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Analyzing Our Childhood Dreams · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, as part of our exploration of all things dreams,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to correspond with the publication of our new book, Dreamwise,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams, we are, as you
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: may know, exploring a different type of dream each month.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: So this month, we're looking at children's dreams, and we
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: invited you, our listeners, to submit either dreams of children
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: in your life, perhaps, or your recalled childhood dreams. And
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I would say that most of you sent in recalled
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: childhood dreams, which is really interesting. We're going to hopefully
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: dig into that a little bit more because many of
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: us do have recalled childhood dreams that affected us profoundly
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: or left an impression in any case. And Jung, of course,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: had childhood dreams that were incredibly important to him. And
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I noticed that because I'm usually the dream picker, it's
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: very common that you send in your remembered childhood dreams
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: on the podcast, and I usually don't pick them. because
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: we don't have any context about what was going on
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: in your life at that time. And of course, that's
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: a hard thing with kids. And Jung did a whole
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: seminar of children's dreams, which was published as a book
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: by the Philemon Foundation. And he makes this point that
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: we don't have a lot of context often for kids.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So we will see what we can see. We're going
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: to speak in general about children's dreams and then We'll
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: also be looking at some of the dreams that you
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: sent us. But I want to start with a quote
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: from Jung, and this is from the book Children's Dreams.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Children's dreams are often extraordinarily important because the infantile consciousness
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: is still weak, so that such dreams can surface uninhibited
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: from the collective unconscious. Consciousness is this time, this here,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: and now. Consciousness wants to let everything appear as a
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: here and now. The unconscious, on the other hand, is
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: an eternity, a timelessness, and has no intentions regarding the
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: here and now. So we're going to see if some
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: of these dreams, what they do lift up, that seems
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: directly related to the collective unconscious. I think we will
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: We will find that. I'm wondering if we want to
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: start off maybe talking a little bit about Jung's early dreams,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: because these were so important to him.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Before we go there, I'm so appreciating the context of
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: the collective unconscious as being such a presence. It's as
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: if the dividing line between consciousness and the deep unconscious
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: is still pretty thin. because ego development is very much
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: still underway. And what we also know about the collective
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: unconscious is that it is very close to the archetype
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: of the self, which was one of Jung's core discoveries
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: about how we work and who we are. Something is
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: undergirding our life. And the dream maker often sends these
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: kinds of archetypal images of something that is present, something
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: that is deep. And interestingly enough, in the book, Dreamwise,
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: we placed a box, a subset of children's dreams in
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: the chapter on the self. So there is something eternal
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: and something very deep that arises in children's dreams. that
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: often gets beclouded, covered up, obfuscated in other ways in
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: the dreams of adults. And we can see through to
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: the depths often in children's dreams.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I'd like to bring up
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: is just about Jungian theory. In the London School of
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Jungian Psychology, there's an idea that every time a child
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: has a true first experience of something, a little piece
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: of the invisible archetype breaks off, comes active in the
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: infant's consciousness, and inhabits the image and experience that corresponds
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: to it. So it's called a deintegration of the archetype
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: and a reintegration of the archetype into the personality. So
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: much of what children's dreams in vivo represent is the
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: imaging of archetypal material, which is one of the reasons
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: that children's dreams are so universal in many ways, is
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: they are the first clothing of the archetypal experiences before
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of other associations
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: will then be added to the archetypal system.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, so let's take a look at Jung's earliest remembered dream,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: just as a place to start from.
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  Speaker 4: It's a blockbuster.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so why would we imagine otherwise? And this is
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: from Memories, Dreams, Reflections. At about the same time, I
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: had the earliest dream I can remember, a dream which
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: was to preoccupy me all my life. I was then
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: between three and four years old. The vicarage stood quite
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: alone near Laufen Castle and there was a big meadow
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: stretching back from the sexton's farm. In the dream, I
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: was in this meadow. Suddenly, I discovered a dark rectangular
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: stone-lined hole in the ground. I had never seen it before.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I ran forward curiously and peered down into it. Then
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I saw a stone stairway leading down. Hesitantly and fearfully,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I descended. At the bottom was a doorway with a
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: round arch, closed off by a green curtain. It was
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a big, heavy curtain of worked stuff like brocade, and
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: it looked very sumptuous. Curious to see what might be
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: hidden behind, I pushed it aside. I saw before me
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: in the dim light a rectangular chamber about thirty feet long.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: The ceiling was arched and of hewn stone. The floor
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: was laid with flagstones, and in the center, a red
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: carpet ran from the entrance to a low platform. On
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: this platform stood a wonderfully rich, golden throne. I'm not certain,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: but perhaps a red cushion lay on the seat. It
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: was a magnificent throne, a real king's throne in a
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: fairy tale. Something was standing on it, which I thought
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: at first was a tree trunk, twelve to fifteen feet
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: high and about one and a half to two feet thick.
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  Speaker 2: It was a huge thing, reaching almost to the ceiling,
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  Speaker 2: but it was of a curious composition. It was made
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of skin and naked flesh, and on top there was
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: something like a rounded head with no face and no hair.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: On the very top of the head was a single eye,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: gazing motionlessly upward. It was fairly light in the room,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: although there were no windows and no apparent sources of light.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Above the head, however, was an aura of brightness. The
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: thing did not move, yet I had the feeling that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: it might at any moment crawl off the throne like
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: a worm and creep toward me. I was paralyzed with terror.
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  Speaker 2: At that moment, I heard from outside and above me
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: my mother's voice. She called out, Yes, just look at him.
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  Speaker 2: That is the man-eater. That intensified my terror still more,
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  Speaker 2: and I awoke sweating and scared to death. For many
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: nights afterward, I was afraid to go to sleep because
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I feared I might have another dream like that. So
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: such a mysterious, striking image that when he looked back
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: at that dream from later in his life, he had
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: an understanding of what it pointed toward. And he marveled
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: at how the dream maker in him, Deb, this goes
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: to what you were saying about the self, was present
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: so early in his life and was speaking to him.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: I am curious what you guys remember, how Jung thought
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: about that dream later in his life.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I have it here. Would you like me to
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: share that?
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: I would. because it's not fresh in my mind.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: He said, it haunted me for years. Only much later
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: did I realize that what I had seen was a phallus.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: And it was decades before I understood that it was
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a ritual phallus. You know, in the first, he talks
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: about the Jesuit. Remember, he saw the Jesuit and that
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: frightened him. That was a the time he had this dream. Um,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: so the, the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit and the
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: phallus were identical. So kind of like a catholic God, right? Uh,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: underneath the ground, um, the power of life and death,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: you know, this kind of fecundating, um, But something that was,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: you know... Potentially threatening, you know, also had the power
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: of death. The hole in the meadow probably represented a grave.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: The grave itself was an underground temple whose green curtain
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: symbolized the meadow. In other words, the mystery of earth
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: with her covering of green vegetation. The carpet was blood red.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: What about the vault? So he talks about the anatomically
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: correct phallus. Where did that come from? and the interpretation
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: of the orificium urethrae as an eye with the source
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: of light apparently above it. And it points to the
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: etymology of the word phallus, which comes from a Greek word,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: means shining or bright. At all events, the phallus of
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: this dream seems to be a subterranean god not to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: be named, and such it remained throughout my youth, reappearing
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  Speaker 2: whenever anyone spoke too emphatically about Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus
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  Speaker 2: never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: quite lovable. For again and again I would think of
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  Speaker 2: his underground counterpart, a frightful revelation which had been accorded
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  Speaker 2: me without my seeking it. So this is the dark
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  Speaker 2: aspect of God.
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  Speaker 4: The dark aspect and also the awesome aspect. It's not
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  Speaker 4: just dark, scary. It strikes a chord of awe. In
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: this little kid who's dreaming of these giant, incredible archetypal
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  Speaker 4: images of what is underground is also fecundating. It also
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: is the source of life. It's a green light. curtain.
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  Speaker 4: It's the ever-ending cycle of life and death. The terrible
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  Speaker 4: penetrating phallus that also gestates new life, is the inspiriting
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  Speaker 4: spark of life. Is it dark? Is it light? Is
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: it good? Is it not good? Of this child was
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: confronted with these incredible archetypal polarities that Jung would go
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  Speaker 4: on to develop as very much as his theory of
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: the self which from an ego perspective has a dark
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: and a light side and is filled with this kind
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: of feeling of awe.
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  Speaker 2: But we also have Jung, the little boy, whose father
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  Speaker 2: is a pastor and his grandfather was a pastor and
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: his great-grandfather was a pastor. And in this phallus image,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: this underground phallus image, is all of the parts of
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: God that have been split off by mainstream religion. And
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it actually prefigures his interest in alchemy because it's like
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: those aspects of the divine that are not included in
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the conception of God have fallen into matter. And that's
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: where he goes to find them, those aspects of God
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: which are not included.
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  Speaker 4: And if I may actually quote us from our book, Dreamwise,
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  Speaker 4: We say, such dreams can pose questions we continue to
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  Speaker 4: ponder throughout subsequent decades. They may offer us a vision
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: toward which we may strive, just as King Arthur's knights
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: were granted a vision of the grail before they set
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: off to seek it. A childhood dream can prefigure our
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: personal quest and serve as a symbolic touchstone on our
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: life path. And I think it's a case to be
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: made that this dream contained the seeds of so much
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: that Jung would then go on to develop and to
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: write about and to articulate theoretically.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Yes. You know, I had a dream when I was
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: probably like eight, um, that was incredibly impactful and numinous.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately I didn't write it down and I don't
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: remember it very well, but I remember that it had
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: a whale in it and it was unbelievably comforting. Um,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: it really, really struck me. And interestingly, I continue to
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: dream of whales, uh, with some frequency and they're always, well,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: for me, they're always symbols of the self. So I
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: didn't quite have the experience that Jung had, but I
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: had something, something like it, something that was a touchstone.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And Deb, just going back to the great point that
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: you made about how, you know, it might be easier
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to see through to the self, to see that the
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: self is with us. You know, Jung, in writing about
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: that dream in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he writes, and I
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: think this is so moving. We quote this at the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: very end of Dreamwise. Who spoke to me then? Who
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: talked to me of problems far beyond my knowledge? What
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: is it in us that knows more than we know? Well,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: that's the dream maker, that's the self, and we get
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: access to it through our dreams. So I would say that,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: you know, we have this incredible blockbuster dream of Jung's,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: which does become a touch point for him. But another
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: kind of dream that happens in childhood with great frequency
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: actually is a nightmare. Childhood dreams are often filled with
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: frightening imagery. The first dream that I can recall, I
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: was very young. It was terrifying and, you know, difficult
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: to kind of parse other than that. And we're going
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: to see that, I think, in a lot of the
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: dreams that we're going to look at today. So our
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: first childhood recalled dream comes from a woman who's now 38.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: She was four when she had the dream. I'm walking
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: in the dark in my pajamas. It is so dark
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: that I can't see anything, but I know I'm in
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a swamp because the ground is wet and sloshy. The
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: sky is also too dark to see, but I know
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: it is the belly of a boar, which is a
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: really curious image. I walk very slowly and carefully and
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: at one point I feel something hard and scaly under
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: my foot. It is the back of a crocodile. With
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: every step I walk on another crocodile. It's like a
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: path made of crocodiles. Suddenly I hear a creak and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I feel a void under my foot and a crocodile
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: bites my leg off. So interestingly, we do have some
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: context for this dream. She says, when my little brother
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: was born, I was two and a bit. And after
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a few months, my parents decided to send me to
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: my paternal grandparents to live with them because my mom
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: couldn't handle two little kids at the same time. My
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: grandparents were very loving. And in the same household, there
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: was also an aunt and uncle with their three boys,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the youngest about six years older than me. I lived
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: with them until I was four. My parents visited me
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: every day and I was with them each weekend, but
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I still missed them a lot. I had this dream
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: shortly after moving back with my parents. So she says
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: the main feelings in the dream, I was terrified to
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: find myself alone in a swamp at night. I felt
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: somewhat reassured to discover the pattern of the crocodile path
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: and to understand I could navigate the swamp like that,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: although I had no idea where I was going. The
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: clearest feeling is fear. And then she goes on to note,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: my childhood was dominated by the anxiety that my parents
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: might get divorced. They didn't, but I still have that
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: fear even now, although I realize how silly it is.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: 99% of the time, they seemed very happy together and
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: we had a great and joyful life. But there were
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: episodes when my mom would get very angry and verbally
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: violent with my dad. And each time it happened, I thought,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: this is it. They'll split up and my life is over.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I just have such a strong feeling reaction to this dream.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: What are you feeling?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's so sad. And even this dreamer talking about
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: her ongoing fear that the parental relationship would just end,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: which I see as a displacement for, you know, as
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: far as she was concerned, it was great. It was great.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: You know, she and mommy were probably very connected. And
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden this thing happens. And she's exiled.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: It's just over.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: The split happened, but it didn't happen between her parents.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: It happened between her mother and her. And I had
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: a very early experience, too, of being outsourced when my
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: little sister was born for exactly the same reason. And
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: it is a huge experience that has followed me all
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: my life. that it will be okay and it's fine.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: And our dreamer here had a wonderful experience with grandparents
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: and other cousins. Parents visited every night. And then there
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: was the shadow side of we don't have enough energy
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: for you too you're too you're a little too much
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: to handle this is a toddler doing what toddlers do.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Well and you get replaced and that's.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Right you You're a little too much to handle, whereas
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: our beautiful infant baby, of course, is much needier and
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: requires so much more holding, feeding, tending, etc. But the
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: split happened for her and got displaced onto the parents.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I think. So just to talk about that life situation
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: a little bit more, because it is really striking and obviously,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: you know, the dream seems closely connected with it, is...
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: So you've been rejected, even though your parents visit you
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: every day and you come home on weekends, you have
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: been rejected and you've been, you've been replaced. And she
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: mentions that she has the dream shortly after she moves
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: back home. Well, that must have been an adjustment as well.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: You know, suddenly you're, you're back trying to figure out
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: where you fit in this household with this sibling that
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you may have some pretty complicated feelings about. I mean,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: if you don't behave, are you going to get sent back?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, it just it's, the timing of the dream
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: feels entirely understandable to me. And there is a sense of,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: I'm walking along, I think I've got something solid here.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, the solid ground is gone.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: And my leg is gone. And I think that it
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: may have been that her life with mom, and mom
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: sounds like she could get pretty angry. And I have
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: to say, I can relate to that. I was I
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: was very difficult to control my temper when my kids
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: were little. And my mom had a really hard time
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: controlling her temper. I can remember her yelling at us.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: I can remember her yelling at our dad, at my dad. And,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: you know, how kind of scary that is. And it
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: could be that the crocodile path is like, mom, you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: crocodiles are actually good parents. They carry their kids around
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: in their mouth. But, you know, they're crocodiles. And it
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: could turn and snap at you any minute. And then
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: it does. And then it actually bites her leg off,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: which maybe is a visual image of the loss that
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: she felt when she was sent to her grandparents.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: And here is in the dream scene. this scene of
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: this little kid doing her heroic best of their crocodiles,
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: but hey, I can walk along their backs and one
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: leads to the next, leads to the next, sort of
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: like a classic fairy tale of I can tread this
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: difficult path but she doesn't have enough of a standpoint.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: Her leg gets bitten off. She's much too little to
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: be able to navigate her way through a swamp on
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: the backs of crocodiles. It can't be done.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: I see what you guys are pointing at. It all
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: makes sense. Just to amplify that a little bit, it's
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: very common for children to regress when there's a big
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: change in the household, and regress in ways that are very,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: very explicit. A four-year-old says, I want to be treated
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: like a baby. They'll even say it, and they'll advocate
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: for it. So whether the stress is that she's been
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: sent to her grandparents, the stress of the child, or
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: the stress of mom's explosive anger, she's on the ground saying,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: And above her is the belly of a boar. And
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: in the belly of a boar are teats, their nipples.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Those are where little piglets are. They're leaning against the
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: belly of the boar. So to me, I'm wondering about
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: this as just a very primal, appropriate aggression. And that
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: she has some solid ground under her in a manner
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: of speaking with the mama crocodiles. Just a place to
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: stand freely. It's primordial. It's dark, as we say. And
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: then suddenly Mama Crocodile bites her leg off. So if
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: I were to want to go back to this dream
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: with this person, I would be curious about her relationship
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: to her own agency and whether or not that explosive
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: anger from the mother is something that has left her
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: unsure about her own agency relationship to aggression, to taking
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: a stance, moving forward in an assertive way or even
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: a dynamic way. Because if moving forward is associated with
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: having a leg bitten off, that could create a real
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: confusion about one's own energy. She did not say that
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: as she gave us the dream, so I'm making broad
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: interpretive curiosities more than anything else.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: I think that's such a good point. And I think
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: it's a path that shows up again and again in
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: children's dreams. And it's a very human path of what
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: do we do with our aggression? In children, it's very primal.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: We have the famous two-year-old meltdowns, et cetera, because there
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: are two. And yet, the child, the toddler needs the
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: parents so, so desperately that you can't let loose with
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: all that primal anger. And I think we see it
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: in Jung's early dream that Lisa read of the voice
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: of the mother comes along as saying in fearsome tones,
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: that is the man eater. It's sort of like, whoa,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know exactly what that means, but it's scary.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: But it's this unmediated parental effect.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: And that is part of the journey of childhood, is
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: what do we do with all our primal affect and
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: how it gets mediated.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: So here's another dream we can take a look at.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: A 33-year-old female sends us this dream. I'm going on
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: a trip with my parents. We're getting ready to leave,
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: heading out to the car. The day is, it is daytime.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: I think we are planning to go to my friend's house.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: I look down and realize I'm not wearing my shoes.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I need to get my Esmeralda sandals. I don't remember
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: if I told my parents I forgot my sandals or
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: just go to find them without saying anything. But either way,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: I am scared. Nervous to look for the sandals alone.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: I think I am concerned that they will leave on
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: the trip without me. When I go into our house,
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: everything is so dark. All the blinds are drawn, and
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: it is very hard to see. I see a glowing
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: light in the distance. My Esmeralda sandals are glowing. There
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: is another glowing from above me, from the loft that
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: looks over the living room. I look up at it,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: and standing above me in the loft is a glowing
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: blue cartoon man. He is not particularly scary looking, but
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: he terrifies me. All he does is stand there, staring.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: I leave in distress, without my sandals. For context, the
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: dreamer adds, this was a recurring dream I had throughout
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: my childhood. My parents got divorced when I was six,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: and we moved from this house. I'm not sure when
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: the dream stopped visiting, but I still remember the images
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: quite clearly today. And just as a note, she says
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: that the things that weren't clear in the dream, she
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: proceeds by saying, I think. The main feelings in the
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: dream are fear, worry, and loneliness. And she adds a
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: few more associations. As I stated before, this was a
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: recurring dream I had in my childhood when I lived
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: at the house in the dream prior to the age
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: of seven. The loft the blue figure was standing in
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: was my parents' bedroom. I slept in there a lot
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: with them, and I don't remember it being a scary
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: place in waking life. I really did have a pair
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: of Esmeralda sandals. They had a drawing of Esmeralda, the
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: female lead in the Disney movie Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: I think this is interesting now, as I am a
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: mixed-race woman and have dark skin, as she did. My
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: parents' divorce was amicable. but the pain of their split
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: has always been a part of me. Into adulthood I
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: have often wondered if there was more to their split
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: than they have told me. My grandma, mom's mom, told
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: me once that they got divorced because of issues surrounding sex,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: my mother's lack of desire after my younger brother was born,
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: and my dad's acceptance of this. My grandma and mom
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: have a turbulent relationship, so I took her comment with
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: a grain of salt, but something about it resonated painfully
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: in me. I have learned through my growth that as
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: a young kid I could feel a lot of the
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: emotions my mom was going through without realizing I was
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: doing it. I have wanted to ask my mom about
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: this comment, but I've been scared to. I have a
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: pretty healthy relationship with both my mom and dad, and
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: the dreamer's occupation is an artist educator.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: So I'm just aware that many of the dreams that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: we're looking at really comment on the early relationship with
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the parents and how the kid is trying to make
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: sense of that. And here we have this dream where,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a little foggy on this because she
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: says this was going on sort of before she was
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: seven and her parents got divorced when she was six.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So this dream must have been occurring around the time
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of the divorce, maybe before, perhaps during. And we have
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: this kind of confrontation with a glowing blue cartoon man.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: One of the things that really struck me about this
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: dream and the reason I wanted us to talk about
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: it is there's a rather ordinary scenario that gets interrupted
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: by a confrontation with something that is numinous, that's darkly numinous,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: that is really and truly other. So exactly what it is,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but there's some content here from the
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: collective unconscious that just is, that just makes an appearance,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: a frightening appearance in this child's life. In a way,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: it's not unlike Jung's dream of, wow, There's something else.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: What is that?
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Well, when I think of glowing blue people, I think
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: of the Hindu tradition of painting the gods and avatars
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: as bright blue. So it gives me a sense that
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: this is a glimpse of the divine, perhaps even the overshadowing,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: observing self that is close to her, uncanny, strange to
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: the child. but perhaps necessary, a kind of abiding support
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: as the relationship between the parents is beginning to unravel.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: So Joseph, you brought in this lovely allusion to the
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: way that the deities are sometimes pictured in Hinduism. And
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: the truth is that sometimes, maybe often, perhaps all the time,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: we first kind of meet the God through kind of trauma.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: So it may have been that through that crack, you know,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Leonard Cohen has that line about the crack is where
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: the light gets in, that through the trauma of the
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: parental divorce, that's where she first has an intimation of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the transpersonal. And, you know, Deb, you alluded to earlier
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the kind of the nature of the self in dreams.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: And in Dreamwise, we talk about the self and how
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the many different ways that it can appear But one
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: of the big tells, of course, is the feeling of it.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And this feels frightening and uncanny. But above all, she
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: didn't use this word, but it feels other. It feels numinous.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: It feels like, whoa, this is not of this world.
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: And some of this, I think, also is the story
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: of development itself. And things happen to our parents, things
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: happen in our lives, and the child in the course
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: of developing an ego and beginning to develop an ego
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden realizes, has a conscious realization when
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: remembering a dream of, oh my gosh, there's an awful
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: lot out there that is much bigger than I am.
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: And that That's the truth of child realizing I'm small
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: and there are mysteries that are numinous and dark and
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: scary and real that I can't yet understand. And that,
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: I think, is part of the reason we remember childhood
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: dreams well, well into adulthood is how do I understand
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: this now? How can I meet this now?
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: What do we make of the fact that the dream
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: really centers on the search for the sandals?
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: In Catholicism, Jesus' sandals were considered relics to be worshipped.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: And they were a thing. So sandals have a religious
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: significance even. And I was wondering about that when the
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: sandals particularly begin to glow. And then the deity begins
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: to glow. We're a little bit in that old, old
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Catholic mysticism and magic.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: And there's a tradition and other traditions as well about,
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: you know, Hermes has sandals that have little wings on
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: the ankles. I remember reading about that and going, wow,
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: that would be so cool.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: The magic shoes are Cinderella, of course, and the famous
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: glass slipper. So we're in the realm of footwear and
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: what it means to have the special shoes.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to share my earliest room of a dream,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: and I'd love to hear what you guys think of it.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, Wes, we're all ears. I know we are.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So I must have been, I was quite, quite young.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I must have been maybe three, three, maybe four. And
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: the only thing was that there was like a malevolent
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: sun circling the edge of the room, burning things down.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: And it was kind of laughing at me. It kind
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: of had, it was kind of personified this little sun
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: sort of circling the room and just setting fire to everything. Hmm.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Things that come up for me are sort of aggression
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: and the way that aggression, probably my own, felt frightening
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: and incredibly destructive, like it was going to burn everything down.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: But I'm also curious. It was definitely a sun.
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: And it was small. And what color was it?
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: You know, sort of orange-red. Okay.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: I like, you know, we know from alchemy that And
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: there's a book by a Jungian analyst, Stan Marlin, called
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: The Black Sun, which is such a wonderful contradiction in terms,
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: just like the sun in your dream that we associate
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: with gold and light and consciousness and warmth and all
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: these good things. And you're seeing the dark side of it.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: And I think there's a real archetypal motif there, that
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: the sun can also burn things. The sun is fiery.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: And that that's a revelation to a child, that every
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: new experience is kind of wondrous and terrifying. So when
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: does a child realize the sun can hurt you? The
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: first time you get a really bad sunburn. And then
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: you're surprised. Your parents say, the sun burned you. And
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: some part of that archetype of the sun now is
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: clothed in the sun's capacity to injure and to burn.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: And how intense that must be for a child to
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: learn that. To learn that dogs can bite. To learn
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: that glasses break. It's so stunning when that new information
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: comes in. Did the sun have a... Did you say
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: it had a face on it?
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Which is that wonderful animism that the sun is burning me,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: but it's intentional.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. It definitely is. I mean, you know, part of...
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, the kind of aggression thing feels sort of
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: obvious and right on top. But the other thing that
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I wonder about, if we're looking at it really archetypally,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: which is what Jung encourages us to do, is kind
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: of what you were saying, Deb, a little bit about, oh, what's...
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: what's the potentially scalding part of too much consciousness? Not
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: that I would have had a conscious appreciation of that
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: as a child, but if I want to sort of
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: follow Jung's lead and say, how might this dream be
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: an image of something that becomes important later? I would
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: say that in some sense, the work of Jungian analysis
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: is to not overvalue consciousness, to recognize that consciousness without
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: being moored in the unconscious and the instinctual invisible world
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: can be deadly. And of course, that is sort of
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: a truth of the collective now is that our wonderful
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: consciousness has created nuclear weapons, which by the way use.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Processes, not totally dissimilar to what happens in the middle
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: of a star, but I don't really remember, but you
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about. Fission, fusion, I don't know. Anyway,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: so I just, I mean, I don't know, but I
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: wonder if there was a kind of collective level to
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: that dream as well. But anyway, all right, let's pick
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: another one.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: Well, one of the things, just to lean into your
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: interpretation of consciousness is, as I don't know how old
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: you were, but we do become self-aware and then the
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: world becomes disenchanted and disillusioned. I can imagine. learning that
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: santa claus isn't real is like the sun setting something
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: on fire in a horrifying way huh that that so
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: much is is taken out of the imagination or repressed
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: when we begin to wake up to ourselves.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Right that just The destructive aspect of consciousness.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Of reality principle, yeah.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Right. Or as I'm thinking of it, the loss of innocence.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: That gaining consciousness, and I'm thinking about this dream of
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: looking for the Esmeralda sandals, that we start out here
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: in this dream, I imagine, as, oh, I'll just get
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: my magic shoes. I'll get my special, special sandals infused
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: with these special properties. And then she meets this glowing
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: blue man and realizes that it's not just wonderful, magical,
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: special shoes and everything will be fine. There is a
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: dark side. Her formerly simply innocent magical solution of get
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: the magic sandals is not all there is to this
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: or to life. Things are dark, things are difficult, things
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: are scary, and there's a loss of innocence, a necessary
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: loss of innocence.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: This dream is also about the birth of heroism. She
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: realizes she's not wearing her shoes. She wants her Esmeralda sandals, which,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: by the way, I put a link to share with
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: you guys, are rather beautiful, by the way. They're kind
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: of gorgeous, embroidered, kind of Persian sandals that Disney was selling.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: They were beautiful. And I don't remember if I told
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: my parents I forgot my sandals, or I just decided
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: to go and find them without saying anything. And this little...
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: audacious girl marching into the house and it's dark and
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: it's spooky and she needs them. And she's decided they're
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: important before she goes on the journey and she finds them.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: It's a real hero's quest.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Yes. There's a glowing man and nothing nefarious is happening,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: but there is this numinous awfulness of going on the quest.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: She does retreat. she leaves without the sandals, which reminds
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: me of the hero's journey. You know, there's the call
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: and the retreat, and then there's the second call, and
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: you build up some strength and you go. So I
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: kind of like that little girl. I think she's got
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: some audacity in her. And again, I don't know how
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: young she was, but....
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: It was before seven.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that sounds right at that age around... you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: going to do some stuff on my own and I'm
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: not going to, you know, make some decisions. When I
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: was six or seven, I literally, we were playing in the,
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: oh God, I was six. I was four playing in
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: the front yard in Glen Oaks, which is a suburb
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: of Manhattan. And I just decided one day I was
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: just going to walk several miles down a main sidewalk
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: and just go window shopping in this little shopping area.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: I still remember it as this really adventurous decision. I
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: remember women particularly stopping and looking at me with a
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: little concern, and I could tell it. So I was
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: walking really confidently to make sure they weren't going to
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: interfere with me. But just walking that far away and back,
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: and of course, at day and age, nobody even noticed.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: By the way.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So you did it?
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: I did it. I must have walked. two miles down
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: to a major shopping area, looked in the windows and
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: then just walked back home. And, uh, it reminds me
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: of that. The girl's a little older than me, but
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: it's the fact that it still sticks with me and
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: tens of thousands of other memories from that time don't,
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: but it's an, it's an archetypal incarnation of, you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: I'm taken to the road by myself at four, you know, Right.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Right. This kind of the sense of autonomy and agency.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: We walked to kindergarten by ourselves. You know, also, that
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: was kind of a norm. But I resonate with that,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: you know. And the sandals are special, too. They're really,
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: they're hers and they're special. And Esmeralda was this fantastic
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: gypsy figure, you know, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: She's a marvelous, wonderful figure.
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: But there is a tempering of the inflated, magical thinking,
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: childhood ego that often happens in these dreams of the
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: little girl who thinks she can walk on the backs
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: of crocodiles. Of course. The little girl who can get
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: the magic Esmeralda slippers. How do we.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Come to terms with agency, adventure, daring to be heroic
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: and daring to be sort of self-sufficient in these dreams,
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: and then realizing, no, that's not how it works. Crocodiles
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: can also bite off your legs, and the glowing blue
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: figure can scare the living daylights out of you.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: And sometimes mommy's become fiercely rageful and life's not perfect
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: and parents don't get along all the time. And by
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: six or seven, you're like in first grade. So you
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: are beginning to like put together some stuff about the
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: real world. I certainly was.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: So, so she talks about like maybe absorbing her mother's feelings,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: which I think is something that kids do. So there
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: was something going on in the parental relationship and, and
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: was she just, was she feeling it? You know, the
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: interesting thing is I, I go back to Jung's dream
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: because of course what we, what we find out later
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: when we read his autobiography is that his father had
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: lost his belief. So he was a pastor. He was
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: working as a pastor and, But he had doubts. He
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: had doubts about God. And he was struggling with that
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and actually kind of, it left him, I think, a
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: sort of failed man in a way. And Jung becomes
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: aware of this later. Obviously, he didn't consciously know it
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: at three or four when he had this dream. But again,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: what was he absorbing from the environment around him that
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: his father had lost touch with his belief? Meanwhile, his
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: mother was out there like talking to the ghosts. And
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: so there's this awareness, this intimation, this knowledge of something else.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: So that's... That's always an interesting thing to wonder about
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: with these kids. Or even with my dream. So here's
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: another one speaking of parents. And we like this one
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: a lot because it references us. So this next dream
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: comes from a woman who was around five years old
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: when the dream first occurred. And I'm just going to
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: read what she sent. She says, I'm submitting this dream
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: not necessarily for analysis on the podcast. I'm fine with
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: it if you select it. but because I wanted to
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: thank each of you for helping me resolve a recurring
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: childhood dream that had secretly haunted me for around 38 years.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: You inspired me to explore active imagination, which was profoundly healing,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: and I included it in the associations below. My best
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: guess is that I was around five years old when
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: the dream first occurred. I do not recall how many
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: times I had the dream or for how many years
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: it persisted, but I do remember that the dream scared
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: me And I did not share it with my mom
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: or dad until I was much older, probably in my teens.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: And it's a quite incredible dream. And then she's done
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: this really beautiful act of imagination, which she very kindly
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: shared with us. And it's such a great example, I think,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: of a lot of the things we're talking about, about
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: childhood dreams, and then also the incredible creative possibilities available
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: with active imagination. So we're going to share it. so
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: she has entitled it The Witch. I'm walking in the
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: backyard of my childhood home with my mom and dad.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: I am positioned in between them, each of my tiny
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: hands clasped in one of theirs. We seem happy, smiling
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: as we pass the old maple tree that towers outside
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: the kitchen window and head toward the orchard full of apple, plum,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: and peach trees, when suddenly a trap door in the
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: ground opens to reveal a tall, wrinkly old witch with
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: long black stringy hair dressed in black robes and a
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: pointed hat. She is stirring a large cauldron full of thick,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: dark bubbling liquid. The witch looks up and reaches for
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: my leg. Her bony fingers grasp my ankle. I struggle
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: to free myself, but my mom begins to push me
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: down saying, take her. Take her. My dad is trying
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: to pull me toward him, shouting, no, no. Then I
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: wake up.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Up.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: So she says, I don't remember any specific transitions at
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: that time, although I was around five or six years old.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: So I would have been entering kindergarten or first grade.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: My mom stayed home with me, so it would have
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: been our first big separation. I was also very shy
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: and was picked on and teased in kindergarten and in
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: early grade school. Were the main feelings in the dream?
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Not surprisingly. Terror. So here's some more associations. I also
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: have a sister who is two years older than me,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: though she did not appear in the dream. We had
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: an idyllic childhood in many ways. We grew up on
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: a family farm in rural Indiana, surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: and cousins. We had a huge family garden, fruit trees, animals,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: and several acres between our houses and the farm to roam, imagine,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: and play. That does sound just amazing. For my sister
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: and me, all of our physical needs were met, though
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: money was tight and my mom was often stressed about bills.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: She also had a high-stress job as she was a
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: social worker in child protection services. So again, I just wonder, like,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: what was the psychic material kind of roaming around in
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: the background with that? My mom gave my sister and
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: me plenty of hugs and kisses, though she felt more
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: cold in her demeanor and was often reactive and unpredictable
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: in her emotions. To a highly sensitive child like myself,
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: she often came off as harsh and unloving, even though
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: she told us often that she loved us. My dad's
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: demeanor seemed the opposite in a lot of ways. He
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: usually appeared relaxed, was warm and affectionate, and would shoot
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: me sympathetic glances when my mom's temper exploded. He had
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: a temper as well, but directed it elsewhere. We thought
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: of ourselves as a close family, spending a lot of
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: time together watching TV, playing games, eating meals together, playing sports, etc.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: My mom attended all of my school field trips and
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: volunteered for things like softball and Girl Scouts. She threw
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: us birthday parties and did up the holidays. And my
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: parents saved to give us experiences like going to professional
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: sports games in the theater in a large nearby city.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: When I turned 16, my relationship with my mom grew
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: hot and cold, a dynamic that would persist for several years.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I had always had a deep desire to have a close,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: warm relationship with my mom and was often disappointed when
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: old childhood wounds would surface. Our relationship had a boiling
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: point when I was 35 and gave birth to my daughter.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: At one point, we didn't speak for nine months. Even still,
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: I could not deny or explain my desire to have
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: a close relationship with her. During this time, I did
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: some deep spiritual and shadow work, and it was the
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: darkest point in my life when I resolved things with
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: her and welcomed her back into my life with a
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: new perspective. Then about eight months ago, shortly after I
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: turned 43, I started working with an energy healing practitioner
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: addressing worthiness in my inner child. A couple of months later,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: I learned of your podcast and started listening to it
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: almost daily. Good thing to do, including many episodes from
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: your archives. I also listened to Lisa's book, The Vital Spark,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: and just purchased your book, Dreamwise. Again, both very good
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: things to do, and I encourage everyone to do both
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: of those things. In a couple of different episodes, you
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: spoke about active imagination, and it sparked an idea. Could
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: I engage with a witch? After about a week of
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: mulling over, I tried it. I sat in my writing
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: chair with my computer open to a blank page and
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: my fingers on the keys. I closed my eyes, turned
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: inwards and beckoned her to appear. She did. And this
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: is what happened. So I want to share that with
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: you in a minute. But first, let's let's talk about
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: the dream and then we can talk about active imagination.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Oh, my goodness. You know, what I think of right
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: at the outset is our theme, you know, and the reason,
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: so to speak, that we put children's dreams in the
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: chapter on the self, because there are such huge archetypal themes.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: And in the dream, what came up for me right
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: away was the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. take her
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: and the old witch, and we're going to throw her
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: into the oven of the innocence of childhood really being punctured.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: And the other thing I thought about in her associations
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: to her childhood was the Garden of Eden, that here
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: they are in this beautiful farm with cousins and grandparents
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: and animals and wholesome, lovely life. And then the fall
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: of that realization that life is not all lovely, magical
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: and easy. It's confrontation with the shadow. Yeah.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: We've talked about a sort of lack of, like a
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: loss of innocence in these dreams.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: Right. As the price of developing an ego. That's the price.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: If you, as you gain consciousness, we also gain consciousness
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: of things that are dark, things that are scary, other
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: people's aggression, parental strife between partners, that the list goes
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: on and on. And even just going to school, you know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: she says she was sensitive and she was She was
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: picked on. Well, there's a whole new, darker reality that
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: we encounter that is imaged in dreams and lived out
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: as we venture into the next stage of our growth
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: and development.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: So one of the things that this reminds me of
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: is some research around tensions between parents and children.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: And when a mother is particularly angry or dark, or
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: is carrying a lot of shadow, as we can imagine,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: given her work with Child Protective Services, that when the
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: mother is particularly angry and fierce, for the girls, it
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: is somewhat less damaging because there's an opportunity for them
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: to take in the power of the dark mother and
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: to claim it for themselves later in life. For sons,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: it's much more difficult. They feel just wounded by it
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: because they don't imagine at any point that they will
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: become like the mother. So here, in this image of
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: the mother handing her over to the witch, that is
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: this unconscious invitation that you can identify with the power
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: of the dark mother, that that is a possibility that
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: may or may not occur. The inner father wants her
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: to remain sweet and connected and sympathetic. But this tension,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: and above the ground, but that tension is even apparent
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: later in the school experience that she is particularly sensitive
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: and passive. That because the mother's experience of aggression is
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: so scary, that it can alienate her from from even
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: the normal amount of aggression that she might need to
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: contend with just other little stinky kids that were just misbehaving.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: So there is that tension where I just don't want
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: to be connected to the inner witch, which archetypally is Hecate,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: you know, who's the ancient goddess who lives in the caves,
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: and she's the goddess of childbirth and and death, and abortion,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: and dogs, and bats, and the underworld, and the power
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: of the underworld. This is also, in a very sweet way,
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: part of that Miyazaki cartoon, Spirited Away, you know, where
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: there's a little girl about that age falls into this
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: fantastical spiritual world, and there's twin sisters that are witches,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: and one's really ferocious and, you know, angry and demanding
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: and the other is sweet and milky and light and
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: that she has to know both of them in herself
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: and in women in general and in her mother in
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: order to be initiated fully so in terms of this
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: later in life piece where she then rejects her mom
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: that she's discovered her own inner witch at that point
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: where she's like I can give you a dose of
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: your own medicine honey and it's troubling to her in
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: a way but Because her own aggression has been kept
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: underground because of her ambivalence of that early childhood experience.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but Joseph, I think that's really just great. And
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: this is what she gets to actually in the act
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: of imagination. Before we go there, I just want to
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: say that I'm thinking about this kind of family picture.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if this mom fits into this category
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: that I think of, you know, she loved her kids,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: but she maybe didn't always enjoy them. So she's stressed,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: you know, right.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the thing is that, you know, when I,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: when I work with young mothers and they come and say,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm doing it right. It was like,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you know, and I'll say, well, do you, do you
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: enjoy it? It's like, oh yeah, I do. You know,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: at least some of the time and sometimes they're, you know,
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: they drive me crazy, but then you're doing it right.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: You know? And I, and I think that we know
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: when we're being, you know, when we're loved, you know,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: her parents, you know, save money to take, you know,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: met all of their needs, save money to take them
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: to special events, made a, made a big deal of
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: the birthday parties. You know, it's like the, in some sense,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: those are expressions of love. Um, but that, that enjoyment pieces, you,
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: you light up when I walk in the room and
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: you can't, it's difficult to fake that, you know, It's
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: because it just happens at this kind of unconscious level
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: that you delight me, you make me laugh. I just am,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: you know, uplifted when I'm near you and not all
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: the time. I mean, you know, there's a book I
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: read when I was working on motherhood. I think it
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: was called Every Other Minute or something. You know, it's like,
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not loving every minute, but maybe I'm loving every
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: other minute, you know? you know, it certainly is hard.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: But if you're working very hard, if money is tight,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: you might not have a lot of that kind of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: juiciness left to just enjoy. So that, you know, she does, Joseph,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: like you were saying, kind of get the witchier side
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: of her mother. But I think you're exactly right. And
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: I think the Miyazaki thing, that's a great amplification. I,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: of course, also think of my favorite fairy tale, Vasilisa,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: because Vasilisa, the beautiful, which the streamer, you know, I
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: write about it in The Vital Spark, actually, you know,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Vasilisa has this really good mother who gives her this
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: magical doll and then she dies. And Vasilisa has been
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: gifted this beautiful ability to kind of self-soothe and continue
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: to feel good about herself that's imaged through the doll.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: by her very good mother, but it's, you know, as
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: Clarissa Pincola Estes points out too, it's the too good mother.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: Because if your mother has loved you and delighted in
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: you and met all your needs, that's great. And then
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: you're going to get out in the world, like you're saying, Joseph,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: you're going to go to school and there's going to be,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: you know, these little mean kids. What do you do?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: You know? So one of the things that we need
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: to do somewhere, somehow along the line is is become
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: apprenticed to the witch. And Vasilisa does that in Vasilisa
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: the Beautiful. She goes and she works for Baba Yaga.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: And then she gets given the skulls with their fiery
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: eyes that will burn people to death. So you have
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: to kind of harness your own aggression. And I think
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: the dream is sort of saying, look, mom can teach
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: you something here that you might need. So what is
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: active imagination? And of course, we have a whole chapter
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: on active imagination in Dreamwise that gives you copious amounts
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: of tutelage on how to do this. But let's talk
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: for a minute about what it is.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: So active imagination is something that Jung found himself in,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: you know, as he went through the spirit of being
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: deeply overwhelmed by his own unconscious material. he would fall
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: into these meditative states or trance states where he was
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: able to retain ego awareness and yet be fully open
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: to the autonomy of the unconscious. So in a very
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: basic way, he says in one of his letters to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: someone who's asking him, how do you do this active
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: imagination stuff? And he says, you know, look inside yourself,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: find an image, and then regard the image until it
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: moves autonomously. easier said than done, by the way. So
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: it is a way of trying to engage the unconscious
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: directly outside of a dream state. And because the waking
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: mind has so much more resources than the dream ego,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: sometimes we can extract a lot more information or particularly
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: solicit the unconscious for things that are mystifying us that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: just didn't happen to come forward in the dream. Jung
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: actually said that DreamWorks was great, but active imagination was
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: the nuclear option. That's the place to go to make
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: really substantive, fast progress.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: It's really sort of a surprise to think that you
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: could regard an image and that it will move by itself.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: And I remember years ago when I was first going
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: to the seminars and reading about Jung, and that's what
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: he said. And I was like, yeah, right. So I thought,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: all right, Dr. Jung, you're on. And I went outside.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: Nobody was around. And I picked an image. It doesn't
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: have to be a dream, but dream images are great
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: material for this. And I oh my God, it moved
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: by itself. And it was very vivid. And that's the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: gift of active imagination is that consciousness is fully present
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: and the unconscious is fully present. So they're much closer
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: to one another and more interactive. Whereas in a dream,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: consciousness is diminished and the unconscious rises up in the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: form of a dream. So, but the other thing I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: want to add is that there are lots of ways
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: to do active imagination because for, I think for most people,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: as it was for me, you know, the idea of
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: just pick an image and it will move by itself
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: is a little bit of a reach. And I was
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: pretty lucky the first time. But journaling, taking a walk
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: and having a reverie, talking out loud to yourself when
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: you're by yourself or in a car. There are many,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: many ways to engage the unconscious when and as you're conscious.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: And it's also a fantastic way to dream a dream
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: on as this dreamer did.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: And we give, I don't know how many, it must
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: be close to a dozen different ways to engage in
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: active imagination in DreamWise. And we offer sort of specific
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: advice about how to do it. We offer examples. There
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: is a wonderful example in the chapter that comes from Joseph,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: which is this really great act of imagination that you
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: did that was so important to you. I find that
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: what I like to do is sort of over the weekend,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: usually I pick, you know, my most energetic dream from
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: the past week, and I work on it using the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: keys from Dreamwise. And then often I try to do
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: an act of imagination as well. So this is great,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: because we have an example. So Joseph is going to
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: read it with me. He's going to be the witch.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: And this is, so as the streamer explained, she sat
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: down on a computer and she just started writing. So
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: she says, hello, witch.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: Hello.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: What message do you have for me regarding the recurring
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: dream I had when I was a child with a
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: trap door opened up outside my childhood home and you
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: grabbed my ankle to pull me down into your bubbling
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: cauldron and While my mom tried to shove me down
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: to you and my dad tried pulling me back out.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: What message do you have for me about that dream?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: We are all wicked. We all have wickedness in us.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: You need to find yours in order to protect yourself
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 5: from people who want to take advantage of you or
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: harm you.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Why was my mom shoving me down toward you saying,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: take her, take her?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: She was not trying to sacrifice you to appease me.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: She wanted you to find your own inner witch, so
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 5: that you would be stronger than she was. It's something
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: that she could not give you, but she knew that
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: I could.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: Why did my dad try to save me, then?
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: Your father, too, turns his eyes on darkness, and has
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: been taken advantage of a lot in his life.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: He sees.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: Still, only sees it as darkness and flees from it.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: He wanted to protect you from the darkness, too. Your mother, however,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: she knows it is necessary. Her higher self knows, and
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: she wanted me to give you what she could not.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: But why a dream like this? I couldn't understand it
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: as a young girl, and it frightened me so much.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: I thought my mom didn't love me and wanted to
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: get rid of me.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: It's so that it would stay with you. It would
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: keep gnawing at you until you went in to face
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: the darkness. You, my child, you need to summon your
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: inner witch. Me. To harness these powers when necessary. To
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 5: protect yourself and your family.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: It is in you. I am in you. If you
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: ever need me.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: All you need to do is call on me and
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: I'll be there.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: Wow, that was wonderful typecasting.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: It was, it was. Tessa, could you just do me
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: a favor? Could you say, Luke, I am your father? No,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: Luke, I am your father.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: That was great.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: Oh, boy.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, isn't that fantastic? It's just so great.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: And that it came, that wonderful wisdom. I mean, which
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: we as analysts might toss around. But that's in the collective,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: that something in her, witchy bones of her own unconscious,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: knows exactly why these dreams happened and how to make
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: use of them. This is also a really important example
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: of telos or teleology, is that we have a dream,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: it's upsetting, we can't imagine it taking us anyplace good.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: But as we talk about in our book, Dreamwise, in
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: the chapter on time and telos, if we put on
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: the lens that this is trying to take me someplace
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: I need to go, that there's medicine in this, even
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: if the medicine is bitter, even if it's confusing, why
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: could I possibly need the witch in order to take
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: what kind of a step forward? So the act of
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: imagination does this fantastic example of Telos, or the purposiveness
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: of that dream.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe I should do an act of imagination with that sun.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: I think that would be fantastic.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: And come back and tell all of us about what happened.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: But there's something about a process like this where it
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: goes so far beyond a cognitive, conceptual knowing to a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: place where, yes, This is it. It rings true in
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: every level of our being. And then we know something
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: because we have experienced the reality of it. We know it.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: And that's the resolution for this dreamer. She knows. She
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: had that encounter. And there it is. And that these encounters,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: in many ways, with the unconscious, give us that knowing
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: that we just don't doubt, you know, any more than
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: we doubt all kinds of other life experiences of like, okay, yep,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: that's it.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: And that spontaneous uprising, when wisdom comes from the inside out,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: there's something irrefutable about it, which is what you're saying, Deb.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, we maybe could have read this in a book.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe somebody would have told us this information on a podcast,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: but it does not have the same veracity. It does
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: not have the same impact as when it rises autonomously
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: inside of us, which is why it's really worth it
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: to take the time to learn how to do active
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: imagination because so much good can come out of that.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: So here's another dream. A 49-year-old female, shared this with us,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: and she had this dream at some point when she
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: was younger than 10. I was in my bedroom, doing
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: somersaults on my bed. Suddenly, a large golden egg landed
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: in the middle of my bed. It felt as if
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: it had somehow come from outer space. I went to
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: touch it, but realized it was electrified and that if
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: I touched it.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: I would die.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: I knew I had to continue to do somersaults, but
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: now I was terrified in case I accidentally touched the egg.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: For context, she writes, I moved countries when I was four,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: but this dream must have taken place at least two
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: or three years after that. It's possible it took place
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: as late as when I was around nine or so,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: and my beloved aunt was diagnosed with cancer. I changed
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: schools a few times. So those were other major transition points.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: I'd experienced some frightening earthquakes when living in that place.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: The main feeling, she recalls, the egg felt somehow very alien,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: but also very attractive. I felt complete terror at the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: egg and at dying by touching it. I woke up
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: crying in fear, and it's the only time I ever
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: went to sleep in my parents' bed because of a dream.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: For associations, she adds, Eggs remind me of Easter and
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: of fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk. I did
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: used to very much enjoy doing somersaults on my bed
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: when I was a child. It felt adventurous and fun,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: and I enjoyed the sense of getting better at it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: with practice. As an adult, looking back at it, I
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: would now associate the egg with my mother, who was intrusive, strict,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: and used smacking, not accepting, of who I was. She
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: valued academic achievement above everything else and was incapable of
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: regulating her own emotions or dealing with mine. And the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: occupation of the dreamer is an education manager and trainee therapist.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: So I have to say that the association that came
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: up for me was like, all of a sudden there's this,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: I guess it's, yeah, it's like I was, I was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: kind of picturing it being like giant, like almost child-sized.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know how she says large association.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: But it reminds me of that scene from 2001, A
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: Space Odyssey, when all of a sudden there's just this
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: big monolith there, you know, and it's, you know, and
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: the primates are kind of jumping around it. But it's,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's such a fascinating scene, right? But it's
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: the appearance of, again, I'm thinking back to the glowing
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: blue moon. cartoon character this is something really other it's
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: come from outer space it's beautiful it's golden i mean
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: a golden egg is a self symbol but it could
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: kill you you know so there's there's kind of like
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: whoa what just happened something just kind of landed um
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: but it's but it's also dangerous.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking about what is an egg archetypally,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: and there are so many creation myths from all around
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: the world that things began with the cosmic egg. And
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: then what happens? Well, the cosmic egg is cracked open
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: and separation occurs. the sky and the earth, various elements
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: and various tales deal with this sudden shift. Something new
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: has happened and the separation has occurred. And I'm thinking
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: about here there are two separate concepts. One is Here's
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: the golden egg, and it's so beautiful and promising. On
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: the other hand, it's destructive. And I think that happens
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: over and over again, is that as we differentiate and
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: begin to differentiate, we have to come to terms with
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: the danger, the evil, the destructiveness, the hostility. And there
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: it is. Which one is it in the golden egg? Which,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: in Jung's dream, which one is it? Is it magical,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: or is it a man-eater, and what is that? And
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: so it goes. Something that was once one has become two.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: It's good and bad.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: In addition to that, I also could interpret the egg
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: as fate. And by that I mean, it reminds me
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: of a a chapter that I had read in James
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: Hillman's biography called Blue Fire. James Hillman was a really
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: prolific writer. He had a remarkable mind. And he's talking
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: about his experience as a child and as a young
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: person with writing, that he hated writing. He was frightened
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: by writing, that it was too much for him. And
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: yet at a certain point, this switch went off and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: he discovered that that actually was his lifelong vocation, that
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: the archetype of the writer was who he really was.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: And what he came to think in hindsight is that
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: the magnitude of his destiny to be a writer was
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: too much for him to touch as a child, that
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: he actually fled from the demand and the intensity of
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: that archetype. but it was also his destiny. So I
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: don't know exactly what the egg represents for this person
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: in terms of her destiny, but sometimes we do get
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: a glimpse. It falls like a meteor from the sky
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: of this is my life's work. This is something that
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: is my purpose. And I can't relate to this at six,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: seven years old, but yet it's there waiting to hatch.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: And there is something I want to pick up on
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: sort of what she said about the kind of feeling
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: tone in the household with her mother. You know, when
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: you think about doing somersaults on a bed, you wobble around.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: It's not a firm surface. So you can't, you can't
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: control perfectly where you're going to roll. And if you
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: were trying to do somersaults on a bed with a
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: big egg in the middle, that if you touched it,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: you'd be electrocuted. You know, there's something about, um, It's
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: no longer just fun. It's no longer just, you know,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: you're enjoying getting better. It's okay if you flop here,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: you flop there. There's there's been a, a really strict
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: kind of limitation that's been imposed. And, and I, I
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: don't know what about that, but I, I mean, I don't, I,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: you know, we're obviously none of us are kind of
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: buying that the egg equals mother.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: And we, we talk about this in dream wise that
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: dreams are not substitution ciphers. You can't say, well, this
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: equals that. But it's interesting that she associates the egg
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: somehow with her mother's like demandingness. And I think that
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: comes more from the fact of where the egg is
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: in the bed. You know, it's like if the egg
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: were going to electrocute her and it were over on
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: a corner of the room, it would still be a
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: fearsome object, but it wouldn't be quite as threatening. There's
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: something about having to do her normal childhood, be a
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: child in the face of this egg. that could kill her.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: But the egg itself is such a peculiar and specific symbol.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: And we've, we've talked about, uh, you know, some of our, we've,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: we've amplified it, uh, with some mythological references and, and,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: you know, how, how important it is as a symbol,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: I think, especially a golden egg. So, uh, so there's something, Joseph,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: I'm picking up on, on your idea about fate and,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: and how that impinges upon us.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: That new life in the golden egg that comes from
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: the divine. And we can say it comes from the
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: divine mother. I mean, eggs come from female creatures. I mean,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: that's irrefutable. So the divine mother has given her this
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: nascent life. And the egg is a symbol of the child,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: for sure. In the Orphic tradition, the egg cracks and
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: the baby eros breaks. emerges with the god of light, Phanos,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: and from the two of them they create all possibilities,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: including out of love.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: I'm going to go back to my idea here of
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: differentiation that is also embodied in a lot of these
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: cosmic myths of where the separation from the oneness, which
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: gets differentiated into sky and earth, and sometimes the sky
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: has to be separated really forcefully and dramatically. It's a
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: real sort of contest and battle of the coming into
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: a conscious awareness of darkness. It looks good. It looks
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: like a golden egg. And It's dangerous of giving our
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: dream ego and then the dreamer an awareness of what
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: she later can describe as dynamic with her in the
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: home and with her mother. But that there it is.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: One has become a differentiated polarity. And that is a
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: step in consciousness. that the dream represents, and it hasn't hatched.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: You know, if the egg hatches, you have a new thing.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: You know, you have a baby duckling or a chick
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: or something.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: A dragon.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But this is just that glimmering of two-ness, of polarities.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: It's good, it's magical, it's dangerous.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: So we hope you've enjoyed this kind of romp through
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: the theme of children's dreams. We have many more dreams
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: and we'll eventually put up a blog post on dreamwisebook.com
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: site where we'll have a kind of extended discussion about
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: this topic and we'll include more of the dreams that
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: you sent us. And next month, we're going to be
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: looking at travel dreams. So if you have dreams of
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: cars or planes or trains, please send us your travel dreams.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: You can do that by going to dreamwisebook.com and click
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: on Dreamography. And there is a form there for you
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: to fill out. And please do share your travel dreams.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com. If
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
• 1:23:26
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• 1:23:30
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