“This is our meditation practice as women, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves……”–Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In her dream, a woman finds a pile of bones out behind the place in which she is living.  This is a disturbing image–with its suggestion of a crime have been committed, an act of brutality, or harm having been done.  Although the dream does not provide information about the actual events that occurred, it marks a dark history.  The remnants of that history–the bones–have been left in a heap.

The particulars of this dreamer’s life are not mine to share.  But I can attest to the fact that many of the women that I see in my therapy practice have been harmed in some way.  Our culture does not protect the feminine well.  Women experience injuries to their bodies, their minds, and their souls.  Many carry these wounds silently within themselves–shame or lack of support keeping them quiet–pretending that everything is okay.

The psyche is not fooled.

Despite our best intentions, one day the soul lets out a cry and we dream of bones behind the place where we live–behind the façade, the persona. Something breaks through to the surface (prior to this dream, in fact, this woman had had another dream in which something buried was being dug up).  Something wants our attention, our love and our care.  The psyche brings us an emotional truth in our dreams.

And so the bones are above ground–no longer buried in the depths of the unconscious.  This woman has made a discovery within herself.  She is now aware of the pile of bones behind where she lives.  The bones are up.  Whatever issue they represent has now come to the surface.

It is at this point that healing can take place.

It is not possible to heal when something remains buried, underground, away from consciousness.   Only the discovery of the bones–the discovery of our own injury–can allow us to find our way back to ourselves.  Once we have seen the bones, we can no longer pretend or turn away.  We can begin to retrieve and process our memories, our history.  We can feel our grief and anger and allow our feelings to flow.  Most importantly, perhaps, we can tell our stories and feel our pain and be witnessed.

But first the bones must be sorted.  For this dreamer they are all in a heap.  In other words, experiences, memories, feelings are all jumbled together.   Processing a pile of bones is not an easy thing to do–it can feel overwhelming, frightening, or numbing.

That is why the bones need to be sorted.  Sorting is a particularly feminine activity.  It has its own rhythm and timing.  In the tale of Eros and Psyche, for example, Psyche is given the task of sorting an enormous pile of seeds.  Sorting allows us to process and make sense of–make meaning from–our experiences.

Each bone in the pile has a story to tell.  Each bone must be examined and held and put in its proper place–related to in a way that feels emotionally authentic.  This sorting takes time.  It cannot be rushed.  There is no formula for how long it takes to grieve injury or pain.  We need to honor the bones–to sing their songs and ritualize their place in our lives.  They mark our wounds and our hurts.  They also form a key part of who we are in our wholeness and our humanity.  We need to come into right relationship with our bones.

Only then can we give them the resting place they deserve.

In her dream a woman is in a car hurtling down a slope with a drop-off into the water.  This is not a good place to be.  The dream shows imminent danger to the woman (and presumably to her car).   If this situation were happening in real life—we would likely be panicking and afraid for our life.  Waking up from such a dream causes us to ask: where in my life am I so out of control and what danger am I hurtling towards?

When a dream brings us such an urgent image, we are wise to sit up and pay attention.  Such a dream lets us know that something is not right, that we are facing a threat of some kind.   The dreaming mind does not say “maybe you should reconsider the path you are on.”  Instead it shows us in a car hurtling toward a drop off into the water. 

It is as if the dreaming mind has determined that there is no time left for niceties.  Instead it chooses to dramatize the situation in a way that is impossible to miss.  It opts for shock value—hoping to wake us up, to bring us to consciousness about what might be harmful to us.

Many years ago, I had a moment in which I considered radically altering the course I was on. Instead of pursuing the training program in which I had invested a great deal of time and energy, I thought about the possibility of dropping out and following a charismatic leader of a very different sort of program.  At that time I had a dream in which I was a passenger in another woman’s car.  She was driving too fast and we were rounding a dangerous curb with a steep drop-off below.  I woke with my heart pounding and a clear sense that the change I was (so rashly) considering was not right for me.

In life, as in our dreams, we are always best placed in the driver’s seat.  Driving in cars in our dreams mirrors the way we move through our experience—how we navigate and steer, how much energy (horse power) or drive we have, and by and large, who is running the show.  The good news in this woman’s dream is that she is driving the car.  The bad news is that the car is driving her—she has lost control, things are on automatic, she no longer has the ability to steer herself safely and move at the appropriate pace through her life.

We all have moments of moving too fast or heading in the wrong direction.  We get caught up in something and may not realize that whatever we are doing is not right for us—now, in this moment, in this way.  Dreams allow us to pause and look more closely at the choices we are making, the attitudes we hold, and the behaviors we engage in.  A dream in which we are out of control and hurtling toward disaster is an immediate call to slow down and reevaluate where we are headed and how we are going about getting there.

I dream about foxes living on my property—a silver fox and a red fox.  In the dream, I do not see them, but I know that they are there—mysterious presences that come through the woods and occasionally make themselves known.  In the waking world, I have seen the red fox.  Once, in the dead of winter, I looked out my dining room window and saw it walking on the surface of our frozen pond.  The contrast of color was startling—its bushy rust colored coat framed by the white and gray tones of the ice-covered pond and the deep verdant green of the pines trees on the shore.  It was not until after the fox had disappeared into the trees that I realized I had been holding my breath.  The impact of its visit gripped me deeply and allowed me to feel a sense of connection with the land upon which I live.  These moments of connection are rare and precious.  They enable me to move out of my head and feel an ancient and profound link to the natural world from which we are all born.

According to Jung, as a civilization we have all but lost this primal connection to nature, much to our detriment.  As he remarked, “in the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with the instincts, the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.”  He believed that “the earth has a soul,” and warned against the tendency of consciousness to move too far from its roots in nature.

In his own life, Jung spent a great deal of time and energy immersed in the natural world.  He would sit and play at the water’s edge, carving streams and tributaries as a way to bring respite from the matters of the day.  He constructed his tower at Bolingen so that he could be alone with the quiet and solace of nature.  Existing without running water or electricity, he would commune with the spirits of the place, carve images in stone, and take long walks throughout the region.

While it seems at times difficult to imagine—living as we do in a world in which the Goddess, nature, and the earth, are treated so poorly—“the old mother of days,” as Jung sometimes called her, still exists within the unconscious.  The deep wisdom of nature is available to us all through dreams, for example. Here, in the many layers of the psyche, we can encounter her healing medicine.  Even if we live outwardly in a world devoid of natural life—city-dwellers, perhaps—we can find sources of connection within the living psyche.

Every dream is, in fact, an encounter with nature and an attempt to bring our personalities into greater alignment with the authentic life of the soul.  We are constantly bombarded by messages about who we should be.  In much the same way as time spent in nature can help restore a sense of perspective and allow us to fee more whole, so can dreams refund us to an experience of what is right and true for our lives.

As Jung said:

Whenever we touch nature we get clean…People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods or bathe in the sea.  They may rationalize it in this or that way, but they shake off the fetters and allow nature to touch them. It can be done within or without.  Walking in the woods, lying in the grass, taking a bath in the sea, are from the outside; entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again.

To really attune to the wisdom of the dreaming mind we need to slow down and listen deeply.  Nature will speak to us if we allow her a voice.  Paying attention to our dreams requires a turning inwards—toward ourselves and our inner landscape—staying alert for whatever inklings we may find there.

“Female figures of thinking and wisdom appear in women’s dreams, notably…versions of the wise old woman such as the owl…”  Karen Signell

An owl has flown into a woman’s dream.  My ears perk up as she tells me her dream.  I have seen an owl that very morning.  I feel a special connection to this woman and her owl.  Together we attempt to listen to what owl might be trying to say.  We have been graced by a visitation—owl has entered the room and we know that we are in the presence of something mysterious and alive.

Owls, especially, carry a sense of mystery.  They can see in the dark.  They have night vision.  Harry Potter had an owl. Owls were sacred to Athena, goddess of wisdom.  Owls are associated with witches and other aspects of the deep feminine.  Their vision is not that of the day world.  Rather, they manifest a kind of intuitive knowing.  They remind us of our ability to find our way in the night—they suggest a kind of seeing that goes beyond our everyday perspective.

This woman did not need me to tell her that her owl dream was connected to her own wisdom and intuition.  The owl told her that.  The very fact of its appearance issued a kind of call to her soul.  Its ancient, wise face spoke to the ancient wisdom within her.  It reminded her of her own deep knowledge.

We all need to be reminded of our wisdom.  When we lose our way, when things grow dark, we need to be able to access our inner radar—that which would point us safely home.  This kind of knowing does not happen in the logical mind.  Rather, we need the deep, instinctive wisdom of our body-minds to guide us through the confusion we call life.  Most of all, we need to be able to trust that intuition, to trust its guidance, even if it flies in the face of everything we think should be true.

Like many people, I have had times in my life when I have lost contact with my intuition.  The feeling is like that of being blind.  We stumble around, trying to make sense of things, hoping that our head will find the way.  The one day, perhaps we hear the words to a song, or find ourselves saying something we didn’t know we felt.  Something clicks.  A sense of rightness comes through—and we know.

Without our owl energy we are lost.  Without intuition we are in danger of living someone else’s lives.  Night vision is not valued in our world.  We have to develop it all on our own.  Dreams are a good place to start.  We can find owls in our dreams—inklings of our own natural ability to move through the night and see in the dark.