Working on a Dream or Dream as Immaculate Conception

My mentor and teacher, Robert A. Johnson, liked to say “I do my best work at night when I go to bed and dream.” To say ‘working on a dream’ is probably backwards. It may be more accurate to say that a dream works on you. The images of the dream are clothed in familiar people, places, animals, and objects, setting the stage for our night’s journey. Through those images the unconscious is attempting to establish a communication network with the conscious world of the individual. That dialogue continues night after night, dream after dream. If adequately engaged with, the practice of dreamwork has the potential to bring about a new awareness. By establishing a relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, the dreamer gains access to the knowledge and wisdom contained in the unconscious.

All of our stories, collectively, originate from the place where dreams come from. We know this instinctively, but have lost our connection to it. One way to re establish the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious is to write down the dream. The act of writing on paper with pencil or pen is one of the most direct ways to capture the images and feel of the dream, its flow of energy. Sharing the dream with someone out loud can be an important and significant step for the dreamer while trying to build the relationship between inner and outer worlds. The act of writing the dream down first is very valuable and essential in order to stay as close to the unconscious images as possible. The less editing and censoring the better. This is raw material and it must be accepted as that without judgement.

“Awareness is painful and confusing, but this is dreamwork.”

Immaculate Conception

Francisco Pacheco, 1615-20

Dreams are the fruit of the labor of the unconscious mind. Every night we give birth to the images that have been gestating within the ‘womb’ that is our inner world. This is the meaning of the Immaculate Conception. The idea of the virgin birth of Christ is just that, an idea. It is the story of the collective peoples of a time in our history in which we still find ourselves working out the implications. Fortunately we are on our way out of the Christian era. A literal interpretation of the Immaculate Conception is no longer valid or working for us, if it ever did. This is a painful and confusing time, and the desire to cling to our past is strong for simply the fact that we are not sure what is to come. Awareness is painful and confusing, but this is dreamwork.