I spent the day at a Dream Workshop studying how Jungian psychology can help us interpret our dreams. I did some of this in the early 90's, so it was sort of a refresher course for me. Carl Jung believed that God still speaks to us through our dreams, and I've had dreams that convinced me it's true. One of the most vivid dreams I ever had occurred in 1990 and led me to seek a new direction in my spiritual life. We used it today in our discussion and I discovered there are several elements in the dream that have never been explored. Here's the dream:

I'm about 12 years old and asleep in the bedroom that I shared with my sister Betsy in the old Baptist parsonage. I awake suddenly, excited about seeing the sunrise, and I run through the living room, the dining room, I have on white socks and actually slide across the hardwood floor in the first two rooms, then make the 90* turn into the kitchen, the back porch, and out the back door, yelling all through the house, "Wake up! Wake up! You're going to miss it!" I bound from the house, jump the ditch, and land in my grandfather's cornfield just in time to see the most glorious sunrise. I fall on my knees in rapturous awe of its beauty.

Upon awaking, I realize that I've just seen the sun rise in what would have been the North, not the East, hence, the "New Direction." The other very unrealistic element of the dream is that I woke up before any of the other occupants of the house, something I doubt ever happened in real life. I was usually the last, not the first, to drag myself out of bed, and it never happened with exuberance. But very unrealistic things happen in dreams, so we take what we're given and try to find the meaning.

Today I learned that the sleeping people in the house are important and each relates to me in a unique way - my sister, my brother, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather. There are aspects of each lurking in my subconscious that I need to acknowledge (wake up) and bring into "the light of day." So I plan to do some more work on this one.

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We're starting a Dream Work Group at St. Philip's, and I'm really looking forward to that. Tonight I googled for images of cornfields and found one similar to the one in my dream. With some tweaking and special effects I got close to the brilliant golds, reds and oranges that appeared in the dream.

There are several websites offering information and guidance in the Jungian method of dream interpretation, in case you're interested. I would start here, then check out some of the links, especially Tallulah Lyons' guidebook at the bottom of the page.