Numinous dreams

Have you ever had a dream where you met the divine, or touched upon a sense of life’s deepest spiritual mystery, or were filled with indescribable awe?

A numinous dream is one that arouses spiritual or religious emotions, inspires deep awe, or carries a sense of the sacred or mysterious.

You might wake from a numinous dream feeling deeply moved, perhaps inspired to be in the world in a different way, yet unable to communicate the enormity of your experience. The rational brain has a go at finding words, but no matter how poetic, the end result doesn’t seem to convey the intensity or meaningfulness you felt in the dream.

Here’s a simple example of a dream I once had:

I walked through an archway and found myself standing on a cobbled street. Two lines of people were walking toward two different ancient English churches. I could see the entrances to both churches. They weren’t cathedrals, but I knew each held the mysteries of the ages. I began to walk toward one of the churches, intensely aware of the ground beneath my feet as if I were on a predestined pilgrimage, a sense of awe and anticipation rising through my body, welling out as tears down my cheeks, not tears of grief, but tears of at-long-last reconnection.

The way I have expressed the dream makes an overview interpretation easy. This was a dream of reconnection. On one level I was reconnecting to the earth, the ground, my physical body, after a long period of intense brain-focussed work. On another level I was reconnecting with my homeland, the ancient roots of my English heritage, roots that ran much deeper than I had understood or acknowledged. On another level I was reconnecting with the spiritual mysteries of the ages, a cyclical pilgrimage I undertake from time to time to refresh and nourish my spirit. On another level I was revisiting childhood years of going to church and singing hymns at school assembly, and the grace these communal activities gifted.

All these levels are intertwined, concurrent reflections of the state of my being at the time of the dream. Each has a numinous element, some more intensely so than others. And while my expression of the dream makes a basic interpretation easy, I feel have not communicated the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual sensations my dream experience imparted. I cannot take you there. It’s a classic numinous dream, and a classic sacred experience.

A numinous dream does not necessarily involve a divine figure or religious symbol. I have had numinous dreams of meeting amazing animals that exude a sense of deep sacred meaningfulness, or found myself looking across magnificent awe-inspiring landscapes that move me to the core with wordless wisdom.

Perhaps my examples have brought to mind your own numinous dreams.

It’s easy to dismiss other people’s dreams, especially when they seem ho-hum.

“I dreamed I went through an archway onto a cobbled street and saw two churches. People were lining up to go into the churches. I joined one of the lines. It was an amazing dream!” Ho-hum.

When a client excitedly books a session with me, and the dream seems surprisingly short and mundane, I know there’s digging to do. If the client tells me it was an amazing dream, it’s my job to find that amazement and meet her there. Only from that point can we explore the potency of the dream to enlighten her path.

The numinous element of a dream, whether it appears in the shape of a divine or religious figure, a magical person, an awesome animal, a shimmering object, or a breath-taking situation, is, at heart, deep emotional resonance. The dream reflects a deep emotion that has, perhaps, yet to reach consciousness in a form that makes wrapping it in words possible. Catching these deep emotions before they surface helps set the groundwork and prepare the dreamer for changes already set in motion. For example, in my dream I felt I was on a ‘predestined’ pilgrimage. Partly this was because there was a cyclical element to my journey, and partly because what was rumbling deeply in my emotional unconscious was irretrievably set in motion to burst into the scene of my waking life experience. It was coming to light. Enlightenment was on its way.

Numinous dreams are all about the self and the various stages of enlightenment we encounter as we grow through life. They are about our deep inner divinity or appreciation of the divine, our felt sense of mystery and awe, and our reconnection to lost sacred elements of our being.

 

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