Why We Dream

The enigma that won't go to sleep.

"I" in the World of Dreams

Watching for mistaken literalism in dreams

Published on January 12, 2012 by Jeremy Taylor in The Wisdom of Your Dreams

We all find the emotions in our dreams to be convincing and compelling, as convincing as emotions feel in waking life. This inevitably leads to some deep confusion and the tendency to take a dream literally—as literally as we take a waking life event. The "me" figure in the dream, (the "dream ego"), is a problematic character. What the dreamer FEELS in a dream always seems to point directly to the deeper meanings in the dream, but this is not always the case!

For example, have you ever dreamed that your best friend lied to you and betrayed you to others, even though all he/she has actually done in the dream is sit and fidget a bit while having a drink with you? You might wake with a sense of outrage and feel as if your friend is somehow untrustworthy. But in the dream, your friend has done nothing to warrant this projection. Perhaps he/she is simply in a hurry and eager to move on, or is physically uncomfortable (it's all projection unless your friend actually tells you what he/she is feeling in the dream).

When the dream ego (the "me" figure) is absolutely convinced that something is one way, and there is no spontaneous confirmation in the dream itself that this opinion is correct, this archetypal pattern is very often associated with opinions that the dreamer holds in waking life about him/herself, (that may have been well-founded when they were first adopted - who knows how many years and decades ago!), opinions which are now asserting themselves & distorting the dreamer's waking awareness without confirmation from any clear observation of the actual current situation in waking life. It's hard to see that the dream situation really is ambiguous, because it FEELS so real.

The hardest thing for even seasoned and experienced dream workers to grasp is that ultimately there is no more reason to take the dream ego's emotions literally then there is to take anything else in the dream literally! This is a difficult concept because, of course, there is at least one level where the opinion that "I am not trustworthy" is a literal feeling - but it is an habitual feeling of MINE, which in the dream I am projecting out onto my friend.

In that sense, the dream is reflecting the level of truth of my own frozen, habitual mistrust of myself in waking life, but at the same time, the dream has constructed a purposely ambiguous scene with a whole other possible implication: perhaps that I am ill at ease in social situations and am finding it hard to trust other's motives (and my own) in such an environment.

Next time you remember a dream consider for a moment that the emotions you feel in the dream are not all there is to feel. The stronger the emotion (love, hate, anger) the harder this is to do, but the more rewarding it can be. When we learn to pull our projections back while looking at a dream, it becomes easier to do so in waking life. All dreams have multiple meanings, even the dreams where we betray or are betrayed, lie or are lied to, hate and are hated, and all dreams come for our health and wholeness. Mistaken literalism cuts off our ability to grasp the multiple meanings and the message of health and wholeness the dreams promote.