Dreams incorporate the wisdom and guidance of nature in a form that is personalized for each individual. Dreaming is our primary connection to the source of being, call that whatever you like. If we are born of Buddha mind then he thinks us whole each night as our ego relinquishes control. If born of Mother Nature, then the Great Mother returns us to her womb to renew what we damage by day. As Jung’s star pupil Marie Louise von Franz put it, “Dreams are nightly letters from God.”

Every night in our dreams we experience directly the continuous stream of guidance (that still small voice) that can recalibrate our views and make each new day a fresh opportunity to get life right.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt [marvelous error!]
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.

And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

(Antonio Machado)

Dreams are “real experiences” within the psyche and they really do change us, just as our outer experiences grow us and change us. People who are prevented from dreaming rapidly deteriorate in functioning, so our dreams must be helping us while we sleep, even if we never remember them!

People who choose to study their dreams can magnify this benefit and accelerate personal growth. “Every understood dream is like a slight electrical shock into higher consciousness” (von Franz). To follow our interior dream guidance is a powerful means of inspired, self-direction.

Everybody dreams every night of their life as we are reconnected with our source and filled with a wholly personal and yet truly universal knowledge! The part and the whole unite each night, without which we cannot go on. All issues are addressed for all who sleep.

Since everyone dreams, we interpreters of dream should seek to communicate with everyone, allowing the dreamer to substitute their preferred language for terms like God or Soul or Nature. Don’t let simple word habits deprive anyone of the wisdom in their dreams. Remember Rumi’s elegant phrase, “Language is a tailor shop in which nothing fits.”

Whoever makes us makes our dreams. Modern culture obscures our connection to the web of existence we inhabit, while busyness distracts us from our inner nature. Fortunately, our dreams are a hot line to the divine. They keep us in touch with wholeness and health, no matter what. Dreams have provided guidance to people in every culture in every era. Truly universal, they are a cornerstone of all science, all religion, and of all art forms.

Our waking world is marinated in dream soup. Understanding our dreams is also the key to understanding our waking life! Our dreams reveal us to ourselves from the inside out. The central secret to understanding dreams lies in progressively grasping the corrective viewpoint of our higher self. To see our lives as our soul sees them is the treasure in each dream.

This involves seeing the spiritual roots of practical events. Dreams apply to our lives, the classic mystical principles that great teachers, poets and truth-tellers have always taught, and they address the life questions we are currently facing and will be facing next. Since eternity includes past, present and future as bedfellows, our dreams include many hints about what is likely and what is certain to happen in our future. The systematic review of past dreams reveals how very often this is true.

The same insights that make sense out of dreams can also explain the hidden aspects of our waking reality. In our dreams, we can talk to the dead. We do the same by day but Ego will not admit it. In dreams, we change identities by the minute, just as we do by day, while ignoring and explaining it away as “mere moods.” Learning to see waking life from the souls-eye view of dreams may be the most important spiritual skill we can learn.

Why not glimpse your personalized answer sheet to life’s upcoming tests? While the village idiot called Ego has the permission of free will to guide the boat, we are not required to follow the fool. Why not benefit from the wiser sources that inhabit our mind “when sleep erases the banal?”

After twenty years of working with dreams, someone asked how I first got inspired. The question took me back to an extraordinary weekend in the 1980’s. I was a private-practice psychotherapist who included a few minutes of dream interpretation in every therapeutic hour. Dreams often suggested topics to explore in therapy, and occasionally some real insight would emerge.

Then I saw an advertisement for a lecture on “Jungian Dreamwork” at the elegant “Old Main” building at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I arrived early and sat in the front row as a huge crowd amassed. I was surprised that so many people cared about dreams. As the lecturer, Tom Laughlin, began to describe the process of dreamwork, his assistant recorded every word for his next book; he had written two (now rare) books on dreams already.

First, Mr. Laughlin decried how “rote Jungians” had lost touch with the living soul of dreamwork. Then he related several amazing case studies that revealed the wisdom hidden in dreams. I was genuinely intrigued. He was a powerful speaker with impressive stories about a vein of living psychic wisdom. He said every dream offers us a living dialogue with the Unconscious. For some Jungians, that roughly translates as “talking with God.”

As I delighted in these fresh possibilities for understanding dreams, an odd awareness began to dawn. I had the clearest feeling that I had seen this man before, that I knew him. So while I took notes, I racked my brain for why he looked so familiar.

After a time, he wiped his forehead in a gesture which I absolutely recognized. Clearly I had seen this brilliant dreamworker before, but where? After half an hour, I tapped the person next to me to ask incredulously, “Isn’t that Billy Jack?” “Of course” he hissed. Always the last to know!

So this overflow crowd was not just here for the dreamwork. Many came to see the movie star who wrote and starred in one of the biggest hits of the 1960’s. Laughlin later mentioned that he had based that film upon several classic Jungian archetypes, and believed this gave it a depth that increased the movie’s collective appeal and cultural impact. So here I was, learning more about the power of dreams than I had in doctoral studies… from Billy Jack!

It turns out that Tom Laughlin had worked for many years with Jung’s star student, Marie Louise Von Franz and many other renowned Jungian analysts. After the lecture, Laughlin’s assistant enrolled volunteers for 90-minute sessions to be held at his Hilton suite from early next morning until night time: anyone could have a dream interpreted! I eagerly arrived at 9:30 a.m.

Though there was not time to interpret my own dream, I observed how, with carefully targeted questioning about the associations to each symbol in each dream, Laughlin could arrive at insights that stunned, sometimes amazed, and without fail, thrilled the dreamers.

Each and every time, with people he had never met, this movie actor could unearth profound and powerful insights that you could witness having a potent effect on the dreamers. It never failed. The impacts were dramatic and unmistakable. People learned important new truths about themselves that they often affirmed with passion and gratitude. This rich interior wisdom came from any dream of any length from any person! I was electrified, and my professional life changed that day.

Tom Laughlin allowed me to witness this amazing process in action for three sessions in a row; 4 1/2 straight hours. That is the day that the wisdom and power of dreams really hit me. That day dreamwork became my primary object of study and in time, my central professional purpose.

Before long I discarded all the rest of the therapeutic hour and focused only on dreams. The psychotherapy model was designed by some brilliant and caring people–but the dreams come from our source, from whoever created all those brilliant humans! Von Franz called dreams “Nightly letters from God,” and I have since devoted my career to reading the mail!

1. Opposites live within us all. I have worked with dreams for decades because they are the most profound spiritual guidance we all have access to each night. WhileI assumethat “I have chosen to work with dreams” the opposite may be true. Was I chosen and then lured by my dreams to serve them for a lifetime? In the psyche, all opposites are true. Dreams reveal to us our hidden sides which can often oppose us (Why else would swearing off Haagen-Dazs or smoking make us crave it even more?) but these oppositions are necessary to make us whole. When young you may emphasize achievement, later friendship may rank higher, but both were always part of you.

2. We are all method actors. Every night, every person is a movie star in an inner drama where we appear in one totally convincing role after another. We spend many hours performing in an endless series of gripping dramas each of which we completely accept as reality at the time. When I am dreaming, it seems completely normal that I live in this particular Yurt or Yacht or Castle that the dream has created for me! “Dreams are real while they last,” wrote Havelock Ellis, “Can we say more of life?”

3. Dreams imply that God likes to think in Stories. Every nightly dream is a parable made to order; a lesson just for us. Some mystics believe that we arestories unfolding in the mind of a greater presence. Waking life is as symbolic as are dreams. The eastern concept of maya means that while our consciousness is real, the physical world it inhabits is only a Waking Dream. This world is like a movie set that allows us to physically experience our spiritual lessons (while trying to hold down a day job!). “All the world’s a stage” and so is every dream.

4. Whoever makes us makes our dreams. Dreams wing from afar to nest in our minds, a personal gift from our Source. Each dream activity blazes neurological pathways which affect our future decisions as if the events had actually happened. Although the bear that chased you last night was “only a dream ,” your real heart was really pounding all the time! This morning, both brain and body believe you were actually chased by a bear, which can affect your point of view in interesting ways.

5. Dreams flow from the Cosmic “arche-typewriter” as a universal language through which we all commune with our Source.  Dreams inform our (earthbound) head what our (heaven-seeking) heart already knows.  Dreams email to the village idiot named Ego, whatever the sage voices within us want it to know. Jung’s star pupil Marie-Louise von Franz said our “dreams are nightly letters from God.” Are you reading your mail?

6. Every dream is Universal; Every dream is personal and ‘hints’ at specific life details. In the psyche, all opposites are true, remember? Dreams are globally personal. And they seem to know their entire future at the moment of their birth. They enrich and speak to anyone who pays attention, and yet every dream includes some meanings that are totally personal to the dreamer. It is because of dreaming that humans are so much wiser asleep than when awake.

7. Our mind’s connection to the higher self is like a two-way radio.  We must stop transmitting in order to receive. That’s why dreams mostly appear in the night while our mind is off duty. First the mouth, and then the mind, must stop talking for us to hear the inner wisdom which operates all day long beneath awareness and emerges in dream by night.  We mostly obscure the still, small voice by broadcasting our own reality-maintaining, wall to wall, mental chatter. That ego chatter is often called Monkey Mind.

8. Free will includes how we use our attention. The poet Allen Ginsberg, in teaching writing and awareness, always advised: “Notice what you notice.” Meditation and receptivity quiet the mind and allow us to intuit by day the messages that dreams portray dramatically by night. Observers have written that Aldous Huxley, when asked any question at all, would close his eyes, go to a place of deep inner knowing and return–every time– with a gem of insight. Until we master such focus, dreams are the best training ground we have for hearing the continuous wisdom of the guide inside.