Dreams

Anecdotally, my dream life is much more vivid and powerful during periods when I am consistent with my meditation. I remember much more from them and they sometimes seem to signify something of weight to me.

Carl Jung – a proponent of dream analysis – was well aware that analysis was subjective, open to an almost infinite number of interpretations. Nevertheless, he thought, when probed, the dream often meant something significant to the dreamer. The meaning lies between the dreamer and his dream.

I’ve never cared much for dream analysis, and I still don’t. Still, the vividness of my dreams has stood out to me as very correlated with how disciplined I have been with my meditation practice.

I’ve recently been studying Sufism. As a tradition, Sufism is far more open to visionary experience than, say, the Christian Tradition as a whole. The only difference between a “vision” and a very strong or vivid dream seems to be whether the subject was “awake” or “asleep” – just different forms of conscious experience – at the time.

Creativity; dreams; perhaps visions; all associated with contemplative practice in one form or another.