Today's brainchild is to get people talking about their dreams and what they might mean. Watching and working with your dreams is a powerful way to learn about yourself and gain increased self-awareness, not to mention to solve current problems, identify themes in your life, and help make pending decisions--Not to mention its fun and creative!
I know not everyone is on Twitter, and though I'm creating this discussion as a landing place for people who find it that way, I invite everyone to join this initiative and "respond" with a dream or dream in symbol (in 140 characters or less!) I recommend you capitalize the words, nouns, verbs, adjectives that have some numinous (strong energy) quality for you.
Have fun, help spread the word about the value of working with dreams, and share your images and symbols! Keep it going! Log them every day and you'll have your own record of what you dreamed in easy to read/recall "bytes".
Share your dream now in 140 characters or less by responding to this post (click Add/Respond link below) and if you are on Twitter, by all means, tweet it (with the opener @DepthPsychAll so we can track them). Here's an example of mine from last night:
@DepthPsychALL: I'm late 2 CLASS We all model a garment we designed, mine a DRESS w/3 CREATIVE COLLARS each can overlay previous
OR
@DepthPsychALL: Dreamsymbol> Creative,colorful COLLAR I designed, set of 3 where each can overlay the next to produce a different look & feel
Here's what author and Jungian analyst Michael Conforti of Assisi Institute says about dreams:
"Dreams, sacred texts, and global initiatives each have an intrinsic meaning that is not open to speculation or interpretation. A story reveals its gold when its symbolic meaning is recognized. . The symbolic allows for the meaning of a story to be revealed, for its message to become part of our psyche. Very little change or transformation can occur without a deep regard for and an ability to translate the profound wisdom residing in our repository of spiritual, psychological and archetypal truths."
Below are a few articles if you're looking for more info on Dreams or depth psychology. There must be so many more. Feel free to respond to this with other links or suggestion for books, etc--and if you're not a member of the Dream Group here on the Alliance, you might want to join.
ARTICLES
Introduction to Jungian Dream Analysis
http://www.insomnium.co.uk/words/dreamtheory/jung-dream-analysis/
Carl Jung's Dream Theories: Jung proved dreams follow a sequence - by Christina Sponias
http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/jung3.htm
Nature Dreaming: Depth Psychology & Ecology by "Dreamtending" creator Stephen Aizenstat
http://dreamtending.com/naturedreaming.pdf
On Jung and Depth Psychology by Author/Jungian Analyst James Hollis: http://www.depthinsights.com/pdfs/On_Depth_Psychology.pdf
You need to be a member of Depth Psychology Alliance to add comments!
Nourishing indeed, to be among those whose lives serve in part consciously and wholly within a larger communion as celebrants of mysterious love.
One might just add a prompt which may be an agent to the spell breaking moment.
(Spells being also what we souls may wear/weave to come into relationship with parts of selves/Selves, in life. And when such a life is done, a 'spell breaking' ensues. Our bodies/conditions are direct reflections of those spells, the symptoms being disposed to inform us of the seat of our joys and pains, our rough and refined beauty.)
So at the edge of this opening inward and outward, one might stop consciously and honour (not reflect upon, for that is a mind process and in this dream it is a soul calling to gather up and into a mystery of Change)...to empty then receive and honour how the drab, confining, insubstantial nourishment piece has served this dreamer's life. This is an invitation to take the redemption seat at the table of feeling and spherical play. There is a lovely area on this web site devoted to the mystery of ritual and another entry somewhere offering a piece on 'initiation'; the release, entry, engagement and return...the return phase, being less honoured in our time of living.
Perhaps there is a place for asking, petitioning the mystery for welcoming spontaneously a ritual of honouring the 'servingness' of drab, confining, subsistence living and its primary mantle of inertia. One might be open to feelingly, intuitively and creatively become aware of how inertia has served; blessing, annointing its service and allowing the body to give itself to a larger state of consciousness within that welcoming is joy making ways! And out of joy, emerges what calls one now back into refreshment and whole living.
And one might find oneself spontaneously drawn to a leaf, a branch on the ground...to lift it up and bless it as what is given back to the soil and then to place it back, reverently so, on or beneath the ground. It's a pleasure, a kind of making love with life when hearts are opened in a prime moment to serve just what wants to happen then. Contrivance, or 'ticking off' the 'ritual' box on the page of 'to-doooos' does serve to satisfy a list making and ticking off part of us. What may serve a deeper part is the entering into a shift, annoucing a change in states of consciousness which is resourced in capacity of soul to serve the 'shedding skin'.
That 'return' into the bright spark of enjoyment also is worth a ritual blessing and it may be as simple as taking one conscious step out the door, lighting a candle or raising one's glass or eyes to something awesome. The surrender to that moment is what allows the fixation, the spell to find itself dissolved into a larger pleasure of life.
This your deepening is a treasure to witness, whether here or in the common ground of the soul. My feeling is that some processes/gifts of transfering 'knowledge' into aha moments may better be embraced not on the public stage. Give to the 'Sacred' what is Sacred...as it were...and is.
So wonderful to see you here and thank you thank you for making me aware of the new Hearts-A-Joy community!
Your insight into my dream is so rich and appreciated and you've given me much to play with and deepen into. I am still chewing on so much of it and don't feel quite ready to expand further but I do want to say that this:
Inertia is about to be thoroughly unseated.
..sums it up perfectly. I've used "inertia" countless times over in the last year to describe this period in my life, along with evoking the threshold image (in waking and dream states) often for inspiration.
I notice this morning that you've written "initiate" and "initiation" a few times in your sharing - also quite appropriate. Thank you for such a "high quality", clear and compassionate reading of the patterns and energies. I feel quite "nourished"!
I love this, Bonnie! What a fun challenge and great idea. I tweeted this:
Go HOME to retrieve 4 CATS. DARK, CONFINING. Food is cheap, not HIGH QUALITY I requested 4 them. Man comes to help. Hurried!
Here is the dream as I recorded it two mornings ago (it was my last remembered dream so I went with it):
I have returned to some home, my grandma's?, to retrieve my four cats that I left there. They come to me, two by two. First Walter and Willie come to me, maybe on one floor or from one part of the dark house. Everything is dark. The rooms they are in are dark and quiet, confining. I feed them dry food in bowls. I notice that the food they are being fed is NOT the high quality food I asked my grandma to feed them but some cheap, store bought, cat kibble. It seems to be bought in bulk in six-packs. This disturbs me.
After Willie and Walter come out to greet me the other two come out, Annie and Sadie? I am relieved that all four are now accounted for and I think I can probably get them in carriers to transport them without too much trouble. At least they are all present and hopefully will not hide under beds and avoid my attempts to catch and contain them.
A man arrives...a tall, robust man who is in his 50s or 60s. I think I try to enlist his help. There might be a bit of a sense of hurry in that I want to get the four cats out of there before I am detected or disturbed?
Bonnie Bright > Laura WinzelerJanuary 27, 2011 at 4:53pm
Hi Laura. Thanks for "playing"! I'm having a lot of fun with it personally. It's creative and intellectually challenging --it also helps me capture the essence of a dream. Your dream is so intriguing. I had a very powerful dream about cats recently as well, and I can't help noticing the number 4--which, though it may have an entirely unique and personal meaning for you--is often associated with wholeness and the Self in Jungian/Depth psych. I'm intrigued by the issue with the cat food--and see you highlighted the words HIGH QUALITY so it seems it grabbed you as well. Very interesting....Do you have some ideas about what the dream means to you/ (Not that you have to share--just curious).
Laura Winzeler > Bonnie BrightJanuary 27, 2011 at 5:31pm
Bonnie, it's funny. After I posted the dream I felt a bit "guilty" in that my dream work mentor was Brugh Joy, and his preference was always that the dreamer offer their insights first. AND, today would've been his 72nd birthday, so he's been in my heart and on my mind all day. I tried to log onto his web site earlier today to find it all gone. Therefore, posting this here as a symbol of a very large new start in my life on his birthday feels quite rich.
I've not worked with the dream in any great depth at all but I will say a few things about key elements that came to me as I read it on the board here and took it deeper after casting it out into cyber space:
My most disturbing and emotionally charged dreams over the decades that have to do with nourishment and various other wounded, younger, unformed parts of self involve cats/kittens. They are also my favorite pet. I am usually trying to get home to them to feed them, to rescue them, etc. This is probably one of my most frequent recurring dream themes, and what's intriguing is that it's been a very long time (I think?) since I've had one of these.
I have had a series of "returning" dreams over the months since deciding to apply to Pacifica last April. Returning home, returning to a campus, driving a car very fast in reverse. Lots of backtracking, sliding downhill backwards, and backing up imagery. Retracing steps?
Yes, the FOUR is quite powerful, and evenly "split" between two male cats (who have both died in the last four years that I've lived in NC. They moved here with me from CO) and two female cats. Further adding to the strong split/separation imagery is that the two males came to me from a floor of the house, or an area that was a bit elevated and apart from the area in which the two females came to me from (the females are my in real life two remaining living kitties.) The males were split off from the females but the entire structure in which they were all housed that I returned to was very dark, quiet and confining. So yes, there is a feeling of balance here for me in the four when I return to re-collect the two + two, or your offering of wholeness. (I'll leave the whole part about my maternal grandmother out as this will be long enough as is!)
Yes, the strongest emotional energy charge for me was in the poor quality, cheap food they had been "nourished" with, despite my request that they be fed only premium, high quality food. There is much energy around the "generic, bought in bulk, high quantity to save money, mass produced" aspects of the nourishment. Well....suffice it to say that the decision to return to school to purse a degree in Depth Psychology was born out of my deep, decades-long despair over the lack of meaningful soul work in the world in terms of true livelihood and vocation and equally as painful is the lack of soulful, nourishing, deep connections with others of like mind. I have been feeding myself low quality, generic relationships, mass produced ways of thinking, feeling, being in the world, etc, for so very long. Don't mean to beat myself up here but as Brugh Joy told me years ago in working with a somewhat similar dream: "You are living too small a life for your Soul."
The hopeful note is sounded by my relief that all four cats are present and appear to be "cooperative" with my attempts to contain them and transport them out of this dark, confining, morgue-like structure to seemingly a new and better home with me where there will be more space, light, activity and good food! This bodes well for my process, I feel.
I am curious about the man who appears to assist me, of course, having the sense that this is possibly both an internal character and one who will manifest externally at some future point. The piece I haven't quite sussed out that feels important is the final emotional content about feeling hurried in my need to want to release the cats from the poor environment before I am caught or detected? There is also the recurring theme of "time running out" which is one that shows up a LOT in the last year for me. I'm not sure if that's perceptual in that I'm nearly 53 and am sad it took me "this long" to finally do what I've known I was to do for decades, or if it's a premonition of sorts that perhaps truly my years on the planet are not as long as I think/hope they might be. A death omen?
The other important note about trying to sneak the cats out before I am detected caused me to ask "who is it that I am trying to avoid, not encounter, not have to face directly?" And on a personal relationship level, that should be more than obvious to me and ties directly back to the HIGH QUALITY key words!
;-)
(Thanks for your attention and thanks in advance to anyone else who feels inspired to offer up insights and intuitive hits.)
Thank you for the opportunity to dive in with you into your dream.
I am happy to share that Hearts-A-Joy.org is up and circumambulating in the roundly compassionate style of Brugh's community forums, if that is of service to any here. It was begun by a group of Brugh's well steeped and adept, students.
As to the cat dream, perhaps the dreamer might share something about the grandmother, for the body of her is relevent to the dream body and dreamer. Something 'feline', in its manifest play is gathered up into intentions for better nourishment, living space etc. Moving from the drab and confining self into the spacious and welcoming self is a shift of paradigms, within. The quality of nourishment, within one's innate sense of life is about to be transformed, by insistence from the dream ego's knowing states. The mystery of the dreamer announces that shift by framing the moments of change in feelings of anxiety. Brugh always said that one knows the initiatory moment as real and not contrived by the presence of both compelling excitement and fear or anxiety. Also, one might insist from the roof tops that this and that must happen, that one is ready for this or that circumstance, yet the soul's timing brings forth at its pleasure what wants to happen.
The threshold waits for no one. A chance missed may not re-present itself. The feeling of 'time running out' may simply be the internal readiness meeting with opportunity while one's pet comforts and joys are gathered up for the ride. The 'dead' cats as well as the 'living' are shown as parts of a living piece, within, thus a bit of story about what each cat represents too, in terms of 'persona' or characteristics or significant manner may help to clarify those dynamics operating within the dreamer's instinctual layers.
The initiate is ever espoused to the gateless gate nakedly, though...and one wonders what role pets have really played in her life.
The helper/man is offered as part of internal dynamic, perhaps to oversee completion, perhaps to initiate or guide. Masculine forces, shown as mature, dynamic and helpful are what take intention and put them into active participation in life. Inertia is about to be thoroughly unseated.
My many years with Brugh and other deeply diving souls have enriched my life and threaten my comforts and joys too, with the urge to keep shedding skins (furry/hairy and otherwise). The ancestral piece may have something to add too.
The 'bottom line' may be simply 'Get Out'...of this...this representing the situation as described in the dream. It's time has come.
The dreamer is out of alignment with the way they are moving through the collective (sporty, new car isn't a reality for the dreamer) - Manhattan isn't hilly, the dreamer is out of alignment with their surroundings. The dreamer is on the fence, unable to make a decision, likely due to a mis-orientation with their work in the collective - career...The dreamer appears distracted by the blue water, not focused on the decision of what bridge.
Cool! Bob-Thanks for "playing"! I definitely notice how the image of "bridge" jumps out. Maybe take a look at how situations in your own life need (or are using) a bridge; you could also somatically recreate the feeling of anxiety about driving across them from the dream and once you're in that space, have some Active Imagination with the bridge itself...
Replies
Nourishing indeed, to be among those whose lives serve in part consciously and wholly within a larger communion as celebrants of mysterious love.
One might just add a prompt which may be an agent to the spell breaking moment.
(Spells being also what we souls may wear/weave to come into relationship with parts of selves/Selves, in life. And when such a life is done, a 'spell breaking' ensues. Our bodies/conditions are direct reflections of those spells, the symptoms being disposed to inform us of the seat of our joys and pains, our rough and refined beauty.)
So at the edge of this opening inward and outward, one might stop consciously and honour (not reflect upon, for that is a mind process and in this dream it is a soul calling to gather up and into a mystery of Change)...to empty then receive and honour how the drab, confining, insubstantial nourishment piece has served this dreamer's life. This is an invitation to take the redemption seat at the table of feeling and spherical play. There is a lovely area on this web site devoted to the mystery of ritual and another entry somewhere offering a piece on 'initiation'; the release, entry, engagement and return...the return phase, being less honoured in our time of living.
Perhaps there is a place for asking, petitioning the mystery for welcoming spontaneously a ritual of honouring the 'servingness' of drab, confining, subsistence living and its primary mantle of inertia. One might be open to feelingly, intuitively and creatively become aware of how inertia has served; blessing, annointing its service and allowing the body to give itself to a larger state of consciousness within that welcoming is joy making ways! And out of joy, emerges what calls one now back into refreshment and whole living.
And one might find oneself spontaneously drawn to a leaf, a branch on the ground...to lift it up and bless it as what is given back to the soil and then to place it back, reverently so, on or beneath the ground. It's a pleasure, a kind of making love with life when hearts are opened in a prime moment to serve just what wants to happen then. Contrivance, or 'ticking off' the 'ritual' box on the page of 'to-doooos' does serve to satisfy a list making and ticking off part of us. What may serve a deeper part is the entering into a shift, annoucing a change in states of consciousness which is resourced in capacity of soul to serve the 'shedding skin'.
That 'return' into the bright spark of enjoyment also is worth a ritual blessing and it may be as simple as taking one conscious step out the door, lighting a candle or raising one's glass or eyes to something awesome. The surrender to that moment is what allows the fixation, the spell to find itself dissolved into a larger pleasure of life.
This your deepening is a treasure to witness, whether here or in the common ground of the soul. My feeling is that some processes/gifts of transfering 'knowledge' into aha moments may better be embraced not on the public stage. Give to the 'Sacred' what is Sacred...as it were...and is.
Your feeling joy is the best of guides.
PJF
spherical play
Jane,
So wonderful to see you here and thank you thank you for making me aware of the new Hearts-A-Joy community!
Your insight into my dream is so rich and appreciated and you've given me much to play with and deepen into. I am still chewing on so much of it and don't feel quite ready to expand further but I do want to say that this:
Inertia is about to be thoroughly unseated.
..sums it up perfectly. I've used "inertia" countless times over in the last year to describe this period in my life, along with evoking the threshold image (in waking and dream states) often for inspiration.
I notice this morning that you've written "initiate" and "initiation" a few times in your sharing - also quite appropriate. Thank you for such a "high quality", clear and compassionate reading of the patterns and energies. I feel quite "nourished"!
Laura
I love this, Bonnie! What a fun challenge and great idea. I tweeted this:
Go HOME to retrieve 4 CATS. DARK, CONFINING. Food is cheap, not HIGH QUALITY I requested 4 them. Man comes to help. Hurried!
Here is the dream as I recorded it two mornings ago (it was my last remembered dream so I went with it):
I have returned to some home, my grandma's?, to retrieve my four cats that I left there.
They come to me, two by two.
First Walter and Willie come to me, maybe on one floor or from one part of the dark house. Everything is dark. The rooms they are in are dark and quiet, confining.
I feed them dry food in bowls.
I notice that the food they are being fed is NOT the high quality food I asked my grandma to feed them but some cheap, store bought, cat kibble. It seems to be bought in bulk in six-packs. This disturbs me.
After Willie and Walter come out to greet me the other two come out, Annie and Sadie?
I am relieved that all four are now accounted for and I think I can probably get them in carriers to transport them without too much trouble.
At least they are all present and hopefully will not hide under beds and avoid my attempts to catch and contain them.
A man arrives...a tall, robust man who is in his 50s or 60s. I think I try to enlist his help.
There might be a bit of a sense of hurry in that I want to get the four cats out of there before I am detected or disturbed?
Bonnie, it's funny. After I posted the dream I felt a bit "guilty" in that my dream work mentor was Brugh Joy, and his preference was always that the dreamer offer their insights first. AND, today would've been his 72nd birthday, so he's been in my heart and on my mind all day. I tried to log onto his web site earlier today to find it all gone. Therefore, posting this here as a symbol of a very large new start in my life on his birthday feels quite rich.
I've not worked with the dream in any great depth at all but I will say a few things about key elements that came to me as I read it on the board here and took it deeper after casting it out into cyber space:
My most disturbing and emotionally charged dreams over the decades that have to do with nourishment and various other wounded, younger, unformed parts of self involve cats/kittens. They are also my favorite pet. I am usually trying to get home to them to feed them, to rescue them, etc. This is probably one of my most frequent recurring dream themes, and what's intriguing is that it's been a very long time (I think?) since I've had one of these.
I have had a series of "returning" dreams over the months since deciding to apply to Pacifica last April. Returning home, returning to a campus, driving a car very fast in reverse. Lots of backtracking, sliding downhill backwards, and backing up imagery. Retracing steps?
Yes, the FOUR is quite powerful, and evenly "split" between two male cats (who have both died in the last four years that I've lived in NC. They moved here with me from CO) and two female cats. Further adding to the strong split/separation imagery is that the two males came to me from a floor of the house, or an area that was a bit elevated and apart from the area in which the two females came to me from (the females are my in real life two remaining living kitties.) The males were split off from the females but the entire structure in which they were all housed that I returned to was very dark, quiet and confining. So yes, there is a feeling of balance here for me in the four when I return to re-collect the two + two, or your offering of wholeness. (I'll leave the whole part about my maternal grandmother out as this will be long enough as is!)
Yes, the strongest emotional energy charge for me was in the poor quality, cheap food they had been "nourished" with, despite my request that they be fed only premium, high quality food. There is much energy around the "generic, bought in bulk, high quantity to save money, mass produced" aspects of the nourishment. Well....suffice it to say that the decision to return to school to purse a degree in Depth Psychology was born out of my deep, decades-long despair over the lack of meaningful soul work in the world in terms of true livelihood and vocation and equally as painful is the lack of soulful, nourishing, deep connections with others of like mind. I have been feeding myself low quality, generic relationships, mass produced ways of thinking, feeling, being in the world, etc, for so very long. Don't mean to beat myself up here but as Brugh Joy told me years ago in working with a somewhat similar dream: "You are living too small a life for your Soul."
The hopeful note is sounded by my relief that all four cats are present and appear to be "cooperative" with my attempts to contain them and transport them out of this dark, confining, morgue-like structure to seemingly a new and better home with me where there will be more space, light, activity and good food! This bodes well for my process, I feel.
I am curious about the man who appears to assist me, of course, having the sense that this is possibly both an internal character and one who will manifest externally at some future point. The piece I haven't quite sussed out that feels important is the final emotional content about feeling hurried in my need to want to release the cats from the poor environment before I am caught or detected? There is also the recurring theme of "time running out" which is one that shows up a LOT in the last year for me. I'm not sure if that's perceptual in that I'm nearly 53 and am sad it took me "this long" to finally do what I've known I was to do for decades, or if it's a premonition of sorts that perhaps truly my years on the planet are not as long as I think/hope they might be. A death omen?
The other important note about trying to sneak the cats out before I am detected caused me to ask "who is it that I am trying to avoid, not encounter, not have to face directly?" And on a personal relationship level, that should be more than obvious to me and ties directly back to the HIGH QUALITY key words!
;-)
(Thanks for your attention and thanks in advance to anyone else who feels inspired to offer up insights and intuitive hits.)
Thank you for the opportunity to dive in with you into your dream.
I am happy to share that Hearts-A-Joy.org is up and circumambulating in the roundly compassionate style of Brugh's community forums, if that is of service to any here. It was begun by a group of Brugh's well steeped and adept, students.
As to the cat dream, perhaps the dreamer might share something about the grandmother, for the body of her is relevent to the dream body and dreamer. Something 'feline', in its manifest play is gathered up into intentions for better nourishment, living space etc. Moving from the drab and confining self into the spacious and welcoming self is a shift of paradigms, within. The quality of nourishment, within one's innate sense of life is about to be transformed, by insistence from the dream ego's knowing states. The mystery of the dreamer announces that shift by framing the moments of change in feelings of anxiety. Brugh always said that one knows the initiatory moment as real and not contrived by the presence of both compelling excitement and fear or anxiety. Also, one might insist from the roof tops that this and that must happen, that one is ready for this or that circumstance, yet the soul's timing brings forth at its pleasure what wants to happen.
The threshold waits for no one. A chance missed may not re-present itself. The feeling of 'time running out' may simply be the internal readiness meeting with opportunity while one's pet comforts and joys are gathered up for the ride. The 'dead' cats as well as the 'living' are shown as parts of a living piece, within, thus a bit of story about what each cat represents too, in terms of 'persona' or characteristics or significant manner may help to clarify those dynamics operating within the dreamer's instinctual layers.
The initiate is ever espoused to the gateless gate nakedly, though...and one wonders what role pets have really played in her life.
The helper/man is offered as part of internal dynamic, perhaps to oversee completion, perhaps to initiate or guide. Masculine forces, shown as mature, dynamic and helpful are what take intention and put them into active participation in life. Inertia is about to be thoroughly unseated.
My many years with Brugh and other deeply diving souls have enriched my life and threaten my comforts and joys too, with the urge to keep shedding skins (furry/hairy and otherwise). The ancestral piece may have something to add too.
The 'bottom line' may be simply 'Get Out'...of this...this representing the situation as described in the dream. It's time has come.
Jane
The dreamer is out of alignment with the way they are moving through the collective (sporty, new car isn't a reality for the dreamer) - Manhattan isn't hilly, the dreamer is out of alignment with their surroundings. The dreamer is on the fence, unable to make a decision, likely due to a mis-orientation with their work in the collective - career...The dreamer appears distracted by the blue water, not focused on the decision of what bridge.