I find that talking about any aspect of Mystery, but especially about dreams and the dreamworld, is best done in dim light, with soft voices and quiet words. I confess that I've always thought of Soul as a rather shy creature who preferred candle light to a spot light, so before we go on, let me invite you to move into that quiet, welcoming space in your own heart. The place where you tend your own hearth fire, and know that you belong...
I have been listening to my dreams, both nighttime and waking, for many years. Dreams have guided me in my healing, and they continue to guide me, befriend me, amuse me, engage me, delight me, woozle me, inform me, direct me, scare me, help me hold my despair for the world's pain and suffer it with grace, offer me a fountain of creative imagery, and occasionally simply annoy me. I believe they are also now strongly guiding me in my efforts to be part of the healing and renewal of the world.
In what follows, I talk a bit about dreams and the dreamworld, and how I move there, and work with the energies I encounter there. By work I mean honor, listen to, be present to and relate to. I do not mean analyze or quantify. And before I start, let me also take a moment to honor the many who have gone before me, or go alongside me now. I have had many teachers over the years, many of whom I have never met, but all of whom I acknowledge with gratitude. Much of my thinking has been influenced by their approaches, whether I am in accord with them and find them meaningful or not. I have also been greatly moved and continue to have my thinking refined by my reading in a host of disciplines, including Jungian and archetypal studies, mysticism of all flavors including Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Hindu, mythology, poetry, art, history, ethics (especially as it applies to spiritual care), prayer, archetypal astrology, transpersonal psychology, quantum physics (the parts I can understand), chaos theory, eco-psychology & eco-spirituality, Celtic spirituality, Buddhism, music, and finally, by my own creative endeavors, especially with poetry, fiction, photography and even knitting.
For me, dreamwork is a sacred art and a spiritual practice. When I tend to my dreams and the dreams of others, it feels to me as though I am honoring an ancient and holy covenant. Dreamwork is also a love affair, a sacred, erotic partnership and therefore a way to be in divine relationship with Mystery, The Creator, The Holy One, The Animating Divine Presence, The Cosmos, Ehyeh, the IsWasWillBeness, Love, Shekinah...names are at one and the same time wholly inadequate, infinite in number since each reflects a particular divine aspect, a God-image, and paradoxically filled with meaning and yet meaningless, as Moses learned when he asked God God's name. For as Lawrence Kushner tells us in Honey From the Rock, "The moment you learn a new name for God, It can no longer be a name for God. For the Nameless One can have no name that we can know." And yet, through dreamwork, we can experience God in and through all of God's images -- the hallowed and the hellish.
Dreamwork is also a dance, each movement of which continually enfolds and unfolds into and out of the whole. I am embodied by the images in my dreams and simultaneously I embody them. Therefore, the way I relate to dream imagery -- mine and others -- is of primary importance, and reflects a bias, and it is simply this:
It is less important that I understand my dreams, in a rational context, using the tools of interpretation and analysis, and more important that I experience them and thereby, allow them to experience and even understand me. My attitude, that is to say, my 'posture' towards my dreams not merely determines but I believe also reflects their attitude toward me. As Frasier Boa said, "When we listen to dreams, we change, and when dreams are heard, they change." Therefore, what I offer here are some ways to cultivate what I believe to be a useful and respectful attitude, or posture, to dreams and indeed, to Soul and the worlds of Soul. This approach is one that I believe is still underrepresented in the field, although there are those, notably those influenced by the archetypal and depth soul-work of James Hillman and others in accord with him, who continue to speak for it.
It is also important to clarify what I do not address here. I do not talk about symbols and their meanings, or psychodynamic theories, or history, or neuroscience. Much has been written about dreams, within each of those disciplines and in many others; much of it is fascinating and leads to ever greater questions. But those disciplines are not my path. My way for working with dreams is the way of the artist. Too much emphasis on understanding and not enough on relating, on being with the images, on accepting the gifts, and I lose the energy, dilute the mystery, become a dull and lifeless dream companion. And then my own dreams begin to reflect this.
So let us then, together, enter the dream on its own terms. Let us refrain from making demands and instead, become dream pilgrims. Let us listen, let us be patient, and let us be present to Mystery. For in our patience we find our soul. "Dig here," the angel said--"in your soul, in your soul."