Another dream

I plan to present dreams from time-to-time to help us understand the origin and meanings of dreams. All dreams originate in the human psyche (human psychology). There are two major types of dreams: personal and collective dreams. Personal dreams provide the dreamer with insights and meanings about their personal psychology. Collective dreams provide the dreamer with meanings and insights about a social situation. Yes, we can dream dreams that inform us about something other than ourselves!

The dream that follows is a short but powerful collective dream. The dreamer is looking at a scene that includes two men. The two men are carrying baseball bats and attacking three people, smashing their heads. The two men then turn to face the dreamer and some other people who are with the dreamer, all of whom run and hide.

The images in this dream are terribly disturbing. Upon waking up, the aggression and brutal killing of the three people left the dreamer feeling fear and deep sadness.

As mentioned in earlier columns, dreams are made up of symbols; therefore, most of the images in dreams are symbols. For example, the symbol of a dreamer in a dream represents the dreamer's ego (identity). In the above dream, the two men with baseball bats symbolize the aggression and brutality occurring in a social or world situation (the collective). The collective fatality is symbolized by the three people dying.

At present, the major fatal social factors include the war that Russia imposed on Ukraine, the COVID pandemic and climate change. Each of these collective realities are brutalities, leading to death and serious damage for the entire world.

The dreamer is dreaming a collective dream meant to inform us of the destructive forces facing millions of people in the world. We can think of collective dreams as commentaries on an ongoing situation. In this case, the commentary provides descriptive details of the ongoing, dark fatalities occurring within each moment and in the near future to people and the earth.

What can we do when we receive collective dreams?

We can inform other people, thus the reason for my focus on this dream. We also can become aware of the severity of the collective situation at a deeper psychological level and to a greater degree than before the dream. We can empathize with the millions of people who are suffering and dying, and we can try to reduce the destruction by protesting, discussing, writing letters to authority figures, expressing our concerns for the injustice, and, yes, writing a column for the Pathfinder.