Dreams are mentors

Those title of this story was written on the top of some material I had when I was in formation to be a spiritual director. Little did I know that those words were exactly what I needed to see twenty years later. I am having so many dreams of people that I haven't seen or thought of very often for years. Why?

We have been told that dreams are just a way for the mind to satisfy it's unfulfilled desires or it's just a bit of boiled beef disturbing the stomach.(Thank you, Charles Dickens) Mostly, I think we ignore our dreams, laugh at them, or shrink from them. What if the following statement by the Psychiatrist Carl Jung is true :

"We have forgotten that age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.".

Lead by a dream, I took my oldest grandson out for ice cream when he was going through a difficult time. Just he and I, to get ice cream. In the dream he had poured out his heart about the problem. I just knew I was being directed to try to have that conversation. Off we went alone, which was very unusual, and although he didn't say much, I told him I was sorry he was experiencing a hard patch and he could call me anytime if he needed help. It didn't turn out like the dream but I sensed going forward a closeness that we didn't have before.

The most profound one I had was after my sister passed away. We had been estranged for 4 years before her death and nothing I did was enough to mend the rift. So I asked my deceased Mother to fix it. Two weeks before her passing, my sister and I reconciled and I spoke to her on the phone the day she died. A week later, I had this briefest of dreams:

I walked into a bare room with only two chairs. My mother and sister sat side by side with their heads touching. I said : "It's been a long time, are you O.K ?" My mother said: "We're fine."

That was a visit. I know it.

It was a dream of his deceased father that brought the brilliant Jung to consider that maybe there is an after life. In tribal societies, dreams often comprised an alternative spiritual reality to which humans gained access only through the dream state.

Time is short, think of what we may be missing. Dreams can be mentors.