Dreams: A Bridge Between Spirit and Ego

: By Nora Caron

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Ever since I was young, I loved going to bed at night. I couldn't wait to drop off into deep sleep and experiment the massively expansive world of dreaming and wake up the next day with revelations and important messages from beyond. I started a dream notebook very young and today I have hundreds of pages of recorded dreams since 20 years, some of them still quite vivid in my mind and heart.

Recently I gave a dream workshop in Montreal and a circle of passionate dreamers got together to share their dream experiments and knowledge. It was a beautiful moment as we all realized that we had one major thing in common: we loved sleeping at night because of the dream world adventures!

Dreams as Teachers

I first decided to write novels when I was seventeen years old after I dreamed a vivid dream that the world was going up in flames everywhere and that people were being destroyed from the inside out. This vision is fully explained and explored in New Dimensions of Being, the second book in my New Dimensions Trilogy. This fire dream is what propelled me to seek answers about my mission on earth, spirituality, rites of passages, and shamanism.

Since this dream at seventeen years old, other vivid and lucid dreams have occurred throughout the years and have always pointed me in the right direction when I was at a difficult crossroad in my life. Dreams have been my greatest teachers because while my ego was busy running circles all day and being fickle, my spirit at night was going straight to the point and not beating around any bush. I like going straight to the core of things.

Dream Work Has Been Around for Thousands of Years

Dream work has been around for thousands of years, long before Sigmund Freud started using them in psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20th century. Freud called dreams "the royal road to the unconscious" and was convinced that if psychoanalysis didn't reveal the causes of someone's neurosis then dream interpretation would.

Carl Jung, Freud’s colleague and friend for several years, went further and suggested that dreams were not just the unconscious manifesting itself but that through dreams we were connecting with something much greater than ourselves, what he termed the Collective Unconscious. The Collective Unconscious is humanity's unconscious mind loaded with seven core archetypes such as the Shadow, the Wise Man or Woman, and the Anima. For Jung, dreams were an opportunity for our opposite forces within to unite and find balance again.

Both Freud and Jung discouraged the use of dream dictionaries and Jung underlined that we should always interpret our own dreams and that whatever "felt right" was the "right interpretation". Both these visionaries have greatly influenced our modern-day perspective on dreams.

Dream Interpretation Circles in Native Cultures

Dream interpretation circles have existed a long time in native cultures across the globe. The first people of this earth often gathered together to share their dreams and help each other understand their important messages.

Most first nations people differentiate between "big dreams" and "little dreams". Big dreams are humanity's dreams and little dreams are the individual's dreams. Jung was actually influenced by the Elgoni people of East Africa when he came up with his own dream theory. His spiritual side could not be contained in a simple mind model.

In our modern Western civilization today no such traditions exist. Our society gives little or no importance to our second lives happening at night. Perhaps this will change as more become conscious of their spiritual dimensions and missions on earth.

The Importance of Dreams

In my third novel Jaguar Dreams, a character named Richard discusses the importance of dreams and how they relate to our ego and spirit:

Dreams are like sign posts in the night; they lead us to our truths without scaring our egos who like to think they control reality during the day. Subtly, like magicians, they show us quick flashes and it is our job to decipher what has just been shown. Our dreams are gateways to the other world, the invisible world, the one we have trouble accessing every day because we think we control everything.

According to Richard's dream theory, if we forget our dreams it is because we have lost our connection with our spirit and unfortunately our ego dominates us. Our main quest should thus be to recreate the bridge between our spirit and ego and allow for both forces to be at peace within us. If our ego controls our lives then we have an empty sad existence.

Lucid Dreams and Higher Consciousness

In early 2015, German scientists conducted a study in which 31 lucid dreamers were called in to the Max Planck Institute of Berlin and Munich to see if their brains were different than non-lucid dreamers. What they discovered in their studies was that lucid dreamers had larger anterior prefontal cortexes than non-lucid dreamers. This suggests they have a higher consciousness than non-lucid dreamers. German researchers are now trying to find ways in which lucid dreams could be used to increase metacognition (higher consciousness) in other people.

The years ahead will be exciting as science tries to decipher the labyrinth of lucid dreaming as it relates to higher states of consciousness. We are standing at the edge of great discoveries and I foresee that science will become more and more interested in higher states of being.

How to Develop Your Second Life at Night

I recommend several things for those of you interested in developing your second life at night. Firstly I suggest you keep a dream journal with you. Also I recommend that you experiment with different essential oils and semi-precious stones to see if they could help you in becoming more conscious in your dreams and help you remember your dreams more.

In the workshop I gave recently we discussed the importance of not eating heavily before sleeping, of taking warm baths to bring our blood pressure down, of going to bed at early hours versus late hours, of avoiding stimulants, and of meditating before bedtime. All these things will help you remember your dreams more and perhaps offer you great new nightly adventures.

(Subtitles added by InnerSelf.)

Book by this author:

Journey to the Heart: New Dimensions Trilogy, Book 1
by Nora Caron.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book on Amazon.

Watch the book trailer: Journey to the Heart - Book Trailer

About the Author

Nora Caron has a Masters degree in English Renaissance literature and speaks four languages. After struggling through the academic system, she realized that her true calling was to help people live from their hearts and explore the world through the eyes of their spirit. Nora has studied with various spiritual teachers and healers since 2003 and she practices Energy Medicine as well as Tai Chi and Qi Gong. In September 2014, her book "Journey to the Heart", received the Living Now Book Award Silver Medal for Best Inspirational Fiction. Visit her website at: www.noracaron.com