The Healing Power of Dreams

Famous psychologist Ernest Rossi proposed self-integration as one of the crucial functions of dreaming.

Our psyches are incredibly complex and their many aspects may or may not be in complete harmony.

Unhappiness and dysfunctional behaviors often stem from internal conflicts between unreconciled parts of our personalities.

Therefore, self-integration is a necessary process for achieving wholeness.

Scientists realized that lucidity can be a powerful tool for facilitating the process of self-integration.

Lucid dreamers can willfully identify, accept, and symbolically integrate rejected parts of their personalities.

According to Carl Jung, we have a natural tendency to symbolize the disowned parts of our personalities in our dreams, as well as project them onto others.

In our dreams, these disowned aspects of our personalities take the form of dragons and monsters that Jung refers to as symbolic figures known as “The Shadow.”

What is necessary—to reach wholeness—is to accept and reconcile with the shadow figures in our dreams.

As Stephen LaBerge once said: “Don’t slay your dream dragons; make friends with them.”

The next time you meet a monster in your lucid dreams, make sure to greet it like a long-lost family member and not run from it.