There are places inside us that time alone cannot reach. Not because they are hidden, but because they live outside the daylight mind. They dwell where memory slips its name and language turns to image. And every night, we enter that place again.
The dreamworld is not a casual accident of the brain. It is a second creation, crafted in shadow, carried by soul. You cannot think your way there. You cannot make a map of it. But it knows you. It remembers you, even when you forget yourself.
In myth, the soul speaks in riddles and sings in symbols. That is how it survives. It does not shout. It sends a snake into the hallway. A child behind glass. A house on fire. The image matters more than the explanation.
We think dreams are random. But the psyche does not waste its fire. The soul has business at night. The dream is shaped like a key. And the life you are trying to live has locked doors.
Some dreams speak in the voice of the day just passed. Others whisper of the life unlived. These are the ones that haunt. Not because they frighten us, but because they carry a secret we almost forgot.
A man dreams he is walking through water that rises to his chest. He is holding a book that must not get wet. He struggles to keep it dry. But the river deepens. The book slips. He cannot save it.
The dream does not explain itself. But it knows. It knows that he has lived from knowledge and held meaning above feeling. It knows what must be surrendered. Not the wisdom, but the tight grip on it. The river is rising, and the soul wants to feel.
James Hollis once said that dreams are the psyche’s attempt to restore us to ourselves. Not to an old version, but to what we are becoming.
In the old stories, a hero must sleep before the truth is revealed. Sleep brings the dream. And the dream brings the riddle. It is not solved in the head. It is lived through. It has to burn its way into the bones.
Some dreams arrive to break the pattern. Some come to show us we are caught. Others carry the old wound wrapped in new cloth. They offer no advice, but they leave us changed. Not because we understand, but because something in us has been touched.
Dreams cannot be forced. But they respond to welcome. They rise for those who pay attention. If you write them down, they grow sharper. If you share them, they grow larger. If you return to them, they may open their hands.
In the beginning, every dream is a stranger. But if you sit with it, it becomes kin. It speaks with the accent of your soul. Not the polished voice, but the voice that trembles. The one that remembers when you forgot.
There is no dream too small. No symbol without root. Even the ones that confuse you belong. Even the ones you wish away carry medicine. The nightmare is not here to hurt you. It is here because something in you hurts.
We come to the dream not to decode, but to descend. We follow the trail of images down into the dark. The light we find there is not given from above. It is found inside the stone.
The soul does not want you to solve the dream. It wants you to feel it. To breathe with it. To live as if the dream were still unfolding.
And in a way, it is. The dream has not ended. It waits for the one who dares to live in the presence of the unseen.
Madeline – Soulful Nuggets Team
This blog is a reflection on the course ‘Introduction to Jungian Psychology‘ taught by James Hollis .
