Dear Dreamers,
Here’s a little peek at some recent group dreamwork:
What are they?
Moonflowers and morning glories.
Why?
You can guess.
Moonflowers open at sundown and bloom all night – like dreams!
Morning glories open at sunrise and bloom all day – like waking consciousness!
And there’s a beautiful liminal moment, just at dawn, when the moonflowers begin to close and the morning glories begin to open, just like the liminal moment in consciousness when we can best remember our dreams.
Tending moonflower and morning glories together is a way of making visible our intention to tend our dreams and integrate their wisdom into waking life. Find some seeds and start your own dream garden. Have fun with it: plant a couple of each kind in a big patio pot. Or plant a screen of vines on your porch, or train them into an arch to mark a threshold, or create a little tent with bamboo poles. I like to plant dozens of them in little peat pots to give away.
One thing to know about growing these dream vines: they need support. You can use a fancy trellis, a fence, even just strings tacked to the wall – any kind structure for the vines to hold onto as they grow towards the sun.
Seeing as all we do here is metaphor, let’s think for a minute about that structure.
It’s one thing for dream interest to sprout, but it needs a bit of structure to grow well. That structure could be some basic premises that we bring to dreamwork – ideas and practices that give us support and a direction for learning.
Here is a good basic trellis for helping your Jungian dreamwork thrive, thanks to master dreamworker Jeremy Taylor:
Jeremy Taylor’s Ten Basic Assumptions About Dreams
- All dreams come in the service of healing and wholeness.
- No dream comes just to tell the dreamer what he or she already knows.
- Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may hold.
- The dreamer’s “Aha” of recognition is a function of previously unconscious memory and is the only reliable touchstone of dream work.
- There is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning.
- All dreams speak a universal language of metaphor and symbol.
- All dreams reflect inborn creativity and ability to face and solve life’s problems.
- All dreams reflect society as a whole, as well as the dreamer’s relationship to it.
- Working with dreams regularly improves relationships with friends, lovers, partners, parents, children, and others.
- Working with dreams in groups builds community, intimacy, and support and begins to influence society as a whole.
Another kind of trellis for your dreamwork is a dream group. I really believe dreams are meant to be shared. A dream is like a poem: we all see it a little differently, and hearing layers of meaning insight helps open up new depths for everyone, not just the dreamer.
You can create a group or find a local dreamworker to lead it. The Community Dreamwork Initiative invites you to join us for summer dream events offered through the Nashville Public Library and the Nashville Jung Circle (see below).
One more thing.
You know how a beautiful garden transforms your yard, and by extension, your neighborhood? Growing dream-consciousness actually changes how you see, and how you live – and you share that transformation whether you mean to or not! Good dreamwork habituates you to compassion and nondual consciousness. Shared dreamwork creates deeper and more flexible relationships. Those flowers in your garden picture the flowering of your psyche and the flowering of a community of amazement open to grace and transformation.
Watch these moonflowers open as dusk begins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNj7afVNIeM
I know I say this sort of thing all the time, but only because I believe we need to remember it. Dreamwork is a profound and amazing resource, available to everyone, that helps us become what the world needs:
people of compassion, courage, creativity, and grace, who are willing to live in alignment with the greatest good, and foster a just and flourishing society.
That won’t happen overnight, but we can dream towards it.
Deep dreams,
Laura