Well, actually dreams aren't new age at all because people since the dawn of time have used them. The first dream interpretations were written down in 2070 BC.
There are people like Plato and physician Hippocrates (responsible for the hippocratic oath)who used dreams in philosophy and for medical diagnosis. Also Aristotle.
Then there's Joseph (father to Jesus) who was going to divorce Mary until he dreamt of an Angel who told him she was pregnant with the Christ child. And Joseph with the coat of many colours who basically did what I do on here (but without the computer, LOL) and saved his community from famine. In fact, the bible is fascinating as it has people using their dreams all the way through.
More recently, there was Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankinstein from a nightmare she had after her baby died, Elias Howe (inventor of the sewing machine) who got his design from a dream.
Robert Louis Stevenson got his idea for 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' from a dream and music composer Mozart got many of his melodies from dreams.
The potential of the human being is only part used when they ignore these gifts that dreams give us. I think it is part of the reason why there is so much depression these days. People pay attention to their physical body but not their spiritual and emotional one. Even many physical illnesses are linked to the mind and most doctors just treat the person as a set of physical symptoms rather than looking at the role their mind played with their immune system.
Anything people don't automatically understand is met with suspicion/fear or thought of as 'hippy' or 'new age' because it's not a 'rational' way of being, to rely on one's intuition anymore - especially in these days where everyone is so obsessed with proving everything in a lab.
What you describe happening are healing dreams. You dreamt of your X and getting back together because you were easing your own pain at the separation and if you're going through bad tomes in real life, the mind will often dream nice things to compensate (that way it balances out your emotions) - if you didn't have this you would go mad.
So although the dreams are horrible, they are a necessary part of your grieving process. I had the same thing, too.
