Humans have been using dreams as a source of wisdom for thousands of years, and yet modern culture tends to disregard dreams as nothing more than patterns in the brain with little value to offer.

I believe this is a big mistake. One the Western world will have to come to terms with over the next century as scientific materialism begins to lose its dominant position as our culture’s source of epistemological grounding.

Now, I won’t tell you that dreams offer significant spiritual value. I’m not sure they do — though, in my view, the fact we dream says something deep about the metaphysics of our waking lives. For if we can be so convinced in the reality of our dreams only to awaken from them, what’s to say the same thing isn’t possible in our so-called reality?

The claim I do want to make, however, is dreams provide a direct window into the psyche, making them a valuable area of investigation for self-understanding and personal growth.

Given that this newsletter is called Adventures of the Mind and our main goal is personal development through understanding the mind, the dream world feels like a natural area of exploration. So, let’s dive into the realm of dreams and explore how they can serve as guideposts for our waking lives.

The mystery of dreams

I’ve always been fascinated by dreams. They’re mysterious while also being a common experience — we dream more often than we brush our teeth and yet still know so little about them. In a way, the wisdom of dreams is hidden in plain sight, but most of us tend to ignore them or write them off as amusing stories of the mind.

Even modern science can’t yet give us solid answers to questions regarding the source and purpose of dreams. This unknown is what makes dreams such an interesting avenue of exploration. Where there are unanswered questions, there are also discoveries to be made.

If you think about it, it’s incredible how entire worlds and narratives can be constructed in our dreams without any input from the conscious mind. It feels almost mystical. Like, really:

How is this unconscious creative force even possible?

Where is this depth of imagination coming from?

We’ve all had dreams that are complex, surprising and feel almost more real than real. Then when we wake up we wonder how the hell we were able to come up with something like that. It feels like the experience came from outside ourselves.

What this tells me is that when dreaming we’re tapping into a source of inspiration and creativity that goes way beyond what we’re normally able to access in our waking lives.

Whatever this source is — it’s there — and we can utilize it.

This raises the possibility of using the creative and intuitive powers of our dreams to learn more about ourselves and the world, and to develop our psyches in ways that benefit our waking lives.

After all, the complex environments seen in your dreams are created by you. They are you — whatever you means.

If anything, this reveals the immense depth and complexity of the mind. We have little understanding of how to access and utilize its untold depth in our waking state. But as individuals, we can start to better understand what the unconscious is trying to communicate — and how it works — by treating our dreams as an area of study, rather than dismissing them as nonsense to be forgotten.

And this is where dreamwork comes in.

Dreamwork

Dreamwork is an exploration of one’s dreams for self-understanding and the development of consciousness. When doing dreamwork the goal is not to simply understand the meaning of your dreams and then forget about them, but to contemplate dreams as an active part of your daily life. Your waking consciousness and dream consciousness play off each other creating a synergy that leads to noticeable changes in both states.

For example, maybe you notice your dreams frequently contain elements linked to work-related anxiety. This is the initial spark of self-understanding that can then be contemplated in your waking state. You could question what exactly is causing the work anxiety. Is it something external? An internal problem? Does it need to be addressed? And if so, what’s the best way to do that?

Using dreams as a means of self-understanding is powerful because it doesn’t hide or hold back. If your subconscious is presenting you with a repeated sign or symbol in your dreams, you know there’s a real psychological issue that needs to be thought about, even if you don’t take any action on it.

After all, your psyche is you, right?

You’re communicating with yourself. So it’s probably worth listening.

As you grow and your life situation changes, your dreams will also adapt to offer new insights. In this way, waking consciousness and dream consciousness are like the yin and yang of your psyche. They work together to help you find wholeness, to help you move toward the Self.

My dreamwork method

There are many ways to work with your dreams, but for now, I’ll keep it simple and share my experience.

The first step is to become familiar with the look and feel of your dream world — you’re establishing a connection with it. This means taking your dreams seriously and treating your sleep time as an opportunity to explore this aspect of your psyche.

Dreams are easily forgotten as your brain’s ability to form memories is reduced while sleeping, especially during REM cycles — the stages of sleep where dreams normally occur.

For this reason, it’s important that you’re motivated to remember your dreams and that you make notes on them as soon as you wake up. Your recollection of dreams will fade quickly, so you need to recall the dream and write it down immediately.

Some people prefer a written dream journal. Personally, I use the note-taking app on my phone because my handwriting is terrible after waking and writing on paper requires turning on the lights, which may disrupt further sleep.

I also don’t try to record every dream — typically, you’ll have several dreams in one night. Instead, I focus on capturing one or two dreams from the early morning hours, usually the last dreams I experience before waking fully (around 5 AM to 9 AM). This period is when REM sleep is most active, and the most vivid dreams tend to occur.

Remember, to try and record your dreams in as much detail as possible. This is easier said than done. But the more nuance you provide, the better you’ll be able to identify meaningful elements. Also, focus on emotion and mood. Dreams are all about feeling, so take note of these, not just matter-of-fact details.

Once you’ve built the habit of recording dreams you’ll experience a greater fascination for the dream world. You might even find you’re excited to sleep as it provides the opportunity to explore these hidden aspects of yourself.

After a couple of months of doing this, you can look over your notes and start to make connections between dreams and their repeated elements. Make a separate list of these common themes. This act alone will make you more aware of the peculiarities of your psyche, setting the wheels of change in motion.

I’d also highly recommend using AI tools to organise your dreams. After you’ve been recording your dreams for a while you can just feed the list into an AI language model, or similar, and get it to find common themes and symbols or get an analysis of what your dreams say about you. With that said, you can’t rely on it alone, the main benefits of dreamwork come from you personally working through and integrating the lessons from your dreams, but AI can be a handy side tool and is only going to get more effective in the years to come.

I’ve been recording my dreams for many months now and have been surprised by the repeating themes that have come up. Here are a couple of examples:

• Childhood and home — I have many dreams containing elements where I go back to locations of childhood or experience modified childhood events in surreal ways. My overall impression of these dreams is that there’s a longing to return to a simpler time and reconnect with the lost childhood version of myself. Realising this, I’m taking steps to get in touch with my inner child, such as spending more time doing things for creative satisfaction or curiosity.

• Obligations and escape — Dreams that revolve around being unable to live up to obligations, and responsibilities and trying to escape from them have also come up frequently. These are usually accompanied by a feeling of anxiety and overwhelm. I believe these dreams speak to overburdening and putting too much pressure on myself, while also not feeling equipped to take on certain responsibilities of adult life.

Again, there’s not a quick-fix solution to these unconscious feelings, but being aware of them allows me to make better decisions to improve my psychological well-being moving forward. This gradual change through awareness is really what dreamwork is all about.

Further considerations and possibilities

We’ve only scratched the surface here. I believe that dreams provide almost endless opportunities for self-examination and growth. My prediction is dreamwork will become a much larger part of the life of a human being in the future.

Sleep is a necessity and an enjoyable experience for most of us, but a large chunk of our lives is lost in sleep. I think evolution and human curiosity will lead us to a place where humans use their sleep time more constructively — for exploration, healing, growth, and more. Dreamwork and learning lucid dreaming — which I will cover in a future essay — are the start of this transition.

True growth requires turning inwards

This isn’t just a nice platitude. It’s a reality. Your inner world is real and active. There are secrets to be uncovered and discoveries to be made. Western culture hasn’t fully embraced this idea yet, but you can be a pioneer if you take the work seriously.

Lastly, dreamwork should be an enjoyable process. It’s fun to record and examine your dreams. Having access to a journal with all your old dreams is interesting to browse through. You’re exploring another dimension of consciousness that most people disregard and that alone should light the spark needed to get started.

Ben Worrall