What dreams can tell us about our lives
Author: Ortrud Grön
We dream, but only when we understand the language of dreams do we realise that we are being dreamed. Who speaks to us in our dreams and how can the language of dreams be unravelled and interpreted? The author, a dream researcher, dedicates herself to these questions and reveals how an inner instance within us communicates with us through the sometimes surreal and provocative images of our dreams and wants to show us a way by on the one hand living out our inherent desires and on the other hand leading a life in harmony with life itself.
An old legend has it, that a young man had a dream:
Behind a counter he saw an angel.
Hastily he asked him: „What are you selling, sir?“
The angel gave him a friendly answer: „Anything you want.“
The young man said: „Then I would like:
- a happy marriage that will remain happy until the end of our lives,
- good friends who accompany us on the path of life,
- Children who develop well and whom we enjoy,
- a company that is always successful,
- and, and, and…“
Then the angel said to him, „Excuse me, young man, you have misunderstood me. We’re not selling fruit here, we’re just selling the seed.“
This legend says that we get the seeds from God – but
the gardener who makes them germinate, who nurtures and cares for the plants – is supposed to be ourselves.
We are to understand our being as the garden in which we grow plants from the seed that God gives us, which blossom and bear fruit.
Our homeland is the love with which we track down the still hidden life within us. But every human being has to go through his own door. Life opens to each person the spaces that he can fill with life.
Understanding the other requires openness. If we allow fake harmonies, we cannot make ourselves aware of chaotic feelings. The repressed feelings then become a subterranean stream of mud.
Who comes up with such images? Who gives the individual so much love in the pictures of the world to show him the way to contentment?
Does God speak to us in a dream so that we may learn to understand his life? Yes, we need the courage to really want to experience life alive, i.e. joyfully. Life should be true life. And for this we have to constantly renew ourselves – just like nature.
Dreams are the workshop of spiritual life.
We open this picture book when we want to understand a dream. Teilhard de Chardin, who was a biologist and theologian, expressed it this way:
„I believe that the world is an evolution. I believe that the world aspires to the spirit. I believe that the spirit accomplishes itself in the personal.“
About the author:
Ortrud Grön, born 1925, founder of the cardiovascular clinic Lauterbacher Mühle at the Baltic Sea (www.lauterbacher-muehle.de) and after three decades of dream research, the founder of the Bavarian Academy for Health – Osterseen e. V., which teaches dreams as parables for one’s own behaviour in open seminars and trainings (www.bayerische-akademie.eu).
Photo credits: © Pixabay
This article was originally published in the German Issue of Tattva Viveka No. 81: Träume sind die Werkstatt des geistigen Lebens
