In the free article, we discussed the historical precedent of the Christian dreaming life. And remember, in week 1 of this arc, we discussed the Biblical precedent of the dreaming life. Here in the Inner Room we go deeper into what we’ve learned in the free article, by exploring the transformative aspects and how these can lead to your spiritual formation. Today, we are going to look at the Ignatian and Jungian practices for discerning your dreams in an accurate way. Consider this verse: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Hebrews 5:13. We are to continuously test our power of discernment (the phrase from this verse is “constant practice”) as a way of developing our maturity in Christ.
Ignatius’ Framework for Discernment
The Spiritual Exercises recognize that the interior movement of the soul isn’t merely about naively trusting everything that comes up for you in your psyche. From the earliest church manuscripts, discernment has been a key to dreams. Once we have removed our cultural biases and recognize that God speaks through dreams, we then move to the importance of discerning them accurately.
We are also going to help those of you today who don’t dream much.
