Dream Patterns (Revealing the Hidden Patterns of Our Waking Lives)

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Dream Patterns teaches us to identify the significant, meaningful patterns in our dreams and how to use that knowledge to make changes in our waking lives. Almost every book on dream interpretation emphasizes the interpretation of individual elements of individual dreams. But dreams contain much imagery that is not through the noise created by physical sensations, events of the previous day, intrusions of conscious thinking, and other stimuli to reveal repeating imagery and themes that reflect unrecognized patterns in our waking lives. Awareness of these patterns liberates us from them and empowers us to live our life more skilfully.

Dream Patterns is for dreamers of all skill levels, from people who rarely recall and have never before studied their dreams to people who have spent years studying their dreams and who want to get more out of them. You will learn how to recall, record, and analyze your dreams, and then how to apply the lessons of those dreams to your waking life.

While Dream Patterns emphasizes long-term patterns and expresses scepticism about the value of most individual dreams, it does teach readers to recognize and benefit from those few dreams that really are significant in isolation. Such dreams include "big dreams” that reflect major life and spiritual changes.

Jonson Miller has practiced dream interpretation for over twenty five years. As he found psychoanalytical and dream dictionary approaches insufficient, he developed his own pattern-based method of analysis. A member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, he lives in Langhorne, PA.

JONSON MILLER teaches history at Drexel University in Philadelphia in the United States. His scholarly interests include American history, ethnic and national identity, war, and questions about technology. His more personal interests include genealogy, mythology, and language. He is an ordained deacon in a Buddhist sangha. He lives with his partner in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Dreams are bizarre. There's no way around it. Because of this, they're inherently interesting. Dreams can also teach us about the nature of consciousness, reveal to us personal and universal truths through symbolic language, and enable us to make lasting changes in our own lives. I have experienced all of these through my own dreams.

At various stages of my life, I have used my dreams to understand the unconscious forces shaping my behavior, feelings, and attitudes. But I didn't do this by studying one of the many dream dictionaries that are available. I never had any success with them. I didn't succeed by trying to decipher individual dream images or even individual dreams, the way almost all books on dream interpretation teach us. Nor did I try, in the psychoanalytical tradition, to interpret all of my dreams as either expressions of unconscious desires or as universal archetypes. What allowed me to create change in my life was 1) recognizing personal patterns of images and themes in my dreams, 2) recognizing the patterns in my waking life that they represented, and then 3) working to change those waking-life patterns. My dreams changed then as well, confirming the changes I made in my waking life. It is these personal dream patterns that I emphasize in this book and that make this book unique. I will teach you too how to use dreams to identify unhelpful patterns in your own waking life and then cultivate new, more skillful patterns that serve you better in the present.

This book is for both those dreamers who are new to dream analysis and for those with years of experience. For new dreamers, I offer a full introduction to 1) recalling your dreams, 2) recording your dreams effectively, 3) understanding what dreams are made of, and 4) analyzing your dreams in order to create positive changes in your life. For those of you who are experienced dreamers looking to get more out of your dreams, you will learn how to go beyond the dream dictionary approach of analyzing individual dreams and images.

**Contents and Sample Pages**