In grad school, I took a year-long seminar on sleep and dreams. We were taught an underlying structure for doing dream work: that every dream may be approached on three levels.

The first is the dream as reflection of the individual. Every person, animal, thing, emotion in the dream corresponds to some aspect of the dreamer. So, if an angry shark is attacking a sleepy little girl in a small backyard pool, we can think about what’s the shark within the dreamer, what’s the little girl part of the dreamer, how is the dreamer a small backyard pool. What’s angry in the dreamer, what’s sleepy.

The second level is the dream as representative of the self in relation to people and situations in the dreamer’s life (past, present, future). So, perhaps the shark has nose hair very like the dreamer’s dad, and the little girl is wearing a shirt like the dreamer’s partner and the pool is just like the one on a TV show the dreamer always watches. In the dream, the water is very cold. The individual might ask who is angry in my life, who is sleepy, who or what is cold. So, lots of connections may arise.

The third level is the dream as representative of the universal, looking for archetypal images, connections to the collective unconscious. This concept assumes we are connected to all things across time. We are connected to God, or spirit, or light, or soul. That universal relationship inhabits our dreams. (Every small backyard drama has universal themes!)

This three-level framework for exploring dreams is not very different from the structure beneath many spiritual practices. We strive to 1) love/know ourselves, 2) love/know others and our world, 3) love/know God.