Healinging Dreams In Healing Dreams, By Marc Ian Barasch

The term “healing” can be defined as a process in which our body makes us healthy again, usually through the aid of some type of medicine. Certain dreams we have, too, behave like medicine: they act as a pill of truth that helps us open our eyes and awake us to an inner adversary or perspective on life that we didn’t know we needed, ultimately healing us in some way. Classified as “Healing Dreams” by Marc Ian Barasch, these dreams make us aware of a hidden pain or fault with a goal to change our mindset and/or actions when we’re awake. Whether or not these dreams appear at a convenient moment in our lives, if we give our attention to them, they’ll effectively transform us in some way. Healing Dreams can be defined through several attitudes

Barasch calls this sensation “ontological weight,” meaning the nature of its reality is immediate and powerful in us (81). This substantial feeling can take the form of any emotion, and it has an overpowering presence, sometimes to the point of absurdity, for some may wake up laughing or crying (Barasch 81). Barasch’s “What Is a Healing Dream?” delves into the many facets of the innermost workings of Healing Dreams, the shapes they may take on, and what they can mean. They don’t just come out of nowhere, but rather, as stated by Jung, transpire as a result of “major life passages, deep relationship issues, and spiritual turning points” (80). They leave such an impression on our soul, that they force us to be introspective, and at the very least, leave us questioning its plot and the images we saw. Barasch brought up the point that, although Healing Dreams are like a personal question to ourselves, they contain collective consistent attitudes (82). These principles are defined as nonself, nonsense,

Though we all experience it on some level, a situation that may cause emotional strain to one person can be seen as asinine to someone else. When humans are physically hurting in the same way, we may be given the same type of medicine. Healing Dreams function as our own personalized remedy; they may instruct us, disgust us, move us, comfort us, but all of them grab our attention and metamorphose our perspectives, attitude, and do not call for typical thoughts after waking. Even if someone has never paid any mind to their dreams before, Healing Dreams can elicit a certain feeling that unintentionally changes something in our spirits, like listening to a song or looking at a piece of art that moves us, but not being able to pinpoint exactly why. The word “dream” in itself means “to be made healthy and strong” in Hebrew (Barasch 80), which is very telling, and though they may not always be understood, we must not flee from this free remedy that provides us rich insight in a positive transformation of