The last few days have been pretty hairy for me so this one seems like an appropriately timely choice. Kind of a little southwestern US region / Arizona / New Mexico vibe going on here, with something reminiscent of a mutated I Ching hexagram in the center.
Drawn on Valentine’s Day 2013. Any connection to the alleged holiday of Feb 14 is purely synchronistic in nature.
celestial impact
alien object
born of the stars
smashing to earth
easing my mind.
dead man tears fill my mouth dead man breath clouds my eyes. heartsick heartbeat laughing banshees hollow haunted house primed to burst.
I have in my care three elephants two males one female they are very sick from too much time in the heat of the sun they've come to a place of shade and safety now but they're dying the female is the sickest. they have large ragged holes in their skins burned into them by an unforgiving sun weak and withered dried and dying drained of power they wait and they suffer. I've noticed them only recently I know that without my help their time is short. I haven't been trained to care for these holy creatures so I ask others for help one well-intentioned man young bureaucrat in uniform suggests a cage for shade and safety they're dying! I remind him but they'll be very safe he says. others are not interested at all some make jokes this is urgent! who will help me? these animals need water lots of it more than I can ever provide with the old buckets once used by my father my uncles my grandfathers elephants have other needs too but water is basic and must come first. I'm desperate time is short I walk up a slow hill on a back country road (I've walked this road in younger days) looking for someone to help me save these sacred beasts.
my dreams float just below the surface of consciousness like ice floes drifting out to sea. asleep on an airplane they are the clouds beneath me always there and out of reach real surreal and everywhere half-seen in drowsy glimpses. invisible as gravity insatiable as imagination they are the wings that hold me to this earth they can take me anywhere but they always bring me home.
forgotten animals
speak to me
in forgotten languages
forever preserved
in forgotten dreams.
What I see in this drawing is an expression of the tension between expansion and contraction in the context of the ongoing struggle of the inner impulse to open against the ever-enclosing force of external constraints. In the moment captured by this image, that impulse to open, to grow from the inside out, seems to be more powerful than the external forces pressing inward toward the center, as the energy radiating outward from within shatters an outer shell that is no longer large enough or strong enough to contain it.
Today’s selection is another product of my ongoing experiment with automatic drawing. The symbols, which were drawn from left to right, are a mysterious mix of the familiar, the unfamiliar, and the nearly familiar. The title came to me immediately after the last symbol was drawn.
This was the 32nd of 32 drawings I made on the first morning of the daily art making assignment given to me by my therapist on April 30.
my dreams float
just below the surface of consciousness
like ice floes
drifting out to sea.asleep on an airplane
they are the clouds beneath me
always there and out of reach
real surreal and everywhere
half-seen in drowsy glimpses.invisible as gravity
insatiable as imagination
they are the wings that hold me to this earth
they can take me anywhere
but they always bring me home.
I’ve written previously about the essential part that dreams and dreamwork played in the genesis and development of my first book, Iron Man Family Outing. Dreams are such a rich source of information. They often express and correspond to major awakenings in our lives. Today I’d like to share some of the basic ideas and strategies I’ve learned in working with my dreams over the last twenty years.
Recall and Record
The first step in working with any dream is to remember it. One of the best ways to encourage and improve your dream recall is to make a habit of recording whatever you remember from your dreams in whatever way is best for you, whether it’s writing, making a voice recording, or doing some artwork. Your record of the dream doesn’t have to be polished and perfect; the point is to capture the important elements and flow of the dream, as well as your own experience as the dreamer, as best you can.
Some folks have a hard time remembering their dreams. They may say “I never have any dreams” or “I have dreams but I can’t remember anything.” But in my experience, there’s always something you can use as a starting point, even when you’re certain there isn’t. You may wake up with a feeling, an impression, or an image in your mind. You may awaken with a vague recollection of a person, a place, or just a word that came to you while you slept. That is your starting point for working with your dreams. Record it somehow. If you do just that much, consistently, you’ll notice that your dream recall begins to improve and you’ll find that you can remember much more than you thought you could.
It’s best if you can record something from your dreams, even if it’s just a few words or sentences, as soon as possible after waking up, while the information is still fresh and easily accessible to your waking mind. For many of us, finding that kind of time in the morning is a real challenge. But even a few minutes of recording basic information, if practiced consistently, can improve your dream recall significantly and put you in a position to return to the dream later in the day if you choose.
Deepen your understanding
Here are two suggestions, based on my experience working with my own dreams, that may help bring you closer to your dreams and deepen your understanding of them:
Every element (person, place, and thing) in every dream is alive and has knowledge and a point of view. Some elements are more articulate, are more complex in nature, and have more to say than others. But nothing in any dream is merely an object without consciousness. One way to gain a better understanding of a dream is record the dream from the perspective of one of the other players in the dream, i.e., someone or something other than yourself.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve just had a scary nightmare about being chased through the forest by a wolf. You’ve written out a recap of the dream but you’re still freaked out and having difficulty understanding what it’s all about. You could try re-recording the dream from the perspective of the wolf. Write in present tense and give that version of the dream its own title. You can do the same thing from the perspective of anything in the dream: the trees, the sky, the other animals in the forest, etc. If you let these elements of your dream speak for themselves, you will gain new insights you never expected.
I purposefully chose a scary dream scenario with a threatening character for this example because I’ve learned that the things that seem the scariest, the most threatening, and the most negative in my dreams often actually carry, contain, or embody useful information that I very much need. So there may be times when it is useful, before chasing that monster away, to ask it, “Who are you? Why are you here?” It may have a story to tell you that you never expected to hear, and a gift for you that you never expected to receive and didn’t even know you needed.
Learn your own language
I don’t trust dream dictionaries and have not found them helpful. They tend to be too general, too specific to someone else’s experience, or both. They also tend to take you out of the moment and cause you to doubt your own experience as the dreamer.
The language of your dreams is unique to you, but it has basic features that are common for all of us. Each dream is composed of numerous elements (people, places, things), and each element is composed of one or more (often all) of the following aspects:
At best, a dream dictionary might provide some information about the universal aspect of a dream element, but no element in your dream, or anyone else’s, can be reduced to a single aspect without losing most of its meaning.
Dreams are so powerful, so rich, and so subtle, and they carry so many layers of meaning that they can be interpreted and understood in any number of ways. I don’t know if it’s possible to achieve a 100% understanding of any dream, and sometimes immediate understanding is not possible. I’ve learned that there are some dreams I just have to sit with for months or years before I understand what was being said to me. Some I never understand, regardless of how much time and effort I put into trying. I’ve come to the conclusion that some dreams are not meant to be understood, nor do they require it. They simply are.
Learn to listen
Dreamwork is about listening. It’s about forming a relationship with the sleeping part of yourself. When you listen consistently and honor what you are given, that relationship will deepen and you will be given more. And that sleeping part of you will begin to speak to you in your waking life more and more, and you will begin to know, more and more, who you really are.
Focus on what matters most
As your dream recall improves, you may begin to receive far more information than you feel capable of handling. You may find yourself having multiple dreams in one night, very long dreams, or dreams filled with an abundance of detail. You may even experience all of these scenarios in combination. This is a classic example of a good problem to have, but can also lead rather quickly to feelings of being overwhelmed, intimidated, and paralyzed by information overload.
If you find yourself in a too much information situation, you’ll have to make some choices. It’s a bit like fishing; you have to decide what to keep and what to let go. So how do you go about separating the big fish from the little fish in your dream life?
One of the most reliable indicators of a big fish is a recurring dream or a series of dreams with recurring themes, characters, locales, etc. A recurring dream scenario is a big bright flare being fired into the sky to get your attention, and certainly warrants high priority in your dreamwork.
Sizing the other fish is a bit more complicated and takes practice. Some dreams will simply feel more significant than others, but even in those cases, some editing may be required to avoid losing your focus in a maze of details and sidetracks, however intriguing they all may be. You may find it helpful to develop some dreamwork shorthand techniques, such as setting a limit on the length of your narrative for the dream (e.g., one paragraph, three sentences, etc.) as a way to contain the dream and keep your focus tight. Another approach worth exploring is the use of poetry and poetic language, which can be a very efficient way to capture the most significant narrative details as well as the deeper information (feelings, imaginative elements, etc.) present in a dream.
Still, no matter what approaches you use, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have to let some of your dreams go, if only because of the ongoing demands of waking life. However, it’s been my experience that important information communicated to me by my dreams will be restated over and over, often in different ways, until I get it. So if you lose a big fish now and then, don’t worry. It’ll probably keep nibbling at your line until you reel it in.
Learn processes and techniques
Processes and techniques developed and documented by others can be a valuable source of assistance in your dreamwork practice. But bear in mind that not every process and technique works well (or at all) for every person. Your own experience will be the best measure of whether a given approach works well for you and is worth continuing, or not.
With that caveat in mind, here are a few reading suggestions that may help you progress in your dreamwork:
Work with others
One of the best ways to expand and enhance your experience and understanding of your dreams is to work with others. The assistance of a knowledgeable dreamwork guide can be a powerful catalyst in the development of your personal practice and help you reach new levels of understanding and appreciation of the information you’re receiving on a nightly basis.
Group dreamwork is another approach that can accelerate and deepen your insight into your dreams, as well as giving you the opportunity to help others improve their understanding of the dreams they share, and to learn from them.
Have fun and enjoy the ride
Dreams are a tremendous source of wonder, inspiration, and insight. They provide us with a nightly connection to the ongoing, transcendent mystery of life and being that is at the core of every human experience. Whether we’re aware of our dreams or not, they’re always with us, every day and every night, giving us hints into the underlying truths that lie just below the surface of our everyday existence. They can take us anywhere, but they always bring us home. So when you’re working with your dreams, however you choose to go about it, don’t forget to have fun and enjoy the ride.
Photo credit: David Jewell. Used by permission.
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
- Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion
I’ve been following the Deepwater Horizon disaster with increasing feelings of dread, sadness, and horror as the oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico with no viable plan on the part of BP, the US government, or any other party for stopping it. Even if the flow of oil was stopped today, the damage that’s already been done is incalculable, and I have yet to see any comprehensive plan from any party for dealing with that either. Every attempt by BP to address the blowout at the wellhead has failed miserably, and the US government is completely paralyzed from the top down at the worst possible time as the entire ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, and all of the associated man-made systems that are directly reliant upon it, are put to their death before our very eyes. If the oil moves up the East Coast and into the North Atlantic, as some have predicted, or even more likely, if one or more severe hurricanes enter the Gulf this summer, the catastrophe could increase exponentially in scale as well as scope.
Those are some of the physical realities and consequences of the situation, but I also find myself compelled to consider the Deepwater disaster metaphorically, as a collective waking dream. In my interpretation of this group dream, the water of the Gulf represents the collective American unconscious, and the oil thousands of feet below the surface the collective American shadow. That shadow, which had previously been controlled and contained, is now gushing upward through the collective unconscious, permeating every level as it makes its way to the surface, to consciousness. This powerful mass of psychic energy, this collective shadow, can no longer be denied. It must be seen and addressed, in its purest and rawest form, and we must reevaluate our relationship with it, and deal with the consequences of our failure to do so properly in the past.
The corporate and political gods in America have been tapping and channeling our collective shadow for decades now, packaging it, marketing it, selling it, and using it to manipulate our deepest desires and our worst fears for their own gain, a process that has been greatly intensified in the nearly nine years since 9/11 allegedly “changed everything.” But playing with, and preying upon, the collective shadow of a people is a dangerous game. The line between controlling such a mass shadow for one’s own ends and turning it loose is fine indeed, and once it’s been turned loose, the illusion of controlling it is laid bare and the damage to the culture, its people, and all related systems (environmental, material, etc.) is inevitably and inexorably severe, as numerous examples throughout centuries of human history have amply demonstrated.
Every group of human beings, whether a family, a business, a political group, or an entire culture, has a shadow, just as every individual does. And just as in the case of an individual, the long-term health and viability of any group of human beings is largely dependent upon how it relates to its shadow, whether it represses it, manipulates it, or deals with it honestly and directly, and to what extent, and when. As Americans, we tend to want to look up rather than down, out rather than in, and forward rather than back. But moving in one direction to the exclusion of the other precludes balance, and always looking up, out, and forward leaves us vulnerable, as individuals and as a nation, to those parts of ourselves and energies within us that we barely know, if we are aware of them at all. Worse still, we may attempt to manipulate and control those unknown or barely known parts and energies, as if they were mere raw materials that are somehow separate from us, to be harvested and used until they burst forth into our lives and our consciousness with a force, and with consequences, we never saw coming.
Our shadow, whether individual or collective, is not evil and it is not our enemy. As psychologist Carolyn Kaufman has written, “Carl Jung believed that in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness – or perhaps because of this – the shadow is the seat of creativity.” Our shadow is a primal, elemental part of who we are, that part of our selves and our history, our very life and our very life force itself, that we have disowned and forgotten, for whatever reason. It is the part of us that remains unknown and unclaimed. We each need to know our shadow, to accept it, to honor it, and to accept the benefits and the consequences of its presence in our psyches and our lives in order to be fully conscious, fully integrated, and fully who we are, both as individuals and as a collective. I see the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as yet one more very dramatic reminder that it is incumbent upon each and every one of us, as Americans and as individuals, to do our shadow work now, because I believe that to the extent we do not, what remains unresolved and unacknowledged in our inner world (individual and collective) will continue to find its way into our outer world in forms that are increasingly dangerous, damaging, and toxic to all.
Addendum (06/19/10): I continue to be extremely irritated by the prevalent and ongoing use of the term “spill” to describe the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not a spill. If I knock over a glass of water on the table in my home, I’d call it a spill. If a pipe bursts in my home and water is gushing out of it uncontrollably and spreading into the nearby houses for 45 days, I’d call it a flood.
