Beyond Dreaming
We all dream. Our dreams take the form of fantasies, day dreams and dreams while we sleep. Dreams have different purposes. One purpose is to correct reality. You fix what is broken or unredeemable in fantasy — your wish for real life played out in dreams. You seek revenge or pride where there was humiliation. You win where you have lost. You are powerful where you were powerless. Our dreams can be very soothing. And it is very powerful to observe them rather than get lost in them.
Observing and evaluating your daydreams can help you categorize them. It is very likely that you produce fantasy fulfillments for both real and false needs. Compensatory fantasies or daydreams may hold the secret to all our regrets, losses and grief. These losses may need to be felt and lived through even as we dream about something else.
I am in a new beach house in a new neighborhood. My fantasies run rampant. I imagine I am a cast away on the beach, just my husband and myself. I am trying to recapture a time I lost when I married him with two small children and we never had that ‘ newlywed couple time.” I am popular in the neighborhood. Everyone wants to be my friend. I have a vibrant social life. This fantasy proves all the people who have ever spurned me socially or personally wrong. I will finally be queen of the prom — the prom I actually never went to at all. There are many Jewish people here. They are a bit older. I fantasize the reconstitution of my broken family. One couple is my aunt and uncle, another woman, a long lost relative. I even catch the glimmer of an alternate life fantasy. What if I never left my original Jewish neighborhood and married a Jewish man – my days filled with mahjong games and gossip.
I know I need to spend more time observing all these fantasies to determine which are manufactured by real needs and which are false needs.
In a dream last night I am in a comfortable private room in a hospital but then moved to a very uncomfortable triage room with harsh lights and a narrow bed. I am waiting to be seen by a doctor. It is 3:00 am. I am getting angrier and angrier as I am waiting longer and longer in discomfort. I am complaining to myself and anyone else who will listen, “How can the staff fall so far behind? It is 3:00 am!” Finally someone hears my complaints and I am moved back to the more comfortable room and a doctor comes in shortly after that. She holds a microscope up to my skin and uncovers a festering, blistering rash. I am so relieved to know that something is really wrong and to be attended to.
Upon examining my dream, I find in myself an irritation and disgust with all my physical symptoms and problems. I take care of them as best I can but I create in myself an environment like the dream’s triage room, barren and without comfort. I put everything before them and refuse to make them a priority. I make my symptoms wait until 3:00 am for attention, after I have done all other important matters.
Over the years I have found a new relationship with my pain. It isn’t something to silence, suppress, avoid, negate. It is a well I can draw from, a deep source of understanding for my clients and myself. And it turns out there is more work to be done. My dream points to a subtle harsh inner environment that still exists . And calls to me, “there is more attention, priority and comfort I still can provide”.
“A greater awareness of your daydreaming can bring many benefits. My advice to you on this path is that whenever you find yourself engaged in such fantasizing, develop a new approach. Observe, evaluate, weigh and determine, without strain, compulsion or pressure calmly and quietly. Make daydreams the useful symptom they are meant to be by learning about yourself, your real needs, your drives, your pseudo-fulfillment in fantasies and about their purpose.” PWL #98
Perfectionism stems from the belief that we are broken. So we dress ourselves up in all sort of ways in our dreams and fantasies to make ourselves whole. Yet we are already whole. We keep doing things to get God’s attention and actually God is right there!
