Dreams, AI, and Lived Ethics

On January 9th, I dreamed about a friend of mine. I awoke to a notification on my phone, a text from another friend that said, "Hey, I just woke from a dream about our friend. Is she okay?" A few months ago I dreamed about my sister and then texted her, "Are you okay? You were not okay in my dream last night." She said, "Yeah, very rough night."

We are all connected, and dreams matter.

Lately, when I can’t process a dream with another person, I will input it into an AI program with a very specific instruction: “Tell me about this dream through a Jungian lens.” It creates a jumping off point to explore symbols and possible synthesis. It’s imperfect and occasionally clumsy, but as a reflective tool, it can help me orient to what my psyche may be working through. It is touch and go, but AI and I are getting along okay-ish lately.

In this particular dream, I was helping a former authority figure find a safer path—moving from a dangerous area to a well-lit sidewalk. Then I attended the funeral of an old family friend, where old and new dynamics played out through a series of interactions. After a bit of volleying back and forth, the system took my rambling journey and scene changes through the night, and summarized it into these five sentences:

Putting it all together (as a lived ethic):

What you are developing is not a belief, but a way of being in relationship:

I will walk with you.

I will not lie about risk.

I will not sacrifice myself to relieve your conscience.

I will not promise innocence as the price of care.

I will help you move to ground that is safer - humanly safer - not perfect.

First, I thought, "Lived ethic...this phrase could be something."

I never liked ethics classes, because as we intellectualize about whether I would stop the trolley with the man on it so he doesn't run into the people, or if I would let a hungry person steal bread for his family, my insides felt like they were burning with questions of immediacy, what am I actually going to do when I pass an unhoused person as I walk into my local grocery store later today, and what am I actually going to do when I face how my own flaws make other people's lives a little worse. What am I actually going to do when I go to write that case note and I cannot make the words capture the reality of anything? And I get all twisted up and sad while we talk about the trolley and the bread, and it feels like I can't bring up the real examples for fear of getting kicked out of the class. (That being said, my real life instructor for my graduate school ethics class told us all about her real life countertransference dilemmas, and I still love her for it.)

So I sat there, with this new lived ethic phrase, impressed that a machine could feed back to me a manifesto that was helpful to what my psyche was processing. There are all kinds of available tangents here about how AI is helpful or harmful; I wonder about all of these tangents. There are all kinds of available tangents about dreamwork; I would love to run down all of those. There are all kinds of available tangents about ethics here; it would be great to give them all the detail they deserve. I love being thorough and finding all potential details that matter to the overall picture.

But right here, right now, my interaction with an AI system about my dream offers me this: clarity about being present in an effective Self-led way.

So let's read through that one more time:

I will walk with you. Being present to you matters to me.

Each word there is deep and relevant: Being, Present, to You, Matters, to Me. We could stop there. That's a full truth right there. But the other details matter too.

This means I am not ahead, above, or evaluating from a distance. I am present and engaged, staying with complexity rather than rushing toward resolution.

I will not lie about risk. Life is a scary, weird place. I am not going to pretend it isn't. Growth inherently involves uncertainty. Normal change disrupts familiar patterns, relationships, and identities. We can face what is real together.

I will not sacrifice myself to relieve your conscience. This is the stickiest one for me. I used to believe that if throwing myself under the bus would help someone else feel better, then that was simply the price of care. If that’s what it took, you could find me splat on the pavement. Many of our most cherished stories are still about sacrifice - and sometimes, real care does require it.

But there is a difference between necessary sacrifice and interfering with someone else’s growth.

I am slowly, slowly learning that while there are moments when it is my role to bear weight alongside another person, there are also moments when relieving a conscience detracts from what is needed. I want your wellness, deeply. And sometimes that means showing up sacrificially. Sometimes it means saying things that I know are uncomfortable. Other times, it means staying present and allowing the processes to unfold. What I know now is that being my Self and being present to your Self is more important than avoidant comfort.

I will not promise innocence as the price of care. I release the need to be innocent, and choose the work of consciousness. Life is complex and messy. I will mess up. You will mess up. Good care includes exploring impact, ambiguity, repair, and responsibility, without collapsing into blame or shame. Therapy is not a courtroom and not a confessional. Innocence is not a pre-requisite.

I will help you move to ground that is safer - humanly safer - not perfect.

The goal isn’t perfection or permanent safety. The goal is increased honesty, flexibility, and choice. Safer doesn’t mean painless or perfect - it means more grounded, more conscious, and more alive.

That truly is my practice, or to use my new phrase, "my lived ethic."