A Reflection about Dreams: April 28, 2024
Unitarian Universalist Congregation. of the Outer Banks. Thomas E Wilson, Guest Speaker
Listening with the Universe
Scripture Lessons for reflection:
Ezekiel. Chapter 37: 1-14
Some time later, I felt the Lord's power take control of me, and his Spirit carried me to a valley full of bones. The Lord showed me all around, and everywhere I looked I saw bones that were dried out. He said, “Ezekiel, son of man, can these bones come back to life?” I replied, “Lord God, only you can answer that.”
He then told me to say: Dry bones, listen to what the Lord is saying to you, “I, the Lord God, will put breath in you, and once again you will live. I will wrap you with muscles and skin and breathe life into you. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
I did what the Lord said, but before I finished speaking, I heard a rattling noise. The bones were coming together! I saw muscles and skin cover the bones, but they had no life in them.
The Lord said: Ezekiel, now say to the wind, “The Lord God commands you to blow from every direction and to breathe life into these dead bodies, so they can live again.”
As soon as I said this, the wind blew among the bodies, and they came back to life! They all stood up, and there were enough to make a large army.
The
Lord said: Ezekiel, the people of Israel are like dead bones.
They complain that they are dried up and that they have no hope for
the future. So tell them, “I, the Lord God, promise to open
your graves and set you free. I will bring you back to Israel, and
when that happens, you will realize that I am the Lord. My Spirit
will give you breath, and you will live again. I will bring you home,
and you will know that I have kept my promise. I, the Lord, have
spoken.
AND
Revelation 22: 1-5
Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within the city, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night in the city, and they will have no need for the light of a lamp or of the sun. For the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.
AND
[Remember, O Muhammad], when Allah showed them to you in your dream as few; and if He had shown them to you as many, you [believers] would have lost courage and would have disputed in the matter [of whether to fight], but Allah saved [you from that]. Indeed, He is Knowing of that within the breasts. [Quran, 8:43]
Our language is full of signs, symbols and images For instance: when you see the Letters “MD” that is a sign that the name attached is a Doctor of Medicine. I have as part of my identification the Letters for M.Div. “Master of Divinity”. Can you imagine any other title so absurd to prance around and proclaim the absurd notion that “I AM A Master of Divinity!”, as if the Divine is my pet. It actually means that I am a religious person who studied theology- “Theo”, Greek word for God and “Logos” Greek word for words and passed the courses. M.D. and M.DIV. , are signs that help you to know that if you want to talk about God or the subtle differences between Unitarians and Universalistes, most MD's will not be able to help you. If you want to talk about Kidney Problems you are not going to be helped much by a M. Div.
Images are pictures that refer to something beyond itself; and you can know what it means if you know what the image means. For instance the image of a Capital U which has the Capital Letter S superimposed on the U with the bottom of the U erased mans we ware referring to a matter of currency in the United States, it is a image denoting a value.
“Signs“ and “Images “are not symbols for they only denote the objects to which they attached
Symbols are terms, names, or even pictures that may be familiar in daily life, yet which possesses meaning, unconscious or preconscious meaning, and refers to something that has a variety beyond simple explanation. For instance X is a letter in the alphabet. But is also can be used as “X makes the spot”, or meaning an unknown whose meaning or value needs to be derived, or denoting a thing of value. If you tip the X 90 degrees then is becomes a cross, a meeting; a vertical and horizontal , originally separate from each other, but by its intersection is held in dynamic tension.
The Christian faith took the cross as its symbol; it can mean the cross on which it's hero died, or it can refer to the dynamic of the human and divine held in dynamic tension, or it can mean a meeting place if it is put on a building, of it can mean the middle of a target, or it can mean a burden you have to carry because of your own unworthiness or your holiness. Symbols are signs that have multiple meanings and symbols are the pre-conscious and unconscious center of understanding dreams.
Dreams are gifts given to each of us to try to figure out what is going on in our lives. Many religious traditions see meaning in dreams; Joseph Campbell said. “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths” Some faiths dismiss dreams; for instance the Buddha does not dream because the Buddha is the Awake One and does not sleep. For Buddhists, dreams are filled with images that are empty and false, BUT if properly understood, as Buddhist teacher Sangharakshita said: “If you want to really know yourself, pay attention to your dreams.” In tension, is the Rev. Heng Sure, a Buddhist Monk who relates
“Perhaps the Buddhist approach to dreams is identical with the path to understanding the purpose of waking life: transforming ignorance by the brilliant sword of Prajna wisdom. We must wake up from our “dream within a dream,” before we can know that we are actually sleeping through our lives. After awakening there is no need to dream any longer.
Jewish and Christians understanding of their faith puts a lot of energy and witness to see God speaking through dreams as interpretations for the past, present and future. St. Augustine saw dreams as a preview of the afterlife where the soul separates fro the body.
In the three lessons we had for today, We see the readers of the Abrahamic Holy Books seeing dreams from their God as giving them strength in the days to come. The Ezekiel story is about having hope in the middle of what seems like an impossible situation. The Jewish people kept the dream story because they saw their People come back from exile. The Reading from the Quran is a time when Muhammad had a dream that his band would be able to crush what they thought was a smaller foe. However, the opposing army was much larger; but they attributed the dream to giving them so much energy that when the larger army showed up, the Prophet's army had so much energy that they did the impossible. They acknowledge if they had been filled with fear, they would have lost. The reading from the Book of Revelation relates a dream that there is a future that they are moving forward towards. All three of the lessons are the same dream motif as the Rev. Dr. Luther King's “I Have A Dream Speech” relying on the arc of Divine Justice.
Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss Psychologist, a friend and then a critic of Sigmund Friend, practiced in the late 19th to the middle of the of the 20th century. Freud believed that dreams were ways of dealing with problems and wish fulfillment. For instance if you are a boy and want to marry a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad, that speaks to some issues that may need to address if you want to grow up or at least get rid of incestuous thoughts and penis envy. Freud believed that girls did not have that kind of relationships with their father, only boys. Freud was about how we learn to grow up and become adults taking our roles seriously and unconscious thoughts need to be exposed as fantasies. Dreams in Freud's view were secrets meant to be kept secret unless shared with a therapist.
Jung believed that we humans were like ships sailing on an ocean of unconscious and pre-conscious material. The task is how we are able to sail using this material for a richer life. Dreams form a great deal of that material, and coming to creative interaction with these elements make for good sailing through life. He wrote:
“The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books.
Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them.
Only the man (sic., he was a product of his time as well) who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
No one who does not know himself can know others.
And in each of us there is another whom we do not know.
He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.
When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude—the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation”. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 325.
Dreams needed to be paid attention to:
“We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.. . . It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant looking product of the Psyche, has met with profound contempt.
Formerly it had been esteemed as a harbinger of Fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger from the Gods. Now we see it as an emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and that is done with astounding completeness.”
Jung quotes Aeschylus; “When we sleep the soul is lit up completely by many eyes: with them we can see everything that we could not see in the daytime.” By this the dream is being regarded as a truth telling oracle.
Jung says: “The unconscious is the dark within that our conscious eyes do not perceive . . . We only become aware of this unheard hearing, the unseen seeing; when the unconscious send us there unconscious images in dreams.”
If you have time I would suggest that you take 17 minutes and watch a good introduction into Jungian thought about dreams by going on line and view “Carl Jung And The Psychology of Dream – Messages from the Unconscious” https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2022/05/08/dreams-cannot-be/
Until I met Pat, my view of dreams were not to be shared with other people unless you were in therapy, because they were often strange. She had this habit of being open with me. I was a Priest and I limited the number of people with whom I was open. She was involved in several Spiritual Growth experiences but I would go off on silent retreats. I had been a therapist and had listened to to many people tell me what was going on in their lives. Sometimes, some one would want to share a dream; I would listen and then I would ask; “Thank you but can you tell me what your dream is saying about your real life”. Often it meant to them that the person, “she” for men had not shared any dreams with me, would say it had to do with how unhappy she was.
Pat had been involved in several spiritual growth groups and she heard about the Haden Dream Work Conference. She dragged me with her, and she and I got hooked at sharing dreams with each other. I trusted her enough to share. We went to the Group Dream Work Leader Training that went on for two years. The first book we used was Bob Haden's book “Unopened Letters From God.” Bob, an Episcopal Priest and Spiritual Director, said that God was sending letters every night to us in the form of dreams and one of the ways to grow spirituality is to open those dreams to see what God might be saying to us. We considered Bob a friend and he died about a year ago, two months before Pat died. Half way through our training, we put together Dream groups at the churches I served. Pat did a Women's group and I did a men's group. In our training there were almost as many men as there were women. She was a perfect leader. I had to deal with men. Women share their dreams in non judgmental ways, which was the plan. Without women to break up the free-floating testosterone in the room, I had men who wanted to have the “Right” answer on what the dream meant. Her women listened and shared and my men competed, on who had the biggest . . . and best . . . idea. I got tired of that, but Pat and I could share with each other.
When Pat got sick, she no longer had the energy to go to the meetings and when she died, I was asked if I could take her place. I have had to relearn that I was no longer a therapist and fix “people”, in this situation, I could only help the group by listening and sharing. Like Pat would have done.
In the group, members bring the dreams that they wish to share. The way the meeting would go is we would start off with how things are doing in their life since we last met. “All may, some should, none must”. Then we would randomly find out who would share, and if we had time who else would share. If a person had a dream , we would ask them the title of the dream, like “A Salami Sandwich left too long in the refrigerator”, We would vote on who would go first to make sure no one person dominates. The person would turn her back, to avoid eye contact. She would read, or tell the story she had written down in her dream book. The group would listen in silence, they would be free to take notes. After the telling, we would thank her for sharing – sharing is a gift not an obligation.. The group would ask questions for clarification like: “What color, or model. was the car ?” “Is this person connected to you in any way” “Tell me about the roadway.” and the group would thank her. They were not to analyzing the dream. Then the person would read the dream again. Then, the person would be asked if we could share the dream with the members; meaning that each member of the group could share, if they wished- “all may, some should, none must” that if the dream had been their dream; this is the message I would have heard. The dream remains her dream, all the other members of the group are offered the opportunity that if it were their dream, this is what they would understand as a message. The person is thanked for sharing; the person would turn back their to the group and if she wants to, she can share some insights she got through the group's understanding. “All may, some should, none must.”
There is no one “correct” answer, there is only the sharing with people who promise to listen with each other. This is not therapy; it is a community of care. I see it as what a church is meant to be; a called out assembly, gathered together, who are aware of the sacred space between them.
People tell me that they have a hard time remembering their dreams. The biggest problem is that the first thing we tend to do when we awaken is to open our eyes and think about all the damn stuff that needs to be done today. One way around that, is to think about writing or recording a few words about the dream you had before you start planning the day. Take care of the night first - before you go blundering into the day.. Give it a title as a memory help to fill in. My problem right now is that when I wake up, I notice that Pat is not in the bed with me and I start mourning again and feeling sorry for myself by throwing a pity party. Pat would have hated that. I need to wake up facing a note book. Many of the dreams I could remember in this time was in the dream to have someone else in the bed with me. Those dreams usually ended disastrously for me as the dream me. Dreams are not morals police; dreams are here for our healing and they use images that get us to pay attention. I believe it was my spirit warning me that my healing is going to take time; there are no shortcuts.
How you do your dreams is up to you. “All may, some should, none must!”
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