Turn towards your dreams

Machiel Klerk is a licensed therapist and expert on dreams. He is founder of the Jung Platform, an online space offering psychological and spiritual perspectives to live a life of meaning in which you are connected to soul and is also the author of Dream Guidance, Hay House/June 2022).

Machiel became interested in dreams in his early 20’s. He was stuck in life, didn't know where to go and had not dealt with the grief of losing his father at a young age. He became fascinated by the works of Jung, which opened the door to the world of dreams. He realised how dreams could help people connect with their lives, with purpose, with the worldview about life and death and all the other fundamental aspects of existence.

Machiel saw that his dreams reflected his own internal dynamics and displayed aspects of himself that he wasn’t aware of. He saw unhelpful behaviours being played out by dream characters and would then ask where in his life was it from. Once he admitted to doing the same things, he could then correct the more destructive behaviours but he also saw that dreams could be used to point out direction and the way to go.

If you go back to the last dream or a very intense dream you have had, you will remember that you were in an environment – you were somewhere where you were having an experience. A dream is a world you find yourself in during your sleep. Your mind is still awake in the dream but you are not very aware so you forget about it and don't even know you are in the dream world. When you know that a dream is a world that you find yourself in you can have and practice experiences. Most research shows that this state of consciousness stays with us the moment we wake up so we continue to live in this world with the dream world co-existing.

You might want to be able to join in the your own experience of the dream to make sense of it. Once you are there it is possible to learn the reality of how the dream is constructed, how your own mind creates part of the dream and your emotions, expectations and intent. You can also ask for experiences or to be shown something important. This gives us an enriched sense of experiences and makes us elastic and better able to carry out the broad range of emotions feelings and experiences in this world and be more resilient and effective with a more enriched balance of the experiences of life.

It is possible to interpret dreams but there are huge limitations to this. Usually interpretations come from the idea that the dream is a letter that needs to be deciphered whereas it’s actually an inner world or environment. If you ask a question such as ‘I’m in a maze and I cant get out’ almost inevitably this is an experience you are having in your day-to-day life. Your dream repeats this and if you can start to slow it down, start to feel in your body what it feels like to be stuck, not to know how to get out, you can start training yourself to feel that you have to hurry up to get out of this. By slowing down and feeling it, you may be able to sustain the tension of not knowing so maybe something else can come up as well. There is a self-organising mechanism inside of us that offers very creative solutions for the troubles we find.

Nightmares are almost like dreams with the eyes open.  The dream life and this world seem to intersect. Dreams often deal with fear and almost always there is too much or too little fear in the individuals life. Research after World War 2 was done with veterans who started to write down and acknowledge their dreams about what had already happened. The positive impact was that by paying some attention to what’s was going on inside of them instead of running away they turned to towards it.

Some people have recurring dreams that they get stuck on. Something in our habitual consciousness or ego hasn't been picked up on. The dream is trying to communicate a different style of living that's more conducive but we continue to run towards the thing we are doing that's not effective. If you engage with the dream then the dream will start rearranging itself and providing ways to deal with it. Write it down, engage with it or talk to dream character so habitual cracks open and the energy in the dream will provide a different state of consciousness that is a better adaption to life.  Turning towards your dream and engaging with it is the key. By pushing it away it’s making the dream reoccur. Dreams are providing information to interpret something from the past or to prepare for something in the future.

Dreams are often seen as goals and can sometimes be the catalyst to great innovation. Some breakthroughs in science, music and other art forms come from spontaneous, helpful dreams. People can proactively consult with their dream as if it's a counselor or a helpful friend in their dream who who responds to heartfelt, genuine questions about their life. It's a way we can engage with the world of dreams.

 You can find more about Machiel at http://www.jungplatform.com or http://www.machielklerk.com

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