Partly due to Freud, we tend to see dreams myopically, as distorted mirrors of our lives, where the elements of the dream are linked, by association, almost exclusively, to the complexes that are triggered during our waking life. But I prefer to see dreams as Magic Eye pictures that only make complete sense when our perspective shifts to their archetypal underpinning and then we see the picture behind the cover-dream.
When we are in the dream (before we wake up and see everything in the dream in terms of us, and the dream as ego-centric) the action in the dream is everything and it is important. We are a player in a drama that is loosely scripted but not finished. How we conduct ourselves affects the outcome. Our complexes are the algorithms that spin out the "story" of the dream. (Algorithm = a set of rules for a program.) Because they are our complexes, the algorithms of our dream-dramas are keyed to and draw on the familiar. But, looking deeper, there are archetypes powering the complexes. To understand the difference between these two perspectives on dreaming that I am describing, I would like to suggest that, if we focus primarily on the personal associations to the dream elements, then we are catering to the ego's bias of seeing the dream as a distortion of our waking life which can be enlightening but it squeezes all the juice out of the dream. The dream becomes a shadow-puppet show, without any energy or "kick". We see patterns or we wade through our memory of a vaguely recalled drama, where the situation makes some sort of sense but can easily be dismissed as a curious nocturnal distraction. Why work on a dream, which is water over the dam, when what is important (or so we tell ourselves) is facing the challenges of our day?
However, if we acknowledge the personal associations in passing, but direct our main attention to the archetypal substrata of the dream, we are using our Magic Eye, and much deeper patterns begin to emerge. Dreams are only confusing / and borderline irrelevant when we try to impose sense onto them, but if we look at them as originating from a deeper place of archetypal wisdom and meaning (and, in that larger context, impersonal) , they become numinous, not stage-lit by the spotlights of recall but backlit by a sacred light. (Archetypes already make sense! They come loaded with sense.) Looking at dreams through our Magic Eyes, we see they have less to do with how we are navigating our days (as, for example, being Gary) and more to do with how we are living our lives as human beings.
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