Sometimes the most important truths in our lives arrive wrapped in riddle and shadow. Not through conversation. Not even through thought. But in the images that come unbidden, on the edge of sleep.
A woman once told me she dreamt of a vast cathedral filled with dust and silence. She had not walked into a church in years. Yet in the dream, she sat alone in the pews, listening to something far below the floor. Not music. Not words. Just a sound, deep and unfamiliar.
When we worked with the dream, it became clear the sound was her own life, calling from beneath the structure she had built to survive. The cathedral was not a place of worship. It was a mask of obedience, constructed over many years of pleasing others and denying herself. The sound rising from below was a cry from the soul she had buried to stay safe.
James Hollis once said the psyche will not be ignored. It finds a way. And one of those ways is through dreams.
We do not dream for entertainment. We do not dream to sort through yesterday’s news. We dream because the soul is speaking. It speaks in symbols. In feeling. In strange and unexpected scenes. It speaks in the only language it can when the ego is finally quiet.
No one makes a dream. We do not choose them. We do not command them. They rise from within like fog from a lake. They bring with them forgotten memories, hidden desires, unmet longings, and urgent questions. And if we are willing to listen, they bring a kind of guidance.
Not the kind that tells us what to do. But the kind that reminds us who we are.
Many people say, “I had a dream, but it made no sense.” And yet when they speak it aloud, their eyes change. Something in the room shifts. The body remembers what the mind has forgotten.
There are different kinds of dreams. Some simply process the day’s events. Others try to balance us, pulling us back toward what we have ignored. Jung called these compensatory dreams. They often show us what we have denied. A man full of confidence dreams of falling. A woman burdened by silence dreams of singing in the street.
Some dreams come with the weight of myth. These are the archetypal ones, where a lion speaks or a child disappears or a wise old woman appears in a garden. They do not belong to our personal history alone. They are older than we are. They carry the voice of the collective soul.
And some dreams, rare as they are, point toward what is yet to come. A door not yet opened. A wound not yet felt. A choice we are not yet ready to make.
Whatever kind of dream it is, it comes with a purpose. Even the dreams we fear. Even the ones that confuse us. They are not mistakes. They are not accidents. They are messages from the deeper self.
But we must approach them slowly. Gently. We must not leap to conclusions. Dreams are not puzzles to be solved. They are images to be lived.
A woman once brought me a dream in which her child was lost in a burning house. She was terrified by it. She wanted me to tell her it was just stress. But we sat with it. Listened to it. And in time, it became clear the child was not her actual child. It was a younger part of herself, one she had locked away long ago. The burning house was the life she had built without that part of her soul. The dream was not a warning. It was a cry for wholeness.
To live with dreams is to live with mystery. There is no system that can contain them. No formula that can decode them. Each one is alive. Each one is specific. Each one waits to be welcomed with reverence.
You do not need to understand a dream in order for it to work on you. Sometimes it is enough to carry it, like a stone in your pocket. To sit with it. To ask it questions. And to wait.
The dream knows its own time. Like a seed in the earth, it waits for the moment the soul is ready to grow.
Tim – Soulful Nuggets Team
This blog is a reflection on the course ‘Introduction to Jungian Psychology‘ taught by James Hollis .
