Collective Unconscious in Action

August 4, 2007

Last night I had a very vivid dream about houses on fire. They were neighbors’ houses, and I was worried about my own family’s house burning down. The flames were spreading underneath the ground, and popped up in very small areas in the backyard. I was freaking out in this dream.

Interestingly enough, at about the same time I was dreaming, fires were going on in an area of Iowa City I lived in 3 or 4 years ago:
String of fires hit downtown Iowa City [link does not work]

This is probably not the first time I’ve experienced the collective unconscious in my dreams, but it is the most recent. Interesting stuff!

For more on the idea of the collective unconscious, see the Wikipedia article about the Collective Unconscious. It doesn’t really explain what I’m trying to get at in this post, but it’s a good start.

What I’m trying to get at is this:
Just because what you dream while sleeping becomes reality in some way does not mean you are a fortune-teller.