Most who know me have heard about my vivid dreams. I heard Jeff Foxworthy’s comedy routine making fun of dream interpretation as one of the most boring subjects ever! I can hear a new routine for Jeff now: “You know you are a bored redneck if….” (tee hee) But dreams have always fascinated me as to the meaning of the dream impressions. I am often called to interpret dreams with my clients, especially when the feeling behind a dream continues beyond a few hours after waking.
Compensation theory, according to Carl Jung and other researchers, holds that dreams are linked to self-regulation. The theory suggests that dream production helps maintain psychological balance in the same way that homeostasis regulates body functions. That our body perspires in heat to cool down the entire system is one example of a physical function used to regulate.
Dreaming is one of the three stages of consciousness in which the body, mind, and spirit compensate for attitudes and personality traits. If a person has developed a one-sided or rigid way of being in the world, a dream can compensate for an area of life that is missing. The artist who gives up a career to take a more traditional job or a person who is shut down emotionally might find compensation in a dream. I constantly dream of working on houses, which I gave up for my current career. Some part of that expression must be missing in my life to evoke such a consistent theme. Let’s see how a whisper from an angel describes dreams as compensation.
Dreams allow for an experience that fills a void in human consciousness. Passion is linked to some aspect of compensation that dreams facilitate. Your emotional experience with a dream can not only inform you of vital information, it can regulate your psychological state of mind. The information expressed in a dream can be far removed from a literal translation, so further discoveries about the self can be found with accurate interpretations of experiences during this state of consciousness.
Unexpressed energy can move through the mind/body system to arrive at the bridge between unconscious self and the Cosmos. With movement, you become an observer of the movie being created from the unexpressed energy. Characters are also created to fill a role needed to further the process of compensation. During sleep, the mind is free to connect with the spirit to travel beyond the confines created by existence in a three-dimensional world. Dreams provide a way to explore the Universe within.
Regulation occurs when the senses beyond the body are evoked to feel that which has been suppressed through the passage of time. Balanced emotional energy can be achieved through dreams, even those that cannot be remembered. Life in a violent world can close the mind and affect the visual senses. Dreams open the mind’s eye, exposing the soul to a world of magic and mystery. From another dimension, twilight learning occurs. Energy expands to release the old, and contracts to bring in the new.
Love evolves on the wings of hope when exploring the possibilities provided by a creative mind, an open heart, and a willingness to travel beyond the known Universe.
Bring joy, ease suffering and create beauty, then dance like you mean it!
Blessings, Russell
The evolutionary stratification of the psyche is more clearly discernible in the dream than in the conscious mind. In the dream, the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to instincts, which derive from the most primitive levels of nature.
Carl Jung
