Decoding Nightmares: What Your Unconscious Telling You

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind

Episode: Decoding Nightmares: What Your Unconscious Telling You
Hosts: Debra Maldonado & Robert Maldonado, PhD
Date: March 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Debra Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado, experts in Jungian psychology and personal transformation, continue their deep dive into the world of nightmares, exploring what these disturbing dreams reveal about our unconscious mind. Through Jungian theory, Eastern spirituality, and neuroscience, the hosts demystify nightmares, presenting them as powerful tools for psychological growth, integration, and self-discovery. The episode is rich with metaphorical dream analysis, actionable advice, and illuminating stories to help listeners work with their nightmares and embrace their underlying wisdom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nightmares and the Wisdom of Dreams

• Dreams as a Superpower: Dr. Rob emphasizes dreams’ neglected power for processing unconscious material and inner wisdom.
  • “Dreams are probably the most neglected superpower that we have as human beings… and its ability to give us this inner wisdom.” (01:51, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• The Unconscious as Inner Ally: Debra shares dreams feel like communication from a wiser internal force seeking our growth.
  • “It just feels like this inner… communication vehicle for my inner ally.” (02:11, Debra Maldonado)

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2. Example Analysis: The Abandoned House Nightmare ([03:14])

Dream Description:
A woman is trapped in a crumbling, echoing, empty house, as doors slam shut around her. She seeks escape, only to go deeper into the sealed rooms.

Interpretation Breakdown:

• Neuroscience of Dreams:
  • Memory consolidation happens during dreaming; emotion, audio, and imagery are sorted for long-term recall.
  • Nightmares signal “important content” the unconscious insists we process (04:23 – 05:38).
• Jungian Symbols:
  • The House: Represents the self or one's identity container.
  • Empty Rooms: Unprocessed past experiences, lacking integration and meaning.
  • Slamming Doors: Ego’s defense mechanisms shutting away intense or traumatic material.
    • “The experience is so intense that the ego is sensing that the individual is not ready to really…” (06:30, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
  • Crumbling Structure: A need to move on from outgrown identities or situations—transformation is being resisted.
• Trauma and Memory:
  • Trauma isn’t always “big T” events. Even minor incidents, perceived with emotional weight (like childhood abandonment), can deeply shape the psyche if not integrated.
  • “Often trauma is with a small T… it’s a subjective interpretation.” (07:04, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Integration Techniques:
  • Use active imagination, coaching, or emotional processing to observe and integrate rather than avoid or suppress feelings.
  • “It's not about healing the emotion or fixing the emotion. It's about not fearing it anymore.” (09:50, Debra Maldonado)

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3. Nightmares as Expressions of the Autonomous Psyche ([11:01 – 17:27])

Dream Example:
Standing on a desolate shoreline under a black sky, a dreamer sees a giant serpent rise from the ocean and coil toward her.

Jungian Interpretation:

• Mythological Imagery:
  • Nightmares often tap into collective myths—serpents, dragons—universal symbols representing psychic forces.
  • The ocean embodies the collective unconscious, beyond personal experience, confronting the ego with overwhelming vastness.
• Neuroscience Perspective:
  • During dreams, the rational “prefrontal cortex” is deactivated, allowing raw, mythic imagery from the limbic system to emerge.
  • “The prefrontal cortex… is asleep… the limbic system is really activated.” (11:51, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Autonomous Psyche/Complexes:
  • Unmet unconscious content takes on independent energy, almost like a personality.
  • “Jung says content that's in the unconscious… becomes almost like a separate ego, like a separate personality within you.” (12:54, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
  • The unconscious is not just passive—it's a wise, guiding, and even spiritual aspect, pushing us toward growth.
• Collective Unconscious:
  • Facing vast, primordial energy (the dragon/serpent).
  • “The ocean symbolically represents the unconscious, but not just the personal unconscious. It's the collective unconscious.” (15:57, Dr. Rob Maldonado)

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4. Nightmares as Urgent Calls for Psychological Integration ([19:02 – 26:13])

Dream Example:
A woman wakes in her dream to her house engulfed in flames. She tries to save precious belongings but the chaos overwhelms her as the house collapses.

Interpretation:

• Physiological Response:
  • Nightmares involve a full fight-or-flight response, activating the body and emotions as in real danger.
  • “Your body is experiencing it. Your heart is beating out of your chest. And it's intense.” (21:10, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Symbolic Meaning of Fire:
  • Fire represents transformation, cleansing, and urgent change—destroys the “old self” making way for rebirth.
  • “It transforms things. It transforms a house into ashes, a tree into stumps… it's a transformative, cleansing symbol.” (21:58, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Clinging to Old Identity:
  • Trying to 'save precious belongings' = hanging on to outdated aspects of identity instead of embracing necessary change.
  • “She's trying to hold on to old identity… things she doesn't want to lose. And that's in transformation.” (21:58, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Continuous Growth Model:
  • Personal development doesn’t stop at adulthood; major transformations occur throughout life, especially in midlife transitions.
  • “Some of the most dramatic transformations continue to happen and happen around midlife.” (23:07, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Letting Go:
  • Growth comes from letting go of past hurts, resentments, or “glory days.” Clinging binds us to the past; true freedom is allowing constant transformation.

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5. Practical Guidance for Working with Nightmares ([27:08 – 29:31])

• Nightmares as Alarms:
  • They are urgent messages from the unconscious calling us to integrate, accept transformation, and move forward consciously.
  • “Nightmares… it's the alarm system going off saying, it's time to do this. It's time to move on. And our resistance, of course, does not help us…” (26:13, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• Compassion for the Past Self:
  • Every pattern and relationship had a role in your journey; transformation means evolution, not fixing what was broken.
  • “Transformation doesn't mean that your past self was broken... you're going to the next level of your life, the next evolution of you.” (27:08, Deborah Maldonado)
• Tangible Steps:
  • Engage with dreams: write them down, reflect on symbols, notice recurring feelings/themes.
  • Begin by observing, not judging, your nightmares as interesting data for self-understanding.
  • Consider coaching and guided active imagination as structured support for integration.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Dreams are probably the most neglected superpower that we have as human beings.” (01:51, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “It just feels like this inner… communication vehicle for my inner ally.” (02:11, Debra Maldonado)
• “The house represents the self or our kind of where we live. Right. It's. It's our… the container of our identity.” (05:38, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “Often trauma is with a small T… it's a subjective interpretation.” (07:04, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “The experience is so intense that the ego is sensing that the individual is not ready to really…” (06:30, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “It's not about healing the emotion or fixing the emotion. It's about not fearing it anymore.” (09:50, Debra Maldonado)
• “Dreams: the prefrontal cortex… is asleep… the limbic system is really activated.” (11:51, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “Jung says content that's in the unconscious… becomes almost like a separate ego, like a separate personality within you.” (12:54, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “The ocean symbolically represents the unconscious, but not just the personal unconscious. It's the collective unconscious.” (15:57, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “Your body is experiencing it. Your heart is beating out of your chest. And it's intense.” (21:10, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “It transforms things. It transforms a house into ashes… it's a transformative, cleansing symbol.” (21:58, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “Some of the most dramatic transformations continue… around midlife.” (23:07, Dr. Rob Maldonado)
• “Transformation doesn't mean that your past self was broken... you're going to the next level of your life, the next evolution of you.” (27:08, Debra Maldonado)
• “If you don't know where to start, simply begin by paying attention, by not pushing it away, by not judging it… Just accepting it as this is interesting. Let me write them down. Let me look at the symbolism. Just paying attention begins that process of acceptance, of integration.” (28:57, Dr. Rob Maldonado)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:28 – Episode Intro, Continuation of Nightmares Series
• 01:51 – Dreams as Human Superpower, App Announcement
• 03:14 – Nightmare Example: Abandoned House
• 04:23 – Memory Consolidation & Dream Function (Neuroscience)
• 05:38 – Symbolic Meaning: House, Ego Defenses, Trauma
• 11:01 – Nightmare Example: Ocean Serpent, Mythic Symbols
• 12:54 – Jungian Autonomy, Complexes, Split Personality
• 15:57 – Collective Unconscious, Ego vs. Depths
• 19:11 – Nightmare Example: House on Fire, Integration
• 21:10 – Nightmares’ Bodily Impact, Fight-or-Flight
• 21:58 – Fire as Transformation, Letting Go of Identity
• 23:07 – Continuous Growth, Transformation in Adulthood
• 26:13 – Embracing the Adventure of Change
• 27:08 – Compassion Toward Past Selves, Transformation
• 28:57 – Practical Guidance: Acceptance and Integration

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Nightmares aren’t random or purely negative; they’re urgent, mythic messages from the unconscious, calling for attention, integration, and growth.
• By analyzing their imagery, feeling tone, and patterns, we reveal profound insights about our developmental edge and what we must let go of to become more ourselves.
• Jungian depth coaching offers both a framework and practical tools for working with dreams—turning even the darkest nightmares into guidance.
• The journey of psychological transformation is ongoing, encompassing our whole lives; embracing rather than resisting change is the secret to personal fulfillment and authenticity.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Narrator]

Welcome to Jung on purpose with CreativeMind, hosted by Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado, creators of the NeuroMindra coaching method based on Jungian psychology, non dual spirituality and social neuroscience. Join us each week as we explore personal growth for purpose seekers and the incredible inner journey of becoming your true self.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Let's get started. Foreign. Welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

I'm Dr. Rob. Welcome to the program.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We have such a great continuation of our last episode. Those of you who didn't get the last episode, please make sure you watch on Nightmares. This is part two. Because we have so much to share, we decided to split it into two. Two shows. Let's just do a quick review. But before we begin, I do want to remind you to subscribe to our channel if you're watching us on YouTube or if you are listening to us on one of the podcast service. We appreciate if you subscribe to our podcast and help us reach more people. And Rob, you have.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. And just in review, we also talked about our new dream app, the Jungian Dream Oracle. Check it out, the link is below, it's free. And then you can experience some of the work we do with dreams in the Jungian teaching program.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We have a Google version, Apple version. You download it for free on your phone and type in your dream or verbally dictate your dream and it'll give you a really great interpretation what's going on psychologically, what the symbols mean, and then also next steps, how to. What you can do, activities you can do to work with the dream. Really, really powerful.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, I would say in general, dreams are probably the most neglected superpower that we have as human beings. Um, people have forgotten its function and, and functions and, and its ability to give us this inner wisdom. As we'll see in working with nightmares

[Deborah Maldonado]

and as I mentioned in previous episodes, for me, dreams feel like there's this inner wisdom within me that's so close to me, like inside my mind. Like something that's a part of me that is wiser, that wants to me to succeed in life, wants me to grow in life. And it just feels like this inner that the. It's like a communication vehicle for my inner ally.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

That's right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So we talked about some night terrors and night nightmares. The difference, if you want to check that out, the previous episode. But we're going to dive into, we're going to give you a hypothetical nightmare example and then we're going to dive into the interpretation. And this one is about unintegrated Experience. When we say unintegrated, we mean it's unconscious. Is that correct?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

In part, yes. It can also be something you remember clearly, which means you're. You're conscious of it, but you haven't really figured out what it means. You haven't taken the time to really process it.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Okay, so here's the dream. A woman wanders through a vast abandoned house at dusk. The rooms are empty and filled with echoing silence. As she moves down the hallway, doors begin slamming violently shut around her. She tries to escape, but every doorway leads to another sealed room, trapping her deeper inside the crumbling structure. Wow.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Let me start with the. The neuroscience first. Okay, so one of the functions that we know happens within rem, within dream. Dreaming is memory consolidation. So it's almost like the brain is taking the time to process the experiences that we've had mostly in the previous day, right before the night of dreaming and putting it in storage in the proper storage places. And what it does, it breaks down like the audio and stores the audio in one place. It stores the emotion in another place. It stores the visuals in another place so that everything is neat and clean.

[Deborah Maldonado]

It's cleaning house, even the thoughts around it. Right. The thoughts of that experience.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

How do I feel about it?

[Deborah Maldonado]

The narrative around it.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

What did I think about that? Yeah. It's storing all that so that we have this powerful, incredible memory that we are able to recall and remember. Very useful for when we're taking tests and those kinds of things. If we don't sleep remembering faces. Yeah. And the research shows that if we study, for example, before a test, and we get to sleep and dream before that test, we do better than if we simply study and go straight to the test without dreaming. So it's this consolidation of information that takes place during our dreaming at night. Now, of course, nightmares are very different, but they're different in intensity, not so much in content. It's essentially important content that just is. The unconscious is saying, pay attention, because this is really important. You need this in order to consolidate and to process further that experience that you had. You. You're not done with it. In other words, you might have gotten some good sleep after an experience, but you didn't complete the whole process. And therefore the. This nightmare appears where the dream symbols are telling you. The house. From the Jungian perspective, the house represents the self or our kind of where we live. Right. It's. It's our habited inhabit the container of our identity, maybe. Yeah, exactly. The rooms are empty and filled with echoing silence, meaning these places we haven't really put them in their proper place. We haven't found the meaning of these experiences and given them their proper function. As she moved down the hallway, doors begin slamming violently shut around her. Meaning the, the. The experience is so intense that the ego is sensing that the individual is not ready to really.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So it'd be like an, like a trauma, traumatic experience, and the ego kind of shuts the door. Okay, so it's saying to someone that there's something that's really intense that you haven't examined, but your ego's not letting you look at it.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes. And this is.

[Deborah Maldonado]

A lot of people tell us that they can't remember their childhood. And a lot of times it's because they've had a lot of trauma in their childhood. They like, I have no memory of my childhood. Would that be the reason? Because it's so intense that the ego just shuts. It shuts them like that doorway to access the tunnel, to access that. That vein of memory.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes, but often trauma is with a small T. Right. In other words, it's simply trauma because the individual interprets it that way. So it could have been, as I often use the example of somebody getting. The mother forgets to pick up the kid at daycare and it's. It's an innocent mistake, but the parents get divorced. Well, that's a serious one. Or it can be a serious one. Right. Depending on how it plays out. But it's not trauma with a big T. It's essentially an interpretation that the child makes. But because it's a subjective interpretation, it's an important one. So the child might feel abandonment, and this feeling of the possibility of abandonment in relationships might still be there even into adulthood, even though it was a minor incident. Well.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And wouldn't it depend on the child's age too? So maybe a kid at a teenager would not be as impacted by the parent not picking you up. But if you're like kindergarten or preschool, depending on the maturity of the child as well, and how much the ego has developed.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes, yeah, exactly. So she tries to escape. So here, right there, we see a clue, right? The dream is saying that you've been running away from this, right? You're. You're trying to. To push it away. And that pushing away often is at the source of a lot of nightmares that we're resisting it. We don't want to look at it. There's a active resistance or repression of the dream. Kant.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And when we repress something, it doesn't mean it goes away. It means that it Actually has more power because now it's operating unconsciously beneath the surface.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And then the. The structure is crumbling, meaning you've outgrown it. You need to move on beyond this, but you're still persisting in this and trying to look for the answer within that house structure. You. You're kind of outgrowing your situation, but you're not paying enough attention to the unconscious prompt. And therefore, the nightmare is saying, once and for all, let's. Let's get this done. You need to move on. Right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So do they need to move on, or do they need to find out what that memory was?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Well, it. Moving on would be kind of integrating and consolidating this.

[Deborah Maldonado]

This piece that is miss this mystery.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Right? Yeah, that's right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And we can do that with active imagination. We can. There's a lot of ways you can. You can do that.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. So we. We call that emotional processing. And coaching is an excellent way to do that because you're actively doing it in a conscious way.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And we're doing it with the meta consciousness, with the witness. We're not in the emotion, like drown, like I always say, marinating. And we're watching it, and so we're able to have that almost like a disassociation in a way, so we can have that objective watching it without buying into it, without pushing it away, without letting it override us. And it actually is a very powerful way to face emotions. So it's not about healing the emotion or fixing the emotion. It's about not fearing it anymore, you know, like really seeing it for what it is. Okay, let's move on to nightmares as raw expressions of the autonomous psyche. And we'll talk about what autonomous psyche means, which I think is such an important part of Jungian psychology. So here's the dreams. Standing alone on a desolate shoreline beneath a black sky, a dreamer watches the ocean begin to churn violently from the depths. A massive serpent rises from the water, its scales glistening in the moonlight. Its glowing eyes lock on the dreamer as it slowly coils toward the shore. Ooh, the dragon, the serpent. A lot of great stuff in that one.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes. This. The mythological element, of course, is very present in this nightmare. And. And remember, this is one of the characteristics of the. The unconscious mind, that it's a mythological interpretation from the psyche, and it's. It's a way of communicating to us in this mythological way. So what's going on in the brain when we're dreaming is that the prefrontal cortex, which is what we think of as Reasoning, logic, our kind of, kind of our business mind. Right. When we present our best image of ourselves.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Like the rational. Rational.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, it's asleep. It's kind of knocked out. Almost like when you drink or, or

[Deborah Maldonado]

you get a lobotomy,

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

psychedelics or something like that.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It shuts down that everything.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

It shuts down that area or kind of, you know, puts it distracts it for a while.

[Deborah Maldonado]

You know, I heard like when I was doing hypnosis with people, it's. They call it a suspension of belie. So you're like suspending that part of your mind so you can have that imaginative and exploration.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

That's right. Suspension of disbelief.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Disbelief, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And it's, it's down regulated, as we would say in, in neuroscience, that. That part of the brain is down regulated and the limbic system is really activated. So these mythological images then are allowed to arise from the unconscious mind in a much clearer way. And we've all had these mythological symbols arise that we feel. I've never experienced anything like that. I don't even think about these kind of things yet. They're appearing in my dream. What's going on here? Right, so the dream then of this. Well, let's talk about the autonomous function of this.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Yeah, I think that's so important.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. So Jung says content that's in the unconscious when it needs to come to consciousness and you haven't made it conscious, you haven't taken the time to pay attention, it becomes almost like a separate ego, like a separate personality within you. So some of you, that number two, like this other part made about the split personality thing. Yeah, but this might be a way to account for that, that this, this, the, the cluster or the complex that is in the unconscious takes a kind of a personality form, an autonomous form. That's what he means by autonomy, that it's separate from the ego, that you're, you're not, you're not willing this thing to appear. It's appearing because of its own volition

[Deborah Maldonado]

in a sense which I think is really important because, you know, the Freudian model of the subconscious is that you're just reprogramming. Like your conscious mind can direct the unconscious and reprogram it. Now you can do that, but they leave out the part that the unconscious is also sending us information, also helping us. It's not just like Freud thought it was like just repression that we're dealing with. This is really like this other, like almost like a spiritual aspect of the unconscious. It has this like path for us, it's showing us where we need to go to grow and to reach our dreams. And it's like giving us lots of wisdom. It's like a wise part of ourselves.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. Jung writes that we as humans forget that this is the original way God spoke to human beings, is through dreams. And we'd forgotten that. We've. We're totally ignored that because often because of our scientific understanding of the brain, we start to think. Well, it's just these activities of the

[Deborah Maldonado]

brain during the night filing everything at night and our memories of the day.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, but I. I don't see the contradiction. I mean, you can understand that. Okay. There are different layers of work here. Yeah. You can understand it as neurological activity, or you can understand it also as symbolic interpretation of these mythological symbols that you know here. The serpent or the, the dragon, that's a powerful symbol that shows up all over the world. In Mexico, the, the Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent in China as this powerful energy that swallows the sun. Those kind of things, they're all part of these mythologies that are arising from the unconscious. So here in the dream or in the nightmare, we see that the dreamer is watching the ocean. Now, the ocean symbolically represents the unconscious, but not just the personal unconscious. It's the collective unconscious. In other words, the dreamer is experiencing and in front of something much larger than themselves. And it's terrifying for the ego because.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Because this collective is so, so vast and it could be swallowed up almost like you're. Be the ocean is that the. You get swallowed up in the ocean. The ego's terrified of the unconscious in that way.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

So from the depths, then this serpent rises from the water that symbolically represents this spiritual energy. Like you were saying, spirituality is separate, different than religion, let's say. But spirituality is part of our human nature. And when we don't pay attention, it often shows up in these dramatic ways and scares us. And it becomes. Or we experience it as a nightmare, but it's really an important dream for us. It's a vision, more of a vision type that, that we're experiencing. This massive serpent rises from the water, its scales glistening in the moonlight. So moonlight already indicating that we're deep in the unconscious mind. It's not daytime. Right. It's at night. Meaning we're in unknown territory. We can't really be clear as to where are we and what's happening.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Would it be also would read that as intuition and kind of, you're in that place of intuition. The night, the night sea journey,

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

the Night sea journey. Yep. The beach in general also is the symbol of the edge of our awareness. It's where the land meets that deep ocean.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We see this a very common dream when people start working with us. Initially they have, I've been on the beach and there was an ocean and I was standing at the edge of this ocean or I was falling into the ocean or the waves were coming up. So that that kind of common theme of being swallowed by the vastness of our psyche. Okay.

[Narrator]

You've spent years building success and achieving what others would only imagine. But yet something deeper is calling. A desire for work that's meaningful, transformative and rooted in who you really are. At CreativeMind, we train professionals to guide others through real psychological transformation using Jungian principles, Eastern spirituality and social neuroscience. No cliches, no surface level tools, just depth, structure and purpose. Our ICF accredited Jungian life coach training program provides a profound professional training in small cohort that includes personal transformation with a dedicated coach and powerful tools to help you guide others in a deep, lasting transformation. Step into that next chapter of your personal and professional evolution. Join us by visiting creativemindlife.com and speak to an admission specialist today. That's creativemindlife.com.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Should we move on to the next one? Okay, last one is nightmares as urgent calls for psychological integration.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes.

[Deborah Maldonado]

A woman wakes in her dream. So it's a false awakening to the smell of smoke. Flames suddenly erupt through the walls of her home, spreading rapidly through every room. As the fire roars around her. She desperately tries to gather precious belongings, but the heat and the smoke grow overwhelming as the house collapses in burning chaos. Nice. And we also, I want to mention too, the feeling tone of the dream is really important. So it's not just the nightmare itself, but you have to work with the feeling that arises from that nightmare. That has a lot of information in there for you.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. So in neuroscience, we understand the nervous system operates in this yang dynamic, the autonomic nervous system, meaning the nerves that innervate the whole body, they're connected to the brain. And so the brain is the central processing unit. And then the. These nerves kind of carry and put every cell in our body in touch with our brain, so that every cell is contributing to our understanding and our experience. The sympathetic nervous system is the one that activates the fight or flight response. So what's going on in this dream? Flames. Right. Fire. The house is on fire. Meaning there's an emergency. Symbolically. Right. There's a. There's an urgent need for the dreamer to pay Attention. And so the autonomic nervous system, the. The sympathetic nervous system is activated. The fight or flight. You got to get out of here. You got to do something. That urgency, right, is felt in the body. That's why nightmares are more than just a dream. You know, where you're visualizing something in the nighttime. You're. Your body is experiencing it. Your heart is beating out of your chest. And it's intense. That's why people wake up from. From that intense.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Even the smell that's like. To smell the smoke. Like you really can have like, smells and touch in our dreams.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

So flames suddenly erupt through the walls of our home. That's terrifying, right? You can imagine. It really puts you into that fight or flight. I gotta get out of here. I gotta run. It spreads rapidly through every room. Now, what does that mean symbolically? So fire is not. Again, we're not reading dreams, nightmares, literally, because we missed the point.

[Deborah Maldonado]

It's ritual. Every ritual has that, like fire and cleansing and. And we even cook food. That's a kind of a cleansing, killing off the. The germs, the food, any bacteria. That's why protect is us, you know, And.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And it transforms things. It transforms a house into ashes, a tree into stumps and those kind of things. So it's a transformative, cleansing symbol. The fire roars around her. She desperately tries to gather precious belongings. Now what does this point to, this kind of trying to gather precious belongings that she's trying to hold on to old identity, things that she's familiar with, things that she doesn't want to lose. And that's in transformation. And we're always in transformation. We can think of Jung's model as a. As a developmental model that doesn't stop at childhood or adolescence or adulthood. It simply continues throughout life that we're always going through different stages. We're always having to leave behind the old and begin anew, create ourselves. We often forget that. We think that, oh, once I'm 21 or once I'm 30, whatever your definition of adulthood is, that I'm done. And that's. That's not the case. Some of the most dramatic transformations continue to happen and happen around midlife.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And those dramatics, some in my 60s.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Exactly.

[Deborah Maldonado]

They continued like, we're constantly becoming ourselves. You know, we're knowing ourselves more. And it's a journey of the lifetime. It's a journey you're meant to be on, is this. And I think it's different than this idea of working on ourselves, trying to fix ourselves. We're becoming More and more who we are. That's what we're doing. Yes, more free, more aware, more conscious.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes, that's right. And so this dream contains a lot of information for the dreamer on how to. How to approach this inevitable situation that's arising. The unconscious is saying, it's too late for you to try to fix up the house and, you know, kind of make a go at the old self. It's too late. It's gone already. Get used to the idea that all those things are. You're going to have to leave them behind. You're going to have to confront the unknown future on your own terms. Of course, that's the hard part of these transitions, these transitional periods. Often people misinterpret them as my life is falling apart or my life doesn't work, my marriage is down the tubes. Whatever is happening, they take it as an end period. And it's not. I mean, in, in a sense it is an end to the old stuff, but it's a beginning of this new stage.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And that's what prevents people from growing, is they hang on. They're hanging on to something that, like I talk about in my book, the Log Store, you're hanging onto the log and it's taking you away from where you're meant to be, but you're hang. We hang onto that insecurity. And if you're interested in that, my book Like a Spark from Fire is available on Amazon.com and all independent bookstores as well. The link will be below if you're interested in that book I wrote a couple years ago. But yeah, we, we hang on and we think we're so afraid to let go of some things. And, you know, I think the biggest thing for me has always been hard to let go of is resentments or people have hurt me in the past. It's like, almost like if I let go of that, then they're off the hook. And I know a lot of people feel that way. And that's the most liberating thing you can do is just let that go and, and, and step. Because you're just tethered to the past all the time. If you keep having resentment or, or in, like you say, the glory days, you know, talk, thinking, hanging on to, you know, you were the high school football champion and you know, you haven't done anything since high school, but you're hanging on to the glory days and you go to Friday Night Lights and watch your high school team and it's 30 years later and you haven't done anything with your life, and it's. You're still hanging on to past glory. So, yeah, it's. It's just kind of like going through life in a light way where you're not. You're not accumulating things. You know, you're. You're. You're letting things pass, just like the weather and the clouds in the sky. And that's really the lightness that we want to cultivate. Is that because you can't really hang on to anything. It's an illusion. The Eastern philosophy teaches us that it's. It's an illusion that you can hang on to anything.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And it is probably the greatest adventure that you can go unconsciously if you embrace it as. This is part of the process of life. This. This transition, this transformation, this kind of constantly having to let go of things and move on to new things. It's the greatest adventure because you're. You're on that journey in a conscious way, willingly, instead of being dragged on and nightmares we can think of in this way that it's the alarm system going off saying, it's time to do this. It's time to move on. And our resistance, of course, does not help us, because as much as we want to whine about it and complain and, you know, go kicking and screaming into the night, it will happen. So are you on board? Are you consciously participating in your transformation or are you resisting it?

[Deborah Maldonado]

Remember, transformation doesn't mean that your past self was broken. Your past self is wrong. Your past self is unhealed. The transformation means that you're going to the next level of your life, the next evolution of you. And at the time when you had those patterns that were formed early on, you needed them to be exactly as they were. The people that came into your life were exactly who they needed to be for your journey, and you just kind of move through it. And I find that if you can have that openness and it's really letting go, let lightness, you know, letting go of hanging on to everything and making everything so hard and black and white, we can really be happy in every stage of our life. People hang on to their youth, too. They want to be young forever and act young forever. The Puella and Prairie Turnus, you know, they. They want to kind of hang on to that childhood, the young 20s, you know, the crazy life that they had. And you can't do that. Rob always tells me, I got to let it go. I'm just kidding, but I do. I love this series on dreams. We'll probably have another session on this. But really, probably the most transformational experience you can have in your life is to really understand your dreams and work with someone who can help you use them towards your growth. And hope you download our Dream app because it'll give you. It'll stimulate more. I find that the more I interacted with the Dream app myself, the more the things started stirring up in my life more and changing and synchronicities start to show up. So it's almost like you're. You're bringing the inner life along with you on the ride. Instead of just focusing outward and on external goals and changing behavior and changing your thoughts on the surface, you're actually partnering with a deeper wisdom within you to, to guide you and help you and show you where you're at.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And the nightmares can be intense. Of course, we're not downplaying that and they can be problematic for people because sometimes they're chronic or persistent, repetitive. But if you don't know where to start, simply begin by paying attention, by not pushing it away, by not judging it is. Gotta get rid of this somehow. Just accepting it as this is interesting. Let me write them down. Let me look at the symbolism. Just paying attention begins that process of acceptance, of integration.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Beautiful. Well, we'll see you next week on Jung on Purpose. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to bringing you some more content on dreams. Take care.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

See you soon.

[Narrator]

Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind.

[Narrator]

Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast

[Deborah Maldonado]

before you leave and join us each week. We'll see you soon.