DREAMS
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/dreams.html
Speaking of the foolishness of the wise, he [Jung] said one must always recognize it but one does not know what a dream means, especially one's own dream.
~M. Esther Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 15
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/dreams.html
Speaking of the foolishness of the wise, he [Jung] said one must always recognize it but one does not know what a dream means, especially one's own dream.
~M. Esther Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 15
Dreams express as sensory metaphor. For metaphor to elicit nuance it must be fresh, not dead; it must shock the mind into wonder by opening up a gap, an abyss, a void. Herein lies that missing information -- again, the unborn dream. Thus dreams continually amaze us with their freshness, engage us with their ability to clothe our recycling issues in story and metaphor. Dreams also encode our evolution, our coevolution with the entire webwork of life. Pioneer dream researcher Montague Ullman (1988) states, "I no longer look upon dreaming primarily as an individual matter. Rather, I see it as an adaptation concerned with the survival of the species and only secondarily with the individual." Shamanic dreaming harnesses this transcultural aspect of dreamtime.
Such dreams are not to be understood literally, they are not prophetic in that sense, but they have that quality of psychological anticipation.
Or suppose someone is going to die.
The death is not necessarily anticipated because in the unconscious it is not so terribly important whether a man is alive or dead, that seems to make very little impression upon the unconscious.
But your attitude to it matters, how you will take it, whether you believe in immortality or not, how you react to such and such an event, that matters to the unconscious.
One could say the whole psychological side of human life was the thing that is chiefly anticipated or constructed by the dreams. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 902-903.
Such dreams are not to be understood literally, they are not prophetic in that sense, but they have that quality of psychological anticipation.
Or suppose someone is going to die.
The death is not necessarily anticipated because in the unconscious it is not so terribly important whether a man is alive or dead, that seems to make very little impression upon the unconscious.
But your attitude to it matters, how you will take it, whether you believe in immortality or not, how you react to such and such an event, that matters to the unconscious.
One could say the whole psychological side of human life was the thing that is chiefly anticipated or constructed by the dreams. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 902-903.
This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
We are the object of the dream, not its maker.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 159.
He [Jung] showed clearly how conscious man ignored such facts at his peril, and moreover taught himself and men how to read the language of dreams as if they were the forgotten language of the gods themselves. ~Laurens Van Der Post, Jung's Understanding of the Meaning of the Shadow pages 205-229
How can a curious person reasonably determine the status of such encounters? The following points may help you notice subtle distinctions that differentiate the nature of deceased dream figures:
1) Active versus static dream figures – If the deceased dream figure initiates action or seeks to contact you or show you something, then it suggests a possible encounter with the person‘s spiritual essence. But if the deceased dream figure sits like a potted plant, as my father did at the TWA gate, then the lack of purpose-
ful activity suggests a symbolic projection of one‘s mind.
2) Knowledgeable dream figures – If the deceased dream figure comes with a message, warning or advice (in person or by phone, etc.), then it suggests a possible encounter. Interestingly, Frederick van Eeden the person who many believe coined the term ̳lucid dreaming‘ recounted an experience where a deceased
brother in law warned him of an upcoming financial loss, which van Eeden later experienced. If the dream figure seems to lack new or novel information, then it may suggest a symbolic projection.
3) How he or she looks in the dream – When you encounter the deceased, do they look younger, more vital and healthy than when they passed? Or do they reflect their appearance when last seen (for example in a state of ill health and decline)? When I see my maternal grandmother in a dream and she seems in her
thirties (while I only knew her in her 70‘s and older), it suggests the dream figure has acted to re-cast themselves as they prefer to be seen instead of as I recall them. This observation seems to indicate a dream figure independent of my thinking or memory, which leads me to assume a dream visitation.
4) Eye contact – When we engage others, we often look them in the eye. The eye to eye contact often helps us see their response or sense of inner activity. If we recall a dream of the deceased and their eyes seem active and lively, it suggests an encounter. However if they fail to look in our eyes or seem to stare passively into space, then it suggests a symbolic projection.
5) Your dream occurs during grieving or long afterwards–If the dream appearance of the deceased occurs during the time of active grieving, then it may simply reflect the inner work of processing your emotions. By contrast, if the deceased appear many years later (after the normal mourning process has ended) and possibly seek you out or share information, then it seems more suggestive of an encounter.
In lucid dreams, it seems easier to determine a dream figure‘s status, especially if you thoughtfully interact with the deceased dream figure, judge their awareness and test their responsiveness, knowledge and behavior. You can even ask them questions and obtain information outside of your knowing, which you can later seek to validate. Together, this input should clarify the situation.
Lucid dreamers must take care to examine personal assumptions and beliefs, when engaging the deceased. By investigating, observing and questioning with an open mind, you become a more insightful explorer of inner realms.
http://luciddreammagazine.com/, Summer 2016
We are the object of the dream, not its maker.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 159.
He [Jung] showed clearly how conscious man ignored such facts at his peril, and moreover taught himself and men how to read the language of dreams as if they were the forgotten language of the gods themselves. ~Laurens Van Der Post, Jung's Understanding of the Meaning of the Shadow pages 205-229
How can a curious person reasonably determine the status of such encounters? The following points may help you notice subtle distinctions that differentiate the nature of deceased dream figures:
1) Active versus static dream figures – If the deceased dream figure initiates action or seeks to contact you or show you something, then it suggests a possible encounter with the person‘s spiritual essence. But if the deceased dream figure sits like a potted plant, as my father did at the TWA gate, then the lack of purpose-
ful activity suggests a symbolic projection of one‘s mind.
2) Knowledgeable dream figures – If the deceased dream figure comes with a message, warning or advice (in person or by phone, etc.), then it suggests a possible encounter. Interestingly, Frederick van Eeden the person who many believe coined the term ̳lucid dreaming‘ recounted an experience where a deceased
brother in law warned him of an upcoming financial loss, which van Eeden later experienced. If the dream figure seems to lack new or novel information, then it may suggest a symbolic projection.
3) How he or she looks in the dream – When you encounter the deceased, do they look younger, more vital and healthy than when they passed? Or do they reflect their appearance when last seen (for example in a state of ill health and decline)? When I see my maternal grandmother in a dream and she seems in her
thirties (while I only knew her in her 70‘s and older), it suggests the dream figure has acted to re-cast themselves as they prefer to be seen instead of as I recall them. This observation seems to indicate a dream figure independent of my thinking or memory, which leads me to assume a dream visitation.
4) Eye contact – When we engage others, we often look them in the eye. The eye to eye contact often helps us see their response or sense of inner activity. If we recall a dream of the deceased and their eyes seem active and lively, it suggests an encounter. However if they fail to look in our eyes or seem to stare passively into space, then it suggests a symbolic projection.
5) Your dream occurs during grieving or long afterwards–If the dream appearance of the deceased occurs during the time of active grieving, then it may simply reflect the inner work of processing your emotions. By contrast, if the deceased appear many years later (after the normal mourning process has ended) and possibly seek you out or share information, then it seems more suggestive of an encounter.
In lucid dreams, it seems easier to determine a dream figure‘s status, especially if you thoughtfully interact with the deceased dream figure, judge their awareness and test their responsiveness, knowledge and behavior. You can even ask them questions and obtain information outside of your knowing, which you can later seek to validate. Together, this input should clarify the situation.
Lucid dreamers must take care to examine personal assumptions and beliefs, when engaging the deceased. By investigating, observing and questioning with an open mind, you become a more insightful explorer of inner realms.
http://luciddreammagazine.com/, Summer 2016
Bruneel, Dreamwalking
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
--Poe, A Dream Within A Dream
This is the secret of dreams--
that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
~Carl Jung, Children's Dreams Seminar, P 159
Some dreams have considerably more than personal significance. These more significant dreams are often vivid, and make use of surprising and even incomprehensible symbols, and their relationship to the dreamer is difficult to trace. These dreams are classed as collective dreams, and to understand them, one must often use historical and mythological analogies to find out what the symbols meant to other men in other times. It may seem strange at first to think that these could have any relevance to ourselves; we have cut ourselves off from the past to such an extent that it is difficult to realize that the experiences of remote people can still have meaning for us. Yet it is so; unconsciously we still think like our distant ancestors, and to understand this is to deepen our experience, and open up new possibilities.
We apply a structure to the dream that corresponds to the pattern of a drama.
We distinguish four elements: the introduction often specifies place and time, as well as the actors (dramatis personae) of the dream action.
There follows the exposition, which unfolds the problem of the dream.
It contains, so to speak, the theme, or maybe the question posed by the unconscious.
From this arises the peripeteia: the dream action leads to increasing complexity, until it reaches a climax and changes—sometimes in the form of a catastrophe.
Finally, the lysis gives a solution or the result of the dream.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 236.
[The dream] shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 304
When I find sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a façade for albumen. What Freud calls the “dream-façade” is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.
We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.
I leave theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreams —not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318.
A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 252
The dream speaks in images and gives expression to instincts that are derived from the most primitive levels of nature. Consciousness all too easily departs from the law of nature, but it can be brought again into harmony with the latter by the assimilation of unconscious contents. --Jung, 1933, pg. 26
Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
--Poe, A Dream Within A Dream
This is the secret of dreams--
that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
~Carl Jung, Children's Dreams Seminar, P 159
Some dreams have considerably more than personal significance. These more significant dreams are often vivid, and make use of surprising and even incomprehensible symbols, and their relationship to the dreamer is difficult to trace. These dreams are classed as collective dreams, and to understand them, one must often use historical and mythological analogies to find out what the symbols meant to other men in other times. It may seem strange at first to think that these could have any relevance to ourselves; we have cut ourselves off from the past to such an extent that it is difficult to realize that the experiences of remote people can still have meaning for us. Yet it is so; unconsciously we still think like our distant ancestors, and to understand this is to deepen our experience, and open up new possibilities.
We apply a structure to the dream that corresponds to the pattern of a drama.
We distinguish four elements: the introduction often specifies place and time, as well as the actors (dramatis personae) of the dream action.
There follows the exposition, which unfolds the problem of the dream.
It contains, so to speak, the theme, or maybe the question posed by the unconscious.
From this arises the peripeteia: the dream action leads to increasing complexity, until it reaches a climax and changes—sometimes in the form of a catastrophe.
Finally, the lysis gives a solution or the result of the dream.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 236.
[The dream] shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 304
When I find sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a façade for albumen. What Freud calls the “dream-façade” is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.
We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.
I leave theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreams —not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318.
A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 252
The dream speaks in images and gives expression to instincts that are derived from the most primitive levels of nature. Consciousness all too easily departs from the law of nature, but it can be brought again into harmony with the latter by the assimilation of unconscious contents. --Jung, 1933, pg. 26
Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-catcher/201110/visitation-dreams
What I did then in order to get at this inferior, unconscious side of me was to make at night an exact reversal of the mental machinery I had used in the day. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
That is to say, I turned all my libido within in order to observe the dreams that were going on. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
By assuming a passive attitude at night, while at the same time pouring the same stream of libido into the unconscious that one has put into work in the day, the dreams can be caught and the performances of the unconscious observed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 144-145
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~Carl Jung; "Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 125.
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung; "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 304.
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. ~Carl Jung; "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 317.
In dream interpretation, the reductive (also called mechanistic) method seeks to explain images of persons and situations in terms of concrete reality. Although Jung himself concentrated on the constructive approach, he regarded reductive analysis as an important first step in the treatment of psychological problems, particularly in the first half of life.– Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon
DREAM ART
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-art-of-dreams/
That is to say, I turned all my libido within in order to observe the dreams that were going on. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
By assuming a passive attitude at night, while at the same time pouring the same stream of libido into the unconscious that one has put into work in the day, the dreams can be caught and the performances of the unconscious observed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 144-145
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~Carl Jung; "Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 125.
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung; "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 304.
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. ~Carl Jung; "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 317.
In dream interpretation, the reductive (also called mechanistic) method seeks to explain images of persons and situations in terms of concrete reality. Although Jung himself concentrated on the constructive approach, he regarded reductive analysis as an important first step in the treatment of psychological problems, particularly in the first half of life.– Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon
DREAM ART
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-art-of-dreams/
“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. --Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. --Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 144-145
It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt.
Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods.
Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this
it does with astounding completeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 21.
As Freud says, dream-analysis is the via regia to the unconscious.
It leads straight to the deepest personal secrets, and is, therefore, an invaluable instrument in the hand of the physician and
educator of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 25
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the
surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.
Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web
through patient work.
But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that
an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.
This discovery compels rather more respect of the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age
has hitherto given short shrift. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 24.
I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level.
In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself.
This I call interpretation on the subjective level. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 130
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed
realism.
To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper.
Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 199.
Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. --Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. --Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 144-145
It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt.
Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods.
Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this
it does with astounding completeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 21.
As Freud says, dream-analysis is the via regia to the unconscious.
It leads straight to the deepest personal secrets, and is, therefore, an invaluable instrument in the hand of the physician and
educator of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 25
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the
surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.
Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web
through patient work.
But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that
an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.
This discovery compels rather more respect of the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age
has hitherto given short shrift. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 24.
I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level.
In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself.
This I call interpretation on the subjective level. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 130
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed
realism.
To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper.
Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 199.
Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502
Sebastiano Ricci’s Dream of Aesculapius (1710)
Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and
a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502
BIG DREAMS wrote: ‘Unlike ordinary dreams, such a dream is highly impressive, numinous, and its imagery frequently makes use of motifs analagous to or even identical with mythology.’ And a big dream may not be just about you, it could be a ‘collective mythological dream’ for your tribe.
The ‘big dream’ fits with what was known in ancient culture as epiphany dreams, in which a god or dead person visits you and tells you some important information. Epiphany dreams were rare, and the examples passed down to us usually occur to famous leaders, with gods telling them to invade a country or establish a city. But there was a democratic culture of epiphany dreams too – you could spend the night in a dream-cave to get advice from the god Aesculapius. Galen, the great medic, says he became a doctor after Aesculapius appeared to him and also to his father in a dream.
- See more at: http://www.philosophyforlife.org/the-big-dream-survey/#sthash.swG8qIMr.dpuf
Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and
a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502
BIG DREAMS wrote: ‘Unlike ordinary dreams, such a dream is highly impressive, numinous, and its imagery frequently makes use of motifs analagous to or even identical with mythology.’ And a big dream may not be just about you, it could be a ‘collective mythological dream’ for your tribe.
The ‘big dream’ fits with what was known in ancient culture as epiphany dreams, in which a god or dead person visits you and tells you some important information. Epiphany dreams were rare, and the examples passed down to us usually occur to famous leaders, with gods telling them to invade a country or establish a city. But there was a democratic culture of epiphany dreams too – you could spend the night in a dream-cave to get advice from the god Aesculapius. Galen, the great medic, says he became a doctor after Aesculapius appeared to him and also to his father in a dream.
- See more at: http://www.philosophyforlife.org/the-big-dream-survey/#sthash.swG8qIMr.dpuf
https://www.inverse.com/article/16713-the-amazon-tribe-that-dreams-of-the-future-fears-sex-welcomes-panthers
The Amazon Tribe That Dreams of the Future
Fears Sex, Welcomes Panthers
When tonight's sleep predicts tomorrow's fortunes,
it's hard to get any rest.
The fact that the Achuar have not only managed to survive but have actually thrived in the jungle for approximately 5,000 years is proof, they say, of their ability to commune with and receive guidance — often including detailed instruction — from the spirit world while dreaming.
“The Dream People of The Amazon have their unique daily morning ritual of ”wayusa” or “dream sharing,” which has continued into the present. Each day the Achuar rise somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m., gathering in family units around a communal fire. There they consume a special wayús tea, guzzling three or four gourds worth of the warm liquid and then promptly vomiting it up. This is done as a kind of purge intended to cleanse a person of any negative energy. It also provides focus for the critical interpretation phase of the ritual, which comes as they take turns telling each other what they remember of their dreams. The Achuar believe that dreams contain fragments of important messages from spirit elders or the powerful spirit of the rainforest known as the ”Arutam” that sometimes manifests as a panther or boa.
This is a serious social responsibility because they have a belief that no person gets all the information,” says Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D, a social anthropologist who has studied the Achuar, including their dream practices, over two decades. “Typically the elder person in the household acts as interpreter, piecing together the various parts of the dreams as a way to navigate their daily existence.”
Perhaps the first and most ancient bit of instruction the Achuar received, the one that’s passed from generation to generation, is to respect and live in harmony with nature.
“This is a system of living in right relationship with one’s community, one’s environment and the world,” says David Tucker, a former executive director of the Pachamama Alliance who has spent considerable time with indigenous partners in the Amazon and Andes and has studied earth-based wisdom and practices for over 20 years.
When attending to the sick, for instance, Achuar “shaman — a term they’ve borrowed from Western visitors — will enter the dream world where they may be instructed precisely where in the rain forest to seek the kinds of plant medicines they need for healing. They’ll also be instructed how to prepare the medicine and how to administer the dosages.
“There is a really strong sense of connection to the plant and animal world, and they do not see themselves as separate from those worlds in the way that we objectify nature,” says Schlitz. “It’s much more of an embedded awareness and consciousness. There is the idea that there’s an intelligence that comes through plants and animals. The Achuar are very symbolically oriented, so they see a lot of meaning in their encounters in a way that we do not.”
Terrifying dreams or visions, those that we would characterize as nightmares, are considered the most profound of Achuar experiences because they result in personal growth. Such dreams are exceedingly rare, but when they do come it is entirely at a time of the Arutam’s choosing. Children are taught to “move toward” the dream threat or obstacle. If they can successfully grasp it while conquering their fears, then the frightening vision will collapse and reveal its true nature and message. To run away is to reject a gift and to miss a golden opportunity.
A view of nature as a sacred, life-affirming source and a reliance on dreams to set a course of action are principles that are intrinsic to many native cultures, but the Achuar hold a unique worldview that entirely upends Western definitions of “reality” and “consciousness.”
For starters, the Achuar go so far as to equate “reality,” what they consider their “true life,” with the state of dreaming rather than the state of wakefulness. They also believe that all of the inner qualities that make an individual unique, the mind and all its memories — which we call consciousness but the Achuar sum up simply as the soul — exist independently of the physical brain. On a nightly basis during dreaming, and also during visions, the soul departs the body and enters a multiverse where anything is possible and anything can be learned.
An Achuar Tribesman with a blowgun.On these journeys, the soul may move forward or backward along the river of time that ebbs and flows like the Amazon. But unlike those of us in the Western world, the Achuar do not focus on the past. Instead, they live in the moment and each one that follows, concentrating on improving their future, which they insist is extremely malleable. Challenge an elder with the point that a recent dream prophecy did not come true and he will tell you that it is because his people were forewarned and took the proper corrective steps to change that version of the future.
“If, for instance, someone dreams about sex one of the worst dreams you can have — it’s almost certain there will be a snake bite,” says Tucker. “If they have a dream like that, they won’t leave the house.”
But if Achuar elders interpret the day’s dream collective to mean that something awful is headed their way, particularly something that could affect the community, they may make an intense effort to alter the future by altering their dreams. Often this occurs in a sacred vision quest, the details of which they are honor bound to relate to the community.
They will go out and pick wild jungle tobacco, one of their most sacred medicines, and they’ll also make Ayahuasca or Maikua (powerful hallucinogenica) and go out in the forest and fast,” says Tucker. “Then they’ll ingest this plant medicine as a way to induce a vision and actually *exchange their dreams. In the Western world we feel like we are at the effect of the world. Some of us believe we are masters of our own destiny but mostly we believe we’re just kind of moving along. But the Achuar are very clear that the future can be changed.”
Two decades ago, the Achuar people experienced an unprecedented number of bad dreams. They interpreted them to mean “the people of the North” — their term for those of us in rest of the world — were coming. This arrival would not be on par with the visits from missionaries and scientists to which they had become accustomed and welcomed. It, their dreams told them, was something monumental that could threaten their existence.
So the Achuar did what they do best — which was to “dream on it” with a goal of transforming this dark future into one that did not include a return to their spears, machetes and blowguns. To see this out, the Achuar did something they had never done before: they organized.
First, they put aside their internal squabbling and united their clans to form The Achuar Federation. Then they sought partnership with neighboring tribes like the Shuar and Shiwiar and called upon the scientists and missionaries they knew — and anyone else who from around the world who cared to join them — to help form an international coalition that is known as the Pachamama Alliance. Then the Achuar waited patiently for the coming of the people of the North.
What their isolation prevented them from knowing at the time they first began dreaming their apocalyptic dreams was that the governments of Ecuador and Peru were in the early stages of talks with big oil companies over some mighty big dollars. The plan was to slash and burn the parts of the Amazon rain forest that were thought to contain the greatest deposits of crude oil and natural gas — the two million acres or so that the Achuar call home.
But in a way that is typically Achuar, they exchanged this disastrous future for a brighter one. As they watched and waited for the North, they busied themselves with preparations, building the Pachamama Alliance’s global infrastructure and strengthening its diplomatic ties. Somewhere along that path, or maybe because of it, the Achuar’s dreams became a revelation: the universe was aligning to accord with the ancient prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor.
The Amazon Tribe That Dreams of the Future
Fears Sex, Welcomes Panthers
When tonight's sleep predicts tomorrow's fortunes,
it's hard to get any rest.
- June 8, 2016
The fact that the Achuar have not only managed to survive but have actually thrived in the jungle for approximately 5,000 years is proof, they say, of their ability to commune with and receive guidance — often including detailed instruction — from the spirit world while dreaming.
“The Dream People of The Amazon have their unique daily morning ritual of ”wayusa” or “dream sharing,” which has continued into the present. Each day the Achuar rise somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m., gathering in family units around a communal fire. There they consume a special wayús tea, guzzling three or four gourds worth of the warm liquid and then promptly vomiting it up. This is done as a kind of purge intended to cleanse a person of any negative energy. It also provides focus for the critical interpretation phase of the ritual, which comes as they take turns telling each other what they remember of their dreams. The Achuar believe that dreams contain fragments of important messages from spirit elders or the powerful spirit of the rainforest known as the ”Arutam” that sometimes manifests as a panther or boa.
This is a serious social responsibility because they have a belief that no person gets all the information,” says Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D, a social anthropologist who has studied the Achuar, including their dream practices, over two decades. “Typically the elder person in the household acts as interpreter, piecing together the various parts of the dreams as a way to navigate their daily existence.”
Perhaps the first and most ancient bit of instruction the Achuar received, the one that’s passed from generation to generation, is to respect and live in harmony with nature.
“This is a system of living in right relationship with one’s community, one’s environment and the world,” says David Tucker, a former executive director of the Pachamama Alliance who has spent considerable time with indigenous partners in the Amazon and Andes and has studied earth-based wisdom and practices for over 20 years.
When attending to the sick, for instance, Achuar “shaman — a term they’ve borrowed from Western visitors — will enter the dream world where they may be instructed precisely where in the rain forest to seek the kinds of plant medicines they need for healing. They’ll also be instructed how to prepare the medicine and how to administer the dosages.
“There is a really strong sense of connection to the plant and animal world, and they do not see themselves as separate from those worlds in the way that we objectify nature,” says Schlitz. “It’s much more of an embedded awareness and consciousness. There is the idea that there’s an intelligence that comes through plants and animals. The Achuar are very symbolically oriented, so they see a lot of meaning in their encounters in a way that we do not.”
Terrifying dreams or visions, those that we would characterize as nightmares, are considered the most profound of Achuar experiences because they result in personal growth. Such dreams are exceedingly rare, but when they do come it is entirely at a time of the Arutam’s choosing. Children are taught to “move toward” the dream threat or obstacle. If they can successfully grasp it while conquering their fears, then the frightening vision will collapse and reveal its true nature and message. To run away is to reject a gift and to miss a golden opportunity.
A view of nature as a sacred, life-affirming source and a reliance on dreams to set a course of action are principles that are intrinsic to many native cultures, but the Achuar hold a unique worldview that entirely upends Western definitions of “reality” and “consciousness.”
For starters, the Achuar go so far as to equate “reality,” what they consider their “true life,” with the state of dreaming rather than the state of wakefulness. They also believe that all of the inner qualities that make an individual unique, the mind and all its memories — which we call consciousness but the Achuar sum up simply as the soul — exist independently of the physical brain. On a nightly basis during dreaming, and also during visions, the soul departs the body and enters a multiverse where anything is possible and anything can be learned.
An Achuar Tribesman with a blowgun.On these journeys, the soul may move forward or backward along the river of time that ebbs and flows like the Amazon. But unlike those of us in the Western world, the Achuar do not focus on the past. Instead, they live in the moment and each one that follows, concentrating on improving their future, which they insist is extremely malleable. Challenge an elder with the point that a recent dream prophecy did not come true and he will tell you that it is because his people were forewarned and took the proper corrective steps to change that version of the future.
“If, for instance, someone dreams about sex one of the worst dreams you can have — it’s almost certain there will be a snake bite,” says Tucker. “If they have a dream like that, they won’t leave the house.”
But if Achuar elders interpret the day’s dream collective to mean that something awful is headed their way, particularly something that could affect the community, they may make an intense effort to alter the future by altering their dreams. Often this occurs in a sacred vision quest, the details of which they are honor bound to relate to the community.
They will go out and pick wild jungle tobacco, one of their most sacred medicines, and they’ll also make Ayahuasca or Maikua (powerful hallucinogenica) and go out in the forest and fast,” says Tucker. “Then they’ll ingest this plant medicine as a way to induce a vision and actually *exchange their dreams. In the Western world we feel like we are at the effect of the world. Some of us believe we are masters of our own destiny but mostly we believe we’re just kind of moving along. But the Achuar are very clear that the future can be changed.”
Two decades ago, the Achuar people experienced an unprecedented number of bad dreams. They interpreted them to mean “the people of the North” — their term for those of us in rest of the world — were coming. This arrival would not be on par with the visits from missionaries and scientists to which they had become accustomed and welcomed. It, their dreams told them, was something monumental that could threaten their existence.
So the Achuar did what they do best — which was to “dream on it” with a goal of transforming this dark future into one that did not include a return to their spears, machetes and blowguns. To see this out, the Achuar did something they had never done before: they organized.
First, they put aside their internal squabbling and united their clans to form The Achuar Federation. Then they sought partnership with neighboring tribes like the Shuar and Shiwiar and called upon the scientists and missionaries they knew — and anyone else who from around the world who cared to join them — to help form an international coalition that is known as the Pachamama Alliance. Then the Achuar waited patiently for the coming of the people of the North.
What their isolation prevented them from knowing at the time they first began dreaming their apocalyptic dreams was that the governments of Ecuador and Peru were in the early stages of talks with big oil companies over some mighty big dollars. The plan was to slash and burn the parts of the Amazon rain forest that were thought to contain the greatest deposits of crude oil and natural gas — the two million acres or so that the Achuar call home.
But in a way that is typically Achuar, they exchanged this disastrous future for a brighter one. As they watched and waited for the North, they busied themselves with preparations, building the Pachamama Alliance’s global infrastructure and strengthening its diplomatic ties. Somewhere along that path, or maybe because of it, the Achuar’s dreams became a revelation: the universe was aligning to accord with the ancient prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor.
When a man is in the wilderness, it is the darkness that brings the dreams ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674
Apart from the efforts that have been made for centuries to extract a prophetic meaning from dreams, Freud’s discoveries are
the first successful attempt in practice to find their real significance.
His [Freud’s] work merits the term “scientific” because he has evolved a technique which not only he but many other investigators assert achieves its object, namely the understanding of the meaning of the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.
It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. Above all, he recognized that no interpretation can be undertaken without the dreamer.
The words composing a dream-narrative have not just one meaning, but many meanings.
If, for instance, someone dreams of a table, we are still far from knowing what the “table” of the dreamer signifies, although the
word “table” sounds unambiguous enough.
For the thing we do not know is that this “table” is the very one at which his father sat when he refused the dreamer all further financial help and threw him out of the house as a good for nothing.
The polished surface of this table stares at him as a symbol of his lamentable worthlessness in his daytime consciousness as well as in his dreams at night.
This is what our dreamer understands by “table.”
Therefore we need the dreamer’s help in order to limit the multiple meanings of words to those that are essential and convincing.
That the “table” stands as a mortifying landmark in the dreamer’s life may be doubted by anyone who was not present.
But the dreamer does not doubt it, nor do I.
Clearly, dream interpretation is in the first place an experience which has immediate validity for only two
persons. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 539
So difficult is it to understand a dream that for a long time I have made it a rule, when someone tells me a dream and asks for my
opinion, to say first of all to myself: “I have no idea what this dream means.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 533
If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious.
Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 477
Nature commits no errors. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 95.
One of the most important sources of the primitive belief in spirits is dreams.
People very often appear as the actors in dreams, and the primitive readily believes them to be spirits or ghosts.
The dream has for him an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man.
Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as
though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality.
To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character.
This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 574
Experience has shown, however, that even professional analysts, who might be expected to have mastered the art of dream
interpretation, often capitulate before their own dreams and have to call in the help of a colleague.
If even one who purports to be an expert in the method proves unable to interpret his own dreams satisfactorily, how much
less can this be expected of the patient.
Freud’s hope that the unconscious could be “exhausted” has not been fulfilled.
Dreamlife and intrusions from the unconscious continue—mutatis mutandis [given also that things do change]—unimpeded. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141
Childhood is important not only because various warpings of instinct have their origin there, but because this is the time when,
terrifying or encouraging, those far-seeing dreams and images appear before the soul of the child, shaping his whole destiny,
as well as those retrospective intuitions which reach back far beyond the range of childhood experience into the life of our
ancestors. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 98
Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and
a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
I mention this curious fact more for the sake of completeness than to lay any particular stress on this problematic phenomenon.
It seems to me, however, that a definite connection does exist between physical and psychic disturbances and that its significance is generally underrated, though on the other hand it is boundlessly exaggerated owing to certain tendencies to regard physical disturbances merely as an expression of psychic disturbances, as is particularly the case with Christian Science.
Dreams throw very interesting sidelights on the inter-functioning of body and psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502
The symptomatology of an illness is at the same time a natural attempt at healing. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312
In my rather long psychological experiences I have observed a great many people whose unconscious psychic activity I was able to follow into the immediate presence of death.
As a rule the approaching end was indicated by those symbols which, in normal life also, proclaim changes of psychological condition—rebirth symbols such as changes of locality, journeys, and the like.
I have frequently been able to trace back for over a year, in a dream-series, the indications of approaching death, even in cases where such thoughts were not prompted by the outward situation.
Death, therefore, has its onset long before death.
Moreover, this often shows itself in peculiar changes of personality which may precede death by quite a long time.
On the whole, I was astonished to see how little ado the unconscious psyche makes of death.
It would seem as though death were relatively unimportant, or perhaps our psyche does not bother about what happens to the individual.
But it seems that the unconscious is all the more interested in how one dies; that is, whether the attitude of consciousness is adjusted to dying or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learned from books.
Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them.
Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 325
So when I counsel my patient to pay attention to his dreams, I mean: “Turn back to the most subjective part of yourself, to the
source of your being, to that point where you are making world history without being aware of it. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 316
One would do well to treat every dream as though it were a totally unknown object.
Look at it from all sides, take it in your hand, carry it about with you, let your imagination play round it, and talk about it with other people.
Primitives tell each other impressive dreams, in a public palaver if possible, and this custom is also attested in late antiquity, for all the ancient peoples attributed great significance to dreams.
Treated in this way, the dream suggests all manner of ideas and associations which lead us closer to its meaning.
The ascertainment of the meaning is, I need hardly point out, an entirely arbitrary affair, and this is where the
hazards begin.
Narrower or wider limits will be set to the meaning, according to one’s experience, temperament, and taste.
Some people will be satisfied with little, for others much is still not enough.
Also the meaning of the dream, or our interpretation of it, is largely dependent on the intentions of the interpreter, on
what he expects the meaning to be or requires it to do.
In eliciting the meaning he will involuntarily be guided by certain presuppositions, and it depends very much on the Scrupulousness and honesty of the investigator whether he gains something by his interpretation or perhaps only becomes still more deeply entangled in his mistakes. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 320
.
As individuals we are not completely unique, but are like all other men.
Hence a dream with a collective meaning is valid in the first place for the dreamer, but it expresses at the same time the fact that his momentary problem is also the problem of other people.
This is often of great practical importance, for there are countless people who are inwardly cut off from humanity and oppressed by the thought that nobody else has their problems.
Or else they are those all-too modest souls who, feeling themselves nonentities, have kept their claim to social recognition on too low a level.
Moreover, every individual problem is somehow connected with the problem of the age, so that practically every subjective difficulty has to be viewed from the standpoint of the human
situation as a whole.
But this is permissible only when the dream really is a mythological one and makes use of collective symbols. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 323
There are, as you know, numerous works on the phenomenology of dreams, but very few that deal with their psychology.
This for the obvious reason that a psychological interpretation of dreams is an exceedingly ticklish and risky business.
Freud has made a courageous attempt to elucidate the intricacies of dream psychology with the help of views which he gathered in the field of psychopathology.
Much as I admire the boldness of his attempt, I cannot agree either with his method or with its results.
He explains the dream as a mere façade behind which something has been carefully hidden.
There is no doubt that neurotics hide disagreeable things, probably just as much as normal people do.
But it is a serious question whether this category can be applied to such a normal and worldwide phenomenon as the dream.
I doubt whether we can assume that a dream is something other than it appears to be.
I am rather inclined to quote another Jewish authority, the Talmud, which says: “The dream is its own interpretation.”
In other words I take the dream for what it is.
The dream is such a difficult and complicated thing that I do not dare to make any assumptions
about its possible cunning or its tendency to deceive.
The dream is a natural occurrence, and there is no earthly reason why we should assume that it is a crafty device to lead us astray.
It occurs when consciousness and will are to a large extent extinguished.
It seems to be a natural product which is also found in people who are not neurotic.
Moreover, we know so little about the psychology of the dream process that we must be more than careful when we introduce into its explanation elements that are foreign to the dream itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 41
My method, like Freud’s, is built up on the practice of confession.
Like him, I pay close attention to dreams, but when it comes to the unconscious our views part
company.
For Freud it is essentially an appendage of consciousness, in which all the individual’s incompatibilities are heaped up.
For me the unconscious is a collective psychic disposition, creative in character.
This fundamental difference of viewpoint naturally produces an entirely different evaluation of the symbolism and the method of interpreting it.
Freud’s procedure is, in the main, analytical and reductive.
To this I add a synthesis which emphasizes the purposiveness of unconscious tendencies with respect to personality development. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 875
But, fortunately, the man [Wolfgang Pauli] had religio, that is, he “carefully took account of” his experiences and he had enough pistis, or loyalty to his experience, to enable him to hang on to it and continue it.
He had the great advantage of being neurotic and so, whenever he tried to be disloyal to his experience or to deny the voice, the neurotic condition instantly came back.
He simply could not “quench the fire” and finally he had to admit the incomprehensibly numinous character of his experience.
He had to confess that the unquenchable fire [in a dream] was holy.
This was the sine qua non of his cure. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 74.
The curious personifications characteristic not only of these visions [of Zosimos] but of alchemical literature in general shows in the plainest possible terms that we are dealing with a psychic process that takes place mainly in the unconscious and therefore can come into consciousness only in the form of a dream or vision.
At that time and until very much later no one had any idea of the unconscious; consequently all unconscious contents were projected onto the object, or rather were found in nature as apparent objects or properties of matter and were not recognized as purely internal psychic events. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 375.
The conscious realization of what is hidden and kept secret certainly confronts us with an insoluble conflict; at least this is how it appears to the conscious mind.
But the symbols that rise up out of the unconscious in dreams show it rather as a confrontation of opposites, and the images of the goal represent their successful reconciliation.
Something empirically demonstrable comes to our aid from the depths of our unconscious nature.
It is the task of the conscious mind to understand these hints.
If this does not happen, the process of individuation will nevertheless continue.
The only difference is that we become its victims and are dragged along by fate towards that inescapable goal which we might have reached walking upright, if only we had taken the trouble and had been patient enough to understand in time the meaning of the numina that cross our path.
~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 746
Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without your understanding their language. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 233.
Heart-Caves
We make the descent into the heart-caves of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." In MDR, Jung (pg. 88) echoes a similar statement, "My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light."
We may or may not carry certain ancestral DNA, but we are still psychophysically entangled with them whether it is deliberate or not, open to interaction or not, 'mutual unconscious' or not. We are seemingly knotted together with some ancestors, through our dysfunctions and unconscious style of perception. If the symptom ties together the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic it is beyond meaning. This might shake up our psychogenealogical assumptions and reinvigorate our practice. Glimmerings of the whole is all that can be expected.
Lacan's debatable theory of phenomenological experience
describes mirroring as a stage with a significant symbolic dimension -- a field of radical alterity. Within our genealogical work, we can produce subjective changes at the symbolic level, resulting in imaginal and real effects. Whether such theoretical claims are true or false, changes in subjective attitudes, (including those involving our ancestors), lead to real world changes (natural consequences) in behavior, emotions, thoughts, and spirit.
For Lacan, the symptom (sinthome) is not a call for interpretation, but a preferred mode of "enjoying the unconscious." For example, depression may be an appropriate response to the world we live in, not something to medicate away. We gain personal and historical perspective seeing how our ancestors responded to the unknowns and challenges in their own lives. We don't need answers to the wrong questions but a tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty, not-knowing and tolerating the terror of not having answers.
This can be backed up by Hillman's soul-making approach that a singular interpretation of a dream stops the process cold, in a perhaps erroneous, if resonant idea of what it means. He refuses to make meaning of dreams, preferring to follow the uncertainty. There is no attempt at a cure or even enrichment. In genealogy the mythic root informs us about human behavior. This happens naturally, unconsciously and doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. It's not about the past, present, or future but about the soul-world.
Hillman locates dreams in the mysterious and hidden House of Hades (Pluto), a journey through the Underworld much like Orpheus. He deals with the dream in relation to the soul and death. He considers them messengers of the Underworld and of soul that first dissolve and then transform us. There is inherent multiplicity of perspectives and meaning in the images themselves, rather than a single truth. It is the soul that takes on meaning, rather than an image that reveals meaning to the ego or narrative. The dream remains alive.
We might draw an analogy between dreams and our ancestral phenomenology. Awake or asleep, it is the dreaming that is important. If we dream of the ancestors, they may dream of us right back - perhaps, poetically they dream unceasingly. In some sense we are that dream. This catalytic process may be more than a metaphor -- some sort of psychic synchronization or interwovenness, resonance, empathy, intersubjectivity, transference of unconscious material, or even mystic unity.
Heart-Caves
We make the descent into the heart-caves of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." In MDR, Jung (pg. 88) echoes a similar statement, "My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light."
We may or may not carry certain ancestral DNA, but we are still psychophysically entangled with them whether it is deliberate or not, open to interaction or not, 'mutual unconscious' or not. We are seemingly knotted together with some ancestors, through our dysfunctions and unconscious style of perception. If the symptom ties together the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic it is beyond meaning. This might shake up our psychogenealogical assumptions and reinvigorate our practice. Glimmerings of the whole is all that can be expected.
Lacan's debatable theory of phenomenological experience
describes mirroring as a stage with a significant symbolic dimension -- a field of radical alterity. Within our genealogical work, we can produce subjective changes at the symbolic level, resulting in imaginal and real effects. Whether such theoretical claims are true or false, changes in subjective attitudes, (including those involving our ancestors), lead to real world changes (natural consequences) in behavior, emotions, thoughts, and spirit.
For Lacan, the symptom (sinthome) is not a call for interpretation, but a preferred mode of "enjoying the unconscious." For example, depression may be an appropriate response to the world we live in, not something to medicate away. We gain personal and historical perspective seeing how our ancestors responded to the unknowns and challenges in their own lives. We don't need answers to the wrong questions but a tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty, not-knowing and tolerating the terror of not having answers.
This can be backed up by Hillman's soul-making approach that a singular interpretation of a dream stops the process cold, in a perhaps erroneous, if resonant idea of what it means. He refuses to make meaning of dreams, preferring to follow the uncertainty. There is no attempt at a cure or even enrichment. In genealogy the mythic root informs us about human behavior. This happens naturally, unconsciously and doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. It's not about the past, present, or future but about the soul-world.
Hillman locates dreams in the mysterious and hidden House of Hades (Pluto), a journey through the Underworld much like Orpheus. He deals with the dream in relation to the soul and death. He considers them messengers of the Underworld and of soul that first dissolve and then transform us. There is inherent multiplicity of perspectives and meaning in the images themselves, rather than a single truth. It is the soul that takes on meaning, rather than an image that reveals meaning to the ego or narrative. The dream remains alive.
We might draw an analogy between dreams and our ancestral phenomenology. Awake or asleep, it is the dreaming that is important. If we dream of the ancestors, they may dream of us right back - perhaps, poetically they dream unceasingly. In some sense we are that dream. This catalytic process may be more than a metaphor -- some sort of psychic synchronization or interwovenness, resonance, empathy, intersubjectivity, transference of unconscious material, or even mystic unity.
Freud has a "theory," I have no "theory" but I describe facts.
I do not theorize about how neuroses originate, I describe what you find in neuroses.
Nor have I any theory of dreams, I only indicate what kind of method I use and what the possible results are.
I must emphasize this because people always fail to see that I am talking about and naming facts, and that my concepts are mere names and not philosophical terms.. . .
In dream analysis I proceed in a circurnarnbulatory fashion, having regard to the wise Talmudic saying that the dream is its own interpretation.
--C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” ―Aeschylus
As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para 4.
Everything psychic has a lower and a higher meaning, as in the profound saying of late classical mysticism: ‘Heaven above, Heaven below, stars above, stars below, all that is above also is below, know this and rejoice.’ Here we lay our finger on the secret symbolical significance of everything psychic. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 77.
The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 64.
I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father's dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 62-64.
I don't use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
That is to say, by means of "free" association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~ Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pg. 292-294.
I do not theorize about how neuroses originate, I describe what you find in neuroses.
Nor have I any theory of dreams, I only indicate what kind of method I use and what the possible results are.
I must emphasize this because people always fail to see that I am talking about and naming facts, and that my concepts are mere names and not philosophical terms.. . .
In dream analysis I proceed in a circurnarnbulatory fashion, having regard to the wise Talmudic saying that the dream is its own interpretation.
--C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” ―Aeschylus
As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para 4.
Everything psychic has a lower and a higher meaning, as in the profound saying of late classical mysticism: ‘Heaven above, Heaven below, stars above, stars below, all that is above also is below, know this and rejoice.’ Here we lay our finger on the secret symbolical significance of everything psychic. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 77.
The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 64.
I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father's dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 62-64.
I don't use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
That is to say, by means of "free" association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~ Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pg. 292-294.
Morpheus can change form and enter dreams. Morpheus and Iris, Guérin, 1811. (Public Domain)
If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious.
Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 477.
If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious.
Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 477.
Dreams, the realm of the collective unconscious, are where our holographic and ancestral memories live, and we can access them from there, and they likewise access us through the dreamworld.
Carl Jung brought the topic of mythology into psychotherapy, and he wrote about his own "personal myth." One approach to dreamwork is the identification of the functional or dysfunctional personal myth (or belief system) embedded in the dream. This personal myth usually is implicit or explicit in what Hartmann calls the "central image" of the dream. In addition, it typically serves as the "chaotic attractor" that self-organizes material drawn to it by the sleeping brain's neural networks. Jung's perspective on dreams is remarkably congruent with many findings in neuroscience as well as the self-regulatory processes that typify contemporary dream theory and research.
My collaborators and I have been studying what Jung called "big dreams" for some time. For various research studies we defined "big dreams" either as "memorable" dreams, as "important" dreams, as "especially significant" dreams, and as "impactful" dreams. In each case we found that the "big dreams" were characterized by significantly higher Central Image Intensity than control groups of dreams - thus more powerful imagery. We did not find clear differences in Content Analysis scoring of these dreams. We will discuss these studies and also present a possible neurobiology of "big dreams."
In an early work, Jung wrote about two types of thinking, directed and fantasy thinking, He had in mind what we might today see as the difference between left brain analytical thinking with words and right brain thinking in images and stories. The brain works differently in each mode, with different areas active and with different chemicals suffusing the neurons. Jung's two types combine what we would now distinguish as right and left brain activity while awake and dream thinking while we are asleep. In referring to the lunar mind, I am speaking about the sleeping mind at work as it dreams us and also the (probably mostly) right brain activity that we use in active imagination. In Jungian psychoanalysis, we are concerned with bringing lunar and solar minds into contact with one another in the field of an analytic relationship, and working with dreams is an essential aspect of this process.
Insights from contemporary neurobiology support rather than contest Jung's view that emotional truth underpins the dreaming process. Recent imaging studies confirm that dreams are the mind's vehicle for the processing of emotional states of being, particularly the fear, anxiety, anger or elation that often figure prominently. Dream sleep is also the guardian of memory, playing a part in forgetting, encoding and affective organization of memory.In the clinical sections of the presentation Margaret will let the dreams speak, revealing the emotionally salient concerns of the dreamers in a way that demonstrates the healthy attempt of the brain-mind to come to terms with difficult emotional experience. The dreams become dreamable as part of the meaning-making process.
Dreams...are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187 Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317
Carl Jung brought the topic of mythology into psychotherapy, and he wrote about his own "personal myth." One approach to dreamwork is the identification of the functional or dysfunctional personal myth (or belief system) embedded in the dream. This personal myth usually is implicit or explicit in what Hartmann calls the "central image" of the dream. In addition, it typically serves as the "chaotic attractor" that self-organizes material drawn to it by the sleeping brain's neural networks. Jung's perspective on dreams is remarkably congruent with many findings in neuroscience as well as the self-regulatory processes that typify contemporary dream theory and research.
My collaborators and I have been studying what Jung called "big dreams" for some time. For various research studies we defined "big dreams" either as "memorable" dreams, as "important" dreams, as "especially significant" dreams, and as "impactful" dreams. In each case we found that the "big dreams" were characterized by significantly higher Central Image Intensity than control groups of dreams - thus more powerful imagery. We did not find clear differences in Content Analysis scoring of these dreams. We will discuss these studies and also present a possible neurobiology of "big dreams."
In an early work, Jung wrote about two types of thinking, directed and fantasy thinking, He had in mind what we might today see as the difference between left brain analytical thinking with words and right brain thinking in images and stories. The brain works differently in each mode, with different areas active and with different chemicals suffusing the neurons. Jung's two types combine what we would now distinguish as right and left brain activity while awake and dream thinking while we are asleep. In referring to the lunar mind, I am speaking about the sleeping mind at work as it dreams us and also the (probably mostly) right brain activity that we use in active imagination. In Jungian psychoanalysis, we are concerned with bringing lunar and solar minds into contact with one another in the field of an analytic relationship, and working with dreams is an essential aspect of this process.
Insights from contemporary neurobiology support rather than contest Jung's view that emotional truth underpins the dreaming process. Recent imaging studies confirm that dreams are the mind's vehicle for the processing of emotional states of being, particularly the fear, anxiety, anger or elation that often figure prominently. Dream sleep is also the guardian of memory, playing a part in forgetting, encoding and affective organization of memory.In the clinical sections of the presentation Margaret will let the dreams speak, revealing the emotionally salient concerns of the dreamers in a way that demonstrates the healthy attempt of the brain-mind to come to terms with difficult emotional experience. The dreams become dreamable as part of the meaning-making process.
Dreams...are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187 Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317
The Value of Dreamwork
by Iona Miller
The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are precisely those which have inspired the basic images of ritual and mythology. These eternal ones of the dream are not to be confused with the personality modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmares or madness to the tormented individual. Dream is the personalized myth. Myth is the depersonalized dream. --Joseph Campbell
No one who does not know himself can know others. And in each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dream and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a different situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude; the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. --C. G. Jung
As we spend a large proportion of our lives in a dream state, a fuller understanding of their implications may prove valuable. Today, there are several prevailing theories concerning the significance and value of dreams. No final statement about dream may be made. There are several approaches to each perspective which is assumed a priori. There are many alternatives to choose from. One's choice of style in dreamwork will be determined by the mythemes currently embraced. The characteristic attitudes associated with the archetypes will motivate and influence one's approach to the dreamworld.
Strephon Kaplan Williams (3) (Jungian-Senoi Institute) is one of the foremost proponents of Dreamwork. He outlines a six-point program for continued use. 1. Dialogue with the dream characters, asking questions and recording answers. 2. Re-experience of the dream through imagination, art projects, and creativity. 3. Examination of unresolved aspects of the dream, and contemplation of solutions. 4. Actualization of insights in daily life, where relevant. 5. Meditation on the source of dreams and insight from the Self. 6. Synthesize the essence of dreamlife and its meaning in a journal and apply them in one's life journey. To offer a variety of other approaches, we will cover theories on dreams and dreaming from Jung's original work, the analytical psychology school, para-psychology, and archetypal or imaginal psychology.
Knowledge of the antiquated Freudian system is so wide-spread that no further comment here seems necessary. Jung was the first to depart from Freud's "sexuality-fraught" perception of dreams. Where Freud saw one complex, Jung saw many. He saw in dreams a gamut of archetypes overseen by the transcendent function, or Self. Analytical psychology amplified and clarified his original material. Most of this work is concerned with the fantasy of the process of individuation. It reflects an ego with a heroic attitude, and proceeds by stages of development. Consciousness, at this stage, is generally monotheistic. It has a tendency to seek the center of meaning, as if there were only One.
Parapsychological work done with dreams also seems to reflect this attitude of searching, influencing, and controlling. In Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman differs from the traditional analytical viewpoint by stating: Dreams are important to the Soul--not for the message the ego takes from them, not for the recovered memories or the revelations; what does seem to matter to the soul is the nightly encounter with a plurality of shades in an underworld...the freeing of the soul from its identity with the ego and the waking state...What we learn from dreams is what psychic nature really is--the nature of psychic reality; not I, but we...not monotheistic consciousness looking down from its mountain, but polytheistic consciousness wandering all over the place. In Jung's model, one major function of dreams is to provide the unconscious with a means of exercising its regulative activity. Conscious attitudes tend to become one-sided. Through their postulated compensatory effect, dreams present different data and varying points of view. Individuation is the psyche's goal; it seeks to bring this about through an internal adjustment procedure. There is an admonition in Magick to "balance each thought against its opposite."
Dreams, according to Jung, do this for us automatically. However, there must be a conscious striving toward incorporation of the balancing attitudes presented through dreams (this applies equally to fantasies and visions). Another apparent function for a dream state is to take old information, contained in long-term memory, incorporate it with those experiences, and integrate them with new experiences. This creates new attitudes. Since the dream conjoins current and past experiences to form new attitudes, the dream contains possible information about the future. There is a causal relationship between our attitudes and the events which manifest from our many possible futures. In studies at Maimonides Dream Labs, Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman were trying to impress certain information on an individual's dream. They found that an individual, being monitored for dream states, could incorporate a mandala, which was being concentrated on by another subject, into his dream. This led to their famous theory on dream telepathy.
Dream symbols appear to allow repressed impulses to be expressed in disguised forms. Dream symbols are essential message-carriers from the instinctive-archetypal continuum to the rational part of the human mind. Their incorporation enriches consciousness, so that it learns to understand the forgotten language of the pre-conscious mind. The dream language presents symbols from which you can gain value through dream monitoring. You can use these dream symbols directly to facilitate communication with this other aspect of yourself.
Should you choose later to re-program yourself out of old habit patterns, you're going to want an accurate conception of what dream symbols really mean. A symbol always stands for something that is unknown. It contains more than it's obvious or immediate meaning. The symbolic function bridges man's inner and outer world. Symbolism represents a continuity of consciousness and preconscious mental activity, in which the preconscious extends beyond the boundaries of the individual. These primitive processes of prelogical thinking continue throughout life and do not indicate a regressive mode of thought.
Dream symbols are independent of time, space, and causality. The meaning of unconscious contents varies with the specific internal and external situation of the dreamer. Some dreams originate in a personal or conscious context. These dreams usually reflect personal conflicts, or fragmentary impressions left over from the day. Some dreams, on the other hand, are rooted in the contents of the collective unconscious. Their appearance is spontaneous and may be due to some conscious experience, which causes specific archetypes to constellate. It is often difficult to distinguish personal contents from collective contents. In dreams, archetypes often appear in contemporary dress, often as persons vitally connected with us.
In this case, both their personal aspect (or objective level), and their significance as projections or partial aspects of the psyche (subjective level) may be brought into consciousness. A dream is never merely a repetition of preceding events, except in the case of past psychic trauma. There is specific value in the symbols and context the psyche utilizes. It may produce any; why is it sending just this dream and not another?
Dreams rich in pictorial detail usually relate to individual problems. Universal contexts are revealed in simple, vivid images with scant detail. No attempt to interpret a single dream, or even the sequence dreams fall in, is fruitful. In fact, later research by Asklepia Foundation researchers asserts it is more important to journey using dreams as experiential springboards for therapeutic outcomes. In interpreting a group of dreams, we seek to discover the 'center of meaning' which all the dreams express in varied form.
When this 'center' is discovered by consciousness and its lesson assimilated, the dreams begin to spring from a new center. Recurring dreams generally indicate an unresolved conflict trying to break into consciousness. There are three types of significance a dream may carry: 1) It may stem from a definite impression of the immediate past. As a reaction, it supplements or compliments the impressions of the day. 2) Here there is balance between the conscious and unconsciousness components. The dream contents are independent of the conscious situation, and are so different from it they present conflict. 3) When this contrary position of the unconscious is stronger, we have spontaneous dreams with no relation to consciousness. These dreams are archetypal in origin, and consequently are over-powering, strange and often oracular. (These dreams are not necessarily most desirable to the student, as they may be extremely dangerous if the dreamer's ego is still too narrow to recognize and assimilate their meaning.)
We can never empirically determine the meaning of a dream. We cannot accept a meaning merely because it fits in with what we expected. Dreams can exert a reductive as well as prospective function. In other words, if our conscious attitude is inflated, dreams may compensate negatively, and show us our human frailty and dependence. They also may act positively by providing a 'guiding image' which corrects a self-devaluing attitude, re-establishing balance. The unconscious, by anticipating future conscious achievements, provides a rough plan for progress. Each life, says Jung, is guided by a private myth.
Each individual has a great store of DNA information. It is generally mediated by the archetypes which are deployed by both myth and dream. As you create this individual or private myth, it attracts, if you will, an archetypal pattern and molds itself in a characteristic way (or visa versa). The archetype precipitates compulsive action. It is the motivating factor which may become externalized in the physical world. Jung notes: "The dreamer's unconscious is communicating with the dreamer alone. And is selecting symbols which have meaning to the dreamer and no one else. They also involve the collective unconscious whose expression may be social rather than personal."
We may discover hidden meaning in our dreams and fantasies through the following procedure: 1) Determine the present situation of consciousness. What significant events surround the dream? 2) With the lowering of the threshold of consciousness, unconscious contents arise through dream, vision, and fantasy. 3) After perceiving the contents, record them so they are not lost (the Hermetic seal). 4) Investigate, clarify, and elaborate by amplification with personal meanings, and collective meaning, gleaned from similar motifs in myth and fairy tale. 5) Integrate this meaning with your general psychic situation. INstincts are the best guide; if you are obtaining "value" from your interpretation, it will "feel" correct. Complexes and their attendant archetypes draw attention to themselves but are difficult to pinpoint.
We may use conscious amplification of the symbolism presented in dream form. All the elements of the dream may be examined in a limited, controlled, and directed association process, which enlarges and expands the dream material through analogy. The nucleus of meaning contained in the analogy is identical with that of the dream content. When a dream is falsely interpreted, others follow to correct the error. Preconscious contents are on the verge of being remembered.
Just as language skills facilitate new conceptualization, knowledge of the vocabulary of dream symbolism allows closer rapport with the preconscious. Dreaming is one of the easiest methods of contact with the numinous element, or unknown. To illustrate how archetypes may affect perspective, we will now examine another of the methods for working with dreams and other images. If Freud's view on dreams can be seen as Aphroditic/sexual, and Jung's as heroic/developmental (Yesod and Tiphareth, respectively in QBL), then Hillman's newer "Verbal Technique" might be seen as associated with Hades, Lord of the Underworld or deep subconscious, (DAATH in QBL).
This relationship to the image is seeking value, depth, and volume. This method stresses keeping to the image as presented rather than analyzing symbols. This method, while usable by anyone, is being applied by those who are thoroughly acquainted with symbols and their meaning in an attempt to recapture to unknown element. The dream image expresses this if the symbols are not dissected from their "specific context, mood, and scene." An image presents symbols with their particularity and peculiarness intact.
Dream presents a variety of images which are all intra-related. Time and sequence are distorted in dream. Hillman prefers to view dream images with all parts as co-relative and co-temporaneous. This approach to the dream is a sort of metaphorical word-play. The elements of the dream are chanted or interwoven. Repeat the dream while playfully rearranging the sequence of events. Remain alert to analogies which form themselves during this word play. Ruminate on any puns which may occur. As the play unfolds, deeper significance emerges as a resonance.
By allowing the dream to speak for itself, interpretations appear indirectly. This is a method of communicating with the psyche which is in harmony with its inherent structure. In alchemy, it is known as an iteratio of the prima materia. Its value is evident, according to Hillman. "We do not want to prejudice the phenomenal experience of their unknowness and our unconsciousness by knowing in advance that they are messages, dramas, compensations, prospective indications, transcendent function.
We want to get at the image without the defense of symbols." (1) The archetypal content in an image unfolds during participation with it. We have found that an archetypal quality emerges through a) precise portrayal of the image (including any confusion or vagueness presented with the image); b) sticking to the image while hearing it metaphorically; c) discovering the necessity within the image (the fact that all the symbols an images presented are required in this context); d) experiencing the unfathomable analogical richness of the image. (2) In this context, 'archetypal' is seen as a function of making. The adjective may be applied to any image (6) upon which the operations are performed. This means that no single image is inherently more meaningful than another. Value may be extracted from them all. This coincides with the alchemical conception of the Opus as work. Here the Opus is carried by the dreamwork technique. Archetypal psychology contends that the value of dreams has little application to practical affairs.
In Re-Visioning Psychology , Hillman postulates that: Dream's value and emotion is in relation with soul and how life is lived in relation with soul. When we move the soul insights of the dream into life for problem-solving and people-relating, we rob the dream and impoverish the soul. The more we get out of a dream for human affairs the more we prevent its psychological work, what it is doing and building night after night, interiorly, away from life in a nonhuman world. The dream is already valuable without having any literalizations or personalistic interpretations tacked on to it.
Hillman ends his "Inquiry Into Image" by stating that the final meaning of a dream cannot be found, no matter how it seems to "click." Analogizing is like my fantasy of Zen, where the dream is the teacher. Each time you say what the image means, you get your face slapped. The dream becomes a Koan when we approach it by means of analogy. If you can literalize a meaning, "interpret" a dream, you are off the track, lost your Koan. (For the dream is the thing, not what it means.) Then you must be slapped to bring you back to the image. A good dream analysis is one in which one gets more and more slaps, more and more analogies, the dream exposing your entire unconscious, the basic matters of your psychic life.
This type of analysis seems consistent with the origins of the word. Originally, it had to do with "loosening." This type of dream analysis loosens our soul from its identity with day-to-day life. It reminds us that styles of consciousness other than that of the ego have validity.
The soul experiences these styles nightly. No paper of dreams would be complete without some mention of nightmares. Even though dream is an easy method of contacting the unconscious, it is not always pleasant. Occult literature speaks of a figure called "the Dweller on the Threshold." In Eastern philosophies there are the wrathful deities. This figure corresponds with Trump XV, The Devil, in Tarot. This seems consistent with Hillman's attribution of the dream as Hades' realm. The healthy person learns easily to cooperate on his descents into the psyche.
The uninformed or neurotic personality is likely to encounter hindrances. These hindrances often take the form of frightening, monstrous, overpowering forces. Ego-consciousness is not able to comprehend them. When the subconscious is highly activated these images may occur during waking hours and in sleep. This dread and oppression form the basis for nightmares. Pan and his attendant phenomena (such as panic) are archetypal representations of the nightmare. Pan also corresponds with Trump XV. In the heroic model, as consciousness develops, there is a marked difference in both the content of dream and the dreamer. He gains increased ability to assimilate the charges of energy associated with the dream. The more conscious the experience of the numinous, the less fraught with irrationality and fear the experience. This holds true in waking and sleeping hours.
John Gowan, in Trance, Art, and Creativity , states, "It is this gentling, humanizing process exerted on the preconscious by creative function of the individual which is the only proper preparation for the psychedelic graces." These graces include an immersion of the ego in the expanded context of the subconscious. The ego is then able to return from its experience enriched by the contact. Contents which might formerly have been considered nightmarish are more fully understood, and the monsters become transformed into butterflies. (7) This attitude toward nightmare is not consistent with Hillman's approach. He does not advocate changing or controlling the psyche. This is, in fact, neither possible nor desirable. He asserts that to enter dream is to enter the underworld, Hades' realm.
Psychic images are metaphorical. All underworld figures are shades or shadow souls. There is no reason for them to conform to the constraints of the ego's dayworld. Soul is the background of dream-work. Underworld is psyche. This relates, therefore, to a metaphorical perception of death. Dreams present us with that different reality, in which pathology and distortion are inherent aspects. We needn't control them, but rather acknowledge their value and depth. Assuming it is necessary or desirable to control any aspect of dream life, there is a further development of consciousness which enables one to consistently experience what is known as the "lucid dream" or "high dream." In a lucid state, there is an overlapping of normal waking consciousness coupled with the dream state. At this stage, one is able to progressively acquire and exercise will in dream states.
In the lucid dream, one "witnesses" the fact that one is dreaming, and may take an active role in the unfolding of the dream. This optional ability is generally associated with the heart-center, or Tiphareth. The heart-center has to do with developing consciousness of the imaginal realm. Rather than control or meddle with dreams, it is more effective to exercise creative expression in waking hours. Many persons pursuing their fantasy of individuation have an outlet through active imagination. Active imagination is, in itself, an art form. It is generally practiced through a discipline, such as psychology, alchemy, or Magick. It may be dramatic, dialectic, visual, acoustic, or in some form of dancing, painting, drawing, modeling, etc.
People who give free rein to fantasy in some form of creative imagination often dream less. All psycho-active drugs also tend to diminish dreaming. In other words, there seems to be a variable ratio between creativity and dream. Jung made the discovery that "this method often diminished to a considerable degree, the frequency and intensity of dreams, thus reducing the inexplicable pressure exerted by the unconscious." There need be no conscious desire to control or interfere in the actual dream. The ego learns to meet the subconscious on a middle ground, the vale of soul making. The activities and intent of both are harmonized. Staying close to the original image is fundamental.
http://www.pauldevereux.co.uk/body_dragonproject.html
The Dragon Project, latterly the Dragon Project Trust (DPT), was founded in 1977 in order to mount an interdisciplinary investigation into the rumour (existing in both folklore and modern anecdote) that certain prehistoric sites had unusual forces or energies associated with them. The DPT, a loose and shifting consortium of volunteers from various disciplines, conducted many years of physical monitoring at sites in the UK, and other countries. In the end, it was concluded that most stories about "energies" were likely to have no foundation in fact, and in a few cases might be due to mind states and psychological effects produced by certain locations. But hard evidence of magnetic and radiation anomalies was found at some sites, and some questionable evidence of infrared and ultrasonic effects also. In addition, it was found that the kind of locations favoured by megalith builders tended to have a higher than average incidence of unsual lightball phenomena or "earth lights".
Some initial on-site studies were conducted with dowsers and psychics, but results of this work were not published as the research remained incomplete. In 1990, the DPT, with its limited resources, decided to shift the main focus of its work to the study of the interaction between human consciousness and ancient site environments. It has started this broad area of enquiry with a research programme investigating dreaming at selected ancient sacred places. This dreamwork programme, which is being conducted jointly with the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, and is still ongoing at the time of this writing, is a kind of modern re-visiting of the ancient practice of temple sleep (see Divination).
The basic aim of the programme is to run many dream sessions at just four selected ancient sites: a holy hill in the Preseli range in Wales, and three Cornish sites - a Neolithic dolmen, a Celtic holy well, and an Iron Age underground passage and chamber called a fogou in Cornish dialect and a "souterrain" by archaeologists. Each of these places possesses an interesting geophysical anomaly. The sleep volunteers are drawn from as wide a range of the public as possible. Ages have ranged from teenagers to 70-year-olds. Women volunteers have so far slightly outnumbered men. Work at the Welsh site and the Cornish souterrain has now been completed, though dreams are still being collected at the other two sites. Each volunteer is accompanied by a least one helper who keeps watch while he or she is alseep. When the helper notes a rocking and rolling action beneath the volunteer's closed eyelids, a motion called Rapid Eye Movements ( R.E.M) which denotes dreaming sleep, the sleeper is awoken and a report of any dreams being experienced at that time are tape-recorded in situ. Later, these are transcribed and sent, along with control "home" dreams from each subject, to the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco under the consultancy of Dr Stanley Krippner. There the dreams are subjected to long and painstaking analysis, breaking each one down into a set of designated elements, and are coded. They will ultimately be presented for double-blind judging under scientifically-accepted protocols. The aim is to test if dreams had at these places revealed site-specific components: will there be a statistically significant number of the coded dreams that, in effect, could be identified as relating to the sites they took place at? Is there something about the physical nature of the places that influences dreams experienced at them? For instance, do the geophysical anomalies of the places affect the dreaming mind? ( The DPT had already noted that places with high background radiation can trigger brief, vivid hallucinatory episodes in some subjects - see the Energies entry.) Even more exotically, do these ancient and long-used magico-religious locations have a "memory field" that could be picked up by the dreaming mind? (If so, this might speak to such ideas as Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic resonance".) But the research programme is an experiment, and there may be negative answers to all such questions. The point is to test and see. Even if the experiment does produced a negative result, the DPT will be able to console itself that a unique and important body of dream data has been brought into existence that can be used for other, future research.
In 2003, the 10-year long DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme came to a pause if not an end. The beginning of the analysis of the dreams began. An initial academic (peer-reviewed) paper was published in the refereed journal Dreaming in June, and a general article was published in Fortean Times magazine in December.
Fortean Times 178 (December, 2003) had an article on the DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme as its cover story. The article actually contained some new material that had not been ready for the slightly earlier academic paper, shopwing how different dreamers had picked up similar dream themes at a specific one of the four selected sites, hinting that transpersonal information may have been picked up by the dreamers’ sleeping minds.
This is the abstract of the academic paper:
The Use of the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and Adam Fish Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2) 95-105, June 2003. Thirty-five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor “sacred sites” in England and Wales where they were awakened following rapid eye movement periods and asked for dream recall. They also monitored their dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries. Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each volunteer. Two judges, working blind and independently, evaluated each of the resulting 206 dream reports, using the Strauch Scale which contains criteria for identifying “bizarre,” “magical,” and “paranormal” elements. Of the 103 site dream reports, 46 fell into one of these categories, versus 31 of the home dream reports. A number of explanations exist for this difference, including expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, the nature of the volunteers' awakenings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites. The latter possibility, however, is unlikely due to the fact the 22 volunteers reported site dreams containing Strauch Scale items, while 20 reported home dreams containing these content items, a minimal difference.
KEY WORDS: content analysis; dream reports; sacred sites. At:
http://www.asdreams.org/journal/issues/asdj13-2.htm#The%20Use%20of%20the%20Strauch%20Scale%20to%20Study%20Dream%20Reports 'The Dreaming' or 'the Dreamtime' indicates a psychic state in which or during which contact is made with the ancestral spirits, or the Law, or that special period of the beginning.—Mudrooroo, Aboriginal writer
What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming.—Djon Mundine, Bundjalung man and Aboriginal Curator
In Dreams & The Underworld, Hillman suggests that "we honor dreams for their own expressions and view the “gurgitations that ‘come up’ in dreams without attempts to save them morally or to find their dayworld use.”
Dreaming With the Ancestors
Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten.
Let There Be Dark
Dreams are psyche's permeable membrane -- a holographic projection of the mystery of being. Ancestral images in dreams can be projections, but might carry objective information. A unified concept of the individual does not separate us from the environment, or relatives, clan or ancestors. Ancestors are the Dark Matter of our corporeal being.
Ancestral Self
Aspire to be an Ancestor instead of fantasizing about eternal youth, Hillman urges. “To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.” The ancestors carry both our wisdom and madness, as we embody their unlived potential. Ancestral blessings are accompanied by ancestral curses. Along with the wisdom there is violence, madness, abuse and shame. But even more frightening is what we don’t know in the shadow of shadows -- those dark family secrets.
The Seer & the Seen
Dreams can lead us to explore our ancestry. All dreams bring us meaning, but some stand out more than others - full moon dreams, ancestral dreams, initiatory dreams, premonitory dreams, sacred dreams, shamanic soul flight, etc. Some dreams are ordinary; some are iconic or Big Dreams that stick with us -- or enduring memories. Our bodies and personalities arose from an intricate web of cultural and family influences, physically and psychologically. Rootlessness is loss of connection with our recent familial and ancient lineage. Both positive resources and dysfunctional patterns are legacies from the past.
Dream for Your Life
We are the dreams of our ancestors; we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors. Sometimes their nightmares visit. For many cultures relationships with the ancestors is central and an anchor for personal identity. They connected with the land, cosmos, and dreams. We may pick up on our ancestors' lives or even their own dreams. Dreams can reflect rough times -- even catastrophes -- but the hope, fears, passions, ecstasies, conflict, suffering, devastations, and thoughts were no different than today. We share the same reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibitions, and lethary, as well as the pressure of the depths in depression, oppression, and suppression. Our ancestors had dreams and worked towards fulfilling those dreams. No one did it for them.
Heeding the Ancestors
Dreams are visits from the Otherworld. We see differently through the lens of the collective unconscious. We may have 'primitive' hunter-gatherer dreams, animistic dreams of immense landscapes of by-gone eras, or dreams of settlers' perspectives in new worlds. We don't have to interpret them or bring them back to daily life, but let them silently work in us, live in us. By reducing their expressions to daily concerns and personal trauma, we may be dishonoring our ancestors.
Ancient Dreams
Some dreams mirror divine realities -- fantastic realms beyond imagining. We may consult dreams for healing and divination like our ancestors did. Our ancestral cosmology centers on roots and blood. The timeless and eternal is just around the corner in our dreams. Like them we are bound by seasons, fertility, sacrifice, passages, death and rebirth. Like a holographic or fractal metaphor, even a dream fragment can point in a meaningful direction. We might even glimpse our indigenous mind.
Dream Themes
We may even discover generations-old trauma passed down through our paternal or maternal lines. Travels and pilgrimage can elicit dreams, even guidance, support and synchronicity. We may have collective or mutual dreaming and dream-sharing. Family patterns mirror the patterns in our souls. We should pay attention to our "waking dreams", too. They may be symbolic or metaphorical. Dreams and inner journeys allow us to peer down the well of souls. If you talk with family members about ancestral dreams, further connections may come up.
Setting, Location & Characters
We may dream of our ancestral homes and homelands, or ancestral waters. This is not a search for ghosts, but meaning and gnosis. Such experience may bring our attention to certain family groups, geographical sites, or events. You may dream of meeting your clan or experience a reunion, of sorts -- reconnection, reverence, acknowledgement, tribute, gratitude, or recognition. But, we must not get lost in the dreams of our forefathers.
Dream Genealogy
We can even intentionally incubate such dreams. This subjective experience can be healing. You might also recall extreme cold, hunger, or privation, painful partings, even abuses. You might recall ancient skills, kinesthetic knowledge, migrations, ancestral lands, inventions, discoveries, and journeys -- even transformations.
Ancestors may not come as actual deceased relatives but as clearly ancestral dream images, sometimes mythic, symbolic or metaphorical.
Ancestors can be the sources of our clarity, revelations, blessings, limiting beliefs, confusion, or blocks. Still, we should resist the urge to give a dream a single source, conceptual system, interpretation, or meaning that stops the hermeneutic process. Hillman suggests a phenomenological approach in which we "stick to the image."
For example, Hillman (Healing Fiction) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive.
Ancestral Romance
Many report seeing recent and long-departed family members in dreams, for spiritual or psychological reasons. Some conjecture that dead family members try to contact the family member (or appear in the dreams) of those who they feel are most likely to connect. We don't have to take such connection literally to derive meaning from a dreamwalk with the ancestors. We may experience conception dreams, intuitions, or by-gone events. Dreams may reveal mythic aspects of collective events and lives.
Ancestral Ways of Life & Knowing
There may be untimely or violent deaths, prolonged illness, and other rough passages with unfinished business; some weren't buried right. But we don't have to make their issues our own, but just be a silent witness. Some dream of what one of their ancestors actually did in their lifetime. They might elicit pain, guilt, remorse, judgment or compassion, but we cannot judge their era or social reality with modern mores. Some dreams come back with a reality we cannot ignore.
Dreamseekers
Deep family-of-origin issues can manifest in our dreams. Virtually any human potential can arise -- the anonymous, the reknown, the infamous. Dreamwork is archaeology of the soul and our biology, unearthing abandoned treasures. It is up to us to make those connections to remember and honor our heritage. We may find ourselves "digging graves" or digging up the past or in vast libraries of human knowledge filled with magical books. We help ourselves more than the departed, but ancestral dreams may even seek our guidance and counsel. In nonlinear dreamtime, everything happens NOW.
The Humble, the Gifted & the Glorified
Cultivating these dreams helps us 'know' our forgotten lifeways and the traumas that haunt our heritage. Dreams help us overcome “melting pot indigestion”, to know who we are, where we came from, and where we live. By dreaming our ancestors, we meet them halfway. Dreams can be brought about by an event or something that we saw or heard in the days leading up to the dream.
Bridge Between Worlds
Deep grief dreams can help us confront the ugly truths of European, ethnic, and other heritage. You don't need to inject your ego or beliefs onto the dream, but let it unfold organically. Concentrate on the situation at hand. Acknowledged, these traumas may lead us on a quest to these ancestral lands, or we might meet a teacher, helpful animals, spirits, or family dreamseer 'inside' who changes the way we live in the world.
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. ~Jung, The Red Book, Pg 242
by Iona Miller
The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are precisely those which have inspired the basic images of ritual and mythology. These eternal ones of the dream are not to be confused with the personality modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmares or madness to the tormented individual. Dream is the personalized myth. Myth is the depersonalized dream. --Joseph Campbell
No one who does not know himself can know others. And in each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dream and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a different situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude; the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. --C. G. Jung
As we spend a large proportion of our lives in a dream state, a fuller understanding of their implications may prove valuable. Today, there are several prevailing theories concerning the significance and value of dreams. No final statement about dream may be made. There are several approaches to each perspective which is assumed a priori. There are many alternatives to choose from. One's choice of style in dreamwork will be determined by the mythemes currently embraced. The characteristic attitudes associated with the archetypes will motivate and influence one's approach to the dreamworld.
Strephon Kaplan Williams (3) (Jungian-Senoi Institute) is one of the foremost proponents of Dreamwork. He outlines a six-point program for continued use. 1. Dialogue with the dream characters, asking questions and recording answers. 2. Re-experience of the dream through imagination, art projects, and creativity. 3. Examination of unresolved aspects of the dream, and contemplation of solutions. 4. Actualization of insights in daily life, where relevant. 5. Meditation on the source of dreams and insight from the Self. 6. Synthesize the essence of dreamlife and its meaning in a journal and apply them in one's life journey. To offer a variety of other approaches, we will cover theories on dreams and dreaming from Jung's original work, the analytical psychology school, para-psychology, and archetypal or imaginal psychology.
Knowledge of the antiquated Freudian system is so wide-spread that no further comment here seems necessary. Jung was the first to depart from Freud's "sexuality-fraught" perception of dreams. Where Freud saw one complex, Jung saw many. He saw in dreams a gamut of archetypes overseen by the transcendent function, or Self. Analytical psychology amplified and clarified his original material. Most of this work is concerned with the fantasy of the process of individuation. It reflects an ego with a heroic attitude, and proceeds by stages of development. Consciousness, at this stage, is generally monotheistic. It has a tendency to seek the center of meaning, as if there were only One.
Parapsychological work done with dreams also seems to reflect this attitude of searching, influencing, and controlling. In Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman differs from the traditional analytical viewpoint by stating: Dreams are important to the Soul--not for the message the ego takes from them, not for the recovered memories or the revelations; what does seem to matter to the soul is the nightly encounter with a plurality of shades in an underworld...the freeing of the soul from its identity with the ego and the waking state...What we learn from dreams is what psychic nature really is--the nature of psychic reality; not I, but we...not monotheistic consciousness looking down from its mountain, but polytheistic consciousness wandering all over the place. In Jung's model, one major function of dreams is to provide the unconscious with a means of exercising its regulative activity. Conscious attitudes tend to become one-sided. Through their postulated compensatory effect, dreams present different data and varying points of view. Individuation is the psyche's goal; it seeks to bring this about through an internal adjustment procedure. There is an admonition in Magick to "balance each thought against its opposite."
Dreams, according to Jung, do this for us automatically. However, there must be a conscious striving toward incorporation of the balancing attitudes presented through dreams (this applies equally to fantasies and visions). Another apparent function for a dream state is to take old information, contained in long-term memory, incorporate it with those experiences, and integrate them with new experiences. This creates new attitudes. Since the dream conjoins current and past experiences to form new attitudes, the dream contains possible information about the future. There is a causal relationship between our attitudes and the events which manifest from our many possible futures. In studies at Maimonides Dream Labs, Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman were trying to impress certain information on an individual's dream. They found that an individual, being monitored for dream states, could incorporate a mandala, which was being concentrated on by another subject, into his dream. This led to their famous theory on dream telepathy.
Dream symbols appear to allow repressed impulses to be expressed in disguised forms. Dream symbols are essential message-carriers from the instinctive-archetypal continuum to the rational part of the human mind. Their incorporation enriches consciousness, so that it learns to understand the forgotten language of the pre-conscious mind. The dream language presents symbols from which you can gain value through dream monitoring. You can use these dream symbols directly to facilitate communication with this other aspect of yourself.
Should you choose later to re-program yourself out of old habit patterns, you're going to want an accurate conception of what dream symbols really mean. A symbol always stands for something that is unknown. It contains more than it's obvious or immediate meaning. The symbolic function bridges man's inner and outer world. Symbolism represents a continuity of consciousness and preconscious mental activity, in which the preconscious extends beyond the boundaries of the individual. These primitive processes of prelogical thinking continue throughout life and do not indicate a regressive mode of thought.
Dream symbols are independent of time, space, and causality. The meaning of unconscious contents varies with the specific internal and external situation of the dreamer. Some dreams originate in a personal or conscious context. These dreams usually reflect personal conflicts, or fragmentary impressions left over from the day. Some dreams, on the other hand, are rooted in the contents of the collective unconscious. Their appearance is spontaneous and may be due to some conscious experience, which causes specific archetypes to constellate. It is often difficult to distinguish personal contents from collective contents. In dreams, archetypes often appear in contemporary dress, often as persons vitally connected with us.
In this case, both their personal aspect (or objective level), and their significance as projections or partial aspects of the psyche (subjective level) may be brought into consciousness. A dream is never merely a repetition of preceding events, except in the case of past psychic trauma. There is specific value in the symbols and context the psyche utilizes. It may produce any; why is it sending just this dream and not another?
Dreams rich in pictorial detail usually relate to individual problems. Universal contexts are revealed in simple, vivid images with scant detail. No attempt to interpret a single dream, or even the sequence dreams fall in, is fruitful. In fact, later research by Asklepia Foundation researchers asserts it is more important to journey using dreams as experiential springboards for therapeutic outcomes. In interpreting a group of dreams, we seek to discover the 'center of meaning' which all the dreams express in varied form.
When this 'center' is discovered by consciousness and its lesson assimilated, the dreams begin to spring from a new center. Recurring dreams generally indicate an unresolved conflict trying to break into consciousness. There are three types of significance a dream may carry: 1) It may stem from a definite impression of the immediate past. As a reaction, it supplements or compliments the impressions of the day. 2) Here there is balance between the conscious and unconsciousness components. The dream contents are independent of the conscious situation, and are so different from it they present conflict. 3) When this contrary position of the unconscious is stronger, we have spontaneous dreams with no relation to consciousness. These dreams are archetypal in origin, and consequently are over-powering, strange and often oracular. (These dreams are not necessarily most desirable to the student, as they may be extremely dangerous if the dreamer's ego is still too narrow to recognize and assimilate their meaning.)
We can never empirically determine the meaning of a dream. We cannot accept a meaning merely because it fits in with what we expected. Dreams can exert a reductive as well as prospective function. In other words, if our conscious attitude is inflated, dreams may compensate negatively, and show us our human frailty and dependence. They also may act positively by providing a 'guiding image' which corrects a self-devaluing attitude, re-establishing balance. The unconscious, by anticipating future conscious achievements, provides a rough plan for progress. Each life, says Jung, is guided by a private myth.
Each individual has a great store of DNA information. It is generally mediated by the archetypes which are deployed by both myth and dream. As you create this individual or private myth, it attracts, if you will, an archetypal pattern and molds itself in a characteristic way (or visa versa). The archetype precipitates compulsive action. It is the motivating factor which may become externalized in the physical world. Jung notes: "The dreamer's unconscious is communicating with the dreamer alone. And is selecting symbols which have meaning to the dreamer and no one else. They also involve the collective unconscious whose expression may be social rather than personal."
We may discover hidden meaning in our dreams and fantasies through the following procedure: 1) Determine the present situation of consciousness. What significant events surround the dream? 2) With the lowering of the threshold of consciousness, unconscious contents arise through dream, vision, and fantasy. 3) After perceiving the contents, record them so they are not lost (the Hermetic seal). 4) Investigate, clarify, and elaborate by amplification with personal meanings, and collective meaning, gleaned from similar motifs in myth and fairy tale. 5) Integrate this meaning with your general psychic situation. INstincts are the best guide; if you are obtaining "value" from your interpretation, it will "feel" correct. Complexes and their attendant archetypes draw attention to themselves but are difficult to pinpoint.
We may use conscious amplification of the symbolism presented in dream form. All the elements of the dream may be examined in a limited, controlled, and directed association process, which enlarges and expands the dream material through analogy. The nucleus of meaning contained in the analogy is identical with that of the dream content. When a dream is falsely interpreted, others follow to correct the error. Preconscious contents are on the verge of being remembered.
Just as language skills facilitate new conceptualization, knowledge of the vocabulary of dream symbolism allows closer rapport with the preconscious. Dreaming is one of the easiest methods of contact with the numinous element, or unknown. To illustrate how archetypes may affect perspective, we will now examine another of the methods for working with dreams and other images. If Freud's view on dreams can be seen as Aphroditic/sexual, and Jung's as heroic/developmental (Yesod and Tiphareth, respectively in QBL), then Hillman's newer "Verbal Technique" might be seen as associated with Hades, Lord of the Underworld or deep subconscious, (DAATH in QBL).
This relationship to the image is seeking value, depth, and volume. This method stresses keeping to the image as presented rather than analyzing symbols. This method, while usable by anyone, is being applied by those who are thoroughly acquainted with symbols and their meaning in an attempt to recapture to unknown element. The dream image expresses this if the symbols are not dissected from their "specific context, mood, and scene." An image presents symbols with their particularity and peculiarness intact.
Dream presents a variety of images which are all intra-related. Time and sequence are distorted in dream. Hillman prefers to view dream images with all parts as co-relative and co-temporaneous. This approach to the dream is a sort of metaphorical word-play. The elements of the dream are chanted or interwoven. Repeat the dream while playfully rearranging the sequence of events. Remain alert to analogies which form themselves during this word play. Ruminate on any puns which may occur. As the play unfolds, deeper significance emerges as a resonance.
By allowing the dream to speak for itself, interpretations appear indirectly. This is a method of communicating with the psyche which is in harmony with its inherent structure. In alchemy, it is known as an iteratio of the prima materia. Its value is evident, according to Hillman. "We do not want to prejudice the phenomenal experience of their unknowness and our unconsciousness by knowing in advance that they are messages, dramas, compensations, prospective indications, transcendent function.
We want to get at the image without the defense of symbols." (1) The archetypal content in an image unfolds during participation with it. We have found that an archetypal quality emerges through a) precise portrayal of the image (including any confusion or vagueness presented with the image); b) sticking to the image while hearing it metaphorically; c) discovering the necessity within the image (the fact that all the symbols an images presented are required in this context); d) experiencing the unfathomable analogical richness of the image. (2) In this context, 'archetypal' is seen as a function of making. The adjective may be applied to any image (6) upon which the operations are performed. This means that no single image is inherently more meaningful than another. Value may be extracted from them all. This coincides with the alchemical conception of the Opus as work. Here the Opus is carried by the dreamwork technique. Archetypal psychology contends that the value of dreams has little application to practical affairs.
In Re-Visioning Psychology , Hillman postulates that: Dream's value and emotion is in relation with soul and how life is lived in relation with soul. When we move the soul insights of the dream into life for problem-solving and people-relating, we rob the dream and impoverish the soul. The more we get out of a dream for human affairs the more we prevent its psychological work, what it is doing and building night after night, interiorly, away from life in a nonhuman world. The dream is already valuable without having any literalizations or personalistic interpretations tacked on to it.
Hillman ends his "Inquiry Into Image" by stating that the final meaning of a dream cannot be found, no matter how it seems to "click." Analogizing is like my fantasy of Zen, where the dream is the teacher. Each time you say what the image means, you get your face slapped. The dream becomes a Koan when we approach it by means of analogy. If you can literalize a meaning, "interpret" a dream, you are off the track, lost your Koan. (For the dream is the thing, not what it means.) Then you must be slapped to bring you back to the image. A good dream analysis is one in which one gets more and more slaps, more and more analogies, the dream exposing your entire unconscious, the basic matters of your psychic life.
This type of analysis seems consistent with the origins of the word. Originally, it had to do with "loosening." This type of dream analysis loosens our soul from its identity with day-to-day life. It reminds us that styles of consciousness other than that of the ego have validity.
The soul experiences these styles nightly. No paper of dreams would be complete without some mention of nightmares. Even though dream is an easy method of contacting the unconscious, it is not always pleasant. Occult literature speaks of a figure called "the Dweller on the Threshold." In Eastern philosophies there are the wrathful deities. This figure corresponds with Trump XV, The Devil, in Tarot. This seems consistent with Hillman's attribution of the dream as Hades' realm. The healthy person learns easily to cooperate on his descents into the psyche.
The uninformed or neurotic personality is likely to encounter hindrances. These hindrances often take the form of frightening, monstrous, overpowering forces. Ego-consciousness is not able to comprehend them. When the subconscious is highly activated these images may occur during waking hours and in sleep. This dread and oppression form the basis for nightmares. Pan and his attendant phenomena (such as panic) are archetypal representations of the nightmare. Pan also corresponds with Trump XV. In the heroic model, as consciousness develops, there is a marked difference in both the content of dream and the dreamer. He gains increased ability to assimilate the charges of energy associated with the dream. The more conscious the experience of the numinous, the less fraught with irrationality and fear the experience. This holds true in waking and sleeping hours.
John Gowan, in Trance, Art, and Creativity , states, "It is this gentling, humanizing process exerted on the preconscious by creative function of the individual which is the only proper preparation for the psychedelic graces." These graces include an immersion of the ego in the expanded context of the subconscious. The ego is then able to return from its experience enriched by the contact. Contents which might formerly have been considered nightmarish are more fully understood, and the monsters become transformed into butterflies. (7) This attitude toward nightmare is not consistent with Hillman's approach. He does not advocate changing or controlling the psyche. This is, in fact, neither possible nor desirable. He asserts that to enter dream is to enter the underworld, Hades' realm.
Psychic images are metaphorical. All underworld figures are shades or shadow souls. There is no reason for them to conform to the constraints of the ego's dayworld. Soul is the background of dream-work. Underworld is psyche. This relates, therefore, to a metaphorical perception of death. Dreams present us with that different reality, in which pathology and distortion are inherent aspects. We needn't control them, but rather acknowledge their value and depth. Assuming it is necessary or desirable to control any aspect of dream life, there is a further development of consciousness which enables one to consistently experience what is known as the "lucid dream" or "high dream." In a lucid state, there is an overlapping of normal waking consciousness coupled with the dream state. At this stage, one is able to progressively acquire and exercise will in dream states.
In the lucid dream, one "witnesses" the fact that one is dreaming, and may take an active role in the unfolding of the dream. This optional ability is generally associated with the heart-center, or Tiphareth. The heart-center has to do with developing consciousness of the imaginal realm. Rather than control or meddle with dreams, it is more effective to exercise creative expression in waking hours. Many persons pursuing their fantasy of individuation have an outlet through active imagination. Active imagination is, in itself, an art form. It is generally practiced through a discipline, such as psychology, alchemy, or Magick. It may be dramatic, dialectic, visual, acoustic, or in some form of dancing, painting, drawing, modeling, etc.
People who give free rein to fantasy in some form of creative imagination often dream less. All psycho-active drugs also tend to diminish dreaming. In other words, there seems to be a variable ratio between creativity and dream. Jung made the discovery that "this method often diminished to a considerable degree, the frequency and intensity of dreams, thus reducing the inexplicable pressure exerted by the unconscious." There need be no conscious desire to control or interfere in the actual dream. The ego learns to meet the subconscious on a middle ground, the vale of soul making. The activities and intent of both are harmonized. Staying close to the original image is fundamental.
http://www.pauldevereux.co.uk/body_dragonproject.html
The Dragon Project, latterly the Dragon Project Trust (DPT), was founded in 1977 in order to mount an interdisciplinary investigation into the rumour (existing in both folklore and modern anecdote) that certain prehistoric sites had unusual forces or energies associated with them. The DPT, a loose and shifting consortium of volunteers from various disciplines, conducted many years of physical monitoring at sites in the UK, and other countries. In the end, it was concluded that most stories about "energies" were likely to have no foundation in fact, and in a few cases might be due to mind states and psychological effects produced by certain locations. But hard evidence of magnetic and radiation anomalies was found at some sites, and some questionable evidence of infrared and ultrasonic effects also. In addition, it was found that the kind of locations favoured by megalith builders tended to have a higher than average incidence of unsual lightball phenomena or "earth lights".
Some initial on-site studies were conducted with dowsers and psychics, but results of this work were not published as the research remained incomplete. In 1990, the DPT, with its limited resources, decided to shift the main focus of its work to the study of the interaction between human consciousness and ancient site environments. It has started this broad area of enquiry with a research programme investigating dreaming at selected ancient sacred places. This dreamwork programme, which is being conducted jointly with the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, and is still ongoing at the time of this writing, is a kind of modern re-visiting of the ancient practice of temple sleep (see Divination).
The basic aim of the programme is to run many dream sessions at just four selected ancient sites: a holy hill in the Preseli range in Wales, and three Cornish sites - a Neolithic dolmen, a Celtic holy well, and an Iron Age underground passage and chamber called a fogou in Cornish dialect and a "souterrain" by archaeologists. Each of these places possesses an interesting geophysical anomaly. The sleep volunteers are drawn from as wide a range of the public as possible. Ages have ranged from teenagers to 70-year-olds. Women volunteers have so far slightly outnumbered men. Work at the Welsh site and the Cornish souterrain has now been completed, though dreams are still being collected at the other two sites. Each volunteer is accompanied by a least one helper who keeps watch while he or she is alseep. When the helper notes a rocking and rolling action beneath the volunteer's closed eyelids, a motion called Rapid Eye Movements ( R.E.M) which denotes dreaming sleep, the sleeper is awoken and a report of any dreams being experienced at that time are tape-recorded in situ. Later, these are transcribed and sent, along with control "home" dreams from each subject, to the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco under the consultancy of Dr Stanley Krippner. There the dreams are subjected to long and painstaking analysis, breaking each one down into a set of designated elements, and are coded. They will ultimately be presented for double-blind judging under scientifically-accepted protocols. The aim is to test if dreams had at these places revealed site-specific components: will there be a statistically significant number of the coded dreams that, in effect, could be identified as relating to the sites they took place at? Is there something about the physical nature of the places that influences dreams experienced at them? For instance, do the geophysical anomalies of the places affect the dreaming mind? ( The DPT had already noted that places with high background radiation can trigger brief, vivid hallucinatory episodes in some subjects - see the Energies entry.) Even more exotically, do these ancient and long-used magico-religious locations have a "memory field" that could be picked up by the dreaming mind? (If so, this might speak to such ideas as Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic resonance".) But the research programme is an experiment, and there may be negative answers to all such questions. The point is to test and see. Even if the experiment does produced a negative result, the DPT will be able to console itself that a unique and important body of dream data has been brought into existence that can be used for other, future research.
In 2003, the 10-year long DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme came to a pause if not an end. The beginning of the analysis of the dreams began. An initial academic (peer-reviewed) paper was published in the refereed journal Dreaming in June, and a general article was published in Fortean Times magazine in December.
Fortean Times 178 (December, 2003) had an article on the DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme as its cover story. The article actually contained some new material that had not been ready for the slightly earlier academic paper, shopwing how different dreamers had picked up similar dream themes at a specific one of the four selected sites, hinting that transpersonal information may have been picked up by the dreamers’ sleeping minds.
This is the abstract of the academic paper:
The Use of the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and Adam Fish Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2) 95-105, June 2003. Thirty-five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor “sacred sites” in England and Wales where they were awakened following rapid eye movement periods and asked for dream recall. They also monitored their dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries. Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each volunteer. Two judges, working blind and independently, evaluated each of the resulting 206 dream reports, using the Strauch Scale which contains criteria for identifying “bizarre,” “magical,” and “paranormal” elements. Of the 103 site dream reports, 46 fell into one of these categories, versus 31 of the home dream reports. A number of explanations exist for this difference, including expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, the nature of the volunteers' awakenings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites. The latter possibility, however, is unlikely due to the fact the 22 volunteers reported site dreams containing Strauch Scale items, while 20 reported home dreams containing these content items, a minimal difference.
KEY WORDS: content analysis; dream reports; sacred sites. At:
http://www.asdreams.org/journal/issues/asdj13-2.htm#The%20Use%20of%20the%20Strauch%20Scale%20to%20Study%20Dream%20Reports 'The Dreaming' or 'the Dreamtime' indicates a psychic state in which or during which contact is made with the ancestral spirits, or the Law, or that special period of the beginning.—Mudrooroo, Aboriginal writer
What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming.—Djon Mundine, Bundjalung man and Aboriginal Curator
In Dreams & The Underworld, Hillman suggests that "we honor dreams for their own expressions and view the “gurgitations that ‘come up’ in dreams without attempts to save them morally or to find their dayworld use.”
Dreaming With the Ancestors
Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten.
Let There Be Dark
Dreams are psyche's permeable membrane -- a holographic projection of the mystery of being. Ancestral images in dreams can be projections, but might carry objective information. A unified concept of the individual does not separate us from the environment, or relatives, clan or ancestors. Ancestors are the Dark Matter of our corporeal being.
Ancestral Self
Aspire to be an Ancestor instead of fantasizing about eternal youth, Hillman urges. “To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.” The ancestors carry both our wisdom and madness, as we embody their unlived potential. Ancestral blessings are accompanied by ancestral curses. Along with the wisdom there is violence, madness, abuse and shame. But even more frightening is what we don’t know in the shadow of shadows -- those dark family secrets.
The Seer & the Seen
Dreams can lead us to explore our ancestry. All dreams bring us meaning, but some stand out more than others - full moon dreams, ancestral dreams, initiatory dreams, premonitory dreams, sacred dreams, shamanic soul flight, etc. Some dreams are ordinary; some are iconic or Big Dreams that stick with us -- or enduring memories. Our bodies and personalities arose from an intricate web of cultural and family influences, physically and psychologically. Rootlessness is loss of connection with our recent familial and ancient lineage. Both positive resources and dysfunctional patterns are legacies from the past.
Dream for Your Life
We are the dreams of our ancestors; we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors. Sometimes their nightmares visit. For many cultures relationships with the ancestors is central and an anchor for personal identity. They connected with the land, cosmos, and dreams. We may pick up on our ancestors' lives or even their own dreams. Dreams can reflect rough times -- even catastrophes -- but the hope, fears, passions, ecstasies, conflict, suffering, devastations, and thoughts were no different than today. We share the same reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibitions, and lethary, as well as the pressure of the depths in depression, oppression, and suppression. Our ancestors had dreams and worked towards fulfilling those dreams. No one did it for them.
Heeding the Ancestors
Dreams are visits from the Otherworld. We see differently through the lens of the collective unconscious. We may have 'primitive' hunter-gatherer dreams, animistic dreams of immense landscapes of by-gone eras, or dreams of settlers' perspectives in new worlds. We don't have to interpret them or bring them back to daily life, but let them silently work in us, live in us. By reducing their expressions to daily concerns and personal trauma, we may be dishonoring our ancestors.
Ancient Dreams
Some dreams mirror divine realities -- fantastic realms beyond imagining. We may consult dreams for healing and divination like our ancestors did. Our ancestral cosmology centers on roots and blood. The timeless and eternal is just around the corner in our dreams. Like them we are bound by seasons, fertility, sacrifice, passages, death and rebirth. Like a holographic or fractal metaphor, even a dream fragment can point in a meaningful direction. We might even glimpse our indigenous mind.
Dream Themes
We may even discover generations-old trauma passed down through our paternal or maternal lines. Travels and pilgrimage can elicit dreams, even guidance, support and synchronicity. We may have collective or mutual dreaming and dream-sharing. Family patterns mirror the patterns in our souls. We should pay attention to our "waking dreams", too. They may be symbolic or metaphorical. Dreams and inner journeys allow us to peer down the well of souls. If you talk with family members about ancestral dreams, further connections may come up.
Setting, Location & Characters
We may dream of our ancestral homes and homelands, or ancestral waters. This is not a search for ghosts, but meaning and gnosis. Such experience may bring our attention to certain family groups, geographical sites, or events. You may dream of meeting your clan or experience a reunion, of sorts -- reconnection, reverence, acknowledgement, tribute, gratitude, or recognition. But, we must not get lost in the dreams of our forefathers.
Dream Genealogy
We can even intentionally incubate such dreams. This subjective experience can be healing. You might also recall extreme cold, hunger, or privation, painful partings, even abuses. You might recall ancient skills, kinesthetic knowledge, migrations, ancestral lands, inventions, discoveries, and journeys -- even transformations.
Ancestors may not come as actual deceased relatives but as clearly ancestral dream images, sometimes mythic, symbolic or metaphorical.
Ancestors can be the sources of our clarity, revelations, blessings, limiting beliefs, confusion, or blocks. Still, we should resist the urge to give a dream a single source, conceptual system, interpretation, or meaning that stops the hermeneutic process. Hillman suggests a phenomenological approach in which we "stick to the image."
For example, Hillman (Healing Fiction) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive.
Ancestral Romance
Many report seeing recent and long-departed family members in dreams, for spiritual or psychological reasons. Some conjecture that dead family members try to contact the family member (or appear in the dreams) of those who they feel are most likely to connect. We don't have to take such connection literally to derive meaning from a dreamwalk with the ancestors. We may experience conception dreams, intuitions, or by-gone events. Dreams may reveal mythic aspects of collective events and lives.
Ancestral Ways of Life & Knowing
There may be untimely or violent deaths, prolonged illness, and other rough passages with unfinished business; some weren't buried right. But we don't have to make their issues our own, but just be a silent witness. Some dream of what one of their ancestors actually did in their lifetime. They might elicit pain, guilt, remorse, judgment or compassion, but we cannot judge their era or social reality with modern mores. Some dreams come back with a reality we cannot ignore.
Dreamseekers
Deep family-of-origin issues can manifest in our dreams. Virtually any human potential can arise -- the anonymous, the reknown, the infamous. Dreamwork is archaeology of the soul and our biology, unearthing abandoned treasures. It is up to us to make those connections to remember and honor our heritage. We may find ourselves "digging graves" or digging up the past or in vast libraries of human knowledge filled with magical books. We help ourselves more than the departed, but ancestral dreams may even seek our guidance and counsel. In nonlinear dreamtime, everything happens NOW.
The Humble, the Gifted & the Glorified
Cultivating these dreams helps us 'know' our forgotten lifeways and the traumas that haunt our heritage. Dreams help us overcome “melting pot indigestion”, to know who we are, where we came from, and where we live. By dreaming our ancestors, we meet them halfway. Dreams can be brought about by an event or something that we saw or heard in the days leading up to the dream.
Bridge Between Worlds
Deep grief dreams can help us confront the ugly truths of European, ethnic, and other heritage. You don't need to inject your ego or beliefs onto the dream, but let it unfold organically. Concentrate on the situation at hand. Acknowledged, these traumas may lead us on a quest to these ancestral lands, or we might meet a teacher, helpful animals, spirits, or family dreamseer 'inside' who changes the way we live in the world.
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. ~Jung, The Red Book, Pg 242
Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914), Twilight Fantasies