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Dreams are the best way to know yourself because dreams are able to show us ourselves better than any other life experience. The dream shows us the whole self, the true self, the inner and outer self, the conscious and unconscious. Dreams show us our negative self and our positive self, our limited and unlimited self.
Dreams are not limited by time and space and are certainly not limited by physics. We can dream about people from different times in our lives as well as from different places. We can dream about the past, including possibly our past lives, and the future, with precognitive dreams sometimes giving us timely warnings.
The process of getting to know yourself is a tricky one, filled with adventure and with danger. If there is something negative that we need to know about ourselves, our dreams will not hesitate to show it to us. The monster in one dream is as much a part of us as the angel in another. It could be said that dreams are nothing more than movies about us.
No matter what creatures or adventures await us in the dream, all are telling us something about the self. We may dream of other people, but even the other people in our dreams are telling us something about us. How is this possible?
One of the most important aspects of psychology, which goes back to Sigmund Freud, is the idea of projection. Projection is simple to understand. Qualities that we deny or suppress in the self are projected onto other people. We then react to these other people, judging them and disliking them, because they are showing us qualities we do not want to look at in ourselves. They may exaggerate these qualities in order to get our attention. Nevertheless, we are always projecting self out onto the world.
Because of projection, I believe that our waking life experiences can be seen as another form of dream. If we are projecting the self onto others, then we can interpret our daily experiences and interactions with others as if they were dreams. If aunt Mabel represents some part of you in the dream, maybe she represents the same thing in your waking life.
Carl Jung talks about the Shadow as one of his archetypes. The Shadow represents those aspects of ourselves that we have denied and repressed and projected onto others. But our dreams don't just show us our faults or denied negativity. They also show us our potential, our power, beauty, and divinity. These things we also tend to deny and repress and project onto others.
If we want to know the whole self, we must also
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Knowing yourself through your dreams
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