.  From time to time, the driver's door opens and wind rushes into the car and swirls everything around before the door closes again.  I feel perfectly safe and at peace. 

The woman who had this dream was working with a counselor on issues of sexual abuse and co-dependence. When we started to look at this dream, at first the dreamer thought it was an indication of her unwillingness to take control of her own life, of letting other people constantly “do the driving,” or perhaps about sitting powerless while her life was being controlled by unseen forces, of being a perpetual victim. She was familiar with these roles, but the last line of the dream, “I feel perfectly safe and at peace,” didn’t hold true, because when she was playing these roles, she was never at peace. In the course of the discussion, she began talking about the Twelve Step program for co-dependents in which she was involved. She suddenly got what we call the “ah-ha!” look, that moment of resonance the dreamer gets when understanding hits home. This dream was a dream about the 3^rd Step, “Made a conscious decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our Higher Power.”  So, now go back and read the dream again.

It's night, and I am a passenger in a car, driving very fast down a unknown highway.  I look to the left and see there is no driver, but I know there is a Presence driving the car.  From time to time, the driver's door opens and wind rushes into the car and swirls everything around before the door closes again.  I feel perfectly safe and at peace. 

For the dreamer, this dream had a very powerful impact because it told her, better than anything else had been able to, that she was healing. She told me  later, that along with the hope which the dream gave her, it had also given her the sense of being cared for and protected. And every time she felt overly stressed or fearful, she could regain those feelings of protection by simply revisiting the dream. So along with the spiritual connections, it also provided another tool for her recovery.

Another kind of dream in this category, where the spiritual quality is hidden in symbol and metaphor, is one which I’ve heard – in one form or another – dozens of times. It goes a little like this…

I am alone in a room, and become aware of “something” on the other side of the closed door. Something is wrong, something is going on on the other side of that door. Feeling a mixture of dread and unstoppable curiosity, I slowly approach the door. I finally get up my nerve and open the door just a few inches, and suddenly there is a blinding white light streaming forcefully through the opening. I am terrified.

Can you guess what the dreamer’s first reaction almost always is? To slam the door shut! It constantly amazes me that so often the first thing Dream Ego wants to do when confronted by some spiritual symbol which wants to “break through” is to shut it out. I don’t know if our reaction is just the all-too-human resistance to change, or if it is our fear of self-examination, which is usually a part of the spiritual process, or if there is some other cause, but I certainly have noticed that it happens.

However, it only seems to happen in those dreams where the call of something spiritual is metaphorical. In the final type of spiritual dream, the reaction is very different. These are the transcendent dreams, so achingly beautiful in content or in experience that they leave the dreamer in awe, full of the feelings that come in the face of something beyond explanation. One of these is the beautiful Rose Dream. This is a dream about connections, self worth, and potential. As you read the dream, please notice that it does not contain a single reference to God or any other form of “Being” but the affect it had on the dreamer was intensely spiritual.

I see inside my body. There is a beautiful rose growing where my heart is. The stem extends down through my spine and legs into the ground. Other stems extend through my arms, so that my entire being is filled with this living flower.. As I watch, the petals slowly begin to unfold. Each petal holds the face of one I love: my Dad, my Mom, John, Deb, and many more. As I watch, I am able to see through the heart of the rose, where, curled deep inside the petals, is a shining seed of crystal, filled with light. When the petals have completely fallen away, the crystal/light will be exposed, and then only the light will remain. I understand that this rose is my heart and my life, and that, because it is large but barely unfolded, that I still have much to open to and fulfill in my life. I also see, as I look around me, that other people have flowers inside of them too, and that I am a petal on others’ flowers, just as they are on mine.

                                                   “The Rose Dream” P.C.

Like dreams of falling, of flying, of being chased by monsters, or of being naked in public, dreams with spiritual content seem to be universal. But unlike those other common dream themes, whose meanings can usually be understood with some examination, why do we have these dreams? I have heard incredible transcendent dreams from people with all sorts of religious backgrounds—and with none. From true believers and from atheists and agnostics. So why do they exist? What purpose do they serve?

Here’s another example from the futurist David Spangler, as quoted in “Healing Dreams” a book by Marc Ian Barasch.

I’m looking at a house I lived in as a child. A large by not fat woman comes out, almost as tall as the house itself, wearing a voluminous dress. I go up the walkway to the front door, then realize her dress is the walkway, the lawn, everything—the whole landscape is coming from her dress, which I now see is a mass of brilliant plant life. She herself is made of fleshlike vegetation. I approach her with trepidation, realizing that at any moment I could be absorbed by her, and that I’m walking this earth at her suffrage, The closer I get, the greater the possibility I will be engulfed. Terror wells up in me. Yet I say to her, I’m here, I’m willing to be absorbed. Like Lord, here am I. She smiles, as if to say, No, not this time.        

The author, Barasch, goes on to say, “A psychoanalyst might have a field day with the image of a gigantic, engulfing matron associated with a boy’s childhood home. But the dream, Spangler says, was a spiritual turning point, a direct encounter with the Great Goddess of all living things. “I’d passed some initiation. I surrendered to utter powerlessness. I stopped putting out that energy we all expend shielding ourselves from the  world. I realized to approach the sacred is to risk everything. In my dream, I’d taken an irreversible step.”

It is my personal belief that these incredible experiences are affirmations of our connection to some sort of basic spiritual nature – whatever that is. Spiritual dreams seem to be easily accessible. They are a part of the universal human experience. They don't require years of study or special foods or fasting or other deprivation. It’s almost as though the spiritual connection is a part of our human birthright.  If we continue to show up in expectation of the experience, the experience will follow.

Which brings me to my final thought. Perhaps one reason spiritual dreams exist is to help us challenge our certainty about what makes up “reality.” When we are asleep, we completely accept the reality of the dreamworld.  We accept the dreaming reality just like we accept this reality when we are awake.

Most people who work with their dreams a lot often begin to notice that the borders between dreaming life and waking life become just a little blurred. For instance, after fifteen years of this, I have a tendency to look at things that happen to me—in my waking life—as if they were symbols in a dream. I often look for metaphoric meaning in daily events. And, going the other direction, people who are interested in what’s called lucid dreaming are injecting waking consciousness into their dreaming life. Most of us have the experience of questioning some dream, suddenly realizing “I must be dreaming” and then waking up. A person who dreams lucidly, has that same realization but stays asleep, actively involved in the dream, but conscious.

One technique to encourage the practice of lucid dreaming involves one of the universal dreams, that of flying. You start with the belief that if you can actually lift yourself off the ground and fly of your own free will, then you are probably dreaming. Then you start trying, at many times during the day and night, to lift yourself off the ground. If you can do it, then you’re probably asleep, once you have that realization, you have become conscious while you are dreaming, and then you practice staying aware while you stay in the dream.

Here is one of the most famous dreams to challenge our concepts of reality – the butterfly dream from the 4^th century before Christ, from the Chinese philosopher, Chuang-tsu.

“Once upon a time, I, Chuang-tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a butterfly. Suddenly I was awakened, and there I lay myself again. Now I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly now dreaming I am a man.

Chuang-tsu, 4^th century B.C. 

Here’s another quote from him:

“While men are dreaming, they do not perceive that it is a dream. Some will even have a dream in a dream, and only when they awake they know it was all a dream. And so, when the Great Awakening comes upon us, shall we know this life to be a great dream. Fools believe themselves to be awake now.” 

Most of us have had the experience of dreaming and being caught in some nightmare, of struggling to wakefulness, and then exclaiming, “Whew! Thank God! It was only a dream!” Well, perhaps, when we finally come to the end of our lives, we really come awake, and we do the same thing. We do the equivalent of wiping our brow in great relief and exclaim, “Thank God! That was just life.”

Maybe this, too, is just a spiritual dream.