Big Dreams, Little Dreams

In the dreamworld of the United States of America we have in our midst one of the biggest of the “Big Dreams” which is still waiting to be integrated into the personal and collective psyche. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Big Dreams & Little Dreams I am in a courtyard of a building showing a series of mandala sketches to a group of wise judges. They look sad and concerned. Around me men are stomping about in huge army boots acting macho, while the women are all teetering around in spiked heels that look like the drawing from the movie poster ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’ I hear the voice of the chief wise judge pronounce the verdict: “A catastrophic failure of the feeling function.” [Rebecca, dream, 2022] What did this dream mean? "A man dreams of the travels of his totemic ancestor, but the dream is not his — it belongs to the land, the clan, the Dreaming." — Strehlow, (1971), Songs of Central Australia Among the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, dreams are not merely private wanderings of the night, dreams are shared communally, spoken aloud at dawn, interpreted by kin, woven into the stories and decisions of the group. Dreams for them are not personal property; they are spiritual instructions for the living fabric of the community. When danger looms, they look to their wise ones for a “big dream” that will guide them through. This ancient view finds resonance in the work of C.G. Jung, who recognized that many dreams transcend the personal psyche and bear archetypal significance for both the individual and the collective. Or, to put it another way, each personal dream grows out from the same living ground of archetypal images from which the culture arises and so can be read as an individual expression of the collective reality.  Jung writes: “As individuals we are not completely unique but are like all other humans. Hence a dream with a collective meaning is valid in the first place for the dreamer, but it expresses at the same time the fact that this momentary problem is also the problem of other people… every individual problem is somehow connected with the problems of the age, so that practically every subjective difficulty has to be viewed from the standpoint of the human situation as a whole.” — C.G. Jung, “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10 My Little/Big Dream Returning to my dream about the wise judges, this was certainly a dream about polarities, about energetic splitting, in this case along gender lines. My mandala sketches are my personal attempt to bring the disparate energies into relationship with each other. The mandala, according to Jung, is the psyche’s tool for integration, hence its ubiquitous presence in sacred iconography. The dream is telling me that I am failing somewhere in my effort to integrate polarities, but the reference to the popular film and the army boots – a collective activity – suggests that my personal struggle also belongs to society as a whole; that we are all failing at properly bringing the feeling function into our courtyard of activity; the “court” here having the double meaning of a potential place of flirtation or courtship, but also a court of judgment. A good friend, the Jungian psychologist George Viney, has told me several times how deeply moved he was by this dream of mine, and how it brought into sharp focus one of the deep crisis of our times. Our dreams have this capacity to reflect back to others certain issues that belong to all of us collectively. In the dreamworld of the United States of America we have in our midst one of the biggest of the “Big Dreams” which is still waiting to be integrated into the personal and collective psyche. John G. Neihardt was a poet and writer with a deep interest in Native American spirituality and history. In 1930, while working on an epic poem about the American frontier called A Cycle of the West, he traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, seeking Lakota perspectives and there he was introduced to Black Elk, an 67-year-old Oglala Lakota holy man who had been present at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) and the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890). With a poet’s sensitivity, Neihardt rendered Black Elk’s oral recounting into literary English and published a book that would have a profound impact on American spiritual and environmental movements, Black Elk Speaks. "I saw myself on the central mountain of the world, the highest place. And round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.  I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father, and I saw that it was holy." Joseph Campbell was particularly moved by Black Elk’s ability to see the universal shining through the personal: “Black Elk says, ‘And the sacred central mountain was Harney Peak in South Dakota - But the central mountain is everywhere.’ Now that is a real mythological realization. It distinguishes between the local cult image, Harney Peak, and its connotation as the center of the world... The center of the world is the axis mundi, the central point, the pole around which all revolves.”    [Campbell, The Power of Myth] This distinction is crucial for work with our own dreams: Some dream messages will be personal and local and apply with great specificity to us with our unique experiences and background. But many of the dream images will be multivalent, that is they will have multiple meanings, some of which speak to the wider culture. The two dangers of such images is 1) that of inflation, where - for instance - we dream of ascending to a throne and believe that we ought to become kings, when the personal message is simply to recognize our sovereignty over ourselves; 2) assuming that we are all alone in our struggles and that our images are not relevant to anyone but ourselves. Black Elk and John G. Niehardt, 1941 Tree of Life Dreams Some “Big Dreams” are outside of localized time and may require generations to bring them forth, such as Black Elk’s flowering tree. The very first dream I recorded for myself, at age 15, was a dream of the tree of life. The ground underneath me begins to shake and I hear a low rumble. A crack slices its way across the dark valley toward me and then with a thunderclap the ground splits open and rising out of the depths comes a tree. I do it in injustice to call it merely a tree. It is The Tree - tall, gnarled, ancient, without leaf or bark and yet deeply alive… This image has haunted me my entire life and I have made it a point to study the mythological stories about the axis mundi. I recognize that I am participating in this Big Dream in my own small way and attempting to bring forth in my own life a few leaves that can be “for the healing of the nations” – as is written in my own spiritual tradition’s holy book. ———————————————————————————- Read more about Black Elk’s vision: https://www.welcomehome.org/prophecy/BlackElk.html The message for you, dear reader, is this: Do not ever dismiss your own dreams as being insignificant. They will always carry some message from your deeper, wiser self to your waking consciousness, and they may also partake of aspects of “Big Dreams” that are relevant to your family, your community, your nation, your planet. You are intimately connected to the center and whatever you nurture and allow to bloom from your center, blesses all. Journal Prompt: Listening for the Collective Dream Reflect on a dream you’ve had that felt unusually significant or had images that feel archetypal, like someone out of a fairy tale or superhero movie. What personal issue does this dream speak to in your life right now? What might this dream be saying on behalf of others—your family, your community, your culture, or even the Earth? If this dream were a leaf on the world tree, what might it be showing about the condition of the whole tree? Take your time. Listen with reverence. You may want to write your dream out again, this time imagining what it might mean not only for you, but as a sign of the times. Ritual: Bringing Your Dream to the Tree This ritual is designed to honor a “big dream” and place it symbolically back into the larger world it came from. You’ll need: A tree near your home A small piece of biodegradable paper A natural offering (a stone, a flower, a bit of bread or seed) Steps: Visit the Tree: Go to a tree that feels sacred, ancient, or simply welcoming. Approach it with respect. This is the axis of your world for now, your Harney Peak. Write Your Dream: On the small piece of paper, write a few lines about your dream; a description, an image, or what you’ve come to understand from it. Offer It: Place your offering at the base of the tree. Hold your dream in your hands, then bury or press the paper into the soil, saying something like: “May this dream return to the great tree of life. May it bring healing to the root and branch, and to all who breathe beneath its canopy. May I bring forth my own fruit in its season.” Sit in Silence: Listen. Not for an answer, but for a presence. Let the tree remind you that you are not alone. Give Thanks: When you are ready, thank the tree and the unseen world. If a leaf has fallen from the tree during your ritual, accept it as a gift, and return to life renewed. Have a dream that you want to decipher? I am offering a free 30-minute Dream Dialogue to anyone who wants one this summer! Let your dreams start to work for you in “paving the way” to a more meaningful life. FREE DREAM DIALOGUE click here AN IDEA ~ Forward this email to a friend who might like a free Dream Dialogue. Perhaps they’ll see it as the sign they’ve been waiting for! Next Time ~ in honor of the new school year . . . “Dreams & Learning Sacred Wisdom”  CONTACT REBECCA  WorkingWithSoul.com Rebecca Armstrong, 1072 E 700 N, La Porte, United States Powered by Squarespace Unsubscribe