Dreams as Sacred Wisdom

In Jung’s vision, the gods did not disappear but rather changed their address. No longer dwelling on Olympus, they now live as archetypes within us… ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏  CONTACT REBECCA  Dream as Sacred Wisdom Two thousand years ago, in the bustling port cities of the Roman Empire, a collector of dreams sought out sailors, merchants, noblemen, and slaves, asking what they had seen in their dreams and what later came to pass. Artemidorus of Daldis had gathered dream data from sixteen even more ancient sages, absorbing their wisdom before adding his own empirical notes. The result was the Oneirocritica (Interpretation of Dreams), a five-volume encyclopedia of dream omens and correspondences that remained the definitive work on dreams . . . until Freud!   The move from Artemidorus and his fixed correspondences idea of dreams toward the modern movement of psychology, shifted the origination point of dreams from the realm of rambunctious and interfering gods to the interior of the human psyche, to the personal unconscious. A simple comparison should suffice: Artemidorus claimed that if a farmer dreamt of having sex with his mother it was a portent of prosperity, because “the mother is as the earth, nourishing crops, and intercourse signifies the sowing of seed.” In other words: a good harvest was coming. Fast-forward 1,800 years to Sigmund Freud, who took the same image but drew a very different conclusion: incestuous longing, Oedipal guilt, a dark riddle of neurosis. Artemidorus sees a bumper crop; Freud sees a psychological crime scene. Oh, to be a fly on the wall and imagine them debating across the centuries - Artemidorus with his farmer’s optimistic husbandry, Freud shaking his head gravely. One man predicting more wheat, the other more therapy bills! The Gods Move Inward It was C.G. Jung who altered the landscape most profoundly: Where Freud saw the dream as a neurosis emanating from the repressed contents of the personal unconscious, Jung saw dreams as symbolic messages picking up pieces of the collective unconscious before being clothed by the personal unconscious for a specific individual. “The dream,” Jung wrote, “is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul…” In Jung’s vision, the gods have not disappeared but rather changed their address. No longer dwelling on Olympus, they now live as archetypes within us. The divine becomes psychological but retains its sacred numinosity. What follows from this shift? Simply this: the dream must be read differently; not statically, but dynamically. Artemidorus gave us a dictionary of correspondences; Freud gave us a catalog of complexes. But Jung and Campbell invite us to something more daring: to treat each dream as a unique text, a living revelation, an unrepeatable visitation from the depths of the soul. "All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.” - Joseph Campbell The Inner Sacred of My Dream During a period of my life where I was wrestling with some of my lingering issues around being raised Catholic, I had the following dream: I am climbing down a ladder that is just metal rings bolted into the side of a steep stone wall. It seems to be some kind of chamber, or maybe the cavern left over after mineral excavation. It's enormous, silent and eerie.  On my way down I glance over my left shoulder and am shocked to see a life-size crucifix that is also bolted into the stone wall. Hanging from the crucifix is a skeleton wearing the crown of thorns. Seeing this, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and my heart catches in my throat. As I hang there on the ladder shivering, a voice says:  "Every generation must put the flesh back on these bones." This dream brought into focus a number of issues related to my work, but the big takeaway for me was this - that in my continual craving to mine the treasures of the ancestral wisdom - (what else am I doing climbing down into the rock pit mine!) - I risk the danger of losing the humanity, i.e. the flesh and blood, of the spiritual impulse that makes these stories come alive to serve and inspire. The admonition is thus very much directed to me: I am a generation that needs to find new life in the spirit, not just the letter of the ancient myths. ———————————————————————————- [You can read more of my reflections about this dream in my blog.] Pioneers of the New Sacred We live in an era unlike any before. The old dream-books are fascinating, but they cannot suffice. The task now is not to predict harvests or expose repressions but to discover the sacred within the human heart. In this sense, we are pioneers, standing on the frontier of a new sacred geography. Dreams are our scripture, imagination our priesthood, the unconscious our oracle. Each night we receive messages - not from gods who hover above us, but from archetypal energies that stir within us. Last Night I Dreamt Antonio Machado, the Spanish poet, gives us an image most fitting for this new frontier. He writes: Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures… Last night as I slept, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that it was God I had here inside my heart. (excerpt from “Last Night as I was Sleeping” by Antonio Machado, trans. Robert Bly) Here the dream is no omen of fortune, no symptom of repression, but a sacred revelation of the self transformed: Sweetness born from failure, divinity dwelling in the heart: this is the new book we are creating together as a community of Dream Tenders.  ——————————————————————————- My sister, Jennifer Armstrong, has a newsletter called “Honey for the Heart" which is a refreshing change from the bitterness of our current media. You can try it out here: https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferarmstrong9/p/honey-for-your-heart-2a1 Expressive Writing Exercise: Harvesting Honey from Raw Experience James Pennebaker’s research over 25 years shows the healing power that comes from honest, unfiltered “self-expressive” writing. Try this variation to transform some bitter old failures into sweetness. 1.     Choose a dream fragment—especially one tied to a difficult feeling or “old failure.” 2.    Write continuously for 15–20 minutes about the feelings that it activates, without worrying about grammar, style, or coherence. 3.    Structure the writing in four movements:    The Flower: Describe the dream and your feelings without censoring.    The Bees at Work: Explore associations—memories, fears, longings—that swarm around the dream image.    Give it to the Hive: Offer the experience to the greater good of the hive and imagine placing the pollen into one of the tiny hexagonal wax cells of the honeycomb.    The Honey: Reread your entry after a day or two and underline sentences that feel most alive. This is the “sweet honey” your psyche has produced! Golden Bee coin from Ephesus circa 200 B.C.E. Have a dream that you want to explore? I am extending my free 30-minute Dream Dialogue to anyone who wants one. It was so satisfying to engage with dreams over the summer that I’m continuing the offer through the autumn! 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 time for Halloween!) “Things that Go Bump in the Night: Nightmares & How to Handle Them”  CONTACT REBECCA  WorkingWithSoul.com Rebecca Armstrong, 1072 E 700 N, La Porte, United States Powered by Squarespace Unsubscribe