Space for Collective Meaning Through Dreams

Dreams serve a vital function to inform our daily life. They cultivate experiences, allowing us to cohesively understand our wants, needs and desires. Dreams inform our thoughts, expand our ideas and contextualise our future, preparing us for healing, growth or change. In the privacy of our own minds, we can replay memories, make sense of traumatic events, remember people no longer with us, and experience the spatial mapping of favourite places lost to time. The dream state allows us to explore our hidden internal feelings, imagination, inherent creativity, and soul’s space; teaching us to consider a new perspective for our conscious existence.

Dreams contain a universal formula of often inexplainable, coded messages, utilising a system of rules to form a distinguished language. Combining ideas, images, sensations and archetypes, stories are fused with a sort of living soul quality that bring the dreamscape to life. Whether one lived in the Eastern or Western world, to experience a dream about love, for example, would transcend perceived barriers of different countries, cultures, beliefs, genders, ages, status, and educational backgrounds, interpreting love’s significant message through subject matter appropriate to the dreamer’s context. No matter what the difference in one’s daily life, dreams provide an opportunity to live out the full range of human emotions in a safe void without censure.

The devaluation of dreams in the West is one of the greatest civilisation failures. Ever since the introduction of Christianity to the Western world, there has been a persecution of the dream state, suggesting that the art of dream interpretation was a form of dark, magical witchcraft. It has taken until the early 1900’s by the pioneers in dream interpretation - Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, to re-introduce understanding of this natural phenomenon through logical analysis. This scientific interpretation of a dream recognises that messages are independent of interference from our conscious mind and one-on-one discussion can redefine the significance of these stories for the individual. However, this exclusive understanding of separate experiences in dreams still fails to consider the shared platform of the dream state and whether to recognise its collective unconscious influence on humanity.

Deviation from our soul’s instinct’s is nothing new as we have actively pursued logical reasoning over rootless, gut feelings for centuries. We are only just starting to understand the psychological distress from the continual suppression or active denial of our unconscious personality with the rise of nervous system afflictions. Dreams serve as a nourishment to the psyche, giving a sort of bearings for human existence, allowing us to experience a universal force indistinguishable from tangible and intangible sensations. By severing ties with our primal ancestors through dream appreciation, our lived experience isolates ourselves from all those who lived before us and experienced the familiar struggles of being human. Imagine how different our relationships would be if we valued the importance of collective knowledge in dreams and shared stories as a group to familiarise insight.

Continual suggestion over the centuries favours the notion that we are only as sizeable and knowledgeable as the confines of our intellectual brain. The scale of the dream state is unimaginable, perhaps even infinite, providing inspiration and messages appropriate to the changing times. The dilemma of the dream space redefines our true spatial imprint, arguing whether the centralisation of the brain within the human body is an appropriate conclusion. If for example, the path towards being human was actually a process of alternating non-linear rhythms of upward and downward forces across time, upward meaning would be just as relevant as downward understanding. Messages would require both a sense of our external existence combined with an understanding of our inner selves, highlighting a need for ongoing self-reflection. The purpose of connection to our dream state mind would be greatly valued as a metaphysical extension of our physical existence.

When our sleep state is shortened, from preference of occupational, intellectual and social activities ahead of personal care, we become deprived of our dreams; disturbing the equilibrium between our psychic soul and our physical experience. It is really worth severing the unconscious connection to dreams and risking further disconnection from the soul’s true nature? That’s for you to decide.