Every night we visit a fantastic realm where we receive one of life’s most precious and most undervalued gifts--our dreams. Dreams can provide creative inspiration, keys to understanding our past and our problems and even introduce us to parts of us that long to live. Dreams are nothing short of miraculous. Carl Jung said that “Whoever carefully observes his dreams may gain access to dimensions of his [her] nature which would otherwise be impossible.”

Dreams often come to tell us what we don’t know, what we’re not paying attention to and come in service of health and wholeness. From Dreams are messengers from the unconscious or from the soul and speak a language of metaphor and symbol. Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may hold.  It is the dreamer’s “aha” of recognition that is the only reliable evidence that we’ve understood the meaning of a dream. Dreams show our natural creative ability to face and solve life’s problems.

Dreams often have a structure that can be divided into four parts of stages. These stages are the setting, the plot development, the turning point and the conclusion. For example, I dream that “my wife and I and another couple are tearing out walls in an old two-story house. The women are doing the work while the man and I are lying suspended horizontally in air. As I reach over and take his hand, he quotes from Shakespeare something that means ‘what I am saying is not what I mean.’”

The setting is a house. The plot is that the women are doing the work while the other man and I are doing nothing, just lying suspended in air. The turning point occurs when I reach over and take his hand. The conclusion is he tells me that what I am saying is the opposite of what I mean.

Both context and associations are important in getting at the meaning of a dream. This dream brings to my awareness several aspects of what is happening in the unconscious. For one, the feminine is doing all the work of remodeling or remolding the structure of my inner life symbolized by the house, while the masculine is suspended in spiritual limbo as symbolized by the image of being suspended in air. This dream reflects the current state of my ego’s position. I’m caught in indecision, in uncertainty, in ambivalence, in spiritual limbo. This dream can also be understood as showing my ego’s spiritually inflated position as not having my feet on the ground. Not only does the dream show that the feminine in me was working hard at restructuring my life, it also showed that I was letting my wife carry the responsibility of repairing and rebuilding our relationship while I was involved in my spiritual exploration.

On one hand this was a sad and disturbing dream, which woke me up to the fact that I was not in touch with reality. However, I have discovered through the years that dreams are often paradoxical. What appears as a negative upon further exploration often reveals an underlying positive intent. Therefore, I have suspended a moral judgment of dreams as being either good or bad. For although this dream woke me up to the fact that I was not in touch with reality—I didn’t have my feet on the ground—it did get me in touch with reality: “What I say is the opposite of what I mean.” This was a sobering and unsettling dream. How was I saying the opposite of what I meant?

When I reached over and took the hand of this other man, thereby getting in touch with this other masculine energy in me, he revealed my unconscious situation and the message of this dream by telling me that “What I say is the opposite of what I mean.”

To say one thing and mean its opposite or to use words to express something different and opposite to their literal meaning is called irony. The ironic statement usually involves the explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation, but with indications that the speaker intends a very different, often opposite, attitude or evaluation. 

For example, I complain about the controlling behavior of a woman in my group of friends while failing to see my own controlling behavior, or I pride myself in my stated flexibility while feeling internally frustrated, even angry, when people disagree with me. To the extent that the ironic situation plays out unconsciously, that is, I am unaware of the contradiction between what I say and my feelings or behaviors, herein lies the shadow. The issue of the shadow is not about admitting faults; rather it is realizing that you are not as you appear—not to others, and not to yourself. 

The shadow contains those parts of us that for one reason or another we disown or wish to keep out of sight; qualities we would rather not see in ourselves, such as controlling behavior, jealousy, or deceitfulness. While the shadow is often seen as negative, it is often only negative because the characteristics are not valued by or are in opposition to one’s current consciousness or view of oneself.

The shadow also contains valuable unrealized potentials. Either way this creates an opposite or an “opposing other,” that which I would never want to be, or that which I can’t imagine myself to be, or that which I long to be, but won’t allow myself to be—the “not I.”

Over the next several months I began to look at the discrepancies between what I said and how I felt, and between what I said and how I thought and behaved. This dream set the stage for the entrance of the shadow, that “other” in me that was the opposite of my “ego-self” or “outer self.”

To learn how dreams are messengers from the soul and can provide us valuable insight into our lives I invite you to purchase my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling and see how dreams can connect you to the meaning and purpose of your life.

Go to https://www.amazon.com/Other-Man-Me-Longing-Calling-ebook/dp/B08N5LQ7NM