Toward a role for dreams and images in a spiritual emergence process: a case study (original) (raw)

Review of Dreams & Dream-like Experiences: Their Role in Spiritual Emergence Processes

Darlene Viggiano's research explores dreams and dream-like experiences (DLEs) and their function in healing and wholeness in spiritual emergence experiences--coming back to ourselves in relation to the earth; the body, mind and spirit; and to the presence of being. She places numinous experiences at the forefront of healing when she queries: what is the role of dreams and DLEs (daydreams, reveries, and similar experiences) in the spiritual emergence processes? Spiritual emergence is defined "as the problematic awakening or maturation within the psyche of that which is capable of relating to a sense of the divine" (p. 12). She examines historical literature and seven interviews through a Jungian hermeneutic lens coupled with Research-Ware Inc.'s HyperRESEARCH software for objectivity and reliability. Through this, Viggiano demonstrates dreams and DLEs offer healing, guidance, instruction, revelation, and connections, and that such dreaming is animating and enlivening. Through these roles and functions, they aid dreamers in comprehending their phenomenological experience in the spiritual emergence process. In bringing attention to the transpersonal images, themes, and patterns in dreams and DLEs during spiritual emergence, one may glean what kind of person one is becoming. In addition, what important aspects of one's being are reaching up into consciousness toward manifestation and action. I suspect the attention and reflection upon dreams and DLEs aid the individual in traversing the spiritual emergence process by helping the ego reference itself within a psyche that is shifting.

The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation

Pastoral Psychology, 2009

Dream content is meaningfully related to waking life religiosity, so much so that reading a person's dream reports "blindly," without any other personal information or associations from the dreamer, can reveal with surprising accuracy his or her basic waking attitude toward religion and spirituality. Two long-term dream journals are analyzed in this manner, and the results demonstrate that dream content is an accurate reflection of a person's religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. The significance of this for pastoral psychologists lies not in specific new techniques of dream interpretation but more fundamentally in supporting the practice of paying attention to dreams in the first place. The goal of the article is to build a bridge between pastoral psychological interest in dreams and the latest findings in the scientific study of dreaming. Contrary to the assumption that religion and science inevitably conflict with each other, dreaming offers an area of potential religion-science convergence.

Identifying and utilizing spiritual content in dream reports

Dreaming, 2001

The question posed by this investigation was whether the spiritual content of dreams could be identified. The Casto Spirituality Scoring System (CSSS) was used to identify spiritual elements in 1,666 dream reports obtained in dream workshops in six countries. The CSSS considers the adjective "spiritual" as a hypothetical construct referring to one's focus on, and/or reverence, openness, and connectedness to something of significance believed to be beyond one's full understanding and/or individual existence. The research question was answered affirmatively. All dream reports were scored by two judges working independently for spiritual objects, settings, activities, emotions, and experiences, with an overall reliability of no less than .90 per item. The collection of dream reports with the highest percentage of spiritual content came from Brazil. This investigation includes quantitative analyses and examples of dream reports in each of the categories identified. It also discusses the therapeutic use of dreams with spiritual content.

The Identification of Spiritual Content in Dream Reports

Anthropology of Consciousness, 1999

This investigation was designed to evaluate a new dream content measure, the Casto Spirituality Scoring System. Therefore, our research question was: "Can the spiritual content of dream reports be identified and measured?" We randomly selected 20 male and 20 female dream reports obtained in dream seminars in each of six countries. We added 20 dream reports from one U.S. female and one U.S. male undergoing "spiritual development" programs. Of the 280 dream reports in our collection, 59 contained spiritual content, according to our definition of "spiritual" as one's focus on, and/or reverence, openness, and connectedness to something of significance believed to be beyond one's full understanding and/or individual existence. The research question was answered affirmatively in so far as the Casto Spirituality Scoring System yielded high reliability when the scores of two judges, working independently, were compared. These initial results are promising but further research needs to be done before the usefulness of this system can be fully demonstrated.

Dream Interpretation: Practical Methods for Pastoral Care and Counseling

Pastoral Psychology, 2000

This article outlines a simple, straightforward set of practical dream interpretation methods which pastoral caregivers can use any time a client's dream becomes relevant to the counseling situation. The article describes seven elements to the successful interpretation of a dream, offers a brief illustration of how dream interpretation works in practice, and explains how to test the validity of an

Spiritual and religious imagery in dreams: A cross cultural analysis

International Journal of Dream Research, 2013

The continuity hypothesis of dreaming suggests that waking day experiences are reflected in dream imagery; research suggests that some waking day experiences have a higher probability of being reflected in dreams than others (Schredl, 2006; Schredl & Hoffmann, 2003). In order to assess the degree to which religious or spiritual beliefs are incorporated from waking life into sleep mentation, a cross-cultural study was undertaken to compare the frequency of dream imagery between two different cultural settings (the United Arab Emirates, and Canada). Results suggested that the dreams from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sample contained significantly more religious/spiritual imagery than the Canadian sample. The UAE student dreams also had more frequent incorporations of a wider variety of imagery categories. Results suggest that religious/spiritual beliefs and practices may have a large impact on dream content.

The influence of impactful dreams on self-perceptual depth and spiritual transformation

Two studies contrasted the short-term effects of nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams (Busink & Kuiken, 1996; Kuiken & Sikora, 1993). Results from Study 1 indicated that existential dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, transcendent dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported self-perceptual depth; also, transcendent dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, existential dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported spiritual transformation. Results from Study 2 replicated these findings for existential dreams, indicating also that the type of spiritual transformation associated with transcendent dreams involved an ecstatic sense of release from everyday entanglements. Both existential dreams and transcendent dreams moved the dreamer toward an unbounded sense of life in all things, as did lucid forms of all three dream types. Such unbounded enlivenment suggests an aesthetic substrate to the changes induced by each of these dream types. The contrasting short-term effects of impactful dream types may require integration into a comprehensive model of long-term dream function.

DREAM SYMBOLS AND PREVALENT PERSONAE IN THE BEST AND WORST DREAMS OF CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Ilorin Journal of Religious Studies, 2019

The paper explores dream symbolization and prevalent dream personae in the best and worst dreams of university students. Thirty male and thirty female English major Christian students at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria were used as samples. Among the findings were: symbolization in the dreams of the students was clearly outside university academic work or other campus experiences; symbolization was largely verbal and not visual; generally. Verbal symbols (i.e. words) standing for referents in the outside world were higher than those standing for referents in the world of the imagination in the dreams. Symbolization relating to the past featured least in the dreams while the present featured most. The overall attempt in the work was to juxtapose science and psychoanalysis (through dreams) with Christianity via the sixty Christian students used as samples to exemplify and particularize, from a novel angle, the nexus in the science and religion dialogue.