What are archetypes in our dreams?

 

photo from RumiQuotes

The members of one of my current dreamwork circles asked me if I word provide them with a primer on archetypes, those mysterious figures and emotion-packed energies that show up in our nighttime dreams. As I searched the Web for easy-to-grasp information on the subject, I came across a great Website full of dreamwork information (www.dreammoods.com), which offered this perfect primer on the subject:

To further help you in uncovering the meaning of your dreams, Jung noted certain dream symbols that possess the same universal meaning for all men and women. He terms this phenomenon the “collective unconscious”. While dreams are personal, your personal experiences often touch on universal themes and symbols. These symbols are believed to occur in every culture throughout history. Jung identifies seven such symbols in what is referred to as the major archetypal characters:  

1. The Persona is the image you present to the world in your waking life. It is your public mask. In the dream world, the persona is represented by the Self.  The Self may or may not resemble you physically or may or may not behave as your would. For example, the persona can appear as a scarecrow or a beggar in your dream. However, you still know that this “person” in your dream is you.

2. The Shadow is the rejected and repressed aspects of yourself. It is the part of yourself that you do not want the world to see because it is ugly or unappealing. It symbolizes weakness, fear, or anger. In dreams, this figure is represented by a stalker, murderer, a bully, or pursuer. It can be a frightening figure or even a close friend or relative.  Their appearance often makes you angry or leaves you scared. They force you to confront things that you don’t want to see or hear. You must learn to accept the shadow aspect of yourself for its messages are often for your own good, even though it may not be immediately apparent.

3. The Anima / Animus is the female and male aspects of yourself. Everyone possess both feminine and masculine qualities. In dreams, the anima appears as a highly feminized figure, while the animus appears as a hyper masculine form. Or you may dream that you are dressed in women’s clothing, if you are male or that you grow a beard, if you are female. These dream imageries appear depending on how well you are able to integrate the feminine and masculine qualities within yourself. They serve as a reminder that you must learn to acknowledge or express your masculine (be more assertive) or feminine side (be more emotional). 

4. The Divine Child is your true self in its purest form. It not only symbolizes your innocence, your sense of vulnerability, and your helplessness, but it represents your aspirations and full potential. You are open to all possibilities. In the dreamscape, this figure is represented by a baby or young child.  

5. The Wise Old Man /Woman is the helper in your dreams. Represented by a teacher, father, doctor, priest or some other unknown authority figure, they serve to offer guidance and words of wisdom. They appear in your dream to steer and guide you into the right direction.

6. The Great Mother is the nurturer. The Great Mother appears in your dreams as your own mother, grandmother, or other nurturing figure. She provides you with positive reassurance. Negatively, they may be depicted as a witch or old bag lady in which case they can be associated with seduction, dominance and death. This juxtaposition is rooted in the belief by some experts that the real mother who is the giver of life is also at the same time jealous of our growth away from her. 

7. The Trickster, as the name implies, plays jokes to keep you from taking yourself too seriously. The trickster may appear in your dream when you have overreached or misjudged a situation. Or he could find himself in your dream when you are uncertain about a decision or about where you want to go in life.  The trickster often makes you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, sometimes mocking you or exposing  you to your vulnerabilities. He may take on subtle forms, sometimes even changing his shape.  

Archetypal dreams, also referred to as “mythic dreams”, “great dreams” or “grand dreams”, usually occur at significant times or transitional periods in your life. They often leave you with a sense of awe or that you have learned something important about yourself. Such dreams have a cosmic quality or an element of impossibility if they were to happen in reality. They are often extremely vivid and stay in your mind long after you had the dream. 

     

A Goddess Archetype Discovered in doG

Gaia, Goddess of Creation

I went hiking last week with a friend and her dog, which she has named Gaia.  Gaia rolled through the dirt, raced at break-neck speed up hills and through the oak woods, and swam with unmistakable exuberance in the marshes.

When I got home that evening, I happened upon a chapter in “The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Around the World” (by Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring) about the Greek Goddess Gaia and realized how well-suited this name is for this nature-loving, almost one-with-the-earth pooch. I was also fascinated with the archetypal energy of the Goddess Gaia, how she is “mother of all, the foundation, the oldest one. . . Earth, she feeds everything that is in the world.” She is also revered as “the active and dynamic consciousness guiding and structuring the ordering of creation. . . the life ensouling it and the law directing it.”

In our dreams, the need for Gaia may be evoked in a shadow image of barren land, untended or desiccated agricultural properties–in need of her nurturing energies, her “life of the Earth.”  In these times of ecological and spiritual crisis, remembering Gaia’s sacredness, as Mother of All, and as inspiration for tending to the health of the land and to our own vitality and inner lives might be helpful.  As we make decisions about how we live in our day-to-day lives, Gaia calls us to be more mindful of our relationship with nature and the Earth. Perhaps, we can consider even the seemly small ways of honoring her Creation, such as, are we recycling all that we can? What can we reuse: containers, clothing, another’s cast-off furniture.

Gaia also awakens us to the feeling of the “divine feminine,” reminding us through her image that we walk on sacred ground and, therefore, live in a sacred reality–everything we are and experience, it was believed, is rooted in that ground. In earlier times in Egypt, the gods and goddesses (or “hidden” beings) were considered intermediaries between heaven and earth and were viewed as connecting the physical world with the unseen dimensions that “ensouled it.” This linking of the unseen with the seen, reflected not only the spiritual realm outside oneself, but the unseen divine dimension within our own nature.

Touched by the synchronicity of discovering Gaia through my encounter with a domesticated, yet still wild, animal, I know that I’ll think of this goddess’s earth-life qualities as a reminder to further help exterior and “interior” landscapes thrive. I’ll also remember to see Gaia’s essence in her four-footed namesake.

–Susan Audrey, CHT

Discover the magic of dream work by joining a Dream Work Circle

Dreams are a Magical Path to Discovering the Self

“Every understood dream is like a slight electrical jolt into higher consciousness.” –Marie Louise von Franz (photo from RumiQuotes)

 

     Why should we work with our dreams? What is the magic they hold?

      Our nighttime dreams are the flutterings of our soul, and when we practice dreamwork, we are tending to the yearnings and dis-ease within us and activating a self-healing that permeates every fiber of our being, nurturing both our psychological and physical health.

     Freud described our nighttime dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious” because they provide us with glimpses of our soul Self, of our own inner knowing without the veil of our ego-clouded, conscious mind, putting us in the express lane to self-discovery.

   By remembering, writing down, sharing and working with our dreams, we are listening to our true Self revealing what it is we truly desire and what our obstacles are to living the happy, fulfilling and healthy life we want and were meant to live.

          Our dreams can give us clues about how to work through relationship troubles, get out of a stuck place in our work life, find and sustain our authentic voice, and much more. Dreams can even provide us with foreknowledge of a health challenge as well as ways in which it may be healed.

     One of the ways dreams teach us how to move through our obstacles is by illuminating parts of ourselves, often our shadow sides, which we may need to activate and put to good use or which may need toning down so that we don’t get in our own way.

    The language of our dreams is metaphorical and expressed through symbolism. In dreamwork, we decipher this language by “being with” our dream images and “listening” to them closely. A cat, for example, consistently entering our dreamscapes, may be telling us that we need to be more catlike, more independent, and strike out on our own in a particular part of our life.

     A cat as a symbol, of course, has many other meanings as well. It is the dreamer’s own “aha,” his or her own recognition that something new has been discovered, which illuminates a dream’s message, as dreams do not come to tell us something we already know.

     Sharing our nighttime dreams with a dreamwork practitioner or in a dreamwork circle gives voice to a part of us that wants to come forward.  It also helps us to better arrive at the valuable in-sights our dreams have come to share, allowing our dream material to be seen through the eyes of another, as we often tend to lean our interpretations in the direction that aligns with a well-worn thought pattern or a longtime desire.

     Our soul-self also benefits greatly when our dream is witnessed and held sacred by another, gaining nurturance and support as we take our first steps into a new way of thinking and being.

      Experience the magic of dreamwork by joining a Dreamwork Circle

Imagine what it would be like to dream the first dream

I love the path former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins takes us on in his poem about the first person to dream. Enjoy.

The First Dream

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

Billy Collins

Open to the Flowering of the Season and the Heart

   As the earth sings in vibrations of color, I wish to share this poignant poem about “the lotus of the heart,” which was shared with me by a dear friend who knows wherein everything is contained.

The City of Brahman

In the city of Brahamn is a secret dwelling,

the lotus of the heart. Within this dwelling

is a space, and within that space is the

 fulfillment of our desires. What is within

that space should be longed for and realized.

As great as the infinite space beyond is the

space within the lotus of the heart. Both,

heaven and earth are contained in that inner

space, both fire and air, sun and moon,

lightning and stars. Whether we know it

in this world or know it not, everything is

contained in that inner space.

Never fear that old age will invade that

city; never fear that this inner treasure of all

reality will wither and decay.  This knows

no age when the body ages; this knows no

dying when the body dies.  This is the real

city of Brahman; this is the Self, free from

old age, from death and grief, hunger and

thirst.  In the Self all desires are fulfilled.

Being the ‘Light in Matter’

Light in Matter

It did not surprise me that during my most recent visit with Marge–my dear 95-year-old neighbor for whom living consciously is a daily “handmade” affair to be considered and crafted with the utmost care–she brought up the matter of being “the light in matter.” What? You ask. No, really, this is important stuff.

As always, Marge and I are on the same page. I’m currently reading “Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness” by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. I have recently read the pages in the book that describe the wisdom energy of the Black Goddess and what it takes for us to open to this wisdom. (Stick with me, we’ll get to the “light in matter.”) “. . .the wisdom energy of the Goddess does not appear in dreams until the traveler is strong enough to be vulnerable. The ego has to have surrendered some of its defensive control before it can tolerate confronting such energy,” the pages reveal.

When we are ready, the Black Goddess comes to us in the flesh (as a human teacher or teaching event), in a dream or a mirage that quickly disappears after providing us with a message that aids us in breaking through our rigidities, our concepts of good and bad, our neurotic clinging to our ego-constructed persona. That message, whether it comes as a nightmare that shakes us to our very bones or a life situation that unceremoniously uproots us from a world we’ve always known, humbles, makes us more pliable, more open to spontaneity, new insights, new experiences. We are jolted out of our illusions, pushed so far in the direction unknown, that maybe, just maybe, when we wobble back upright, like one of those bottom-weighted dolls, we can come to rest at center.

We become more balanced as we see, accept and own the opposites within ourselves: our masculine/feminine, mind/body, thinking/feeling, even the life/death within–and without. The dark Goddess is “being the consciousness in matter” or “the unifying light in creation,” “Dancing in the Flames” authors Woodman and Dickson explain. She’s being the light in matter, as my dear friend Marge would put it, and as Woodman and Dickson contend “the energy we need to become whole and proceed toward consciousness.”

That light in matter–the result of experiencing the “sharp edge” of the feminine, the book reveals, takes us out of our heads, our minds, into our bodies where we have to feel our feelings. “Knowing we have done our best and it simply wasn’t enough opens our hearts to other human beings whose best likewise failed. The mind has its logic; the heart alone can know wisdom, bridge chasms, make peace.”

As I witness Marge making peace with her long life, opening to this sharp edge, this piercing light that brings pain, self-realization, and an embracing of the whole self, I am filled with compassion for her–for myself, for all.

–Susan Audrey, CHT

Why We’re All Emerge-lings

I currently live next door to a 95-year-old modern-day mystic. She has earned every one of the precious wrinkles in her always-tan face as well as her wisdom, and she’ll tell you so. She’s the one who told me that we are all emerge-lings, that none of us is any better than the other when it comes to where we are on the spiritual path or, as she likes to put it: “We’re all on the bus together.”

We’re all emerge-lings, because we’re all growing, all the time, we’re all on our way this ominous year of 2012, even if our fits and starts of emergence are not readily noticeable on the surface. Our karma is up, she says. We can coast now. Even the planet, she insists, is rounding in on its own karma.

I always enjoy Marge’s philosophies on spirituality, the collective unconscious, and life in general. She also always knows–before I utter a word–what  I am struggling with or what I dreamt the night before or what is making my heart sing that day. The insight she shares into my small-self struggles feels divinely guided, as if the answers I need are channeled through her from some all-knowing source. These answers usually don’t “solve” my challenges though. They hoist me out of my small, ego-based views, those stuck, stale places we all find ourselves in, usually when we’re viewing ourselves as separate from everyone and everything else.

Marge

In the warmth of her lighted window on the other side of the fence, while I’m churning out marketing materials and devouring psychology books on archetypes and the sacred feminine, Marge is pondering the micro (her own spiritual journey) and the macro (how all of us and the universe are evolving) and can prolifically articulate her latest thoughts like a living book with added dashes of humor and sheer joy at her discoveries. This is not a woman who does small talk. Oh no. Before our Hellos have barely been made, we are in the rich depths of why “melting” (embracing what is) is a much better approach than trying to fix each uncomfortable occurrence that comes our way–we don’t have any control anyway.  I’m glad I’m on the bus with Marge.

What Emerges in Our Dreams

Of course, I couldn’t let a new word like emerge-lings sprout without looking at how it could apply to my favorite realm–the world of dreams. Right away, I saw how the images in our dreams are all emerge-lings themselves, parts of us that want to be known, emerging in our dreamscapes so that we can learn from them, embody them, and grow into who we truly are in our waking hours.

As Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung noted, we have many parts within ourselves : our persona (the self we present to the public); our shadow sides (the rejected and repressed aspects of ourselves); and the anima and animus (the female and male aspects of ourselves) to name a few. Read more about our major archetypal characters here

Essential Nature

All these parts that make themselves known through our dreams hold valuable clues to what we are needing to look at within ourselves, the parts of our Self, for example, we are denying or, at the other end of the spectrum, leaning on too much.  Oftentimes these clues will come to us in our dreams through metaphor, a word Jung defines as a “crossing over.”  When we dream about flying, for example, often a metaphor for joy, the image of us flying in our dream when viewed metaphorically becomes a crossing over of information (that we are happy) from our unconscious, dreamtime mind, to our conscious, awake-time mind.

If we work with our dreams with an open mind, from a stance of not knowing, we allow this crossing over, this learning to occur without our ego, our waking-time mind, getting in the way. When we begin to rationalize the meanings of our dreams, attempting to validate these meanings through mere ego-based explanations, we lose the aliveness of our dream images, the potency of these just-born emerge-lings and their ability to present to us our own inner wisdom.

Let the Discoveries Begin

When working with individuals or  dreamwork circles, I encourage dreamers to inhabit this place of not knowing what a dream means, to imagine the images in their dreams as “alive” and capable of evolving, and to open to all possibilities. We  journey back into the dreamtime through visualization and conversation and uncover many surprises, spontaneous heart-felt discoveries, insights our rational, waking mind could not access on its own. A large granite rock with a red glow inside becomes the heart of a dreamer’s father; a sinkhole in a lawn between a dreamer and her mother becomes the “sinking” feeling the dreamer has when she lives her life contrary to her mother’s wishes; a dreamer who becomes a snake in her dream, embodies her creativity, the kundalini, her energetic force vital to life and her highest potential.

These dreamers nurtured their dreams’ emerge-lings to bring these parts of themselves forward, embracing and welcoming them, and becoming more whole and emerging more fully in their waking lives. Marge would be proud. Hurry, she’s saving you a seat on the bus.

–Susan Audrey, CHT