Dreams Highlight the Roadblocks to Spiritual Growth

In my personal dreamwork practice and in my one-on-one work with dreamwork clients, I am driven by a primary objective: let us become more aware of who we are so we may choose who to be.

The path of spiritual growth is unique to each individual. Some of us got on the path after a health or relationship crisis; others of us through curiosity, insight experience, or religion. Some of us have known for quite a long time we were different from the average person in our school, family, work environment, or community. We sought to understand why, and how to survive and thrive in a world that may not be best suited to the way our brains, hearts, or bodies work.

I have been on the spiritual path for some time, and I’m grateful for my formal and informal teachers, as well as the communities I’ve been a part of along the way. All have contributed to the expansion of my mind and heart. What makes dreamwork uniquely supportive to me at this stage of my development, however, is that it illuminates that which is still (surprisingly?) hidden, even to someone who has made personal development and emotional well-being a priority.

For one, dreamwork has shown me ways in which I may have resisted the teachings I have been taught before now, or why they never sat well or seemed to work fully. Why I prefer Natural Dreamwork, in particular, is because the approach is very specific to the individual, and assumes both a benevolence and an intelligence inside the dream that aims to support the dreamer’s self-awareness and healing.

So, as a very general example, I may learn through a series of dream encounters that I may have resisted Buddhism’s teachings about letting go of attachments because of some previously unbeknownst-to-me reactivity I have around “people telling me what to do.”

Or, I may come to understand through feeling deeply into a thread across recurring dreams that in my love life, I may have been confusing intuition with trauma response, choosing men who seemed to be a perfect match or a “twin flame,” when they were simply a mirror of an unresolved attachment wound from my childhood.

When we are ready, dreams provide us with images, events, and encounters that pull back the curtain to present to us our very most tender blind spots.

Dreams and dreamwork show us how we emotionally react to others, whether they be teachers, lovers, friends, children, animals, or strangers. Hopefully, we also become more aware of the impact of our reactions, witnessing in our dreams how much our reactivity directs our lives, as opposed to our living a liberated life of feeling in which we choose who and how to be with clarity, authenticity, and intention. Certainly, we may already be aware of tendencies we have toward certain behaviors, judgements, opinions, etc. But what I’ve found through working directly with a dreamwork practitioner is that I have plenty more that I don’t realize, and that these reactions are keeping me from feeling and sensing more deeply, connecting more intimately with others, and opening to the world around me, including the hidden world beyond our ordinary perception. Which is to say: if you are someone seeking to expand your intuition or psychic abilities, there may be roadblocks to doing so you are unaware of. If you have unsuccessfully tried to astral travel, lucid dream, or meet up with non-human intelligence in a meditative state, it may be because of one of these emotional roadblocks. Dreams and dreamwork will help to elucidate what those are. It’s a good practice ground, too, for interacting with supernatural beings, the uncanny, and the surreal.

I strongly believe that our waking life behavior and choices, as well as our subconscious desires, aversions, beliefs and fears significantly impact our ability to expand our minds and open our hearts to love and compassion. Both are necessary for spiritual growth, whether you are seeking that growth for your own healing or in the hopes of acquiring extrasensory perception.

Mystical traditions, like Kabbalah, emphasize how important it is to attain an inner wisdom, maturity, and a “mastery of emotion” before dabbling in practical magic. I believe this is for good reason, both for the individual and for the collective. It’s not simply about knowledge or intellect, but also about feeling and understanding: an oscillating consciousness.

Our nightly dreams can be an exercise in feeling and our subsequent dreamwork can lead us to even deeper feeling, and perhaps, understanding.