I dream a lot. When I was in graduate school, I was required to be in therapy, because I was seeing clients. Because I thought it would be interesting I chose a Jungian Analyst. He suggested, I pick up a dream journal to remember my dreams. The first entry was September 8, 1991. I’m on about my fifth journal and it’s always around, reminding me that a current flows beneath the ground of my usual awareness. The other day, I was doing an Astrology reading for someone and the subject of dreams came up. I told them how I had recorded 7,000 dreams. “What have you learned?” My client asked. Good question. The first thing that I’ve learned because of the “find” capability in most word processing programs is that the dream I had last night, often is related to a whole series of dreams I have had over the years. For instance, I have discovered on numerous occasions that what seemed like a stand alone dream was actually a link in a dream chain. Or a piece of an emerging fractal. I’ve woken up after dreaming I was doing something in Chicago, to discover that I had 26 other unremembered dreams over the years about Chicago that were thematically and emotionally related. Chicago is a “location” in my dream state. If I am dreaming about being in Chicago, I am dreaming about being in some part of myself, that I return to over and over again. And usually the dreams are progressive, showing that my relationship with that location is evolving. I’ve actually come to think that the “location” of Chicago isn’t really Chicago at all. It’s a location outside of space of time that I perceive to be Chicago like. I often feel the work of the dream is to tease out the symbolic representation that a place or person is to me. So to me, Chicago is the capital of the Midwest. The city at the center. So, when I am in “Chicago” I am dreaming of the man made structures built around my center. Likewise, I often dream of people both famous, and not. I will discover the same pattern of a dream about a person being a single link in a chain. This is especially delightful when I wake up thinking, “It’s strange I dreamed of that person,” only to discover I have done it many times before. One of the things I have learned whether the person be a public figure, or an acquaintance, that the dream is rarely about that person. If for instance I dream of a famous person, I actually realize it’s not really a famous person that I am dreaming of, but a part of myself that my dream ego misperceives as that particular person. So the work is never to go, “Oh, I dreamed of so and so, famous or not, the work is to tease out who that particular person is in me, that my dream ego misunderstands as having enough of the traits of a particular person, to be them. My dream ego connects the dots of a a character, and my job is to look directly at the dots which are usually parts of myself that I am not presently in relationship with. The amazing things about dreams is that they are NEVER telling you something you already know. They are communicating to your ego from the primordial ground of being, presenting you with a message about how it views a particular part of you. So the quick answer, “I’m in Chicago, or “So and so is angry at me,” isn’t what the dream is about, it’s just the beginning of a conversation between you and the Primordial about not presently understood parts of yourself. Parts of yourself that you are usually screening out, because they don’t fit into your current self concept, or even the self concept you’ve held your whole life. The self concept or Ego(both east and west) is something that has been formed in response to your initial environment, to cope with other people, and to make the timeless, spaceless parts of yourself, feel safe where it finds itself. There is no ultimate reality in an ego, it’s a construct, and it’s a construct that efficacy of, your dreams comment on nightly. You should take what they are saying seriously.