The Dreams Are Back

Three days ago I started remembering my dreams again. Last night, a gray cat knew who had been murdered; I lay on the floor trying to convince him to tell me.

This new series of dreams has a much darker tone; gone are the laughter, the fun, the joking with friends. Instead, these latest dreams are filled with images of war, murder, and uncertainty. This is clearly a new phase.

It's pretty typical to see groups of dreams follow patterns like this. Sometimes a set of images will appear consistently over a period of days or weeks, then give way to another series, only to reappear later on. I expect my laughing friends will come back to visit, even while the darker images prevail. Psyche often seems to send reassuring images to lighten the load of darkness as we work through difficult times.

A wonderful book that details a woman artist's psychological journey via her dream images is The Dreaming Way by Patricia Reis and Susan Snow. It documents the healing power that dream images can have when they are used consciously.