Does God dream?
As a counsellor I’m always interested in my patients’ dreams. Freud called them the Royal Road to the Unconscious. I also have an interest in theology and spirituality. A conversation recently left me mentally combining the two and asking “Does God dream?” Behind that there’s another question “Does God have an unconscious life?”
In clinical practice I use unconscious material a lot. We think about my patients’ dreams. The Soto vocce asides they make. (In psychosis these are experienced as “voices”. They are a similar phenomenon. Communications that are only partially meant to be publicised.)
The unconscious seems to be akin to the Cloud. It is an undiscriminating storage space with limitless capacity, password protected and safe from external interference. ( I confess to understanding the unconscious far better than the Cloud!) My other premise is that we are told that Man is made in the image of God. Logically, this should lead us to the thought that God has an unconscious life.
But what is stored in the unconscious? Predominantly those parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable. Those parts that Jung calls our Shadow. We hide our racist thoughts here; our sexual fantasies; our murderous and hateful feelings. And so on. How do we know we have these thoughts? Catch yourself the next time someone cuts you up when driving. Or has the temerity to queue jump. Or to say or do something that leaves you feeling patronised and not-seen.
So where does this leave God? Where does an omnipotent being hide his Shadow? Jung suggests He hides it in plain sight. He uses projection. Brexit seems to me to be a current example. All our social, political and economic woes are due to Brussels. And immigrants. And any “previous government.” Looking inside ourselves is anathema. Who knows what we might find?
Jung suggests that God put all His shadow into Satan, also a son of his. But one who for a number of reasons was not his father’s favourite. A dynamic not unknown in ordinary non divine families! So any thought or idea that Yahweh couldn’t tolerate was given to Satan to own. (The NetFlix series “Lucifer” plays with this idea very perceptively and amusingly. A kind of “theology lite”!)
If God went into Psychoanalysis we could explore his unconscious life. Which might make many things clear – not least Him!
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