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February 2021

2/11/2021

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I love Lent. 
 
Note: nobody ever tried to make me give up chocolate.
 
Rather, Lent always appealed to the adventurer in me: it’s less about self-denial and more about making room, saying yes, putting on the hiking boots for a serious stretch of soul journey in the company of the Christ.  In the Christian tradition, we see the Christ mystery (which could maybe be called “How it is when the Divine Is Embodied and Gets Loose in the World”) in the story and person of Jesus.  But this soul-stretching time of deep journeying is part of every wisdom tradition, and I hope that as you read this, you’ll be able to sense how this story translates into your language.
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Once I had a journey dream:  I am one of a small group hiking with a guide,  a rough, wise woman who loves wild places and knows the way.  We trek up to a high alpine meadow on a ridge, a zillion miles from anywhere.  We set up tents.  As dusk settles, we light the fire. The wind picks up.  Night falls. The stars shine with unbelievable brilliance.  The air becomes chillier, then cold. Sparks fly from our campfire, and as the wind grows wilder, the fire flares out then settles into glowing embers. The night goes on and on, and we are so cold – but instead of huddling in our tents, we stretch out in our sleeping bags in the stiff grass, facing each other across the dying coals.  The guide starts laughing in a warm, delighted way: she knows how alive we feel, and how utterly right and good it is to be together in this wild freezing darkness. The night, the wind, the companionship – all of it is exhilarating and quiet too, as we feel ourselves full of the Presence that fills this wilderness.
I wake up thinking – this is how I want to live.
 
That dream is my image for how it feels to be in Lent.  Certainly, in the dream we are without a number of things that would be nice to have (such as chocolate, not to mention heat and light) but maybe if we had those things, we wouldn’t experience that wild, living presence in the sky and grass and wind, and that sense of being so well companioned on the trail.
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The setting is so much of the dream.  When I look at the setting in any dream, I’m looking at an address, or the  part of me the dream addresses.   I can ask who am I when I am here?  So when I think of that dream, I say, “Here I am in my inner wilderness, walking with Wisdom and my inner pilgrim band, and this place is full of forces: darkness and starlight, fire and ash, and the wild holy wind of the Spirit that is knowable, tangible, invisible, true, and I'm breathing it, it's part of my body.  When I am here, I am receptive.  I am not stuck inside my own perceptions.  

In waking life, I couldn’t actually live on that ridge.  There is raw danger up there, and I could die of overexposure.  But as a spirit person, I know that without this place, and the awake-in-the-night awe of it in the company of these people, I’m not fully alive.   I just hope that when I get home, I can stammer out what happened, and why I want others to come with me next time.
 
As a person who chooses to live inside a very capacious version of the Christian story,  I think of Lent as a six week trek with Jesus. His life journey is an individuation journey, as Jung would call it.  So my participation in Lent is participation with that life of the Divine Human, from calling to response to death to resurrection.  Lent is a ritual of companioned individuation.  
 
Where our feet take us during Lent, awake and in dreams, will show us where we stand on things, how we choose to move through time, who travels with us, what our perspective is in relation to others.   Maybe we see our habitual assumptions and skewed values. Maybe we are challenged to shift positions, share a new view, or travel a road less taken.   
 
Count on it, an intentional Lenten journey will take you someplace new.   If you choose to journey with your dreams this Lent, they will put you into the territory of what Jung calls the Self, which is what others might call the Divine Within, the Imago Dei, the Soul, true self, or Essence.  Every spiritual tradition has a name for this vital transpersonal Aliveness that draws us further into the mystery, reveals the wisdom that companions us, and shows us how to thrive.

If this appeals to you, consider joining me and a small group of others for a 6-week Lenten dream group (details below). 
We will frame our dreamwork with six place-centric passages in the Jesus journey as narrated in the Gospels.  Even if you don’t recall a dream, you can dream into the gospel story.  And if you bring your dream to the group, we will enter your journey with you. 
 
Deep Dreams and Traveling Mercies,
Laura
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Hafiz, the 14th century Sufi mystic offers a lovely invitation to the journey:
 
                     The place where you are right now
                         God circled on a map for you.
 
          Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
                            Against the earth and sky,
                       The Beloved has bowed there --
 
            Our Beloved has bowed there knowing
                                     You were coming.

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                             NOW at FIRE BY NIGHT -
                         TWO NEW OFFERINGS... SOON! 

Lenten Dream Groups starting Feb. 15 and 18
Dreamwork is soulwork.
And the Jungian perspective on dreams is deeply aligned with the essence of Christian spirituality.   Church folks, this is a good place to start with dreamwork.  And for those of you who like Jesus just fine, but church makes you restless  – or maybe you just don’t do church at all anymore – you will feel at home here.  Because this has nothing to do with church, and everything to do with experiencing the Christ within together with companions on the way.
 
In a Lenten Dream Group, you’ll explore your dreams within the framework of six passages about Jesus’ life journey as seen in the Gospels. 
In each session, we’ll talk a little about the Jesus journey, then explore two dreams each meeting. In between you’ll receive short readings and dreamwork practice suggestions.
This group includes six weekly meetings plus a final celebration our dreams will help us plan.  Limit 5 dreamers per group.  Cost $150.  
 
Monday Nights, beginning Feb. 15 6-7:30 Central
Thursday Mornings, beginning Feb.  9:30-11 Central
 
Email me soon to insure your place - these start soon, and places are limited!   laura@firebynight.net.

For a description of dream groups, visit http://www.firebynight.net/dream-groups.html



             AND THIS!
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DreamStoryTelling Workshop
Saturday Feb. 20
Your dreams are soul stories that challenge and enlighten you - and sometimes you want to share them!  But how do you tell a dream so that its mystery & meaning come across to people who aren’t steeped in dreamwork?
Here you’ll learn to craft a powerful dream into a tellable tale. This simple storytelling process will give you insight into your dream and help you articulate its magic.
 Before the workshop, choose a dream that has stayed with you awhile. Write it in first person, present tense, double spaced.  You’ll also need a stack of paper and a box of crayons or colored pencils.
Saturday Feb. 20, 9-12 Central time, 10-1 Eastern.
Cost: $25 (Venmo: @FirebyNight.   Zelle: 615-594-5930    Paypal: Fire by Night Dreamwork)
To register, email me at laura@firebynight.net.
 
Deadline for registration is Friday Feb. 19.  Looking forward to seeing you there!
​
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January 2021

1/24/2021

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I wanted the T shirt that said, “A Story is the shortest distance between two people” but they were out of my color at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough TN.
Instead, I have a lovely blue one that reads “Stories are our native language.”  Which is just as true, and completes the thought:  “Stories are how we relate to each other.  Tell a story and expect to connect.”
 
Right now, if you’ve got a story that connects people, that gives us alI a wider, more generous, more lifegiving perspective, please get out there and tell it.
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Here’s one of mine:  a story that involves a dream which explains why I keep showing up in your inbox.
 
This dream came nearly two decades ago, a few years after I’d finished my dreamwork training. While most of my time was spent in the delight and disorder of raising young children, I tended my dreams, ran a dream group and – in every minute I could wrangle – devoured all the Jungian dream books I could get my hands on.  It was a formidable intellectual diet.
                                          
In the dream, I’m walking down a sandy road in a pine forest when I come to a little cottage. Inside, it’s dim. At the stove, I see a man with his back toward me, whom I recognize as a professor, a former colleague.  He’s older now, with disheveled hair and a rumpled flannel shirt.  As I come closer I see he’s boiling turnips in a big black pot.  I look up to remark about the turnips, and then I see – he is blind.
He knows I’ve realized this, and explains, simply and almost cheerfully,

“I was given blindness so I could see past my books.”

I woke up flooded with that deep shock of an Aha – knowing I’ve received a direct hit from the unconscious. Grateful, yet staggered by the impact.
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This dream spoke exactly to my situation: I’d been living too much in the intellectual realm. The dream shows me both the consequences (blindness) and offered another perspective through the image of the professor, who in waking life had left academia to become a priest.  The whole cabin is a crucible dedicated to psychospiritual alchemical transformation.  Contents of my unconscious – the turnips – have been dug up. They’re now being cooked so that they can be shared and eaten – integrated, in Jungian language.  
 
Dream wisdom showed me the limits of unbalanced learning about dreams.  Study was blinding me to the living, transformative relationship with the dreams, with others, and ultimately with the Dreamgiver. As I worked with the image of the blind wise man/alchemist/cook, I began to embody and teach dreams more.  
 
It seemed right to grow the work into Fire by Night, so here I am, in your inbox, your Zoom screen, your telephone;  your classroom and your small group, your retreat; your school, your church, your circle.
 
These days, as the tough roots from unconscious push their way up -  in your life and in the life of the collective -  I want to offer you a place to cook your turnips.  Bring those raw gritty weird-looking beautiful nightmarish "emergences" and let’s make them edible, with heat and water and time, with a grain of salt and lots of butter. Those dreams are soul roots that can make us wise. And when share them, we grow strong together. ​
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Please join me at the table, where we can tell each other, in our native language of story, in awe and laughter and terror and always with hope, the divine human story, dream by dream.  


 WINTER AT FIRE BY NIGHT

 DreamStoryTelling – a New  Workshop on Zoom!
 
If you’ve ever tried sharing a dream, you know it’s harder than it seems.  How do you get across that sense of meaning and mystery to someone who isn’t into dreams?
 
I’ll teach you how to make soup out of raw turnips: crafting a tellable, hearable dream story to share when the time is right. 

It's a simple method, it's fun, and it works. 
 
Bring a dream and join me for the Zoom workshop Saturday morning, Feb. 20, from 9-12 Central time.  Email me at laura@firebynight.net and I’ll send you the info.  All you need is a dream and a box of crayons. $25. 
 
Remember the T-Shirt Truths:  People love a story. Learn to tell one that really connects.

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Lenten Dream Circles: Hearing deep truth is an excellent Lenten discipline, and nothing tells the truth like a dream. There’s still time to join a Lenten Dream Circle.  Plan it for your group or join one now: we begin the week of Ash Wednesday.  Contact me for details and scheduling; laura@firebynight.net.
 
Individual Sessions:  Bring your dreams for deep listening. Come for a session or a season to catch the accents of your personal dream language, and hear a wider meaning.
 
 
These Days
 
whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle
 
and the dirt
 
just to make clear
where they come from
 
                           -Charles Olson

 
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Nashville Jung Circle
January 24 2:30-4:30  “2020 as an Alchemical Year ”presented by Dr. Karen Harper, LCSW

February 28, 2:30-4:30  “Soul Collage”  led LeAnne Nesbitt

Join us on Zoom.  Learn more at www.nashvillejungcircle.com.  
Or contact me and I'll forward the link: laura@firebynight.net
 
Starts today! 
The Jung Platform is offering a free Summit on Dreams from Jan 14-17th. 
 
There will be sessions with 12 world class experts on dreams from different traditions: Jungian, Native American, Tibetan and Shamanic.
 
You can enroll for free here: https://jungplatform.com/summit/dreams-and-your-personal-journey
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October 2020

10/21/2020

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A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor was sitting in her front yard when a streak blazed past her.  She had the wits – and even the camera - to see that it was a bobcat.   It turned, looked at her, and dashed away.
BOBCAT!  Here on my street!
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While this alarmed some neighbors, my sons and I were thrilled.  Days and nights of Bobcat Watch commenced.  Binoculars by the window.  Stealthy exploration of the thicket by the creek.  Forensic dissection of dog poop, hopeful it might be bobcat sign. I forbade setting out a chunk of ham but it’s possible Peter did it anyway.   William, invoking the predatory grace of the harmonic minor scale, improvised a sensuous Bobcat Luring Tune and played it by the open window at dusk.   No luck.  Others have seen the bobcat again, but we, alas, still quest for clues.
 
Sometimes dreamwork feels like Bobcat Watch.  We glimpse a dream, we write a few words, catching the dream just as my neighbor caught a fleeting photo of the big cat.  Hunched over our notebooks, we associate, amplify, and sketch our dreams, looking for explanations and meaning.  We long for something we can’t imagine to appear.
 
But remember, dear Dreamer:  dreams are just the signs.  Dreams are the damp pawprint on your driveway, the bedded spot in your tall grass, the scat in the garden, the tuft of hair snagged in your rosebush.  They all attest to the Wild Presence, here, every night, just outside your door.  Remembering this can rearrange a person.
 
At first we thought the bobcat lived in our neighborhood. Soon the bobcat re-ordered our whole sense and scope of the place and of each other: we now realize that we live in the domain of the bobcat. We keep eyes open for the thrill of the hidden streak, the slightest movement. We compare notes with neighbors we didn’t know til now.  We watch out for each others’ pets, and invite each we other to sit – distanced and masked - around the firepit on a Friday night.  We’re not exactly scared, but awed and wary as we tend the Wild Presence who has let us know we are living in its territory.  
 
So sometimes when you’re doing your dreamwork, and you feel a shiver, a prickle, an inkling, straighten up.  
Turn around slowly. 
And breathless, you may find yourself eye to eye with the great cat, the living source you hoped to glimpse, which has all along been following your trail...gazing, golden and glorious, at you.

Yes, it can rip you open. 

Or you can open yourself up to the transformative powers of the DreamGiver - who watches from the shadows of that fire circle, in this neighborhood where the evangelical right-wingers and the yellow-dog democrats and the gay couple and the single mothers and the Obamacare-dependent cancer survivors and the songwriters who sing in their driveway on Friday nights and the economically crashing self-employed and very very shy and the exhausted homeschooling parents somehow keep the peace and grow more human by honoring the Wild, here on our uncommon ground in Bobcat territory.

Wild, wise, live-encounter dreams to you,
Laura
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Autumn at
Fire by Night

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Individual Dreamwork

Discount for group members!
If you've been in a dream group in 2020, take advantage of a special rate on 1:1 dreamwork.   
4 sessions for $320
(instead of $380)
Contact me before the end of November:
laura@firebynight.net.
You can book the sessions now or any time in the future.


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Something new:
Digging Deep
with a
Dreamwork Retreat
for your Small Group


Curious about group dreamwork?  You can book a
one-time dream circle
for your small group or circle of trust.  You’ll learn the basics of group dreamwork, practice three ways of exploring your own dreams, and reach into your creative depths for some embodied dream-tending that helps you carry your dream’s wisdom into waking life. 
 
  • 2 hour group meeting ($200)
  • 4 hour workshop ($400)

Groups: All groups are set for now: if you’d like to be on the waiting list to join in January, please email me at laura@firebynight.net.

Photo of bobcat at night courtesy of D.C. Cat Count
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September 2020

9/1/2020

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Dear Dreamers –
 It’s Emergency Preparedness Month, something that weirdly appeals to me. Maybe it comes from raising a pack of Boy Scouts.  Or from the prudent thrill of filling so many plastic tubs with supplies before the inevitable disaster of Y2K.  Or the charm of the tiny, detailed survival kits my boys used to pack into Altoid boxes.   Given the vividness and nightmarish quality of many Covid dreams, it occurs to me that we may need to check our Dream Emergency Kits.
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This month I want to remind you of the Swiss Army Knife of dreamwork, the one tool you absolutely must have to engage with your dreams and to follow through on their purpose.  Often you will need this when things feel troubling or nightmarish in the dream.  But know this: when you feel an emergency in a dream, it comes in the service of emergence.*  The tool goes beyond “Mitigation Strategy” and into the realm of “Divine Compassionate Healing Miracle for Yourself and for the Ages.” 
 
Here’s your tool: it is the phrase I am that too.
 
Yes, you probably already have it in your pocket.
Yes, this is shadow work.
I just want to remind you how necessary it is, and offer a blade by blade review of how to use “I am that too” when you wake from a dream, particularly one that disturbs you.
 
  1. Remember that all parts of your dream picture parts of you, the dreamer.
  2. The upsetting element, perhaps a person or an animal or a place or a natural disaster, is most emphatically part of you.
  3. And it is asking for attention, NOW.
  4. Because to be whole, and to mitigate crisis or misfortune, and to be the person you are called to be in the world for yourself and others,  you need to integrate the essence of this dream image into your conscious living.  Now is the right time.
  5. This will seem dangerous, mad, foolhardy, and wrong.
  6. To bolster your conviction, recall who Jesus hung out with: the misfits, the marginalized, the ill, the poor, the overly emotional, the bothersome, the relationally challenged, the rulebreakers, and a few dullards.
  7. That’s the sort of person you’re looking at when you encounter the “shadow” in your dream: a part of you that needs to be seen, wondered about, understood, gently heard, and accepted at the table.
  8. “I am that too,” is a simple mantra or breath prayer that you can use to remind yourself that whatever you dream,  is part of you. Your main job is to acknowledge that you have that particular characteristic going on in yourself.
  9. Stay with this challenging otherness.  Get to know it: learn to recognize when it starts to  make you angry, disgusted, or fearful.  Trust that there is some needed truth for you here; there is some sort of flip side to this energy. Give it time to arise.  Try a different kind of seeing. For instance, if you have a dream character who is controlling, you may find that they are manifesting the shadow side of your own untapped leadership.    A cruel monster may be the shadow side of your own unacknowledged anger and its power for transformation. **
  10. Then see what happens.  Over time, you will find that you have more compassion for yourself, and you become more expansive in your understanding and merciful in your responses to others. 
  11. Especially the ones who are most troubling to you. 
  12. Clearly, the blades of this Swiss Army Knife are not for stabbing the enemy. They are for carefully cutting your attachment to your negative projection. This will free the person in front of you, whether in dreamlife or waking life, from your crippling judgment on them.   And it clears you to be your more whole and loving self, so that what comes through you is genuine and compassionate.​
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I am offering this tool now because we are in a state of multiple emergencies, including the Covid crisis, wildfires and hurricanes, political turbulence, coming to terms with systemic racism, violence at peaceful protests, economic instability, and the general upheaval of life as we thought we knew it.

To many of us, it feels like a time of emergency.  It can also be a time of emergence.  Of new capacities in ourselves…of space for the Other…and of the wild surge of knowing that way way down in the psyche, in the imagination of God – there is a kind of unifying force field which holds us all.
 
Carl Jung talked about the necessity of doing this kind of soulstretching , claiming that the fate of humankind depended on every one of us doing our inner work.   
 
Shadow work is hard, it’s never finished, and it often feels nearly impossible. I’m still pretty bad at it. But dreams help us learn it.  They offer us an amazing chance to practice over and over this strange, richly powerful, deeply humbling work of saying…and meaning…and finally understanding… through the disturbing emergence in a dream …“I am that too.”
 
Heartfelt gratitude to each of you who is willing to stay with the otherness,
Laura


* I had a dream that showed me this: I saw a crash site, emergency vehicles everywhere, looked like a disaster, then I see a geyser of clear water gush up from the center of the intersection!  Somehow the emergency had become an emergence. Gives me hope.
​

** See David Richo, How to Be an Adult for a clear, simple guide to shadow transformation. 

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Autumn at
Fire by Night

Individual Dreamwork –
Pandemic-friendly discounts
END
at midnight Wednesday Sept. 30.  Thanks to all who have taken me up on the offer!
Email me by the 30th to book your individual sessions at 
$75 each or four for $280. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 Something new:
Dream Emergence Survival Kit
for Group Dreamwork

Curious about group dreamwork?  Book a
one-time dream circle
for your small group or circle of trust.  You’ll learn the basics of group dreamwork, practice three ways of exploring your own dreams, and reach into your creative depths for some embodied dream-tending that helps you carry your dream’s wisdom into waking life.  You’ll be prepared to handle future dream emergences - alone or together. 
2 hour group meeting ($200)
4 hour workshop ($400)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Groups:
All groups are set for now. If you’d like to be on the waiting list to join in January, please email me at laura@firebynight.net.
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July 2020

7/1/2020

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I doubt many of you noticed, but I never got that June newsletter off the ground.  Not for lack of trying! I had a series of vivid dreams, all set in white churches, that I wanted to write about as being relevant to our collective work with racism these days.  But no, this series of images has more to teach me before I write.
 
So I want to share just one simple phrase which applies to dreamwork and any kind of emerging work or wisdom.  It’s been helpful to me in many ways, and is especially useful now as I navigate through Covid-based social/family/school challenges; antiracist learning and unlearning; work and financial disruptions, and general dismay. 
  
Here’s your phrase:
“Not yet speechripe.” 
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Isn't that beautiful?
Not yet speechripe comes from the poetic, image-rich Anglo Saxon language, the precursor to modern English. It means exactly what it says.  It means something has come up for you.  You kind of get it, sort of see it, but you can’t really say yet what it is.  It’s a state of dawning consciousness, in which the mind is just about to grasp something of great significance.  It’s on the tip of your tongue, but words are not how you can experience or share the experience.

In dreamwork, that not yet speechripe feeling is often indicative of a big change in progress.   Something that will rearrange your sense of who you are and how you fit into the larger picture.
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The dreams I can't yet write about are helping me viscerally experience something of white supremacy.   How pervasive it is in my life and culture. How calmly powerful. How it has shaped everything I know and do.  And how it limits my imagination about how I can contribute to a just society.   
        
How this era changes us may be  not yet speechripe for you– but certainly it will change you and all of us.  ​
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Please, let’s do two things. 
Let’s learn. 
And let’s do better.  I love what Layla Saad says, in Me and White Supremacy, “Just try to be a better ancestor.” 
 
How? Dreams do help. When I dream repeatedly of white churches, I am looking at the “white church”  part of myself as well as the influence of white churches over time in my culture.  The dream doesn’t show me one church: it shows me many different ones, and only a few are familiar.  As I begin my dreamwork, I can list all my associations – personal and collective – about “white church.”  I can learn more about how white churches chose and didn't choose to serve justice in the civil rights era and beyond.
 
And I can also simply put myself … literally… at the threshold of an actual white church, and see what comes.  Lately I have been doing just that – spending time outside my own literal white church each morning, and meditating on  the blessings and burdens in my legacy of being a lifelong white churcher.   There are many.  Understanding where I stand - the setting I am in, both in dreams and waking life - helps me catch on to my perspectives from here.  They are limited, but open to a vision of justice and mercy and full inclusion for all people.
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Lately, the young neighborhood hawks and their parents scream to each other all day.  I can't imagine what they could be going on about, but they start at dawn and keep it up all day.  Their cries are like the words - from dreams, from newscasts and podcasts and books and articles and each others' stories  and the streets full of protestors- that challenge everyone in earshot to get woke and stay woke.

So I'm getting woke. Meanwhile I'll wait, not yet speechripe, for whatever is truly mine to say.

Deep dreams,
Laura

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Time to Sign up for Fall...FIRE BY NIGHT  DREAM GROUPS
I've moved all my groups online and it's working beautifully!  Some dreamers say the focus and depth in virtual groups is even better than an in-person group. 

NOW you can dream with us from anywhere! 
Fall dream groups begin the first week of September.  8 meetings, every other week.
Let me place you, or gather your own group of 4-6 dreamers.
What do you do in a dream group? You will -
  • share dreams with respect using the projective dreamwork method
  • listen for their wisdom in an open-minded, playful way
  • learn Jungian theory for dreaming and dreamwork
  • begin to integrate dream wisdom into your waking life.
8 meetings, $200 per dreamer.
Email me to schedule a conversation at laura@firebynight and 
learn more at firebynet.com.

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MAY 2020:  Bringing Home the Boon

5/31/2020

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So much trouble in the world.  
I trust we're naming these things, praying about them, and meeting each other with as much equanimity as we can muster and as much grace as we are given.  If you're like me, you want to do something that "matters.”  But what?  That "really matters?"
 
The other day, my walk took me past the Glendale Elementary School flagpole, which reminded me of Ivey Mae Lewis, and a story I want to share about “doing something that matters.” ​                                        ​

So much trouble in the world.  
I trust we're naming these things, praying about them, and meeting each other with as much equanimity as we can muster and as much grace as we are given.  If you're like me, you want to do something that "matters.”  But what?  That "really matters?"
 
The other day, my walk took me past the Glendale Elementary School flagpole, which reminded me of Ivey Mae Lewis, and a story I want to share about “doing something that matters.” ​
​                                                                          
Ivey Mae’s name, along with dozens of others, is carved on a plaque near the flagpole, honoring those who made significant donations to the school.  Ivey Mae went to my church, and I knew her only slightly as a retired first grade teacher with slow drawl and gorgeous Betty Davis eyes.
 
One day, to make conversation, I asked about her career. She was silent a minute, looked me over, and said quietly, almost whispering, like it was a secret, “I taught nearly a thousand children to read.”
 
I burst into tears.
 
Can you imagine how that would feel?  To know you gave the world a thousand readers?
                                               
This puts me in mind of the old hero storyline: After great challenges, those who follow their call finally reach the point of “receiving the boon,” where they experience such bliss, riches, insight, or meaningful wounding (or all of the above) that they can hardly stand up to walk back home.
 
But remember: the point of the journey is not receiving the boon.  The point of the journey is sharing the boon.  So whatever it is that transforms and enlightens you, that reveals your true self, that opens worlds and saves your soul and reunites you to the human race and shows you your true Belovedness – that is only half the story.   Now you have to bring back that Gift to your ordinary world. 
                                         ​
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Remember this too: as we travel back, blessed and burdened by the discovery of our essential Gift, the boon transforms us.  Who we are and what we bring are re-created by the journey.   Maybe you discover your essential belovedness – and it turns to acts of compassion that bewilder you. Or you discover your creativity – and you find yourself engaging the divine possibility in any situation. Surrendering fear manifests in curiosity about everything frightening or strange.  By the time you return, the Gift is not what you give – it’s what makes a Giver out of you. Over time, your offerings might change, but always at the heart of them is the lively, essential relationship between you, and your Gift, and the Giver.
 
Dreams are one way we learn how to embody our Gift.  For now, dreams lead me to sharing dreamwork.  But being a dreamworker isn't the boon, nor is it the main way I am called to share the gift, which, as best as I can say at the moment, is the shocking awareness of my essential belovedness.  What am I to do in this disorienting hour in our collective history? I really do not know. But in my dream I see a wounded wolf outside the church door - and I'm sure that a right response to the current situation will feel like a loving, courageous response that wolf. The Dreamgiver and the Giftgiver are one and the same. Staying in alignment with that sacred source makes it possible to respond from soul, not ego. 
 
Ivey May must have had a powerful encounter with the BoonGiver. Clearly, it graced her with whatever it took to walk through the door of a first-grade classroom every day, for decades, and teach a thousand children to read.
 
And you?  May you remember your Gift -  the freely given grace that you’ve had to struggle so nobly to receive.  Listen for your calling – now, in this time -  that shapes your Gift to meet the needs and longings of the world’s heart.  Let's help each other stay aligned with that. Our world needs your giving to come from there. 

One more thing: Don't be surprised if it you never  know what it is that you give: few of us can point to a thousand readers, and I know Ivey Mae gave those children much more than literacy skills.  Just trust, as Paul says, the Source who "by the power within us, is able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine." 
 
Deep dream blessings,
Laura

P.S. About Ivey Mae’s husband: He had some other kind of encounter with the Boongiver and I can only say that he converted the garage into a Jungle Room with a wraparound mezzanine, fake zebra rugs, and a Wurlitzer on which he played 40’s swing tunes in his Hawaiian shirts amongst the trailing vines.  He brought home some Boon, let me tell you.  If your Gift is wild joy, live it large. 

I've learned that Zoom space is a real place, a thin place –and it is made for liminal sharing and honest intimacy. For now, all groups are on Zoom.  It works! ​​
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"Me reading my dream journal!"
(a card from Carrie, FBN dreamer)

Summer dream groups are about to start. 
Email me to learn more: laura@firebynight.net.  

Thursday nights and Monday afternoons are open for new dreamers!
You can dreamgroup from anywhere!

**********************
If you’re having puzzling, powerful dreams lately, let’s do some 1:1 dreamwork to learn how the “wholemaking nearness of God”  is transforming you and your world.  

Pandemic pricing extends through June. Go to www.firebynight.net  to learn more.

Thursday nights
and Monday afternoons
are open for new dreamers!
You can dreamgroup from anywhere!
  
If you’re having puzzling, powerful dreams lately,
let’s do some 1:1 dreamwork
to learn how the “wholemaking nearness of God”  is transforming you and your world.   Pandemic pricing extends through June. Go to www.firebynight.net  to learn more.
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FOR THE JUNG AT HEART
 Join us by Zoom to discuss Jung’s  wonderfully readable autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.  We will talk about Chapters 5-8 on Sunday June 14, 2:30-4:30.  So that we can send your invitation, please register at https://www.nashvillejungcircle.org/onlinebookdiscussion.   (Free)
 
DREAMING AT THE LIBRARY:
In June, Elizabeth Sanford and I are teaching an online class on how to turn your dream into a fairy tale and create a Dream Story Book.  
Follow me on Instagram to learn when it’ll post.  LauraHuffDreamworker.  (Free)
                                  

Boongiving and Givebooning is happening all the time.Here’s a song that describes how it works in psychospiritual terms: “The Wholemaking Nearness of God” from one of our Haden Institute stars: teacher, musician, and dreamworker Sheri Kling.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPPKh0-otoA&t=10s  (You can just dance to it and understand it that way if you don't catch the lyrics.)

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My grandmother, Mattie Lou HIxon, with one of her many many first grade classes.  She had the Gift too. ​
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APRIL 2020  RELATIONSHIP, NOT MASTERY

4/1/2020

0 Comments

 

Dear Dreamers,
You do your inner work: you read the books and listen and learn; you receive insights and glimmers; your mind and soul are slowly trained in paradox and levels of significance; you learn how to wait and see; synchronicities flock about you; you pray paint, write, sing; you do your active imagination and your rituals; you discover you can dream together for each other; and, and and. The gifts are astounding.
 
 And still - you wake up and say –  What does  this dream, this morning, mean?

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Yes, there is a balance to the sacred not-knowing I wrote about last month ((https://mailchi.mp/d25d8370cb33/a-time-of-knot-knowing?e=[UNIQID]). Of course you can know plenty about your dreams, and through your dreams.  But dreams rarely come straight at us with a "this and no other" clarity. So this newsletter is not about the steps of to dreamwork (download those in my "Field Guide to Dreaming" see below) but more about how dreams mean, which really points to our own attitudes of receptivity.
                   
I want to assure you that nightmares are included in what I say here and anywhere. Thousands of people worldwide are reporting Covid nightmares (links below).   For our dreamwork practice this month, I will give you the Nightmare Transformation practice that will help with  any dream that feels disturbing.  
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 A couple of preliminary things:
Let’s talk about a dream’s significance, not meaning.  “Meaning” can imply there’s only one golden kernel of truth.  Sometimes that happens, but you can always trust that a dream offers a significant, living link to waking life. 
 
Also – I’m just responding here, not answering. This is a beginning.
 
Premise:  Dreams help us grow into our Godgiven wholeness which the world needs us to live and give. Dreams nudge us to recognize our projections and complexes and outworn attitudes so that we can be more conscious of our gifts and how we live into them.  We experience continual reorientation to this wholeness within us.  And there is necessary disorientation before reorientation .  Sometimes that process is painful and disturbing – and sometimes makes, literally, for nightmare material.   Dreamwork is endlessly humbling, which is one reason I trust it.
 
SO
In response to the question of “What does this dream mean?” I want to respond with a dream that is itself a comment on how we seek significance in dreams. It illustrates how our relationship to the dream is crucial to our interpretation of the dream’s significance.  While this dream's perspecitve is limited, I stay within its limits because remarkably, it was dreamed by a woman in one of the Fire by Night dreamgroups as a response to the questions of meaning we were processing.  (Or, in  the words of another group member, "I'll just let it lay where Jesus flang it.")
 
Here’s the dream: it has four short scenes which I will discuss as I present them.  In each section, I’ll suggest what the dream may be saying about the nature of dreamwork, and then project on some significance it has when I dream it as my dream.
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Title: Elk, Stalk, Blossom, Hunter
Scene #1.  I’m flying in a small plane with a male pilot above a tundra or large meadow. A hunter has just shot and killed an elk, which is now lying motionless on the ground.  He is proud of his trophy.
 Dreamwork as Trophy Hunting.Here the seeker comes upon the wild beautiful creature (dream) , and he kills it in a single shot.   While he is a great marksman who hits his target and claims his trophy, the elk is dead.  Similarly, we might say that if we assume we’ve possessed a dream in a single shot (“Oh I know what that dream means”….then dismiss it as “interpreted” ) then we have in fact killed any further relationship with its complexity, its beauty, its wildness, its place in the stark alien tundra of our interior, and how it might partner us in meaning.  Maybe claiming the single interpretation makes us feel smart and empowered, but – the dream dies there.
 
If this were my dream, I’d beware the desire to master my dreams! They are live and wild. Targeting their meaning in a way that feels efficient to me will eliminate them, rather than help me relate to them. Maybe I can make a conscious shift to loosen up my dreamwork and get to know my inner “tundra” or wilderness in my soul where the dream/elk lives.Interestingly, the pilot and plane show me that I have an aerial view. Maybe I need to land.Get grounded here.
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Scene #2.  I’m in the courtyard behind my house. There’s a strange stalky plant growing there that I don’t recognize. The whole plant is a deep maroon with curved leaves. I don’t know how tall it will grow or when (or even if) it will flower.
Dreamwork as Beholding Mystery. There’s a “back courtyard” in the psyche, perhaps a mandala-like image of the private, sacred inner space of the soul, where something strange and not really beautiful – possibly even a little scary - is thriving.  Dreamwork asks us to enter our soul space, and see elements of ourselves that we can’t understand right away.  Rather than whip out a classification guide, we are just to take it in.  To Behold – that is a beautiful sacred word that means to engage with awe and wonder and nonacquisitive curiosity. 
 
Wonder is exactly the opposite of the hunter’s approach and this is the first way of really relating to a dream: just behold the mystery that isn’t yet known or named.
 
If this were my dream, I’m exploring the cultivated temonos aspect of my soul. (Not a tundra.) Here I find a strange aspect of myself that seem like an intruder. What in my experience is like this – weird, awkward, unclassifiable, not fully formed? I’m disturbed by this thing, and wonder if it’s going to be something beautiful or ugly? Edible, medicinal or poisonous?
In my dream it could picture some marooned, stalking homeopathic shadow essence in myself which I need to become conscious of. Maybe a little bit of this shadow could save my life. Maybe too much of it could kill me.What in my life is like that? I am paying attention to situations that bring up this tension of interest, bewilderment, and anxiety. It is my soul's growing edge.
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Scene #3. There’s another unfamiliar plant in the courtyard. It’s has a large, completely round white flower on a green stalk. When I look at the flower closely, I see that it’s made up of lots of tiny blooms; some of them are buds that haven’t opened yet.
 
Dreamwork as a Signpost or Summons. Sometimes s dream shows us “You Are Here”  in the life journey. Or – a tweak on that – “This is Where You Need to Be.” Dreams address our life journey though their settings, feelings, and actions.
Trust that the soul always desires to draw us into our fullness of being. We never get the whole of a dream, but we can see and feel the sense of it, and trust that there is fuller knowing blossoming soon. Stay with it.
 
If this were my dream: I’m moved by this encounter with the new flower. I sense that continued beholding in the inner dream garden, the sacred place of soul – has yielded a vision of the Self.  If it is a signpost,  I feel reassured that there is a wholeness in me and it has blossomed, yet still is blossoming, like this flower. What in my life feels beautiful, complex, and continually unfolding, like this flower? 
Or – if it is a Summons, how might  I need reassurance that whatever mess I’m in right now is a confused effort to find this soul essence? How can I meet a challenge with more confidence knowing this full-and-still-flowering truth about myself?
 
Scene #4.  I look out the front window and see the hunter standing in my yard. He is wearing black, and he is changed: he seems disoriented, he’s awkward. No longer macho.  Humbled. He believes the pilot took his trophy elk and now he’s troubled. He wants his elk back, but isn’t hopeful he’ll ever see it again, and he wants to talk to me.   The dream ends as I consider whether to open the door to him.
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Dreamwork as Balance and Discernment
Even if, like the hunter, we diminish the dream with our egoic desire for mastery, our deeper desire is to understand the living truth in the dream. That unerring draw toward individuation  brings the hunter closer to the garden, a place of growth towards wholeness.

The seeker is now in black (often the color of the unconscious, and of nigredo, the beginning of a new stage in the individuation process).  He is disarmed, disoriented, and humbled – but still he has his masculine energies for understanding.  His humility is more of a boon than the elk ever was.  Now he is a true seeker.

And what does he find? Dreams always show us where we need balance. The hesitation at the end of the scene shows a tension between masculine and feminine energies.  Dreams help us grow by picturing the union of opposites in ourselves. Here the masculine seeker and the feminine beholder might tend the garden of dream wisdom together.
 Both the humbled hero and the lively beholder are necessary to understand what a dream is asking or telling the dreamer.
 
If this were my dream: I’m feeling that I’m being asked not to scorn the masculine even though he shot the elk. I might need to welcome my farsighted, straight-shooter masculine energies. I don’t really want to. But I know that as the feminine  “beholder” I can get bogged down and moony about a dream.
What’s going on in my life in which I need the hunter’s precise analytical energies that are now in service to the soul rather than the ego? In my dream, I am shown an energy that I need to integrate into my life to balance my current way of being. I’ll be watching for ways I reject the “hunter" energies in waking life and try to integrate them instead.
 
 
IN short, relationship, not mastery, is the what dreams want from us.
In my dream, the courtyard garden – a larger image of the Self -  summons the both the Hunter and the Beholder. 
We enter dreamwork feeling like seekers, and eventually discover we are the sought.
​Connections Websites/articles: Here are a few of the resources for collection and discussion of dreams related to Covid 19.
  • https://qz.com/1840728/how-to-tackle-insomnia-and-nightmares-during-covid-19/
  • https://www.idreamofcovid.com/dreams/forget
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Dreams/
  • https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-is-giving-people-vivid-unusual-dreams-here-is-why/ 

Podcast: This Jungian Life - a wonderful Jungian resource http://www.thisjungianlife.com. 

I love these three Jungian analysts! Each week they take on a topic of current interest and/or Jungian theory.  LIvely and enlightening discussion followed by a dream they work together.

The Nashvile Jung Circle has some timely offerings: www.nashvillejungcircle.com

The Haden Institute's
Summer Dream Conference
is Live on Zoom! 

While those of us who love to go the Haden Summer Dream & Spiritualty Conference are sad that it’s not happening at Kanuga, I’m thrilled to invite you to attend online.  Participants will have access to dozens of live presentations, workshops, meditations, and a live dream group.  $350.  Participate live and have access to it all afterwards.  www.hadeninstitute.com.  May 24-28. 

If you register, tell them Laura Huff sent you!  I'll earn a little bonus which I can use to help the Community Dream Initiative bring dreamwork to others. Thanks
Find my teaching series on my Laura Huff Hileman FB page: there is an invitation and 4 videos in which I teach my "Fleld Guide to Dreaming."  2 more in the works. You can download the Field Guide for free at www.firebynight.net.


Dreamwork Practice:
Nightmare Transformation.
While this is a good way to work with a nightmare, it’s good with a disturmbing dema of any sort – and any dream ,really.This is a very non-invasive, safe guided imagery that puts our in an observational role with a nightmare – not back into it.The fact that you are addressing it means the psyche will change the dream and you will begin to see something healing or creative in it.Do this at least twice with the same dream, preferably a couple of days apart.I used this as my thesis and everyone who tried it found it helpful and non-scary.
www.healingpowerofdreams.com
Scroll down to Guided Meditations and click on Nightmare Transformation. 
Developed and read by Tallulah Lyons in connection with the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
 

NOTE: I am not a trauma therapist, and if you are dealing with trauma, you should consult a licensed therapist.
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March 2020

3/1/2020

0 Comments

 
When I wrote the first draft of this newsletter last week, I named a few things that were out of my control, including the Nashville tornado and closed Metro schools. But now the whole world is out of everyone’s control.   By the time I hit “send” on this newsletter, there will be half a dozen new updates on the coronavirus as well as the economy, cancellations, closings, and continually lengthening “pauses” as we all gaze at “the curve” and know that this is not going to be over in weeks.  It’ll be months.  And lots of us will probably get sick.  
 
However, this is not the End Times.  It’s between times.
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Recently I've had several dream images of being in between two entities – maybe two spaces, or two times, or energies, or two people or two choices.   Maybe you can relate.
 
The last of these dreams was vague but powerful – a dream in which I know only that I am in a a place of not-knowing. And I’m there wholeheartedly, completely and strongly at peace.
 
It felt wonderful.
 
In liminal consciousness,  I groggily reached for the notebook under my pillow and began writing: “I’m in a state of knot-knowing….”
 
Then I woke up sharply, suddenly seeing exactly that -  a complex, orderly, impossible knot floating in my imagination– whole and perfect.
 
I hadn’t seen it til I misspelled the word correctly.
 
I’d like to consider that image of the knot, as a a picture of wisdom for this time of relinquishing our fictions of certainty.  A time of not-knowing. 
 
What does a knot do?  It can tie together, it can unite and secure. A knot creates a crafted, connecting bond, and it’s often beautiful. Complicated and balanced. 
It is like a labyrinth. A piece of art. You can get lost in there.
 
In my dream, the experience of wholehearted knot-knowing was an invitation to be squarely centered in this time of in betweenness, in a time of that can feel like tangle and scrum, a time of untethering and disintegration.  The dream says Wait.  Not-knowing has its gifts. 
 
What are the gifts of not-knowing for you?  Especially in these times?  Perhaps the gifts of “nots” could include:
 
Not to fix or correct
Not to over-plan
Not to control
Not to let anxiety be the choice-maker in my decisions
Not to feel I must be heroic
Not to insist on perfection, tidiness, order, and niceness
 
Instead? Perhaps the gifts in the  “knots” of not-knowing are:

Allowing myself to be still and balanced.
Allowing the cycles of crisis to happen and just be in them
Allowing impulses of compassion, creativity, and courage to take the lead
Allowing myself to accept the unknown, to give up my personal agenda
Allowing myself to play, to find joy and connection with people even as I distance myself from them physically.

The image of the knot also invites the willingness to be situated inside the tangle, to be ready to engage with what is, and to relate to others from there.  To let the interplay of attachment and detachment instruct me.
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I invite you to play with not-knowing this month.  I have tied a knotted string around my wrist, right here next to my watch.  The time of knot-knowing is a pause in the flow of time as we know it.  As potter and poet M.C. Richards writes, “Trust and not know, simultuaneously."

One of the most important things we can do in this strange season is to tend our dreams.  They connect our reactionary ego-selves with our deep wisdom – for ourselves, for others we know, and for the human species.   
 
You can start by watching my series of videos about dreamwork.  See below for link and details.  Share liberally!

Also - I would value any dreams you share about living in these times.   Please send them to me at laura@firebynight.net with your name, a note about your situation if you wish, and permission to share anonymously if you are willing.
 
Thank you and deep dreams blessings,
 
Laura
​​
 All in-person Fire by Night events are paused indefinitely – the groups, the Sunday gatherings,
even 1:1 meetings for now.  
Same thing with the Nashville Jung Circle and the Nashville Public Library. Nothing is on our meeting calendars at this time.
 
HOWEVER
This is a powerful time for dreamwork.
Here are three invitations

 Watch my online videos here;
 https://www.facebook.com/laurahuffhileman/videos/10216514069383778/
 If you are new to dreamwork or need a refresher, I’m teaching my little book “A Field Guide to Dreaming.”  Download the book for free on my homepage at www.firebynight.net.   I’m leading you through the basics of dreamwork practice, including demos for ways to work, play, and pray with your dreams.   FInd it at https://www.facebook.com/laurahuffhileman/videos/10216514069383778/
Pass it on!
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  1. can't make the numbers do right, so, whatever.  Lots of not-knowing with the tech!)
  2. Email me to set up a 1:1 dreamwork session.  I am happy to hear your dream and help you explore its energies for wholeness, holiness, and healing.   (Plague Special: $75/hour through April.)

  3. Join a Zoom dream group!  We can get together online for a similar experience: this works!  4-6 people per group.  ($150 for 6 sessions).
Email me at laura@firebynight.net for group or personal dreamwork.
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Make  a Quipu: 
Maybe you have LOTS of time.   In that case, you might want to make a Quipu.  What’s a quipu?  Briefly, it’s an ancient Inca system of creating knots to record stories – anything from number-centered stories about trade and population to stories about the lives of people and the history of the culture.  Take a look below, then use string, yarn, or threads to create your own quipu-like storyline about dreamlife and waking life.  (I wish I’d taken a picture of the one I made: it was a total mess but remember, the doing of art is the point.)
 
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931972-600-we-thought-the-incas-couldnt-write-

these-knots-change-everything/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPyz1kCbOw
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January 2020

1/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Dear Dreamers,
How many 2020 ocular jokes have you heard already?   In the following paragraphs I will torture the metaphor just a bit more, but first, in a rare moment of total literalism, I want to share some 20/20 bliss:   this month I will have cataracts removed in both eyes and corrective lenses implanted (they DO that!) and I will open my eyes in the mornings with near-perfect vision.  ​
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This hasn’t happened since I was 8 years old.   It’s hard to express how happy this makes me.  Only recently have I realized the limiting effects of serious myopia compounded with the gradual cloudiness of cataracts plus floaters and those dizzying bifocals.   I quit driving at night because I couldn’t see and headlights blinded me.  So I stay at home a lot.  Since I can’t see big things from a distance -  things like road signs, powerpoints and humans I should recognize, I unconsciously developed adaptive strategies to get by (driving only familiar roads, listening better, and identifying people by context, gait, and voice).  Since I can’t see little things like small print, sheet music, and crumbs on the carpet, I quit reading the small print, took up percussion, and vacuum barefoot if at all.  Really, I’m amazed by the limitations I’ve been accommodating.  And I can’t wait to “see” what happens to those limitations once I can actually see better.
 
Meanwhile, of course, I hear a restless dream group ready to jump in with projections about my waking life "dream" of 20/20 vision in January.   Yes – you can “do dreamwork” with a waking life issue – no actual dream required!
Here are some of the voices I imagine in the circle, after the group has dreamed the "dream” of my limited sight issues and corrective surgery in January:
 
  •  I remember Janus, the Greek god of the new year, who sees both backwards and forwards into time.   In my dream, I wonder what I need to remember about my past and my future, and how they connect to my present moment.
 
  • In my dream, I want to include both my personal and collective past and future. Globally and locally, it’s a critical time, and the year 2020 carries so much significance for collective issues: politics, climate, refugees, environment, peacemaking…I need to see clearly to make good choices.  I need to see with moral, compassionate, spiritual insight because my words and actions will have consequences. 
 
  • In my dream 20/20 makes me think about accurate hindsight and foresight.  I wonder how I sometimes obscure my own vision through false perceptions, projections, old stories, old patterns, etc.  
 
  • Janus is also the guardian of change, transitions, beginnings, and gateways.  So in my dream I feel that having 20/20 vision in the new year -  clear perception and insight - is necessary for beginning new projects and relationships.
 
  • In my dream, getting 20/20 vision right now in this new year is about the emphatic importance of integrating waking life and dreamlife vision.  Seeing in the dark.  Being able to bring the wisdom of dreams into waking life for myself and others.
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Thanks everyone!  My main Aha was about the ways I am likely to obscure my new perceptions with worn out assumptions and projections.   Given a chance to see anew, I don’t want to limit myself with my old adaptive patterns! What else is there to see?  In a person, an institution, a situation, a dream?  
And also yes – it matters what I do and say in these times of high stakes, hot tempers, and elusive truth.
 
What am I going to do about it?  Let’s start with opportunities for Jungian oriented dreamwork. Two free classes are coming up this month.  Details below. If you’re new to dreamwork, I hope to see you there!   

And consider joining a dream group: we begin the first week of February. 

If you’ve worked with me before, I’m starting Fourth Sunday meetings – please come join me in February 23 from 1:00-5:00.  More about that in the February newsletter. 
 
All the best to each of you for the new year…the new decade…Epiphany…and January’s new chances.
 
Deep dreams,
 
Laura

Dreamwork Tip:

In my letter above, I used my vision issues as a model.   Tip: Remember, you can do “dreamwork” without a dream.  Anything that seems to carry significance for you in waking life can be explored using the same metaphorical processing skills we hone in dreamwork. ​
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 You can use a situation, an arresting image from a movie or art piece, an interaction, a song lyric – anything that touches your heart or soul or piques your curiosity can be explored as an energy or  “part of you” that is asking for your attention.
Try it with the image above, or any other that moves you.

 

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September/October 2019

9/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Main idea:  Shadow work for October Mask.  Survival Kit
1.  Horrror movies...I dont' do them but politics and contiual specer of Face (fill it in with hhwoever you're blame) is 
- 2016 dream group
1.5 dream.  
2. Tiem do do our shadow work, and soon: survival kit

3. first. Assumptioins.  Jeremy.  Maybe some Rico. 

4. then the work.  Rico?  The flip.  But also Taylor, th epromise.

5. Do/dont' .   Dont' mask.

6 Share ... iI wonder... BELONGING  Maybe some joh ondonohu;oeiteu

7 my other trump dreams.  Scar. 

Waking up grumpy lately.  Nothings exactly wrong,here in my tidy little life,  but there is so much out of tune, out of joint:  there is no more sense of some sort of safe apartness that insulates.  It's hot, October 4 and the coolest is .... but I can't complain because my country contributed more than anyone else, adn my country covered up the evidence that we needed to act s30 years ago, and my country is too busy following the insane dsXXX of its  XXX to do anything outside of itself to pass any real legistlation that helps.  We're turnign around EPA and stalling on gun contro and seriuosly doing adn not-doing anything we can to avoid and destoy human progress.  

In this it's easy to pick the prime targets and let loose a rant. 

But what we know is that all we can do about whoever seems most blaemworthy is to take a deep breath and start with the shadow work.
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Tips and Titles for Dreamwork and Dreamplay
Tip: Sleep-train yourself. 8 hours. No kidding.
​
Title: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
To start or deepen your dreamwork, begin at the beginning: sleep. Just stop and go to sleep! Make it a priority to get 7-8 hours a night, and do that by going to bed and getting up on a regular schedule. I know - this seems so boring! Especially for you dream junkies who want tips for flying, problem solving, and steamy lucid-dream romances. But listen: not only will you dream better, you’ll live longer (like 8 years). If I can do it so can you: I’m up to 7.5 hours of “sleep opportunity” every night – in bed, lights out at 10:30. Working towards 10:00. It’s a stretch, but the results are every bit what he promises (read the book).
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And one tip for dream tending:
Tip: Make a dream twig: Pick up a twig from the ground. Meditating on your dream image, wrap the twig in string or yarn in a color that seems appropriate to you. Place it in easy view to keep your dream image in mind. Whether or not you understand a powerful dream image, you need to translate its energy into concrete expression through some small ritual. Any little act that connects your feeling about the dream into a physical gesture is enough.
 
Title: Inner Work This book by Robert Johnson - sage, analyst, and friend of your heart - is one of the best Jungian oriented introductions to dreamwork ever. Lots of stories to illustrate his accessible and exciting presentation of Jungian dream theory. Written to stay with you and change your life. If you’ve already read it, read it again: I promise there’s always more with Robert Johnson.

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