Modern Dreamwork by Linda Yael Schiller

Author:Linda Yael Schiller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CVR01032019;linda schiller;linda shiller;linda yael shiller;modern dream work;dreamwork;dream work;dream interpretation;interpreting your dreams;how to interpret dreams;how to interpret your dreams;dream journaling;meanings of dreams;dream meanings;CVR09302019
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2019-10-23T18:29:54+00:00

Our Personal Dream Mythos

When we interact with the images from our dreams and give them attention outside of the dream, we engage in a process Jung called amplification, or making something larger. When we expand the image past our own personal story we enter the realm of myth and archetype—the grand stories that have engaged humankind for millennia. We dream nightly in our own personal mythologies. Our waking task is to connect our dreams with larger-world mythologies and see ourselves in the greater context of being part and parcel of the human condition.

Here is an example of connecting our dreams into a larger context, found in two dreams with mythic undertones and a powerful CI. Jana, a member of my dream group, shared them with us. She first dreamed that she was living in a tent with other Israelites in the desert. There were holes in the tent and hail fell through on her and the others in the tent. It reminded her of the plagues in Egypt.

Her second dream, about three days later, continued one of the themes in a different way. She dreamed that she was in bed in her tent at summer camp. Two girls were whispering outside her tent window, and she told them that they woke her up. One girl replied, “You’re never confined to the tent that you’re in.”

Those back to back dreams also exemplify the importance of writing dreams down, since we may have missed the repeating theme otherwise. The repetition of the tent imagery from the first dream in the second alerts us to the fact that it’s a central image and provides the dream circle with avenues to follow while unpacking and examining Jana’s tent dreams.

Jana’s first dream connects her personal image of the tent with a psycho-spiritual journey that is common mythos in Western culture. It references the journey of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and through the desert of Sinai on their way to the Promised Land in the book of Exodus. This motif is not just Judeo-Christian, but one common to African-Americans as a metaphor for their own ongoing journey from slavery to freedom—a frequent and powerful theme in gospel music. Every year on Passover we read of the ten plagues that were inflicted on the Pharaoh and his people before he finally allowed the Israelites to leave Egypt. One of the plagues is hail, just as in Jana’s dream. Jana’s first dream immediately connects her with these larger stories, and the recurring image of the tent lets us know that the second dream is somehow connected as well.

Using a priori meaning to guide your thought process, look at the striking connective image in the two dreams and ask yourself, “What is a tent?” We got a variety of responses from the dream circle, many of them related to the idea of home. Members tapped into their own associations that a tent is a form of shelter—usually a temporary shelter in our day and age, but a permanent one in ancient times.

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