Dreams are the language of the soul. Abiding in a domain that transcends conscious perception, they provide an objective and meaningful portrayal of our lives.

C. G. Jung’s unique approach to dreams and the creative unconscious reveals their forward moving, teleological dimension. Rather than simply retelling our past, dreams offer an intimation of a life waiting to be lived, an orientation into this new world, and ways to traverse its waters.  Entering the world of a dream is to truly step out of the everyday realm, to glimpse vistas far greater than we commonly see.

In working with dreams, we embark on a journey to discover the wisdom residing in the psyche. The universal themes of redemption, birth, death, love, career, and destiny are clearly expressed in our dreams through the same archetypal images we find in the world’s wisdom tales and sacred stories. Although this repository of collective knowledge remains eternally available to us, we tend to seek guidance about these transpersonal, archetypal images through our own personal frame of reference. Relying on a subjective understanding of dreams yokes us to the whims of the conscious mind, and closes off access to the sacred.

The four stages of a dream are the exposition, development, crisis and lysis. The exposition is the opening of a dream.“I am on the corner of the upper west side of Manhattan. I am on West 90th and Broadway.”The exposition places us somewhere at a place and time.

The second stage, development, is the part of the dream where a situation begins to unfold.“I am standing on the corner of West 90th and Broadway, and I see my cousin who I haven’tseen in 30 years.”Something is happening, and we want to find out who this cousin is who we haven’t seen in so many years. Something from the past, from our personal past is coming back to greet us.  There is a meeting, an encounter. There is an intimation of great meaning in this.

The next stage is what is called the crisis. The crisis is when something begins to happen, dramatic action. It is a call to action, a call to do something. The cousin may say in the dream, “I can’t believe it.  I have been thinking about you. I had to tell you what happened to Uncle Joe.  And I was telling everybody in the family that I didn’t know how to reach you. I really wanted to contact you, and here you are. Something very, very important happened and I just really want you to know.”

The final part is what is called the lysis or the solution of the dream.

Continuing our story line, the cousin then says,“Oh, would you please come over next Friday night?  All the family is going to be there, and we are having a big meeting to decide how to help Uncle Joe.”You typically don’t go to family events, but something makes you decide to attend this meeting. There is some action you have to take and a decision you have to make. So the lysis in the dream shows how the dreamer is going about resolving the issue.

There are two aspects to the lysis.  The first aspect is what we know to be our habitual way of handling situations In other words, although it may not be the most generative way, this is how you typically resolve things. So the lysis represents the habitual ego position, which may not be the most effective, but it is what you use every day.

The second aspect, on a more profound level, offers the dreamer an approach towards life which expands the conscious attitude of the dream. It is very, very different from our habitual patterns, and is a solution offered by the Self. The dream is altering you to think about responding in a different, more generative way.

In no way is this schema meant to suggest a rigid approach to working with dreams. Intuition also plays a very large role.  Intuition is really a subtle form of pattern recognition, and many times what we call intuition is really our unconscious (and maybe even conscious mind) simply picking up data.

The second level of intuition is pure intuition. For example, you are sitting with someone, and you suddenly have a fantasy about a roller coaster. The person then says “Remember that time we were on the roller coaster as kids?” I am sure you have had many experiences like that in your life where nothing in the perceptual field, nothing in your conscious relationship with the other person provided any data that would prompt you to think about the roller coaster.

copyright 2010 Michael Conforti