The Power of the Question in Dreamwork

The sacred interplay between asking and receiving.

Before you fall asleep tonight, pause. Take a moment to consider a question, an inner desire you have to know. What question lives in your heart right now? What are you genuinely curious about? This simple act of forming a question or intention before sleep is not just helpful for dreamwork. It is the doorway to Sophia herself, to gnosis, to direct knowing.

Your intention is your will, your magnetism. It is a desire distilled down to its essence. The universe cares deeply about what you need to know. This is not about obsessive desires to control or know everything. That impulse comes from fear and anxiety; you know the difference. What we are talking about is the sacred quality of genuine curiosity, the kind that arises from the questions of your soul.

In the ancient oracular traditions of Greece and Egypt, and likely in many indigenous culture across the world, the question itself was paramount. What you came to the oracle to understand, and how closely this question aligned with your true heart’s desire, was directly related to the quality, specificity, and usability of the information you would receive. The oracle could only respond to what was genuinely asked. The world and its possibilities are always far more vast and generous than our limited minds can comprehend. When we ask questions that leave us open to new possibilities and perspective changes, we receive more powerful information in return.

This is why flowering questions work so much better than yes or no inquiries. Rather than asking “Should I take this job?” which closes down the field of possibility into a binary, we might ask “What do I need to know if I were considering this new direction?” The difference is profound. One demands that spirit squeeze itself into our tiny “yes/no” framework. The other invites the dreaming realm to show us something we have not yet imagined.

In dreamwork, creating an intention puts you into relationship with spirit, with the consciousness of existence itself. You become part of the natural call and response that has always existed. Without a question, it becomes far more difficult to interpret and receive the information that comes through in your dreams. The response is intimately related to the question. The dream speaks directly to the intention, to the desire. When we set a clear question before sleep, we create a container that can actually hold a dream’s wisdom. Without that vessel, dream images can feel scattered or meaningless. The question provides context that allows seemingly random symbols to reveal their coherence and purpose.

Sometimes we need to ask the same question for many nights in a row. You might spend a month asking for the same guidance, returning to the same need. This is not failure. It is like water wearing away stone. Each night we return to the question, we deepen our commitment to knowing. We signal that we are serious and ready to receive. Sometimes the wait itself is part of the lesson, part of the medicine we need.

This interplay between question and answer, between asking and receiving, is beautifully illustrated in an excerpt from How a Mountain Was Made by Greg Sarris that speaks to the indigenous traditions of the land I live on in Sonoma County, California. In this passage, twin sisters Question Woman and Answer Woman, who are often depicted as crows, sit together in dialogue:

One day, Question Woman was curious, which, of course, was not unusual given that curiosity was her usual state of mind. She was sitting with her twin sister, Answer Woman, in their usual spot next to the fence on Gravity Hill. Below them spread all of Santa Rosa Valley. On this clear summer afternoon, they could see as far as the ocean, all the way to Marshall and to Tomales Bay.

“Tell me, Answer Woman,” she asked, “How do stories come to you?”

“Quite simple,” answered Answer Woman. “You ask me a question, and my answer comes up in the form of a story. After all, the best answer to anything will always be a story.”

“But I still don’t understand, where are the stories located? Where is their home?”

“Stories are like invisible seeds,” answered Answer Woman. “They live in the very air we breathe; they are around us at all times. When you ask me a question, it is like one of the seeds has been watered, and a flower grows, one of the ever-lasting spirits, and it talks to me. That is my power, my gift. To understand what that invisible flower spirit is telling me. Of course, the flower spirit is not awakened; the seed does not sprout and grow without your question.”

Question Woman and Answer Woman, Sitting on Gravity Hill

In some ways, the sisters are two aspects of the same consciousness; both sisters live within us. Question Woman embodies our sacred curiosity, our capacity to ask what we truly need to know. Answer Woman represents our innate ability to receive wisdom, to hear the answers that rise up in response to our genuine questions. We need both. We must learn to work with both.

Dreams are stories. They are personal myths that arise in response to what we most need to understand. Answer Woman is correct: the best answer to a question is always a story or a myth. The myths that survive through centuries do so because they continue to answer our deepest, most heartfelt questions.

Setting an intention before sleep is a radical act of self-trust and self-love. It acknowledges that you already have access to wisdom. You are not broken or lacking. You simply need to ask and listen. This shifts everything away from seeking external answers and toward recognizing your own internal authority. This is not knowledge gathered from books or based on blind faith. This is gnosis, direct knowing that lives in your body, felt and sensed. Once you know something this way, it is yours forever. You become the oracle. You develop the capacity for self-gnosis, for this embodied knowing that cannot be taken from you.

So tonight, before you close your eyes, ask yourself what you truly need to know. What question is alive in you right now? Speak it quietly to your dreaming mind. Trust that the invisible seeds are already there, waiting for your question to water them into bloom.