What Do Our Dreams Tell Us? Dream Journals and Interpretation

Foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of MU Talks in the Multnomah Studios.

Today.

We have myself and Renee Duffy, Aline and Renee here in the co hosts of MU Talks and a very, very, very special guest.

That's right. We're excited to welcome Multnomah Professor Dr. Elliot Lawless to the podcast today. Dr. Lawless is a professor of psychology and has pursued research in many areas of psychology, including the psychology of religion, existential anxiety, the psychology of shyness, and the integration of psychology and theology at Multnomah University. He brings his passions to the classroom where he's equipping future counselors to provide compassion and desperately needed services to people who live with mental illness. On today's episode, we'll be discussing their rarely covered topic of dream dreams. What are they? Where do they come from? And can we find any meaning in them? Elliot, thank you so much for being here. Can you start with telling us why dreams?

Oh, of course. Well, where to begin? Dreams for me have always been a fascination. From the time I was a little kid, I'd have very vivid dreams. And when I, you know, got into college and into grad school, I realized how little is known about them, which is so surprising because we spend so much of our life, about six years of our life, we spend dreaming, which is just a phenomenal amount of time to be spent unconscious with all these images coming to our mind. And we have to ask ourselves, where do they come from? Right. Where do they come from? How did they. Who's the author of our dreams? Really, it's just this fascinating sort of, sort of idea. So I guess those personal sort of experiences of, of seeing my own dreams, trying to understand what they meant, looking at what science has to say about dreams, looking at what some of this early psychologists had to say about them, looking at what the faith has to say about it or doesn't talk about regarding dreams. All those things were just so interesting to me. And then I had a series of dreams myself that proved to be pivotal in my own calling dreams in which what I now come to understand, I was talking with Jesus and I didn't know that at the time. It was very symbolic, very numinous to use that sort of Rudolph Otto word. And those experiences for me just propelled me to want to understand what are dreams? Why do we have them? And how do we understand the content of those dreams? So I guess that question of our dreams meaningful. I actually start out one of my classes with that. Are dreams meaningful? I take a poll and I get, I Get the hand raise and then I get the half hand raise, you know, that half hand where I think it's meaningful, but I'm not sure. I think all of us deep down have a fundamental curiosity and uncertainty about dreams. And it's not helped by science or religion, honestly, in least in Western society. I think when I look at it, science has a skepticism about the content that we dream. Well, of course we dream. That's. There's no debating that. But the content, why, what does all that mean? And then our faith, I think in the west we've moved towards this.

Measurable.

Yeah, yeah. Things have to be controlled, rational and repeatable.

Right?

Yeah. So. So when I, when I think of dreams, it's ultimately uncontrollable. It is ultimately irre. Well, not irrational, non rational. And so it does. It kind of throws science for a loop. It throws religion for a loop. What do we do with them? And so that's, that's really my, the impetus for me trying to figure this all out. So I'll walk through a couple of things. One is the science behind dreaming. I explored that pretty thoroughly. So I want to figure out, well, if it can be explained by science. Well, fine, good. That's, I'll take that for sure. I'm definitely a scientifically minded person. And then I'll talk about what the early psychologists found in terms of symbolism. So dreams are just full replete with symbolism. So we have to understand what is symbolism and then how then to interpret that and then what does that mean in terms of your spirituality? So our faith touches on these. In fact, I'm going to actually prove it's, it's actually a dominant thing in our, in our faith. And then what, you know, if that's true, then what do we do? How do we go about interpreting dreams? How do we go about understanding, pursuing the meaning of dreams? So.

Okay, well, this is very exciting. I'm, I'm actually excited. So let's do a poll in this room in the studio here. So I, I don't, I don't, I don't think I've had five dreams that I remember my entire life. So I'm not, I'm not a big, like, I, it's never been. But I've always had a curiosity and I'm so excited that we're talking about this because it's the, the theme of dreams is so prevalent in the scriptures, in the Bible. The most fascinating place for me. And I can't wait for us to have this because the most fascinating place for Me is where God says, God speaks in many ways, but people don't listen. And then he gives a list of the way he speaks. And in that list you have dreams. And I'm like, ah, do I not hear this voice? What's going on? Because I'm just a sound. I mean, just I go to sleep and I don't, I feel like I don't have time for dreams. That's. It's only six hours that I have. I don't have time to dream. So I'm curious how your experience of dreams.

Yeah, I'm somewhere around in the middle of that, like, half hand raise. Because I have had experiences where I felt like they were meaningful. Not to the extent maybe that you have or that you discussed, but honestly, everything that's built into us, everything that makes us human, God put it there. And God uses those tools to communicate with us. And so, hands down, I definitely believe God can communicate to us through dreams. But it's that, like, where it meets my everyday life and how I interact with it. That's where I'm not so sure.

So I took this, Paul. So you see your audience, you are an educator. So you know, you know, you need to know who you're talking to. So let's go for it. I'm super excited. Ready, ready to learn.

I do want to address some of those concerns. This is not uncommon. You know, I don't, I don't remember my dreams ever. I mean, I've had students say that many times.

Yeah.

Two things that come to mind. First is the quality of sleep. Sorry, Elaine.

You know, go for it, Go for it.

No, I know most of our dreams occur in the last two hours of sleep.

Okay.

Meaning if you're getting less than eight hours of sleep, you're probably not having enough dream sleep.

Maybe that's why I've not dreamt in the last.

Wait, so can I just clarify that? So science, when they look at brain activity during sleep, they're showing that the dreaming is happening at the end, not like all the way through.

Well, it does happen all the way through in the beginning of the night. The first, say half of the night, you spend just a few minutes dreaming. You spend most of your time in stage four sleep, which is. Or stage four or three, which is very deep, slow wave sleep where your body's doing a whole lot of activity to kind of restore and replenish.

Okay.

Then towards the end, you spend. The majority, I'd say 80% of your time is spent in dreaming. Towards the end, in those last Two hours. It's almost entirely dreaming. So that's one part of it is you're probably not sleeping enough if you got a really good. If you slept in someday you might get some really vivid dreams.

Wow.

The other would be interesting, just paying attention to dreams when, and this is, this is where it gets sort of into the spiritual. If we ask God to communicate with us through our dreams, I don't think that God will deny us. And when we pay attention to our dreams, when we treat them seriously, all of a sudden our dreams become much more vivid and meaningful. So I, I fully believe that God meets us there when we are paying attention.

So I, I pay attention very closely to my wife's dreams. I've once been punished because she had a dream in which she was attacked by a bear. And I did nothing, absolutely nothing. I was just sitting there and I changed the whole outcome of the day. I'm telling you, like, I just. And since then, she wants, I have a dream. I always listen, try to figure out what was my role in that. And one time I actually even went so far to say, look, this is, this is my interpretation of the dream. I was there. But you didn't sleep enough.

Coming.

I was coming in, trying to save myself a little joke in here, but. So, wow, this is already fascinating to think. I, I feel like transparent right now. I feel like people know on this podcast that I don't sleep enough. I thought my six hours are plenty. But hey, let's first. Lesson learned already. So let's go for it. I'm curious. So the scientific.

Okay, scientific side of, of dreaming? Well, there's two dominant theories. There have been many that have proposed, but two dominant theories that science has a lot of support for. The first is the activation synthesis theory. It's this idea that while we're sleeping, especially while we're dreaming, the pons, which is an area of the brain stem, is sending up all sorts of electric activity through the brain. All these impulses and what they're doing is they're finding recently used pathways, recently used synapses and strengthening some and weakening others to consolidate memories and to consolidate responses. So you have essentially like you're, I don't know, tuning up your responses to your environment while you're dreaming. And so because of those electrical impulses are somewhat random and they highlight random areas. What you see is random activation. And then there's a part of your brain that synthesizes and creates meaning out of meaninglessness. And that area of the brain brings it all together and makes A story. And so because of that, you see these random things happening in your dreams. You tie it all together and you make something out of it. And that makes a lot of sense, right, that our dreams are random. And. And oftentimes you're in one place and then all of a sudden it turns into something else. Very, very common sort of things. And so it does. It does a great job at understanding that we dream and what's happening neurologically while we're dreaming. So it's a fantastic theory in that way. Where it fails is it doesn't fully understand, or if it doesn't fully explain, I mean, the. The content of dreams. Dreams are often far too meaningful, linear. There's oftentimes references that we have never experienced in our dreams as well. So there's. There's a little bit of a disconnect in terms of explaining content. It might explain some types of content.

But it makes a process, but not necessarily content.

Yes, yeah, it explains the process of dreaming, explains what's happening. So it explains the. That we dream, but not why, or, excuse me, not what's going on in terms of the process. The second theory. So that's why that one fails, though it does explain a lot. The second is the clinical anatomical hypothesis, which suggests that there's a lot of activity going on in the brain, but it's happening in a weird space. So if you've ever thought of like a sensory deprivation tank, you've heard of those, right? Where you have all these strange experiences. You're putting this tank with almost no stimulation, external stimulation, so your brain actually creates it. So you have visions, you have hallucinations, you feel things. And that's what happens in a sensory deprivation tank. And that's kind of what happens when we're sleeping, right? We're not paying attention to the outside world at all. And so our brain kind of starts creating activity. And so that explains quite a bit as well. Where it fails, too, is in terms of the content of the dreams. Because you would think then that if it's truly just another form of thinking, that the content would reflect some similar themes to what you would think on a conscious level, and it just doesn't. You experience things that you've never experienced before, encounter people you've never met. Objects are morphed and changed, so it doesn't reflect natural thinking. So it's a completely different type of thinking. And so that's where it doesn't explain the content in terms of what the experience actually is of a dream. So though both of those Theories, I think actually are very valid and helpful in understanding dreams. It doesn't explain the actual content of what you dream at night. Especially when you think about the fact that you have a series of dreams. Why have so many.

Oh, wow. Or random bears.

Right. Or random bears that, that you've never seen before. Right. You've never seen before and you've never had. I don't imagine you've ever had that actual experience.

Nope.

Watched a bear attack your wife. That would be.

Nope.

Terrifying.

Yeah. And do nothing. I mean, that's the terrifying one.

So anyway, so that's, that's where I think, I think science. Those are the two dominant theories now there are a few others I could, I could point to, but the, those are the dominant theories right now. So they do explain all quite a bit. So what I decided to do then is to look, well, what are the early psychologists do, early psychology especially, you know, around the early 1900s, we have Freud and Jung. Those are the two big figures, or Adler as well, but Freudian Jung were the big heavy hitters at the time, especially Freud. And what they saw in dreams is something totally different than what modern science looks at. They saw, they focused primarily on the content of dreams. And what they found was that these dreams are portraying for us the dreamer. They're portraying for us a side of ourselves we don't know. Our own unknown face, right? They're showing us ourselves. As one author says, every dream is a portrait of the dreamer. So it's a portrait of you. And so Freud was a genius. Despite all his flaws, he was a genius in figuring out that dreams have meaning, right? He actually saw that the symbol, the symbol of the dream needs to be interpreted. You should know Freud, of course, was Jewish and who was raised in a strict sort of Judaic worldview. And his favorite character in scripture was Joseph. So he was very, very, even from a young age, interested in dreams. So this, this process that I was going through then, trying to figure out what are, if dreams are meaningful. I started reading Freud and his, his pivotal work, you know, the interpretation, Interpretation of dreams set the stage. The, the, the way, the best way to think about Freud's interpretation of dreams is this, that we are still animals. Okay? Animals dream, right? Bears dream and, and humans dream too. And what we have in the dream of a human is really a, an expression of the inner animal, what he called the id, right? This inner animal within us trying to express its frustration with living in a civilized society. Here we are, right? Civilized animals trying to make our way with all these urges within us to be aggressive or sexual. And so our dreams are going to reflect the, the frustrations of the, of our inner animal. And so to interpret that, then we have to look for those two drives, the sexual drive and the aggressive drive. And so, you know, when you, I mean, sorry to be kind of crass, but when you see a, a sword, it's a penis, right. When you see. It's so things aren't what they seem. Right. And so Freud's, for his genius there was that is trying to identify what the, what this symbol means. Where he, he started with some, some data though, assuming that, that we are simply reflecting upon our animal nature. And so that's where it. And he also did. The second thing is, is that he identified that every symbol has an exact interpretation. That's his other flaw, as we are going to see with the Jung, he changes the script on that entirely. Every symbol has a reference point in your life, not necessarily just in, in nature. So that's where I went from Freud, who I appreciated significantly. But then reading Jung I had a completely different experience.

So just to put in there, what I find fascinating is I like the framework and I subscribe to the school of thought of really seeing the giants in the fields that have changed the, the playing field that have brought legitimacy already. There's so much positive because people just discard Freud's work on the basis of spirituality, which is interesting, but we're really understand the legitimacy that he gave to this means of communication on the symbolism. Right. And all this. And that it connects to something. Now we question if it connects to the inner animal or question all that, the fundamental. And I know you're going to get there, but I do want to acknowledge and I appreciate the framework by which you say he has moved the framework. He has created a framework. He has given us permission and verbiage to talk about dreams differently. And then you move and somebody comes in. And that's consistent with research. And I love the world of research. Somebody says this is body of knowledge. This is what he knew. I'm moving this body of knowledge further instead of dismissing everything he's done on the basis of. I just don't agree with that.

Oh, love it. Absolutely. Yeah. Freud I, I always talk about this too, that if it weren't for Freud, we wouldn't. Well, and I'll tell you that we wouldn't. But Freud was a, was a proto feminist. He was the first to stand up and say it's wrong for women to be sexually abused. Can you imagine that it was just kind of dismissed. Well, of course, that's part of culture. That's just what happens.

Wow.

Wow. So his theory to actually say, no, this is trauma. This is trauma that you live with the rest of your life. I mean, my goodness, Freud was, we dismiss him as sexist, but he actually had some fairly important ideas as well to contribute. But yeah, so I appreciate that, Aline. Yeah.

And then young.

Yeah, Jung has, has Jung. That's. I can talk for way too long. I actually teach an entire semester long course on you. So I, I could, I'm gonna have to rein myself in quite a lot. Jung's perspective says there's a whole world beyond the world of instincts.

We.

And he calls it the collective unconscious. Maybe you're familiar with that idea that we are connected not just to our own individual past, but to the experiences of our ancestors, to God, to those patterns that we've inherited from various experiences of our ancestors as well. So when we dream, we're experiencing two things. We're experiencing first of all a reflection of our own difficulties. So whatever you're going through in your life, right, you're going to be or is going to be a triggering of a prior difficulty, what he called a complex. At the same time, every image in your dream is also going to contain an element of the transpersonal, the supernatural, so. Or what he calls the archetypal.

Right.

So every dream has both of those elements together. So when you have a dream of you and your, your father, for example, that dream of your father is actually an aspect of you, what you've internalized of your relationship with your father. But it's also got the core element of the archetypal father. So your experience of your father is there is, it's part of your psychology, but also within you there is that sense of I know who a father really is, I know what a father is meant to be, or I know what a mother is meant to be. And so our experiences then have that. Our dreams, I mean, excuse me, our dreams have the both of those elements of our, of our obviously our experiences, but also of our, our wishes that those things that would make us whole again as well. The other thing our dreams contain for Jung is the whole making factor which he calls the archetype of the self, which is the God image. So he actually articulated as the image of God within us that we have this pattern of wholeness that brings together all these elements into a cohesive whole. So that's, that's our spiritual world that's alive and active Every time we dream, it is present within us. But the question is, how do we understand it? Right. That's. It doesn't come out as, you know, obvious, most typically. And so that's where, in my exploration, at least that's where I kind of found a home. Like, trying to figure out what. What do these symbols mean? Both from my own experiences. But then what do they reveal? Of. Of God. Of God's nature, of our. Of. Of the human experience, of. Of meaning and purpose. There's so much depth to it all. So for that, you have to really understand what a symbol is and what a symbol, how a symbol functions. So I'll give you an example from a dream I had last night.

Oh, wow.

Okay, Here we go.

All right.

It's fresh and it's. It's weird. All my dreams are weird. I don't know. I just don't know if that's just a reflection, that I'm weird, or if that's just.

Today I found out my only weirdness is that I don't dream.

So there you go.

Here we go.

Well, I'm going to tell the whole dream because it's. It's a. It's a long one. But I'll tell you about one symbol. In the dream, I was handed an apple. So that's my question. What's an apple?

An imac.

Okay. By that I mean fruit.

Oh, I was already going with the metaphor.

A fruit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so it's a fruit. Well, tell me more about what an apple is.

Sugar, for me.

Other. What's an apple?

What's an apple? I guess I'm just too literal. Like, I don't know. It's. Yeah, it's food.

It's food. Anything else that comes to mind when you think of apple? Just in your mind. Picture an apple. Someone handing you an apple. This comes to mind.

Health. A doctor. An apple a day.

An apple a day. Good, good, good. You have to work on the. Yeah, you get the literal isms there. Right? An apple a day. What else?

All the things we know about them.

I mean, I guess I don't know what your image was, but it's almost always red in my mind.

Good, good, good.

Yeah.

We rarely have the green apple. Right.

Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So that red. So red. What does the red symbolize? Right. What does red mean? In Western society, we often associate an apple with the Garden of Eden.

Yes. I wanted to say original.

Did you? But did you.

Okay, I was like, I already made my joke with the imac.

It's Very, very common. In fact, if. If you look at it outside of the U.S. it wouldn't be. That wouldn't be the case, of course. Right. Or outside of the West, I should say. But here, apples are associated with the Garden of Eden very specifically. Okay, on this apple, this is where it gets weird. Half of the apple was normal, and I turned it over and the other half was flat. But what was coming out of the skin, it was, like, protruding. I mean, you could just see it. Coming out to the surface of the skin of the apple was a spine.

This is so weird. You're right. A spine.

Thank you for validating my.

Wow.

I'm so happy we're recording this podcast in the middle of our working days.

Yeah.

So it was a spine.

A spine.

Okay.

So. So, okay, here's my process. So then I'm holding in my hand an apple, and on the back of it. The back of the apple. Yes, there's a spine emerging.

This apple had integrity. Yeah, there you go, the spine.

So my process then is to think, what is this? What is the spine? When I think, and some of it's like that, like integrity. But in the dream, it didn't feel like that. It was this tiny little thing emerging. So my mind went instantly to embryo. And when you see something like that in a dream, the symbol of the apple, which, when you think of it as from the garden of good and eat, as this idea of the forbidden fruit. But then you could also say, well, this knowledge, this knowledge of good and evil. And when you see the embryo, this development. Right. So my mind. And this is why I don't sleep very well, because I have these dreams, and then I can't go back to sleep because I just stay awake thinking about them all night. These. The symbol for me was very hopeful, though. It was grotesque in one sense. In one sense, like a, you know, apple with a spine coming out of it. Very strange. It was ultimately very, very hopeful. Gave me a sense of like, whoa, something new. Something new is starting, but it's going to be in a form that might feel different. That's what taboo is. Taboo is different. And it's going to shift things. Right. So anyway, so I just wanted to sort of give you that sense of what. What to do with a symbol is to not look at it. Literally, I'd say, whoa, that's weird. An apple with a spine on it.

Right.

Think. What. What does this mean? What is it? How does it function? How did it function? That's what's called an archetypal amplification. How does it function in other contexts? So what is an apple in our culture? Right. So anyway, so that's, that's. Does that make sense?

It makes sense. I know we're going to get there. I think we're there. I'm willing to sacrifice our rapid fire session today because I think this is, this is so powerful. But it. So you do have to have an exercise in this. You have to practice this and create a form for you. You also have to create maybe some guidelines by which you not allow yourself to go anywhere and everywhere in, in. Oh, interesting. But what I was thinking is it's fascinating to know that the Jewish people by themselves, I mean, it's one of the smallest nations really, and they have the, the most number, the most amount of, of Nobel Prize winners in. On Earth. And the book of Proverbs is very different because it's basically like a reconfiguration of the software of, of the operation system of a person because it works with analogies and you learn how to operate with analogies. It just changes the complete framework of thinking. And you're thinking very differently the whole book. You read the whole book and you realize like, you might not get anything or you completely might change your entire way of thinking of everything around you.

Right.

And, and that's why I love about this because even though it's a world of analogies and you're out of your depth, it does have some rules of engagement. It does have, right, the scientific framework that, that Freud is putting some, some framework to it. Right. Jung is taking it further. But also the scripture gives you. So, so you have, you're not basically on the ocean and you don't have any, any pedals. So you're not, you're just floating in this world. There are some rules of engagement in the way you understand this world or not. I'm just curious from your perspective.

Hmm, That's a good question. I'll say what Marion Woodman said, okay. She's a very famous union analyst. She said that dream work is like having a machete. And you go into this thick forest and you know, you're trying to get down to the river and you hack it branches. You hack at branches and you hack at branches. And every branch you're hacking down is a dream. You're trying to get it. What is it saying? What is it saying? And you're uncertain, of course you're going to be uncertain. But you move to the next dream and you realize that they're connected. And then you realize once you get down to the river, that on the other side of the river, someone's been clearing the path for you to continue.

Oh, okay.

Do you understand that? So in other words, the spiritual side of dream interpretation is God meeting you. God meeting you. When you put the effort in, God will be present. He won't. I mean, you know, God fills every empty void, right. That, that space where you're trying, trying but not certain God will come in to meet you. I've seen it so many times in my own life, my own work with my dreams that I try really hard to figure this out. And I sit with it and I sit with it probably with way too much time and then all of a sudden it just comes to me. That's what it means. Two days later, usually there it is. That's what it means. So yeah, I would say yes, there are. At the same time, one of the rules of dream interpretation is not to censor yourself. Okay, so like you just brought up random things. Yeah, let it be. Don't necessarily say that's it, but let all of the associations flow. If you limit yourself and say, well, it's supposed to mean this, then of course you're going to be stuck because we have to deal with the person. The dream comes from you. Right. So we have to go back to you. So dream interpretation is individually, it's phenomenological in that sense. It has, it comes from the person and so it must be interpreted that way. So there are boundaries, yet at the same time we're meant to push them too. Right. To see where they go.

I have a question about what you just said. You said the dream is not going to get it right. It's individual. So the interpretation has to come from the individual.

Yes.

So then is this something that really should be done in isolation? Is there any room for the check and balance that would come from community?

Oh, absolutely. We, because it is individual, we are also easily self deceptive because I think we're not in the sense that we're trying to, purposefully trying to. But we're self protective. Right. The bigger issues of our life are hard for us to see sometimes because it's too big. And so sometimes you do need the outside person. Most of our dreams I think you can arrive at some sense by yourself, but there are many where you will need and you'll feel it. That's what it's called, the big dream where you wake up and you're like, oh my goodness, I have to talk about this. I don't even know what it means I have no idea. I have to talk about it. And so, yeah, no, it's. There's absolutely a place for community union analysts. That's their. They spend what, like over half of us each session talking about dreams. Dream groups are very common in union circles as well. So it's not. It's not just to be done in isolation, but it can be. Mm, good question, though. Yeah. So I guess that's that the world of the Spirit is where this intersection that Jung found. And that's where I. Since there's a lot of connection to our Christianity or to our faith, is through allowing that interface to take place. So I. I don't know about you all. I personally have experienced what I believe to be a. A bias against dreaming or dream interpretation in the church. And that. That's why it becomes, I think, relegated to, you know, the. The neighborhood psychic. That's where almost honestly, that's where most people get their. Their dreams interpreted is the neighborhood psychic. It's very strange where, you know, it should be in my. When you read. Read scripture, dreams are everywhere. It should be a part of the faith to have dreams be discussed at least. But I think it's a broader problem in the Western tradition. A bias of what I'd call the bias against the feminine, a bias against the emotional, a bias against the non, bias against the non rational. And so that's pretty significant. And that's a bigger problem than we can entertain here, probably. But anyway, so I guess the. I guess unless there's other things I can move on to.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, okay, please.

So the best in terms of how you can actually use this to. To inform or enhance your spiritual life. That's where I like to move the. The first thing I'd recommend is to do your best to take your dream seriously. Even if it's random, you can find meaning in it. I've done this many times in. In my classes where I've actually have students tell me a dream and I give. Make sure there's full disclosures, you know, confidentiality. And it's this random dream and they're laughing as they tell it. It's just. And then we did this, and then we. That. And then I start asking them their associations to each of the symbols. And then I'm. Then I'm connecting them all. And then by the time they're. They. They're. Their faces change from just laughter to just. Oh, my goodness, that touched really deep. So it can go from something very seemingly random and ridiculous to something extraordinarily. Deep in about 15 minutes. That's a lot about how long it takes. So take them seriously. The symbols mean something. Every symbol means something. And you have to do the work. So. Yes. So that's what I first recommend. The. The second is to keep a dream journal. Keep it by your bed, right? And it's going to be totally annoying if you're. If you're married, wake up and write it down. Your spouse is going to be upset, but if you have your phone, you can actually type it on your phone. That works too. But keep a track of them, watch them, see how they. How they. They move. You'll need some time to analyze them, though. And here's the process that I typically recommend for people to go through to analyze their dreams. You first, after you've written it down, you. In the morning, then you first take each symbol, each sort of major thing that happened, like an apple, this, the spine, right? You take those symbols and you create an association to each. So you ask yourself questions like, what comes to mind when I think of apple? Or what is an apple? What do apples do? Those sort of things. And you just allow for any association to take place and you write them all out. For each of the symbols, you also look for what are called archetypal amplifications. So how this symbol might have functioned in other contexts, other religions, other cultures, because these are universals that we're experiencing there. Okay, so you've mapped all these out. And then the second step is to look at the dynamics in your own personal life. So where in my life am I being handed an apple? What is this new thing I've been given? Where in my life is. Am I experiencing gestation? Where is something new happening in my life? And that'll lead you to this investigation of how the dream is speaking, giving you a new perspective on what you're experiencing in your life right now. So those dynamics from your life are going to be reflected in the dream, but you have to pay attention to how they intersect together, because dreams are going to be commenting on your attitudes, your feelings, but also where your life is out of balance. So I don't know if you're like me. I'm, you know, as a professor, you live in your head a lot. And that can lead to an imbalance. Right. So how are my emotions doing? How's my body doing? Right. And my dreams might reveal to me. I had a dream the other day that I was in a car driving up a mountain, and it felt like the car was going to topple over and go backwards on itself, right? What, you know, you have to be, where in my life am I feeling that way? Like I'm ascending too quickly. This is unsafe. So you have to be asking those questions. Those are where you get to the dynamics. That's the second step. The third step then is where you arrive at some sort of interpretation where you're connecting all of the symbols to what's going on in your life. And then you say, I think this is really what it means. And it'll kind of click. Oh, yeah, that's it. You'll have the. The click moment. It'll. It'll usually surprise you. It'll usually be very humbling too. Dreams tend to humble us rather than elevate us. So that's how you know, it's probably closer to the correct interpretation. You can also pray and ask for guidance. That's one of the most important parts of this too, because you could easily be like, well, I'm supposed to. I had a dream once, for example, that someone I knew was committing suicide. Should I run out and. And tell them, don't do it, don't do it. Instead of asking, where in my life? What part of me feels desperate? What part of me is giving up hope, right? So going back into yourself, looking at your own inner dynamics, then you realize, oh, that's what I need to do. And that's. The next stage is to actually do something. That's what they call the ritual stage. And that's the last, the final one. The ritual is where you actually perform an action that connects the dots for you. So for me, right, this dream about the apple, maybe I do need to go and buy an apple. Maybe that's it. I just need to go buy an apple and see. I get it. It's sort of a communication back to God that I understand what you're saying. I don't know if buying an apple would actually do it, though. I don't think that's. Might be also painting, doing something creative. Paint the apple. Paint what I saw. There's various ways in which you can actually engage in a physical activity that shows that you understand the message, right? When you understand the message and you communicate that back to God, back through your psyche, back to God, you feel this sense of completion. And that's when the dreams start to get more and more interesting. When you communicate back, then the dreams become more vivid. And so you get in this. In this inner dialogue really with your soul. So the process of it.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Well, I say wow because it's not something we hear every day, unfortunately, and we don't talk often about this. I hope you have benefited today. I know I have tremendously from even opening this door now. I don't know if I should sleep longer or less actually to make sure that. Because we tend to run away from things that would communicate clear with us and the message. But I do think, doesn't matter how difficult it might be, that we have tremendous benefit from hearing God's voice, from hearing about what he wants from us, what he wants in us, and to connect with our soul. One of the most beautiful things I've heard was a beautiful Christian soul from Egypt, a Catholic nun that came and spoke at this conference. And there were 10,000 people in the room and 100,000 people in attendance. She came and I could just see vividly how the whole place just came to a, to a standstill. I mean it was just a beautiful sight to see. And, and you had like prime ministers come and speak. You had top leaders in the world and was, and she was invited too. And she, she had a two minute thing and she said it's, it's important to silence your. Your words, to hear your thoughts and silent your thoughts. Silence your thoughts to hear your soul and silence your soul to hear the spirit and silence the spirit to hear his spirit. And just that line of how much silencing you have to do before you really hear what is truly deep inside. I think it's very powerful. And this exercise, it's such a tremendous value for us. And I can't thank you enough for sharing this with us. Not only that you shared your knowledge, not only that you shared expertise of science from the science perspective, but you even shared some of your dreams. So you've created a sacred space on MU talks. So I'm thankful for that. Thank you. Thank you. This is our time. Go ahead, Elia.

I had one more thing, if anyone's interested in a reading suggestion.

Oh, good, good, good.

The, the book that I was referencing there is Robert A. Johnson's book called Inner Work. It's a very, very usable book, very user friendly. You don't have to have any prerequisite knowledge to read it. So it's very good book. The other is Morton Kelsey. He wrote a book called Dreams A Way to Listen to God. And he's an Episcopalian priest, but also a Jungian analyst as well, so. Oh, wow.

So. And the only thing you need to have for this, for these books is dreams, right? You need to have your dreams, a few dreams. Okay, seven hours of sleep here I come with some reluctancy. Thank you. Thank you again and thank you for being with us on MU Talks. Renee, thank you for enough. Another another wonderful guest and and really hosting this for us. Here it is. What I want you to know today is that the views, opinions and dreams shared in this podcast are only representative of MU Talks and not of Monola University. So thank you.

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