Upcoming Book

 

I Myself am a Dream

As we engage our personal and collective narrative - our myth - as if it and we are dreaming processes, we may gain entry to different ways of being in the world and within ourselves. Lying deep beneath our personal and literal histories, vaster regions of the psyche beckon the ego to awaken into the fields of the imaginal, the mundus imaginalis.

Here we come across particular collective dreaming processes the human psyche has been cultivating over millennia.

Let us follow these archetypal dreaming processes through our bodies as it guides us into our living extensions of active imagination through the psychic expressions of logos, eros, mythos and chaos.

Having Jung’s theory of the functions of the psyche—thinking/feeling, intuition/sensation—as a supportive backdrop for our inquiry, we can engage our relationship to logos, eros, mythos and chaos in their roles and contributions to individuation. Heeding our mysterious telos, Psyche’s deeper intent for each of us, we are drawn down into the depths of the unconscious and beyond.

Chapter 1

I Myself am a Dream I. Psyche is Dreaming all the Time.

·        Taking the perspective that our life and all the characters and encounters we experience are a dreaming process.

·        Experience as a mirror of the myth that is living through us.

·        What are the figures behind the figures (the inner figures that live mostly in the unconscious and are powerful parts of the dynamic of our intrapsychic landscape)?

·        Any person in our waking life may carry the projections of this often hidden (from us) dynamic just as we carry theirs (projective identification).

Chapter 2

I Myself am a Dream II and the Imaginal Ego

·        If we were to re-engage particular experiences symbolically, that as if they (and us) were a dream, we might enrich more subtle sensibilities that lie beneath our consciousness.

·        Taking a relationship or a life scenario for example and doing dreamwork with it through the art making activates a transmutation process of this raw material.

·         As Alchemists we work with what is at hand and “cook” the ingredients in the safe vessel of the art and group process.

·        *The imaginal ego is archetypal, that is according to Hillman, (1976) connects both to the personal as well as collective psyche. It has the capacity, like Hermes, a trickster figure, to cross boundaries including travelling back and forth into the Shadow. Because of its twofold nature it can hold opposing perspectives simultaneously and thus plays the role of archetypal activist within the dynamism of the psyche and its imperative towards transformation. This is not a choice. However, what we can decide on is to consciously participate in this process or “be dragged towards change as though she were a pig squealing on the way to slaughter!” (Daniela F. Sieff,2017. Trauma-worlds and the wisdom of Marion Woodman p. 8).

·        The imaginal ego facilitates dialogue between the subjective and objective nigredo, a realm of the unconscious too dangerous for the fragile waking ego though sometimes activated in dreams. Drawing on the uncanny skills of the imaginal ego, we enter its world (the imaginal), and work symbolically. In this manner we gain access to the possibility of integrating personal and collective shadow material without destroying the necessary navigational role of “who I think I am”, the waking ego and sense of self.

Chapter 3

I Myself Am a Dream III: Relationship as Mirrors

·        Taking a relationship or life scenario and doing dreamwork with it.

·        Look for paradoxical figures or situations where a polarity (often what is considered the “problem, obstacle or conflict”) will present the dynamic through which we gain access to the transcendent function (Jung’s fifth function of the psyche: thinking/feeling, sensation/intuition and the transcendent.

Chapter 4

I Myself Am a Dream IV: The Unlived Life

·        Living symbolically, that is, experiencing life as a form of dreaming, has its own deep logic often inaccessible to the conscious mind.

·        Art mak­ing and other creative activities intuitively spiral around inner and outer events bringing forth intimations of what is emerging from the personal and collective liminal place between the conscious and unconscious.

·        As humans we have a shared imagination in myths and archetypes that is the common ground of this imagining, this dreaming.

Chapter 5

I Myself am a Dream V: The Child Archetype

·        The courage and resilience of the Child Archetype keeps us leaning towards learning and growth.

·        As we tap into this, one of the primary archetypes, through a dreaming process, we gain access to its potent and endlessly innovative energy for dreaming our myth forward.

·        The Child is central archetype, the place of beginnings and the first wounding as well as being the infinite inherent archetype of creativity, learning, growth and resilience. An enormous personal and collective resource.

·        We are dreaming together just as children are often in a semi-dream state instinctually connected to the imaginal (world of images). This world is filled with inner and outer figures as the child learns what is part of her and what is part of the world and that transition space between these called relationship. And how the inner and outer realms are mirroring each other becoming actually one process in the child’s experience.

Chapter 6

I Myself am a Dream VI: Growing Down into our Mythological Roots through our Waking Dreaming Processes

·        As we engage our personal and collective narrative, our myth, as if it (and us) were dreaming processes, we may gain entry to different ways of being in the world and within ourselves.

·        As we enter this more symbolic or poetic immersion into lived experiences we move into the mythological and archetypal strata of humanity.

·         Lying deep beneath our personal and literal histories vaster regions of the psyche beckon the ego to awaken into the fields of the imaginal, mundus imaginalis.

Chapter 7

I Myself Am a Dream Part VII. Eros, Logos, Mythos and Chaos

 ·        As we continue to inquire further into the notion of I myself am a dream, we come across particular dreaming processes of the human psyche that have been cultivated over millennia.

·        Exploring the relationships between eros, logos, chaos and mythos invites us also to consider our ethos and telos, personally and collectively.

·        Our mysterious telos, Psyche’s deeper intent for each of us draws us down into the depths and out beyond them and the limits of our understanding. This is our living extension of active imagination and to the psychic reality it invokes where/when ego speech does not drown out the voice of the imaginal.

·        Possibly we could deconstruct the fixity of such stale meanings and dead beliefs about ourselves if we were to turn to the inherent dreaming processes of the psyche that offer life a certain jouissance (physical or intellectual pleasure, delight, or ecstasy).

·        As we contemplate and inquire into the notions of eros, logos, mythos, and chaos including telos and ethos we are always already beyond the moment. We have entered the symbolic: I Myself am a Dream.

Chapter 8

I Myself am a Dream VIII. Moving the Dream Forward (Where Do I Go?)

·        Through exploring the vertical axis of the Transcendent Function (Jung) in relationship to the Descendent Function (Hillman) we enter a dialogue between spirit and soul (Hillman).

·        Continuing to track how our bodies are dreaming through the simultaneous pull of the ascendant and descendant functions of Psyche/Soma we begin to navigate subtler regions of the felt sense without splitting.

·        Mapping our experience through the four quadrants of embodiment/contemplation, and the transcendent/descendent functions, we bring a unique level of consciousness to our embodied inquiry of Moving the Dream Forward.

Chapter 9

I Myself am a Dream IX. Who is the Dreamer?

·        After having fairly extensively explored the notion of I Myself am a Dream we come to this point where we are examining the relationship between the dreamer and the dream-ego.

·        What parallel realities the dream-ego travels become accessible to the conscious waking ego - the “I” I identify with – that adds depth and breadth to our experience? 

·        What does the dream-ego know that can only become apparent when the dreamer understands that one of them is an image of the other, mirror selves reflecting and refracting psyche’s deeper intent?

·        Let us consider the words of 14th Century German theologian Meister Eckhart: “When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it” to engage the depths.

·        Here we are examining the relationship between the dreamer and the dream-ego, parallel realities, mirror selves. Inquiring into the respective roles of the conscious and unconscious in the exploration of the imaginal invites the potential metamorphosis inherent in this most intimate of relationships.

·        What parallel realities the dream-ego travels become accessible to the conscious waking ego - the “I” I identify with – that adds depth and breadth to our experience?  What does the dream-ego know that can only become apparent when the dreamer understands that one of them is an image of the other, mirror selves reflecting and refracting psyche’s deeper intent?

1.      The waking ego the I”, looks at the dream-ego and identifies with it, sees it as “me.”

2.      The dream-ego sees from within the dream and connects the waking ego to the world of psyche.

3.      The imaginal ego is connected to the Archetype of the Self which the ego is a complex of.

Chapter 10

Art Making as Dreaming Process

·        Working with the unconscious through our bodies and the body of the art materials.

·        Harnessing the potent energies Psyche is gifting us with we can take up the venture of stepping into our own individual soul-making journey: individuation.