Written by Lumi (Changyi Li), Visionary Artist & Healer
Lumi (Changyi Li) is an art healer and intuitive known by her visionary art and embodied spiritual practices on the journey of self-healing and personal growth. She created Illumina Free Soul Art, an online platform to heal and empower the world through authentic and heartfelt expression.
If you consciously walk on your personal growth path, dreams can be a helpful and inspiring guide and ally to your journey. It is the unconscious, or your soul self, reminding you of your inner status, life lessons, vocations, and where you are on your path. Messages and healing are offered through dreams to every aspect of our psyche, the psychological, the emotional, and the spiritual, depending on which aspect of our being is in need. No matter how dreams appear to you, they are here to help and guide you on the path.
The nature of dreams
During sleep, many things happen in the background beyond our conscious knowledge. Our mind gets to rest and switches off while our unconscious, or soul mind, becomes alive and active. Dreams are one way that our soul speaks to us in its language of symbols and hence, are always metaphoric, implicit, and meaningful. The realms of our unconscious, or the soul, are multidimensional. And so, its messages are not to be taken in a linear, realistic, or literal way. This is also the reason why dreams often appear to be surreal, abstract, bizarre, and inexplicable to the mind.
Different functions of dreams
Dreams are gifts from our souls. Their presence weighs much more than we can think of. It is common for dreams to hold more than one function because of their multidimensional nature, and these functions are often linked and interconnected to one another.
Processing conscious intake & compensating for daytime experiences
Our unconscious absorbs information in the background during the daytime without us noticing. This information continues to be processed, assimilated, and expressed through dreams. Dreams often express the aspects of your perceptions that you tend to ignore, repress, or are unaware of. For example, the daytime figures or events you interact with and encounter show up in an astonishing, absurd, or inexplicable way in dreams. Dreams will inform you indirectly about the hidden beneath the surface, latent emotions/thoughts/opinions you hold during the daytime that are present in your unconscious but yet to be known. Dreams, as an unconscious expression, compensate and are complimentary to the contents of our consciousness. This is where we experience the self-integrating function of our psyche, which always retains and maintains its inherent wholeness.
The compensating and complementary effect of dreams can also be healing on an emotional or spiritual level. From my personal experiences, whenever I went through tough and dark days, dreams often showed me serene and peaceful scenes and left me with a calm feeling after waking up. The ambiance and emotions in the dream compensated for my daytime emotional status. Intuitively, I felt this was a soothing and relieving message from the soul to allow me to rest and regenerate and to remind me that there is always love and beauty holding me during difficult times.
Reminding you of your inner work and where you are on your path
This is the key reason why dreams exist, and its teaching can cover all levels of the psyche depending on where your inner work lies. Sometimes, this kind of dream doesn’t leave a comfortable feeling as it reveals the aspects of your psyche that need to be seen, accepted, reintegrated, healed, and transcended. It can reveal the darkness of our soul or our shadow sides with all the limiting and false beliefs that stop us from realizing our potential and fully living our truth. These shadows can be expressed as horrid or conflicting scenes and emotions of fear and frustration in dreams. Those inner works your dream reminds you to do are often on resolving relationships (especially the relationship with yourself, original family relationships & intimate relationships) and past trauma.
A few examples can refer to C. G. Jung, the renowned psychoanalyst, and his studies on dreams. During the years of his intense inner transformation, he once dreamt of the killing of a hero figure and instantly realized that he had to let go of his egocentric superiority and surrender to the greater plans and teachings of life. He also kept dreaming of being in an unfamiliar building with countless unknown rooms. As he discovered more elements of the human psyche and assimilated them into his work, this series of dreams unfolded: he kept entering new rooms that he previously did not manage to go in. This series of dreams was a reflection of his inner discoveries and his progress in serving the vocation to bring these inner discoveries into public awareness.
Premonition
Dreams always have predicting functions. However, predicting dreams tends to show up more often when we are less attached to any future outcome. These dreams often refer to inner changes rather than just being a projection of future reality, and so this is very linked to the revelation and teachings of one's inner works. This premonition can be either short-term, long-term, or both, depending on the dream's contents and where the dreamer is on his journey.
Certain predicting dreams are big dreams, the dreams with profound significance on one’s inner journey, and often leave the dreamer with profound feelings and vivid dream scenes even after months and years. These big dreams tend to be long-term predictions on one’s soul path, involving symbolic elements of what the dreamer will encounter. From my big dream experiences, I once dreamt of being in misty woods in a tribal outfit, interacting with a sacred bird who offered me some feathers. I felt the significance of the dream as it was full of symbols. After the dream, in a few months, I was introduced to earth-based indigenous spiritual traditions and started forming tribal connections with healers and shamans. This dream foreshadowed how my journey unfolded, my future work, and my life mission.
Revelation and affirmation of your vocation
When the time comes for the individual to be clear of his life mission or vocation, he might feel this calling through dreams. This is especially true for the ones in the healing industry serving the world through energy works. This vocation is different from what we think we should do or what others believe we should do, but an inner knowing that “this is what life assigns to me that I need to listen to and follow.” Dreams will keep finding you and affirming you on your path that aligns with your mission.
Healing dreams
As mentioned, healing every aspect of the psyche can be achieved through dreams. But some dreams are specially classified as “healing dreams.” They often embody more spiritual significance and carry messages directly from the soul, honouring the completion of certain life lessons or simply sending you blessings and love. This can be the case when you are on a journey of inner transformation. Very often, one wakes up from healing dreams feeling relieved, calm, affirmed, clarified, or uplifted. Its effect also expands and covers the emotional and mental plains.
One of my friends who was experiencing a descent into her shadows once dreamt of an ocean of glowing pinkish-golden. She could recall the feeling of the glimmering waves coming to her and washing her through on the shore and said that the ambiance was delightful yet deeply serene. In this case, a healing dream appeared to her even during her time in the dark. This also appears to be a “soul remembrance dream,” reminding of one’s innermost being the inherent light, love, and beauty regardless of where one is on the path.
How should we respond to our dreams?
It is always encouraged to maintain an interaction between your consciousness and unconscious. Keep a relationship with your dreams instead of shutting down from them so that you will always have an inner reference and reminder to keep yourself aligned on your path. This can give you more clarity and groundedness through slightly edgy and rough times.
Keep a dream record
If you wish to study your dreams for self-discovery, it is recommended to record them down. You may wish to keep a pen and a notebook by your pillow or simply use your phone or any other devices. The key is to record the dreams when they are fresh and vivid because they tend to fade away very quickly. You can do this right after you wake up.
Study precedents from those who work with dreams
Legacies from Jung and Sigmond Freud are both worth referencing in order to study the meanings of dreams. For example, Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Jung’s work gives a deeper and more holistic understanding than Freud's, involving substantial studies on symbols and is more multidimensional, connecting the human and the unseen.
Related: Unveiling the Symbolic Language of the Unconscious: An Exploration of Jungian Dream Symbols
Call upon your dream to help
When you are more open to receiving the dream messages and calling upon them, they will show up and answer your call. You can ask for your dreams on the questions you hold by doing a simple prayer before going to sleep. The questions are better to be inwardly focused and self-motivating. For instance, instead of asking what is wrong with our relationship, say, “What shall I do or change for our relationship to serve both of our growth journeys?” You need to be actively involved in the current situation and your growth. Your intention and attitude are the key to receiving. Be honest and genuine when you ask, and try to let go of any expectations or assumptions. Just allow it to happen. It might take time for the dream to emerge. But you will receive the message at the right moment.
Be honest with what you feel about your dream, and allow yourself
It is common for us to turn away from facing negative dreams or nightmares that imply our inner works because our ego tends to deny our shadow sides. But for us to truly evolve and change from the core, it is necessary to step into our shadows. However, if you notice that you are unwilling to face what the dream is telling you, that is okay. Maybe you are not ready to act upon it, but the dream message is already sowing the seeds. You may say an affirmation to connect to your unconscious and consciously be aware of your lessons to learn: “Thank you, dream, for reminding me about my lesson. I hear your call. And I wish to call upon the inner strength and courage to step into it, for my journey and my highest good.”
Keep this connection going
The more you become aware of your inner world, the more layers of every single dream you will be able to discern, and the more associations you will make to find a pattern of your dream world. This pattern, as well as any changes and shifts it undergoes through time, is a projection of your inner status and its changes and transformations.
Lumi (Changyi Li), Visionary Artist & Healer
Lumi is a visionary and intuitive with the mission to serve as a healer through art. Her expression springs from her growth and self-healing journey and centers around themes on personal development, self-empowerment, re-connection to ancient wisdom and nature. Lumi shares her heartfelt expression on social media and website. Her art has been showcased in various UK-based exhibitions and magazines. Being passionate about inspiring and connecting to those who walk on similar journeys, Lumi is open to commission and collaboration which aligns to her mission. Her core value: to heal others one needs to commit to ones own growth journey; in the end it is love that heals it all.
