Dream Bibliography

Tags

Dreams, Dreamwork

I offer below a bibliography of books recommended by The Haden Institute (hadeninstitute.com) to help with your dreamwork:

I. Achroyd, Eric—A Dictionary of Dream Symbols **

II. Bosnak, Robert—A Little Course in Dream

III. Brook, Stephen—The Oxford Book of Dreams

IV. Bryant, Dorothy—The Kin of Atta are Waiting for You

V. Campbell, Joseph, ed.—Myths, Dreams and Religion

VI. Cirlot, J.E.—A Dictionary of Symbols **/***

VII. Clift, Jean and Wallace—Symbols of Transformation in Dreams

VIII. Fontana, David—The Secret Language of Dreams **

IX. Freud, Sigmund—The Interpretation of Dreams

X. Gongloff, Robert—Dream Exploration

XI. Haden, Robert—Unopened Letters from God *

XII. Hall, James—Jungian Dream Interpretation

XIII. Hoss, Robert—Dream Language

XIV. Hudson, Joyce Rockwood—Natural Spirituality */***

XV. Johnson, Robert A.—Inner Work ***

XVI. Jung, Carl—Dreams ***

XVII. Jung, Carl—Memories, Dreams and Reflections */***

XVIII. Jung, Carl—Psychology and Religion

XIX. Jung, Carl—Man and His Symbols **/***

XX. Kelsey, Morton—Dreams: A Way to Listen to God

XXI. Kelsey, Morton—God, Dreams and Revelation

XXII. Kutz, Ilan—Dreamland Comparison

XXIII. Lyons, Tallulah—Dream Prayers

XXIV. Maurer, Sue—God Has Been Whispering in My Ear

XXV. Moore, Thomas—The Care of the Soul

XXVI. Moore, Thomas—Soul Mates

XXVII. Sanford, John—Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language */***

XXVIII. Sanford, John—Dreams and Healing

XXIX. Sanford, John—Healing and Wholeness

XXX. Sanford, John—Invisible Partners

XXXI. Sanford, John—The Kingdom Within ***

XXXII. Sanford, John—The Man Who Wrestled With God

XXXIII. Savary, Louise—Dreams and Spiritual Growth: A Christian Approach to Dreamwork

XXXIV. Singer, June—Boundaries of the Soul

XXXV. Stein, Murray, ed.—Jungian Analysis

XXXVI. Stevens, Anthony—Archetypes

XXXVII. Taylor, Jeremy—The Wisdom of the Dream *

XXXVIII. Taylor, Jeremy—Dream Work ***

XXXIX. Van De Castle, Robert L.—Our Dreaming Mind

XL. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—Animus and Anima

XLI. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—On Dreams and Death

XLII. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—Projection and Re-Collection

* Good Beginning Books

** Good Books to Explore Symbols

*** Books I own

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Something Squirrelly

Tags

Dream Groups, Dreams, Dreamwork, Haden Institute

The squirrel cookie from my dream. Yes, there are dozens of squirrel cookie photos on the internet.

I spent the past week at the Haden Institute’s Summer Dream Conference. In addition to the many workshop and talks I attended, I was assigned to one of 27 Dream Groups–Dream Group XXVI. Our group consisted of nine people. And because of confidentiality issues, that’s all I can say about that.

I was the only person in the group who had never been in a Dream Group previous to the conference so this was a new experience for me. Being an extreme introvert, I had serious doubts the first day as to whether I would be able to fully participate in the group.

When working with my own dreams, it usually takes me several days to process the dream and it often takes a lot of journaling as well. How was I going to be able to respond to the dreams of others on what was, for me, essentially ‘on the fly’?

Honestly, I started out slowly but by the final day, the day I presented my own dream entitled “Something Squirrelly”, I was able to respond and ask questions. I can now highly recommend Dream Groups and the work that can be accomplished within them. The truth is that very few of us are self aware enough to see all the different levels of meaning in a dream. Entrusting other people with your dreams provides insights you might never have imagined.

Guidelines for Dream Groups from the Haden Institute

1. All participants should have had some previous exposure to dreams whether it is extensive reading or a period of recording their own dreams or an introductory course or conference or individual meetings with someone on dreams.

2. No one should be coerced to come to the group. Everyone should feel good and comfortable and safe being there. If your psyche is telling you now is not the time, wait. If you are seeing a therapist, consult with them about being in the group.

3. It is best to have someone in leadership of the group who is versed in dream work and group process. If not, use a rotating convener who sees that the group sticks to is rules for its own safety.

4. Every gathering of the group should begin with silence, the ringing of a bell, the lighting of a candle, the Jesus Prayer or some other sort of ritual that will help the group center itself and invoke God’s spirit. Every gathering should end with participants in a circle holding hands sharing a prayer, a song or something else that will gather all you’ve done together in that session and remind people of God’s grace and that they are accepted regardless of where they are on their journey.

5. Once the group is centered, they can spend 20 minutes or so checking in with each other. It is important to share something of your life and any relevant feelings or information. This will help the trust and connections between your life and dreams.

6. Then the leader or someone previously appointed gives a 15-minute presentation on the wisdom of the dream or related material. This can come from ancient or modern sources. It could be something from Jungian psychology or mythology or scripture or a book or other source. This could be followed by a short period of reaction or discussion. This, along with opening prayer, calls forth the Self. This in and of itself not only brings in wisdom, but also promotes health, healing and safety within the group.

7. The group needs to decide in its first meeting how it will go about choosing the dream(s) that will be shared during the meeting. Because the process of sharing dreams can take half an hour to an hour, rarely will more than two people be able to share dreams within Dream Group time. Options include volunteering, choosing by the title of the dream (voting with eyes closed and the leader counting hands), a rotation can be set up or you can choose another method. It is important that every one in the group be able to share a dream before repeating the process so that one person doesn’t make their dreams a priority.

8. Once you have chosen a method, the leader asks for the person to share their dream using the following procedure:

• The person shares the dream with any pertinent information but NOT their interpretation.
• The group asks questions of clarification but NOT interpretation.
• The leader asks the dream presenter to give the dream to the group.
• The group will now talk with each other and not look at the dreamer so that the dreamer will not have to respond to everything. If the dreamer prefers to sit outside the circle or with their back to the group (in order that they can still listen) this is a viable option. The group will now project onto the dream using the words: “If it were my dream  . . .” or “In my dream  . . .” It is important to the process that the group adheres to these two rules.
• After sufficient discussion, give the dream back to the dreamer for any comments. Thank him or her for sharing and tell the dreamer that it is important to track their dreams for the next few days, because future dreams will repeat what the dreamer did not catch. The reason for saying this is two-fold: 1) it is absolutely true and 2) it reminds the group that they don’t have to milk every “aha” out of every dream. Dreamwork is a continuing process.
• Remind the group members that they were projecting onto the dream. So, have them recall what they said and let them see if they can make any connections with the energies and issues inside them. Even if no one speaks up, the question is in their heads and they will be making connections during the day. This also takes the spotlight off the dreamer and back onto the group.

9. Bring the meeting to a conclusion with a closing prayer circle or other spiritual ritual.

 

The Evolution of Three to Four

Tags

Carl Jung, Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson

Carl Jung spent his final years fascinated by the evolution of consciousness, and more specifically by the number three moving to four. To him, the number three represented a consciousness that was time-dominated, and devoted to acting, doing, processing and accomplishing.

We live in a world, says Robert Johnson, that is dominated by the third level of consciousness, most notably because we live in an age that holds a trinitarian view of theology.

“The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is basic to the Christianity of our time,” he writes, “and the Holy Trinity is an exact model of our modern consciousness.”

The number four, on the other hand, denotes being, eternity, peace, and contemplation. It was Jung’s belief that we live in an age where the collective unconscious is devoted to the evolution from three to four.

Jung thought that nearly every modern person is drawn into this evolution and even dreams of these symbols. He claimed that our dreams involve three turning into four whether or not we have any conscious awareness of the process or of what it means.

“If our civilization is to negotiate the perilous years immediately ahead,” Johnson says, “it will be by virtue of this evolution.”

Jung believed we could make it “if enough people will make the necessary evolution within themselves.”

This, unfortunately, is an incredibly painful experience. It has been called “the dark night of the soul,” “the journey through hell and purgatory (by Dante),” and it was the forty days and forty nights in the desert for Jesus.

“For modern man,” Johnson writes, “it is midlife crisis or, worse, a nervous breakdown; or still worse, physical suicide.”

Basically, Johnson says, the process can be summed up in one sentence: it is the relocating of the center of the personality from the ego to a center greater than one’s self.

“This super personal center has been variously called the Self,” Johnson writes, “the Christ nature, the Buddha nature, superconsciousness, cosmic consciousness, satori, and samadhi.”

It is the death of the ego and the only way for the ego to die is through violent suffering, which is why very few choose to engage this process.

“The relocation of the center of the personality is a form of suicide,” Johnson says, “and it’s best done voluntarily by the ego.”

A very good example of this is found in Shakespeare’s King Lear. The Earl of Gloucester has been blinded as well as shorn of all his worldly possessions, his family and his power. Wandering miserably on the moors, his son, disguised as a peasant boy, arrives to protect him. Gloucester pleads with him to take him to the cliffs of Dover where he might hurl himself into the sea and end his life. Instead, Edgar takes him into the middle of a field, convincing Gloucester in his blindness that he is on the edge of a cliff.

Gloucester throws himself over the “edge” but only falls forward into the field. His suffering was so intense that he truly believed he had fallen. And yet, he lived. He stands, relieved of his suffering and ready to face life anew. According to Johnson, Gloucester did his “suicide” correctly.

After making his journey to the maternal depths, Faust blunders again. Instead of admiring the archetype of femininity in Helen of Troy, Faust attempts to embrace her, have a personal relationship with her. There is a huge explosion and Helen vanishes. Faust is left unconscious on the ground, burned and nearly destroyed.

As Jung put it, if you have an assimilating match with a tiger, you know who will assimilate whom. You might be able to open up the unconscious, but it is incredibly difficult to enter into a relationship with the super personal forces that will be unleashed.

Faust makes a serious mistake. Again.

“Archetypes and archetypal energy are bigger than we are,” Johnson writes. “We cannot try to embrace that energy without causing a psychological explosion.”

Mephistopheles returns to help Faust and carries him back to his study for a bit of ordinariness.

The word, ordinariness, is derived from ordered. And, ordinariness is the perfect remedy for inflation or egocentricity.

“That which is dry, pedestrian, and bookish can have a healing effect at critical moments,” Johnson explains. “An iconoclast needs to learn that a little reason and discipline are not hindrances on his way to heaven.”

Next Week: The Second Puer–The Homunculus

 

 

 

 

 

Archetypes in Dreams

Coyote the Trickter by JW Baker

When we examine dreams with an eye to their meaning and structure, we discover that dreams speak a universal language of metaphor and symbol.

~~Jeremy Taylor

According to Taylor, understanding the archetypes and how they interrelate is both a complex and subtle task seeming without end. But, briefly, here are some of the archetypes one may encounter in dream work. Another way to get a grasp on some of the archetypes found in dream work is to study the major arcana of the Tarot, which is composed of 22 archetypes.

1. Persona: The part that shows; the “mask” we wear. This is made up of our choices of how we wish to be perceived, individually and collectively.
2. Shadow: The part that is denied and repressed; the dark, scary, immoral, unpredictable, and unconscious/unknown part of ourselves.
3. Light & Darkness: Archetypes of consciousness and unconsciousness; the quality of light in dreams is most often a metaphor of the extent to which the main theme of the dream either is or is not already known and acknowledged in waking life.
4. Animus & Anima: The man inside a woman, and the woman inside a man, respectively; figures representing our deepest intuitions and feelings about the opposite sex.
5. Trickster: A figure representing human consciousness itself–simultaneously knowing and foolish, overblown, yet the source of all the gifts culture.
6. Divine Child: A figure representing new consciousness and self-awareness; born amidst trouble, yet most often surviving with its miraculous powers and the aid of:
7. Animals:Figures often representing instincts and natural drives; elements of life that are vital but not yet consciously differentiated, creatures and servants of:
8. Great Mother: Mother Nature, Mother Earth, cyclic time, the divine perceived in feminine form, the feminine principle(s); multiplying, dividing, nurturing, bringing forth all life, and simultaneously condemning all to inevitable death.
9. All-Father: The thunderer, the law giver, linear time, the divine perceived in masculine form, the masculine principle(s); abstracting, constructing, judging, and calculating with objectifying will.
10. Spirit Bird: A figure representing and embodying communication with the divine; unites the realm of the sky with the plane of the earth.
11. Wise Old People: The figures representing the oldest and wisest and most loving possibilities of our being; figures sometimes referred to as mana-personalities.
12. Willing Sacrifice: A figure representing and embodying the increasing consciousness of interior and exterior oneness; the One dividing itself in to Many, and the many in the act of dying to rejoin the One.
13. Mandala: An image uniting the circle and the angular figure exhibiting radial symmetry and a defined center; an image of harmony, beauty, balance, order, often used as a visual aid in meditation and worship.
14. Spiral: Image of evolution; the spontaneous archetype of cyclic, repeating rhythmic processes occurring amidst the forward flow of time; visible at all scales and levels from the shape of galaxies to the DNA helix.
15. Perilous Journey: Image of life and being alive, often a sea journey, a descent into earth, or into a labyrinth or maze, the journey to the land of the dead, the search for treasure, wisdom, immortality.
16. Death & Rebirth: In the realm of dream and myth, as in physics, energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Each dream death is a liberation of psychic energy from specific form and is linked inevitably with a new birth.

Taylor notes that theoretically there is no end to this list. “The archetypes inter-relate and metamorphose into one another in complex and subtle ways,” he says, “and like the organs of the body, they form a living whole.”

Acknowledging our Shadow aspects is the most difficult thing to do when it comes to dream interpretation because we often are afraid of or dislike those parts of ourselves. Yet we must face them over and over again in order to evolve and grow. The Shadow is most easily visible in the shape of those whom we most dislike and fear, Taylor says, both awake and asleep; that is, in both our waking life and in our dreams. These are the people we perceive as our “Enemies.”

Some Elements Always Present in Dreams

A recent image from a dream

I recently had a traumatic nightmare–the kind from which you wake up crying–and was so glad I had just read this particular chapter in Jeremy Taylor’s Dream Work. It helped with seeing the many different levels and meanings available to me–particularly when my subconscious was trying desperately to get my attention.

Jeremy Taylor

According to Taylor, EVERY DREAM:

1. Comes in the service of wholeness and the effort to harmonize interior and exterior life.
2. Contains an element of “libidinous,” sexual desire á la Sigmund Freud.
3. Contains an element of unconscious wish fulfillment (once again via Freud)
4. Depicts elements of the dreamer’s personality, interior life, and vital energies in its imagery (Gestalt school of dream work).
5. Contains an element of reflection of the physical health and condition of the body at the moment of the dream.
6. Demonstrates that both biophysical and biochemical behaviors accompany the act of dreaming.
7. Has an element drawn from the memories of the preceding day or two, known technically as “day residue.” Ask yourself not only what event is being recalled, but more importantly, WHY it has found its way into your dreams.
8. Has an element of the dream’s construction associated with the “information processing” of memory from short-term into long-term memory.
9. Has an element representing power and dominance relationships in waking life á la Alfred Adler.
10. Has an element of childhood and adolescent reminiscence, often associated with the question: When in my life did I first feel the way I am feeling now?
11. Has an element of speculation about the future: What might happen if I did thus-and-so?
12. Renders feelings and emotions into metaphoric images or symbolic forms as are thoughts, sensations and intuitions.
13. Takes the shape it does because that is the best “fit” that can be achieved, given the multiple meanings carried by the dream.
14. Has an element of archetypal drama, a universality, no matter how personal and/or mundane they may seem.
15. Has an element of “anniversary” or “commemoration” of significant waking life and dream events.
16. Contains an element of constructive self-criticism.
17. Contains an element of creative inspiration and problem solving.
18. Has an element of religious concern and intuition about the inevitability of death.
19. Has a balancing or compensatory element relative to waking consciousness.
20. Is constructed out of the seeming opposition between polarities.
21. Contains an element of “synchronicity” (dèjá vu, telepathy, precognition, or the like).
22. Has an element of “return to the womb” and “return to the crucible for melting and recasting” as in the evolution and development of personality and character, and every awakening is a rebirth into a potentially new life.
23. Is related in theme to all the other dreams one has in a single night (whether you can unravel it or not as you may not see the particular layer that holds the key to the theme).
24. Reflects a concern for waking life emotional relationships or the lack of them.
25. Contains an element of humor even if it is only waking from a nightmare to discover that it was, in fact, “only a dream.” The fundamental basis of dream humor is often in the radical synthesis and juxtaposition of incongruous elements within the dream.

As Taylor notes, there is theoretically no end to this list. Some elements will dominate while others will be obscured at various times, but they are always there.

17 Hints for Working with Dreams

If you have had success using the eight basic hints for dream recall, and once you start recording your dreams, Jeremy Taylor offers some advice on working with your own dreams:

1. Make a written record of your dreams no matter what method you use to record them initially.
2. When you record your dreams, do so in the present tense (reserving past tense for what is experienced as memory in the dream). Always make sure to note the date and the day of the week for each dream.
3. Give your dreams titles after you write them down. This becomes crucial when you go back and review the dreams over months and years because the moment of picking a title is often a doorway into insight.
4. Never forget that you are the only one who can know what meaning and significance your dreams can hold. The “tingle” or “aha” that you feel (or whatever you prefer to call it)–that inner knowledge that something seems true, strikes you as right–is the only reliable touchstone of dreamwork.
5. However, the “tingle test” is only a positive test. Just because you don’t feel something doesn’t mean that an idea or experience is wrong–only that you need to take it into consideration. It is always possible that you are not prepared to acknowledge some aspect of the truth that your subconscious is presenting you with.
6. Never put any limitations on the way you record or interact with your dreams. Prose writing isn’t the only way. You can use art, music, poetry, whatever seems to fit the context of your dream.
7. That being the case, give expression to the images, energies and ideas of your dreams in as many ways as you would like to explore. In this way you will open up your dream to more of its meanings and insights and gifts for living. Cultivate whatever means of expression work best for you.
8. Do not ignore dream fragments. Just because you can’t remember the entire dream doesn’t mean you won’t find meaning in just a piece of it. Often dream fragments are a condensed version of the meaning of your dream.
9. Read, think, pay attention to the full range of your experience in each moment, and try to make sense out of it as whole, in pieces, any way you can.
10. Every dream has many meanings and many levels of meaning so don’t get too caught up in the first or even second set of “tingles” you might experience. Try to see the whole range of meanings.
11. Remember that every one else is in the same boat, dream wise. We all have multiple layers to our dreams.
12. And, because of this it is important to love our enemies–we share one planet on the outside, one archetypal drama on the inside.
13. Re-experience your dreams in as vivid imagination as possible. Re-experience it from the different points of views of the different characters and figures within the dream. Write these imaginings down and re-read them. Imagine different ways your dreams may have continued had you not awakened.
14. Take the time to make the journals where you record your dreams visually interesting. The more you honor and welcome your dreams, the more likely they are to provide you with insights. In addition, how you decorate your journal now can give you great insight later into where you were at that particular time in your life.
15. Go back and look over all your dreams periodically. Keep an open mind for patterns and directions of development. This work can be greatly facilitated by keeping a second journal in which you keep your dream titles on one page with dates and page references and a list of significant events in waking life on the opposite page.
16. If you practice any formal meditative practice in waking life see if you can’t translate that to dream life as well.
17. Share your dreams with people you care about and ask them about their dreams.