By Amanda Moreno
We have once again entered what I fondly refer to as Pisces Dream Season. Usually, about a week before the Sun shifts into the sign of dreams and the abyss, my dreams kick it up a notch, becoming more vivid and intricate. I also tend to remember them more. This is not to say it’s the only time of year when dream activity increases, but it is the most predictable. So, let’s talk about dreams.
Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day
My background is in depth psychology, which at this point predominantly refers to forms of psychology that orient themselves around the ways the unconscious speaks to us, including the study of dreams.
In the depth psychological approach, we’re looking to understand the ways the unconscious speaks to us so that we can learn about the parts of ourselves that are hidden from view. We can learn how to heal the soul, that ambiguous and mysterious connector between the world of the mind and the realities of the body that gives heart and meaning to experience.
I find this approach to be significant for many reasons. Among them, depth psychology is a genuine science of the soul. The word ‘psychology’ actually means “logos (knowledge or account of) the soul.” Unfortunately, much of our psychologies have been stripped of soul and dried up into a science of the brain. I believe that as we transition worldviews during this time of monumental change, we are also being tasked with healing the soul — and how do we heal the soul in a world seen as soulless, one that refuses in so many ways to acknowledge the mystery of human experience as well as our innate thirst for meaning and connection?
Depth psychology and astrology go hand in hand, really. They both speak the language of the soul, using archetypes as the basic structure. Depth psychology needs astrology to give it cosmological context, and astrology can access depth psychology to stay relevant and personal, and to avoid being strictly a mental exercise.
One of those methods of personalization is dream work, be that by observing and potentially acting on correlations between astrological transits and shifts in dream activity, or seeking to understand the ways the archetypes come alive through each of us in the images our psyches — our souls — offer in the dream time. Heck, a few times in life I’ve been fumbling through the dream time only to have my psyche throw up a big ol’ astrological chart as if to say, “Here! Can I make it more clear for you?!” Unfortunately, much of the time my response is “Well, that doesn’t make it that much clearer — now I have to decipher the chart!” Ah, the longing for absolute, direct and concise communication that the psyche rarely provides.
There are some fairly easy, although at times time-intensive, things you can do to get more out of your own dreams. I do not recommend cookbook definitions of dream images, although sometimes they can be a good place to look if you get stuck or are curious. The reason is that each dream image is intensely personal. It is a robust attempt by your unconscious mind to deliver a whole universe of information.
This is why I refer to it as dream tending or dream work rather than interpretation. The psyche is multi-dimensional and dreams are alive! Water in my dream last night might have been clear, blue, calm and viewed from a precipice off of which I was about to jump. For you, it might have been rolling waves on a moonlit night viewed just as they were covering up your head. The images and intent of the element are quite different in each.
So, what are some ideas for making the most of Pisces Dream Season? Here are a few, although I highly recommend Stephen Aizenstat’s book, Robert Moss, or Robert Johnson’s Inner Work, which can be found at your local bookseller or online.
First, having a dream journal by your bed is the most important step. It should be at minimum a journal that is dedicated solely to recording dreams, set with a pen used only for that purpose as well. If you’re into it, have fun with it! Spend an evening decorating the outside of the journal with images you’re drawn to. This lets your unconscious know you’re ready and paying attention. It’s definitely best to write the dreams down as soon as you wake up, even if it’s in the middle of the night, as they tend to be quite slippery. Some people find a voice recorder more useful.
When you write the dream down, write it in present time as an invitation for the dream to come alive again, and refrain from adding in extra details or thoughts about what has happened. After doing this, you can reflect on emotional states upon waking or tangential thoughts.
As you keep a dream journal, over time you will notice repetition of images, recurring themes, and just generally get a feel for the way your psyche communicates, opening the door for more fluid understanding.
Free association can be a really easy tool for connecting the dots. Take an image from your dream, write it down and circle it, and then free associate out to other images or ideas. Always go back to the original image after each association. When you have 10-12, see which two or three (or just one!) have the most zing, and then free associate from them outward. See what memories, thoughts and realizations arise. It can also be helpful to then amplify the dream some way, perhaps through diving into myths that seem to connect or old photo albums from the time of the associated memories.
Interacting with dream images from a waking state can be a really insightful tool. In a quiet space, bring your attention to your breathing and then bring the dream back to life from start to finish. Imagine re-running it. Notice the landscape, textures, images and emotions.
After you have re-animated a dream, you can do several things. Perhaps you’d like to talk to a specific character or image. Perhaps you’d like to re-run it with a different ending. Perhaps you’d like to see where it goes after its official ‘stopping’ point. The imaginal realms are quite endless!
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Finally, it can be really helpful and meaningful to bring the dream into waking life by honoring it through artistic expression or meaningful acts of service.
This can mean drawing, painting or otherwise creating an image and then keeping it somewhere with your other dream creations. It could mean purchasing a tiny fetish of a dream-time animal. It could mean making a commitment to walking around the block thinking about the dream once a day for a week.
I myself have been incredibly lax with my dream work over the past few years, but can say that diving into them is richly rewarding — and totally fascinating — work. My psyche has been speaking up in some very loud ways through the dream time lately, even giving me a few rarely acquired but much appreciated phrases to work with.
There are so many ways to work with dreams, and there is something magical about unraveling the mystery of their language. I’ve found a lot of usefulness in simply telling my dreams (in present tense) to a willing listener who will then project onto my dream by saying “If it were my dream…”
So, Happy Dreaming Season! Please feel free to share resources, ideas, questions or dreams themselves in this space if you so desire.
