DREAMS AND CREATIVITY

 

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Creative Dream Group

Feeling Disconnected and Depressed? Lacking a Sense of Purpose in Your Life?

Here's a Powerful Way to Get Back in Touch with Your Resourceful Self!

Some people are so active and outer-focused that they lose touch with their inner resources and feel that they are existing more that thriving. They may feel depleted, lacking the joy they once had. Maybe they feel they have no purpose or that they have lost a part of themselves.

They can ignore these signs and symptoms, but that inner voice won't be hushed indefinitely. It will generally exact a price, possibly through feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem, alienation, depression, or neediness. Feelings and symptoms are a wake-up call. They say, "Pay attention to what you need. Listen to your feelings. Reconnect with your internal guidance system."

If this sounds like you and if you're currently out of touch, there are ways to reconnect with yourself. One very powerful and effective way is to pay attention to your dreams.

You may not remember your dreams.
Actually, many people don't, although sleep scientists report that everyone dreams, even if they don't remember. Dreams are a very important part of mental and physical health. If you don't remember your dreams, it can be a sign that you have lost touch with the source of what's important to you mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Dreams are a powerful builder of confidence, authentic spirituality, and abundant living.
It was the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who said, "An unexamined dream is like an unopened letter from God."   What he meant is that when we relate to our dreams, we communicate with our divine source. This was his lived truth and not an intellectual theory.

Before Christianity, dreams were considered an important source of healing on many levels. In ancient Greece, if someone was sick they went to the temple and were prepared to have a healing dream. Afterwards, the priest-healer would give them the prescription -whatever the dream showed would heal them.

The early pioneers of modern psychology used dreams as a way of uncovering the roots of a person's emotional and mental problems. In fact, it was Freud who said, "Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious."

Many other 20th century dream theorists and researchers believed that dreams provide opportunities for intrapersonal and interpersonal growth and healing.

When we work on our dreams and connect to our center,
we shift our allegiance from our ego self to our core Self. Then we see life from a broader viewpoint. We are able to resolve old, enduring difficulties. We can make permanent changes. Through reconnecting to our core Self, we have the power to go beyond our limitations and fulfill our purpose in life.

Some of the contributions dreams make to our well being are:

  • showing our unhealthy relationship dynamics.
  • showing our unhealthy patterns of self-identity.
  • identifying situations where we lose power.
  • pointing towards freedom and resolution.
  • informing us of core potentials and our possibilities for realizing them.
  • warning of unexpected shocks and future events.
  • guiding us towards meaning and purpose in living.
  • showing changes in our bodies.
  • expanding our mystical and spiritual dimensions and connecting us to the divine.

Ursula's story...
Ursula (not her real name) came from Germany to the United States with the intention of studying to become a therapist. Although she took classes and was going through an internship in her program, she was also interested in ways she could develop her personal strengths and be as clear as possible in her work with clients.

Ursula knew that it was important for her to address anything that would come up in her internship. Her supervisor suggested that Ursula join a creative dream group as a way of staying in touch with herself and as an approach to working with clients.

Creative Dream Work is a process which includes meditating, creating art, sharing, and doing a Gestalt working on a dream.  Each time when the dream group met, they would all do a brief meditation to form an image of one of their dreams. Then they would make a piece of art on their image. If they wanted feedback, other group members would give impressions of their art. Finally, if someone wanted to go deeper, they could do a Gestalt working on their dream with the group leader.

Ursula initially became excited when she recognized that her dream presented information she needed to resolve a problem.
The dream showed the unhealthy ways she was devaluing herself, by internalizing the destructive attitudes of some family members towards her. This insight helped her free herself from these attitudes and begin to establish her own, separate identity.

One day Ursula took her art home and taped it to her bedroom wall.
She spent time reflecting on it. She observed new insights and feelings arise. This gave her the hope that she could continue to gain access to hers intuition by using her art as a meditation.

People often try to find ways to delve into their dreams.
Initially, they may consult dream books, which usually give universal, not personal, interpretations of symbols. Books often don't present a clear map of unconscious processes and, by themselves are generally not a very effective way of understanding dreams.

Universal meanings can be helpful by triggering personal meanings, if someone doesn't have a personal meaning for a symbol. But, if a person is unfamiliar with dreams, they can also be thrown off course, thinking that a single common meaning adequately explains their personal dream image.

What is most important is that a dream image is heard and understood personally and experientially.

Creative dream work is experiential and provides an avenue understanding and relating your dream to your personal life.
You can integrate a dream by receiving its specific message through feeling and imagination. When you can pinpoint what a dream refers psychologically, or in the outer world, you can follow its indicators to be more and act more consciously. Accurately receiving messages from your unconscious gives you access to some very powerful knowledge your conscious mind does not have.

You may be wondering if you can afford dream work.
The nice thing about working in a group is that you learn from other people and their dreams. This expands your range of experience. Plus groups are more affordable.

The creative dream work group I offer is on a sliding scale so that when there more people in the group, it costs each person less. The maximum enrollment in any dream group will be five participants. The time is increased as the group numbers increase. This way there will be enough time for someone to do a piece of individual work.

For those interested in pursuing dream work as a personal practice in their lives,
I will form new month-long groups continuously over the course of a year. Each group will be different, with fresh dream material and new insights. Your knowledge will increase with different dream images, scenarios, and the life circumstances that call forth a particular kind of dream.

Here's what Ursula did to support her ongoing exploration of dreams:
When the dream group finally ended, Ursula felt she had learned a lot about herself and dreams. And, she had gained new insights into her clients by working with other dreamers in the group.

She wanted to stay tuned in to her dreams, so Ursula decided to experiment a bit. She began to do "dream incubation" at night and would ask for an answer to a specific question. Then she would reflect on how the dream answered her question.

She recorded a vocabulary of reoccurring images which helped her understand her own dream language. When she was stumped by an image, she would look in one of her good dream dictionaries for universal meanings, and assess their relevancy to her particular dream.

She also began to do active imagination (the process of re-imagining a dream for new understandings) and write dialogs with figures in her dreams.

Ursula increasingly felt that she was developing a relationship with an intelligent and powerful ally.
Her dream wisdom seemed to pick just the right image at just the right time to communicate with her. And she had an ongoing dialog with her inner figures.

What's your next step?
Are you new to dreams or a veteran dream worker? Either way, I hope you will find relevant information and opportunities on this site that help you relate to your dreams.

If you wish to register for this group, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

If you wish to subscribe to my newsletter, it will inform you of other opportunities to support your understanding of dreams.  You may unsubscribe at any time. 

For new opportunities to participate in any new classes on myths and fairy tales, dream interpretation, individual dream work, dream theory and more, click on groups and classes to for e-mail notification.

Above all I wish you the best in creating a wonderful relationship with your dreams!