Spiritual Life & Our Dreams: Dreams in the Christian Tradition

“Spiritual directors and gurus have always been listeners, but the language to which they listen is the ‘forgotten language’ of myths and dreams and symbols, the language of fundamental human experience.”

— Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend

Within the Christian tradition, dreams have long been regarded as one of the ways the inner life speaks — not in the language of doctrine or argument, but in symbol, image, and story. Dreams do not arrive as theological propositions. They arise from the depths of the soul, often carrying emotional truth, spiritual invitation, or unresolved experience that has not yet found waking expression.

In recent decades, much contemporary dream work has drawn from depth psychology, which has given us valuable language for understanding symbol and unconscious process. Yet the Christian tradition itself contains a rich and often overlooked history of listening to dreams as part of the spiritual journey. This article revisits that lineage, not to romanticise it, but to remember that the language of the soul has always belonged within spiritual discernment.

Dreams in the Christian Tradition

From ancient times, people of all religions have shown reverence for dreams and sought to understand their meaning. In the Christian tradition there is a particularly long history of respecting and working with dreams. Apart from well-known examples of dreams in the Bible, dream material is also to be found extensively in much early Christian literature:

Dreams and the Early Christian Writers St Irenaeus said the dream was the means for him to maintain proper contact with God. Tertullian (155-240 sometimes called the father of Western theology and the first theologian to use the term 'Trinity') often cites dreams, and wrote a psychological treatise on the soul called The Anima, in which he stated: 'Almost the greater part of mankind derive their knowledge of God from dreams,' and 'Is it not known to all the people that the dream is the most usual way that God reveals himself to man?' St Augustine of Hippo made careful note of many dreams as recorded in his Confessions and in De Trinitate. Origen (184-254) equated dreams with the activity of the divine Logos in his work Contra Celsum I. He wrote about dreams in several of his works emphasising the meaning of the visions in the Old Testament and stressing that every intelligent person regards the dream as a possible means of revelation. Cyprian, the great African bishop, looked to his dreams for practical guidance in making immediate decisions and Synesius of Cyrene (373-414) wrote a detailed description of dreams in his De Insomniis describing the dream as an opening of the self to God and the spiritual world. Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, asserted that in dreams the soul transcends the faculties of the body to hold divine communion with the angels (Against the Heathen). Gregory Nazianzus (329-390), a Doctor of the church, explained that most of his inspirations came to him in dreams. And his close friend Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) also wrote a book on the development of humanity and spent an important part of it dealing with dreams. And there is an abundance of dream material in the apocryphal early Christian material, perhaps the most important of which is The Shepherd of Hermas, which is based entirely on dreams and visions.

While the early Christian writers did not possess the psychological language we have today, they understood something essential about the interior life. They recognised that dreams arise from depths beyond conscious control and may carry meaning that requires patient discernment. In our own time, depth psychology has helped articulate how symbol, memory, affect, and unconscious process shape dream life. Rather than replacing spiritual understanding, this psychological language can serve it — offering tools to listen more carefully to what earlier generations already honoured as part of the soul’s dialogue with God.

Dreams as a Language of the Sacred

So, from its very beginnings, and throughout the history of Christianity, the dream has been a channel understood as one of the ways God communicates with God’s people.

Other well-known more contemporary examples are:

John Newton author of the popular hymn 'Amazing Grace' who had a dream whilst a seaman of a slave-trading ship that caused him to cease being a captain and become a clergyman instead.

St Thérèse of Liseux who had a dream a year before her death whilst seriously ill and depressed, scared that she would die young. The reassuring dream took the weight from her mind and carried her with joy through the final year of her illness to death.

So we can see that in all ages dream work has been integral within the Christian tradition. The dream is understood as one way the mysterious shaping energies of the Creator urge us on towards the fullness of our unique being and purpose. Many people have found in dreams a deep connection to the sacred in their lives, and listening to our dreams is a very personal way of tapping into a source of rich inner wisdom.

However, in the contemporary Western world, the tools for listening to and working with dreams have often been neglected in a world that draws so much of its current heritage from science, logic and reason. The language of myths, dreams, and symbols has often been described as God’s “forgotten language” — part of the wider symbolic language of the soul, through which deeper wisdom becomes accessible beyond reason alone.

Remembering and Welcoming Our Dreams

Some people rarely remember their dreams and assume this means they do not dream at all. In reality, we all dream — often several times each night — though much of this inner activity passes beyond conscious recall.

The Psalmist writes, “God pours gifts on the beloved while they sleep.” Dreams may be one such gift: not always dramatic, not always revelatory, but part of the quiet conversation between soul and Spirit.

If you find that your dreams are elusive, you need not force them. Dreams tend to respond to gentle hospitality rather than effort. You might begin simply by turning your attention toward them — acknowledging, before sleep, your openness to whatever may arise. Placing a notebook by your bedside can become less a technique and more a gesture of receptivity.

Prayer before sleep can also create a climate of welcome — not demanding a message, but inviting whatever needs to be known to surface in its own time. The prayer by George Appleton which follows is one such expression of that openness.

And if only fragments come — a feeling, an image, a single scene — trust that this is sufficient. The psyche does not reveal itself all at once. What is needed will return, perhaps in another form, perhaps in another season.

Dreams cannot be commanded. They can, however, be received.

Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God,

As I go down into the deep of my own being.

Show me the hidden things,

The creatures of my dreams,

The storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts.

Take me down to the spring of my life,

And tell me my nature and my name.

Give me freedom to grow so that I may become my true self - The fulfilment of the seed which you planted in me at my making.

Taken from a prayer by George Appleton.

Don't worry if you don't feel you remember a whole dream. You remember just what you need to remember for now. If there was some other aspect of the dream that was important, either the dream will recur or the important aspect will come up again in a subsequent dream.

In my next article in the series 'Working with Dreams in the Spiritual Life' I start to explore some basic ways we can begin to work with our dreams to try and discern any revelation they have to offer us.