Dream Weaving Jeremy Taylor Views Dreams As An Integral Part Of Health And Wholeness

The dreamer twirls the lock on her high school locker. She’s forgotten the combination. She rushes to the principal’s office, only to find a long line ahead of her.

She darts back into the hallway. She’s lost her class schedule, too. She heads into the first class she finds. It’s the wrong one. But the lecture has already begun and she hates to disturb the other students. Resigned, she sits back and listens to a lecture she doesn’t need to hear, in a place she doesn’t need to be.

This classic dream of frustration recurs in the REM sleep cycles of three Spokane sisters. They only recently realized that all three had been dreaming this identical dream for years. Right down to the glassedin principal’s office.

Spooky? Eerie? A tale for the tabloids?

Not a bit, said Jeremy Taylor, a nationally known dreams expert who will conduct a workshop on the topic in Spokane this weekend. “I think we do ourselves a great disservice to call it supernatural,” Taylor said in a recent telephone interview from his home in San Raphael, Calif. “Siblings often have the same dreams. It’s not that unusual. It only seems unusual because we’ve gotten out of the habit of sharing dreams.”

Taylor, who recently ended his term as president of the Association for the Study of Dreams, finds this sleepy world of swirling images, disconcerting symbols and vivid feelings rich with meaning.

Practically every other culture in the world would agree, Taylor said. “Western industrial society is unique in its reluctance to talk about dreams and take dreams seriously.”

His book “Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill” is subtitled: “Using the Dreams to Tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious.”

“The single most important conclusion I have come to in my work is that all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness,” Taylor wrote in that book. “In other words, there really is no such thing as a ‘bad dream.”’

Dreams bring important messages regarding the dreamer’s physical health, emotional well-being and spiritual wholeness, Taylor said. They communicate in a common language of symbol and emotion which transcends culture, and taps what psychologist Carl Jung labeled “the collective unconscious.”

In his lecture and workshop in Spokane, Taylor will discuss “Unleashing the Creative Power of Dreams.” His visit here is sponsored by the Samaritan Counseling Center.

He advises people to form groups to share dreams and discover their meanings together.

After one of Taylor’s previous visits to Spokane, Larry Winters formed a dream group. A recently retired United Church of Christ minister, Winters is aware of five dream groups in the Inland Northwest.

“I think the topic is just now beginning to come alive,” Winters said. “I think it is a subject of a lot of mystery for most folks.”

This month’s Life magazine featured a cover story on dreams. Taylor and the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams appear in the article.

Taylor’s reaction to the piece was mixed. “I think P.T. Barnum was right,” he said. “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”

People who pay attention to their dreams begin to swear by them.

“I have made life decisions based on my dreams,” Winters said.

Among the most startling messages are those that concern the dreamer’s physical health.

One woman in Taylor’s dream group dreamed of rotten meat in her purse. She was found to have uterine cancer. Another, who dreamed of a house with damaged brick in the fireplace, was soon told she had dangerous stomach ulcers.

Taylor said the dream’s surroundings often signify the health of the body.

If the dreamer encounters a sunny street, with smooth sidewalks and buildings with firm walls, his health is likely to be fine.

But if he dreams of cracked sidewalks, muddy streets, soft walls on the buildings and a general sense of distrust and unease, the dream may indicate illness.

Dreams work on multiple levels. According to Taylor, only the dreamer can discover the dream’s true meaning.

“The answer is this experience of the ‘aha,”’ Taylor said. “When you have an ‘aha,’ you can be sure that what the dreams mean is true.”

In Spokane, Winters finds that people begin to listen to the messages of their dreams in mid-life.

“The agenda of mid-life and beyond is to nurture one’s own soul,” he said.

In San Rafael, Taylor believes that people can tackle large social issues by sharing their dreams. One group managed to heal a serious racial conflict through this technique.

As Taylor travels throughout the world - the Association for the Study of Dreams is international - he discovers that at certain periods, similar dreams will crop up around the world at the same time.

A year or so ago, Taylor began hearing reports of a group of monkeys moving through people’s dreams. They’d jump up on tables and knock things over. He wondered if they reflected fears about the Ebola virus.

Earlier, he heard that a number of people were dreaming of a storm gathering over the Earth. The dreamers were gazing down on the planet from space, and the storm was alternately described as heading over Florida or the southern tip of Africa.

Winters said, “To me there’s no question but there’s a big stick stirring people’s consciousness throughout the world.”

But there appear to be no easy explanations for these strange images.

“I don’t explain them,” Taylor said firmly. “I just stand up and say they are there.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: 1. LEARN MORE Jeremy Taylor’s lecture will be at 7 p.m. Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church at Government Way and Fort George Wright Drive. Cost is $5. His workshop will be Saturday and Sunday at Holy Names Music Center, 3910 W. Custer. Cost of the workshop and lecture is $105. For more information, call 747-8214.

2. TIPS FOR REMEMBERING YOUR DREAMS Get plenty of sleep. Avoid alcohol. Keep a pen and notebook beside your bed. Attach a small flashlight to your pen for recording middle-of-thenight dreams. Before falling asleep, remind yourself to remember your dreams. Upon wakening, lie in the same spot until your dream images return. Draw key images from your dream (stick figures are fine). Join a dream group.