Interpreting Dreams

Can our dreams predict the future?

 Are they windows into a world of future events yet to unfold?

Are dreams manifestations of the subconscious, using stories and images to symbolize something about ourselves? To show us something we need in order to grow in our lives?

Or are dreams sequences of completely random events, having no real meaning on us or the world around us?

Many in the mainstream world of psychology certainly believe the latter, that dreams are typically random and meaningless.

Sigmund Freud, on the other hand, believed that dreams were always trying to tell us something about ourselves. Freud was a pioneer in psychology and in studying dreams, having written the popular book, The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud believed that our dreams were like novel stories, playing out the deepest, unfulfilled desires of our unconscious minds. If we suppress our wishes or desires, they will play out in the dream world our minds create when we close our eyes at night.  

Carl Jung, another pioneer, was influenced by Freud and agreed that our dreams were stories told by our unconscious minds. They were to be interpreted as being strictly about ourselves. If we dreamt about famine, maybe there was something we were lacking in our lives. If we dreamt about war, maybe there was a war going on inside our heads that we needed to resolve. Everything was to be interpreted as symbolic messages about and to ourselves.

But then something strange happened.

In 1913, Jung began having a series of intense, vivid, unimaginable dreams that would end up foreshadowing what was to come. In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he writes:

            “In October [1913], while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland, I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about one hour. I was perplexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness.

Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke.

‘Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.’

That winter someone asked me what I thought were the political prospects of the world in the near future. I replied that I had no thoughts on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood.

I asked myself whether these visions pointed to a revolution, but could not really imagine anything of the sort. And so I drew the conclusion that they had to with me myself, and decided that I was menaced by a psychosis. The idea of war did not occur to me at all.

Soon afterward, in the spring and early summer of 1914, I had a thrice-repeated dream that in the middle of summer an Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice. I saw, for example, the whole of Lorraine and its canals frozen and the entire region totally deserted by human beings. All living green things were killed by frost. This dream came in April and May, and for the last time in June, 1914.

In the third dream frightful cold had again descended from out of the cosmos. This dream, however, had an unexpected end.

There stood a leaf-bearing tree, but without fruit (my tree of life, I thought), whose leaves had been transformed by the effects of the frost into sweet grapes full of healing juices. I plucked the grapes and gave them to a large, waiting crowd…

On August 1 the world war broke out.”

Carl Jung had numerous dreams that would end up predicting, symbolically, one of the worst wars the world has ever faced: World War 1.

But as he was having the dreams, he thought he was going mad! No way could his dreams be “predicting” the future or have anything to do with the world outside of his own mind.

But sure enough, they were.  

Dreams are one of the mind’s greatest mysteries. I personally keep a log of all my dreams I have; I’ve been doing this for the past year and a half.

Sometimes I read through them, and I’m amazed at what I read.

So many patterns emerge. Similar people appear throughout many of my dreams. The same messages are communicated in all sorts of ways.

As I grow as a human being, my dreams grow as well. New messages are communicated to me until I have learned and implemented the lesson in my own life.

Dreams are powerful tools. They can tell us something that our conscious mind might be missing or would rather avoid.

But can our dreams also predict events of the outside world?

Can our dreams act like crystal balls, symbolically (or even literally) showing us what’s to come?

I know too many people who have seen their “random” dreams come true for this to be ignored.

Most recently, many people have been having similar, unusual dreams. Considering the state of the world at the moment, this shouldn’t be surprising. It feels like some ominous is looming the air. I’m not sure what; but the signal is there.

What are our dreams trying to tell us in this moment?

Are we willing to listen?