Why do dreamwork? One could certainly do other valuable things in the early morning rather than spending time writing down dreams and images from the night before. Sipping morning tea or coffee, reading the paper, working out, reading devotions, or just getting ready to meet the day — all worthy activities. So why do dreamwork?

The answer, for me, is that there really isn’t any universal reason that one should do dreamwork. Dreams are interesting, entertaining, and, according to some dream researchers, dreams accomplish necessary functions regardless of whether we attend to them or not. Apparently, dreams help to integrate memories, thoughts, and emotions important for our survival. In fact, if we are prevented from REM sleep and thus dreaming, we will begin to hallucinate in waking life! Some dream researchers even claim that dreams, left unattended, still serve as a kind of “unconscious psychoanalysis” that works nightly to keep us in balance.

So, there needs to be some compelling reason for doing dreamwork, a reason that addresses a felt need on the part of the dreamer. A reason such as a desire to understand relational difficulties that seem to repeat themselves, despite our best efforts to change. Or one might want to better understand what vocation or career one is being called to. Or you might be confronted with the challenges of parenting or of aging, or some other life transition.

A common reason people give for doing dreamwork is that they desire to grow spiritually — knowing that our ego-centric lives, by definition, ultimately defend us against the authentic stirrings of our souls. When people feel that there is “something missing,” dreamwork is something they turn to in order to discover what their egos are unable to find.

This is the perspective of Jung’s view of the ego-Self axis.

As we go through life, we typically shift from being united with our deeper selves to gradually becoming more and more alienated from the Self, the God-image (imago dei) that is unique to each individual. So the question is a good one: “How do I stay in-tune with my own soul? How do I open up to God’s guidance in my life?”

Most forms of spiritual discipline do not help with this process of experiencing in a deeply felt way God’s guidance for one’s life. Prayer, Worship, Bible Study, doing acts of charity — all of these tend to rely on conscious behavioral practices. They do not deal with the unconscious, where the God-image or Self resides. While other spiritual practices, such as Centering or Contemplative Prayer, Lectio Divina, Walking the Labrynth, and Meditation do provide ways of setting consciousness aside in order to provide for a more immediate experience of the Sacred or the Holy.

Dreamwork enables a person to go more directly and consciously to the Source — the GPS system inside of us that God has so wonderfully designed for our guidance through life. Just as the Monarch Butterfly (See Flight of the Butterflies at IMAX) “knows” precisely how to travel over 2500 miles, not to a country or a county or a city or a town, but to a specific mountain peak where it has never been before, so we can find our way through the challenges, the storms, and the uncertainties of life to fulfill God’s plan for us by paying close attention to our dreams.

Of course, it involves taking time to write our dreams down, learning how to interpret our dreams, either alone or preferrably in a group. Also, reading deeply and widely in Jungian psychology is a must, it seems to me. It may take years to learn well the symbolic language of archetypes and one’s own personal symbol-world. But the opportunity to live one’s life feeling “fully alive,” deeply in touch with the same energy that formed the stars, the planets, the incredible diversity of Mother Earth, as well as the chance to make a unique difference in this world — for those willing to travel this journey, what a remarkable privilege!

Amen