Collective Dreams

It’s time to return to the importance of dreams. Dreams are common nighttime experiences, as common as our daytime experiences. The problem is that we don’t easily remember dreams, not as easily as we remember daytime experiences. Why is that? That’s because we are not conscious (aware) while we sleep but we are when we’re awake. That seems obvious enough.

If we’re not conscious when we sleep, where are the dreams coming from? Dreams come from the unconscious (hidden psychology) or inner world, which is where dream content forms. Since we can’t know what is in our inner world, dreams provide a critical function for us by providing visions or symbolic images from the unconscious. This means dreams enable us to see into the unconscious and realize how we’re being influenced by the mystery of our psychology. That’s remarkable!

There are two types of dreams: collective (related to the social and cultural side of life) and personal. We’re all familiar with personal dreams. Personal dreams inform us about the unconscious influences in ourselves. So, too, collective dreams inform us about unconscious influences related to society. Finding the meaning of both types of dreams helps us become more conscious at both personal and societal levels.

Let’s look at an example of a collective dream:

The dreamer and many people are working together to accomplish a task.

Everyone has something to accomplish as part of the task. The dreamer is

given a trough with a hole in the middle. It can be held with two hands and

is as long as the dreamer’s open arms. The dreamer is also given a

substance that is essential for changing the social life in which everyone lives. The substance is put in the trough; the trough is then shaken

to break up the substance so it can fall into the hole. Most of the

hole, but not all, becomes filled with the substance, but the dreamer must

wait for more substance to arrive to complete the task and save humanity.

There we have it. It’s a collective dream since society or humanity is to be saved. The meaning of the dream indicates that the dreamer has a central role to perform and must discover how the dreamer and other people can accomplish this task in waking life. But what is the symbolic substance? Answering this question would provide the dreamer with an expanded consciousness.

When you look at your dreams, first try to determine if the dreams are personal or collective, then attempt to find their meanings.