As you have seen in the preceding text, seeking advice from one’s dreams has been a universal practice. With Irina’s dreams I have given you examples of answers given by dreams. However it happens sometimes that the answer is ambiguous or that the dream gives no answer at all.

This is what happened to Helena. Here is the dream she received last week. Helena will soon be turning forty, she is a mother and since a few days she knows she is pregnant. She is wondering whether she’ll keep the baby or not. She wants to and she doesn’t want to.

On the one hand she feels a motherly desire, she loves children and family.

But on the other hand she feels like a woman who, arriving at mid-life, would like to realize another type of project in view of self-realization. She feels like going out, living for herself a bit, finding new, pleasant activities and meeting friends.

She is torn between accepting this pregnancy or not.

Once it is yes, and then it is no.

 She is tormented and decides to ask her dream if she should keep the baby or not.

 A very serious question, an oppressive task for the interpreter…….courageous. Let us see the dream.

Sarkozy’s son   

I have a son, his father is Sarkozy, the president of France. My son is a young man, strong and sturdy, very interesting and very reasonable.

Between us there is a great understanding and a respectful complicity.

He asks me if I have accomplished what I wanted in my life.

I answer :

- No, it’s not easy. I add that it’s never too late and that maybe I…

He smiles at me and tells me that I can share my thoughts with him.

I feel great strength, a real support emanating from him.  I wake up feeling happy.

Interpretation

Here are Helena’s answers during the interview.

I have a strong, sturdy, interesting and reasonable son. 

Helena doesn’t have such a son in reality, so this one represents a strength, a way to assert oneself that she has developed over the years.  She possesses the qualities underlined by the dream.

He is Sarkozy’s son      

It would be ridiculous, absurd to think that Helena fantasizes about the President, no, the dream indicates that this inner strength was the result of adopting the same values as him, as a way of living.

About Sarkozy

We are talking about Helena’s Sarkozy, of the personal image that she has of this man. This is not political, it concerns an interior dynamism of hers. So we must ask her the “interview” question :

- Helena, what is Sarkozy for you, what is he like?                                                      

- I love what Sarkozy says, we share the same values : order, work. I appreciate the fact he wants to sanction the trouble makers. I love his strength and his humanity, he has the courage to say out loud what others think but never express.

So this description defines an aspect of Helena’s nature which has common points with Sarkozy, as she sees him.

He asks me if I have accomplished what I wanted in my life.

Crucial question ! By this the dream asks the young woman to question herself on the meaning of her life and to take stock of it. Following this she could look inside and decide whether or not she will keep the baby.

I answer no, it’s not easy.  I add that it’s never too late and that maybe I…

Helena doesn’t complete her sentence, she keeps the rest to herself. This attitude shows that there are aspects in her that she doesn’t want to admit to herself, that she doesn’t want to look at.

 My son smiles at me and tells me that I can share my thoughts with him.

This strength which is part of her and also larger than her invites her to be authentic, to do like his father Sarkozy, to “have the courage to say out loud what others think but don’t express.”

What is the dream doing?  It’s asking her to dare to be truly herself.                    

Is that a direct answer to her question? 

No, the dream doesn’t answer, it leaves Helena with her own decision, it allows her the freedom of choice.  The answer concerning the decision of keeping the baby or not will spring up when she dares to be herself.

I feel great strength, a real support emanating from him.

The dream shows that, whatever the solution, Helena will have the needed strength to face up to it.

I wake up feeling happy.

She feels happy because now she knows that she is free, that whatever the outcome she will live as she wants because she knows that this inner strength will not fail her.

Conclusion

So this dream is an example of the limits of incubation.  Yes, the unconscious is benevolent but we must not expect everything from it.  We must exercise our own judgment, our will power and our freedom. If we asked the unconscious to dictate our behavior, we would be like machines. To expect all the answers from our dreams would be infantile abdication of our responsibility for our own life.  The unconscious guides us toward our independence, it encourages us to exercise our freedom of choice and to live the experiences that our choices have brought forth. Practicing incubation profusely won’t lead to maturity, on the contrary.

Illustrations

I thank the  French artist Mrs Anne Marie Volodos who permits me to illustrate our blog with her paintings.

http://mapage.noos.fr/anne-marie.volodos

Clotho :

Lachesis

Penelope

Jason Lewis : Tecmix.aufeminin. com

Sarkozy : backchich.info

Jason Lewis : instyle.com

Jason Lewis : people.plurielles.fr

Le grand Bleu by Mme Anne Marie Volodos

In our last release we saw the importance that dreams and incubation held in Antiquity in the Pagan and Jewish world, until around 300 A.C.

Christians in turn, perpetuating the long Jewish tradition, had exactly the same point of view and practices regarding dreams as members of other religions.

Remember that the Bible recounts over 200 dreams where God indicates the safest way to follow;

 for example the dreams in the New Testament  received by Joseph concerning the child Jesus, as wel as those  received by the Apostles Peter and Paul. You remember how Joseph, a pious Jew, sees an angel several times in his dreams. 

The angel tells him to take care of Mary, the pregnant young woman bearing the child Jesus.  Also, in another dream the angel tells him to flee to Egypt with her and her child to escape Herod’s massacre.  So, through the intervention of dreams, the child Jesus was saved.

He would later become Christ and change the established civilization.

In those days everyone considered dreams as being the natural way of communication between the human and the divine levels. Everyone knew that a man, through his dreams, could get answers to his questions and receive guidance from this information.  Incubation was a current universal practice.

 For example, around year 200 A.D. one of the most famous sanctuaries was built in the city of Pergame in Asia Minor, the ancient Greece, now located in Turkey, near the city of Izmir.

 The temple was dedicated to the god of dreams and healing Asklepios. There priest/doctors practiced their famous dream therapy and interpreted pilgrim’s dreams. 

At that same time, in the year 203, a young woman, Perpetua, was living in the part of North Africa, now called Tunisia, in the city of Carthage, not far from Tunis.

Perpetua was thrown in prison for her Christian faith. There, she wrote her life story before her martyrdom. Her story has been presented by Jung’s famous collaborator Marie Louise von Franz who also analyzed her dreams.

In her poignant account Perpetua tells us how she asked God to guide and support her through her dreams and especially to tell her if she should expect liberation or martyrdom. The process of incubation is very simple and furthermore she is in prison.

Perpetua indicates how she proceeds and relates :

“ My brother told me :

- Sister, you now find yourself  in a position where you can ask to receive a vision which shows you if you have to expect martyrdom or liberation.

And I, she writes, conscious of the benefits that God had bestowed on me through the dialogues that I was accustomed to having with Him, and filled with trusting faith, I promised :

-Tomorrow I will tell you.

Then, I asked a vision and this is what was shown to me…” 

She then tells her dream, which was received the next day and reveals the interpretation :

“We understood that the dream signified imminent martyrdom ; from then on we did not entertain any hope concerning this worldly life.”

Perpetua died in the arena and “she proved steadfast as she guided the death sword to her own throat when a young soldier trembled too violently to dispatch her cleanly.”* (Dan Graves)

Perpetua’s story confirms that dream incubation was widely practiced, by Christian people as people of different religions.

I could give other examples from around the world but my objective here is not to search for more general knowledge.  My objective is to awaken a personal interest in you and to inform you as to the possibility of gaining access to a living dialogue with your dreams, should you be interested in trying this new experience for yourself.

Bibliographie

The passion of Perpetua, Marie Louise von Franz, Paperback

Great Women in Christian History, Curtis, Kenneth and Dan Graves,

ed. Pennsylvania : Wingspread Publishers and Christian History Institute, 2004.

Illustrations

The Christ of Rio Janeiro

The two portraits are Fayum Portraits,  painted in Egypt, from the last century BC to the middle of 3rd century AD