Inner Vision

by Lorrie Klosterman and illustrations by Diana Bryan, January 26, 2007

When you drift to sleep and into a dream, where do you go? Most of us were taught that dreams are baffling diversions from reality. “We in the West have learned that dreams are projections of the waking mind, or they are wish fulfillments,” explains Sarvananda Bluestone, a psychic in Woodstock and the author of a fascinating compilation of dream stories from around the globe called The World Dream Book. “Or they are subconscious, unconscious, preconscious, but definitely not conscious. By referring to dreams as either ‘sub-’conscious or ‘un-’conscious, we are stating that dreams are either lower than consciousness or they are without any consciousness at all.”

We are rather alone in these perspectives. “Most of humanity has seen dreams differently,” Bluestone says. Those alternate views include interpreting the dream world as a place of finding one’s truest self, healing psychological and physical ailments, discovering unique scientific insights, and communicating with and getting help from the spirit world.

This oft-quoted statement, ascribed to Rabbi Hisda from the fourth century, tempts us to look deeper into dreams: “An uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter.” What mountain of mail has been accumulating for those of us who ignore our dreams? How do we start to access them instead?

Dream “work” has actually become popular in the West, too, with a bounty of dream “dictionaries” in bookstores that ascribe meanings to those bizarre images that pop up—the three-legged dog, the boat on a dry riverbed, the slithering snake. But many dream experts agree that searching for meaning this way isn’t the best approach. Symbols can carry drastically different meanings depending on such things as one’s personal history, social context, and religious background.

Doug Grunther is an unquenchable dream enthusiast who recently completed advanced certification in Dream Work Facilitation from the Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work—another step in his dozen years of dream exploration. As host of “The Woodstock Roundtable” on WDST-FM, he upon occasion invites listeners to call in to describe their dreams. He, like his mentors Dr. Jeremy Taylor (founder and director of the Marin Institute) and legendary psychiatrist Montague Ullman, says we each are our own experts. Others can assist the process to some degree; an effective way is for the dreamer to describe what transpired and have a listener tell it back, giving the dreamer a chance to experience it again. The most a listener should do to interpret is, if helpful, say, “If it were my dream, to me it would mean….” Psychiatrists and therapists who impose their own interpretations, or insist a dream can only be understood through professional analysis have, Ullman laments, “killed the dream.”

Grunther’s dream work began with an affinity in the late ’50s and ’60s for Eastern traditions—Buddhism, Taoism, Zen—which opened him to non-Western forms of self-discovery. Then, in the ‘80s, he suffered a period of inexplicable, tenacious allergies that even the best specialists couldn’t alleviate. Grunther eventually realized he might need to “go inside” for an explanation of his malady. During that time he came across Dream Work by Jeremy Taylor.

“It just resonated; it sang to me. I started doing what it recommended—keeping a dream workbook, using the techniques, remembering more dreams.” Within a few months Grunther had a series of dreams that gave him some insights about what might be troubling him. “Then one day, all of a sudden, it popped. It was like the clouds parted, and I realized what was going on. I felt totally elated and exhausted.” Once Grunther understood the dream to signify his mother’s death years earlier, an event he had never dealt with emotionally, he found a therapist who could effectively guide him through that emotional work. Shortly afterward, his allergies disappeared and have never returned.