• Category Archives Dreams

  • Now That I’m Here; Was I Really There?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                          Bee Hiving Moon

    The snow has come, as predicted. Heavy since around 2 pm.  April?

    As it falls, so has the night and with the night the quiet.  While on my trip, no matter where I was the rooms were noisy: traffic outside, television leaking from the room next door, the heaters and air conditioners working in agony, basketballs thumping on the court next to my room at the Resident’s Inn.  I have become used to, dependent on the silence here.  It’s absence grates, draws my attention and focus away.

    Of course, there are the noises here, familiar ones that I incorporate.  The train whistles far in the distance.  The occasional great gray owl hoots.  The metal clicking, contracting and expanding as my gas heater responds to changes in the room’s temperature.  But these are gentle noises, not so much intrusive as atmospheric.  At least to me.

    It’s interesting though how, once back in the familiar, the far away can come to seem dreamlike, maybe not real.  Were those great kiva’s built of stone, yet curved into perfect circles?  How could that be?  Are there vast expanses of land filled with catci and other desert adapted plants?  Did I walk through a hole in the earth, past a twilit zone where light from the sun vanished forever?  Did I keep going then, deeper?  Were there those others who gathered to listen intently to their own inner life?  Was it hot there? Did I visit a city where many of the buildings, businesses and homes alike were made of adobe and had fireplaces built into an interior wall?

    Bishop Berkeley, the English idealist, is famous for his dictum, Esse est percipi. That is, to be is to be perceived. Once I’ve stopped seeing something, touching it, smelling it, hearing it, tasting it it’s reality, for me, begins to fade.  In fact, Berkeley would go so far as to say that I have no way of proving Santa Fe exists apart from my mental idea of it.  The same for Chaco Canyon, the Saguaro, the Intensive Journal Workshop.  And he would be right.

    Yet there is, too, David Hume’s equally famous response.  He kicked a table or a door frame and said, “I refute it thus.”

    So, though I can not convince you of the desert’s reality with my words about it, I do expect it to be there the next time I visit the southwest.  That’s how stubborn our minds can be.


    Dreams Travel

  • What Is My Life Reaching For?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

    On the last afternoon of the Intensive Journal Workshop we had an exercise focused on what our life is reaching for.  In the first morning we had defined the current period of our life: in my case the time after Kate’s retirement.  By the last afternoon we had worked ourselves into the next period of our lives.  Since we were newly in this next period, this exercise asked us to feel, below the conscious level, where our lives wanted to go.

    Here is my sense of what my life is reaching for in this next period:

    1. a bountiful, sustainable nutrient dense harvest of fruit and vegetables.

    2. a way to use the Great Wheel website to advance the Great Work through literature, science and political activism.

    3. a third phase (third lifetime) writing portfolio with short story writing credits as a floor for selling novels.

    4. a schedule for translating and commenting on at least several books of the Metamorphoses

    5. still more of a stable, wonderful marriage, regular visits and communication with kids and grandkids and friends.

    6. more mutual travel opportunities with Kate.

    As I work in the inner movement of my life, I can feel a quieting, a confidence that who I am and what I do is enough-no matter the outcomes.  This feeling has grown stronger since Kate retired and continues to strengthen with time.

    In my third lifetime I will be calm, steady, productive.

     


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Family Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Translating Metamorphoses Travel Writing

  • Gee. That’s Interesting. Watch Out.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                      Hare Moon

    Denver.  Realized I never got back here on the big dream I had.  After working with it in a couple of different ways, here’s the nub of what I got:  In retreating, I advance.  The dream called me to consider the time just before my decision to re-enter the ministry with the UU’s.

    It was, in many ways, a poor decision and, as I considered it over the retreat, probably caused me to lose almost a decade by turning my focus away from my real work:  writing, gardening, politics, home life.

    It shared a characteristic with my original decision to go into the ministry, also a poor one.  My fascination with the sophisticated and intricate intellectual disciplines of first the Christian church (especially biblical study) and then the emerging movement of liberal religion in the United States entranced me.  I confused my very real intellectual excitement with vocation.  The ministry was not the vocation; the intellectual engagement was.

    What this means is that I have to guard myself well when I get intellectually stimulated.  A tendency, no, my pattern, is to seek out institutions that utilize that discipline and try to join them.

    Instead, when I retreat from institutional involvement, I advance because I do my own work, on my own time and in my own way. Thus, leaving the ministry let me begin this focus on writing.  Then, leaving Unity and giving up the UU ministry except for the occasional preaching assignment let me get started again on the writing.

    But, I picked up the Sierra Club and the MIA. Why?  Because both areas fully engage my intellectual interest.  My passion for the Great Work on the one hand and beauty on the other pushed me into the institutional involvement.

    Of course, I’m not saying these were wasted years.  Any of them.  I did real work, engaged difficult political, religious, organizational and educational challenges.  However, what I am saying is that following my intellect toward institutional engagement has been a mistake.  One I no longer have to continue.

    Now, in the third phase, I have fully retreated to home and study, to self-directed work.  So, I have advanced at last.

    This is why, in part at least, this retreat basically affirmed what I’m already doing.  It has taken me 40 plus years to learn this lesson.  About time, I’d say.

    The third phase, then, will be the first period of my life when I will engage life fully as I am.  This retreat marked the end of a transition period that began roughly when Kate retired and which is now over.

    Now we can live this new life, Kate as earth mother and quilter, me as, well, I don’t have the image yet, but I’m searching for it.


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Third Phase

  • Excited

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                               Hare Moon

    The turning of the great wheel to the season of birth and rebirth and the celebration of this golden moment seem now poised to reinforce some new work, at least a major insight.

    Today begins the life integration workshop, the last of the three, and the one which ties together the inner and the outer with an eye toward the future.  This morning I had a big dream.  Its content was driven by work I’ve been doing over the last four days.

    (Jacob Wrestling the Angel, Marc Chagall)

    That means I’ll have a meaty piece of inner life to take into the integrative work of the next two days.  It has something to do with my spiritual life and seems to suggest working in and through the time period when I decided to return the ministry in the late 1990’s.

    It’s exciting to me to have such relevant and significant material to work with in the concluding hours of this intensive journal workshop.


    Art and Culture Dreams Faith and Spirituality Humanities

  • Oh. Yeah. I Remember That.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                    Valentine Moon

    A few days back I wrote this post.  In it I admitted my yearning for the mystical, the mysterious, the contemplative; but, the metaphysical superstructure for them had been stripped away. (by me.  and for the most part happily so.)  Those impulses, partly stirred by the long, cold winter and its isolation, welcome, but draining at the same time, have been niggling away at me for some time.

    (Progoff)

    Then, I remembered.  I know how to get those elements back in my life.  The Ira Progoff Journal Workshops. I’ve done two of these, the three part series.  I’ve included some introductory material on them below.  Progoff was a Jungian analyst who worked over his career to develop a means of self-work rooted in Jungian method.  His efforts produced the Intensive Journal ,Process Meditation and these workshops.

    Here’s what I like.  The work is yours, for you and reviewed by no one.  It’s a method, which I’ve used off and on, for many years.  As some of you know, I was in Jungian analysis, also off and on, for many years.  That means the worldview behind Progoff’s method reaches into deep work I’ve already done.

    There are no guru’s here, no dogma, no path other than the ancientrail of self-wisdom. There’s no follow up, no encouraging you to do more.  Yet, there is a deep passion for the work individuals do on their own through Progoff’s methods.  It fits me and I’m glad I remembered it.

    In fact, I’m headed off to Tucson, Arizona in late March for a six-day retreat to do all three workshops.  There will be, too, side trips to Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco Canyon and grandaughter Ruth just before her 8th–no longer required to ride in the car seat–birthday.  Ah.

     

    Introduction to the Intensive Journal Program

    Experience a life-changing process to give your life greater direction, vitality and purpose. Developed in 1966 by Dr. Ira Progoff, our nationally-recognized program has helped 175,000 people lead more fulfilling lives. Discover resources and possibilities you could not have imagined. The Intensive Journal method can be your honest friend in the creative process of shaping your life.

    Article 1: The Intensive Journal Process: A Path to Self-Discovery
    by Kathy Juline
    Article 2: The Write to Fulfilling Life: An Interview with Ira Progoff
    by The New Times
    Article 3: The Way of the Journal

    How can you benefit from this method?

    • By using an integrated system of writing exercises. It’s much more than a diary.
    • Gain insights about many different areas including personal relationships, career and special interests, body and health, dreams and imagery, and meaning in life.
    • Apply fresh approaches to access your creative capacities and untapped possibilities.
    • Work in total privacy. Neither you nor anyone else will judge or analyze your life.
    • Use a method that is without dogma. The Intensive Journal method is a process that can be used by people of all different backgrounds, interests and faiths.
    • Attend workshops at leading centers for reasonable prices.
    • You do not have to like to write or be a good writer. You are the only one who reads what you write.

    Part I: Life Context (LC) Workshop: Gaining a Perspective on Life

    Develop an inner perspective on the movement of your unfolding life process. Gain greater awareness of the continuity and direction of your life as it reveals what it is trying to become.

    Generate insights about major areas of your life, including personal relationships, career and special interests, and body and health. The dialogue process provides a unique way to gain feedback and momentum as you deepen your understanding of these areas.

    Part II: Depth Contact (DC) Workshop: Symbolic Images and Meaning in Life

    Deepen your experience as you focus on the exercises in the second half of the Intensive Journal workbook. Learn how to use Progoff’s unique non-analytical method to draw forth messages from you inner symbolic experiences which can provide important leads in your unfolding life process.

    Using Process Meditation™ techniques provides specific ways of developing your spiritual process in the context of your entire life. Explore experiences of connection that had significant meaning, gain insights about your ultimate concerns, and explore major themes in your life. Progoff’s advanced meditation techniques provide an avenue for greater reflection.

    Part III: Life Integration (LI) Workshop/Journal Feedback™ Process: Integrating the Life Process

    Progoff said the Journal Feedback process is the “essence of the Intensive Journal method and one of my main contributions.”

    Experience the cumulative dynamic process created from working with material in one workbook section and how it can lead to entries in other related areas. This progressively deepening process generates an inner momentum and energy as you apply Progoff’s non-analytical Journal Feedback techniques. Your workbook becomes an active instrument as you approach situations from different perspectives.

    New awareness and growth become possible as you realize connections between diverse areas. You are drawing your unfolding life process forward as you move toward greater wholeness and integration.


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Health Humanities Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase Writing

  • At Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter Solstice                                                           Winter Moon

    The long night continues.  Kate and I had our bonfire together.  All three dogs came out and sat with us for a bit before taking off for doggy business barking at something deeper in the woods.

    (Lorraine_Williams_Rainbow_Serpent_Dreaming)

    The silence has fallen and will stay with us until morning.  Then the sunlight will wake up the birds and the newspaper deliverers and those who work on Sunday mornings.  And the long trek into darkness begun last summer in June trades places with an equally long ancientrail of light.

    These are not opposites, not poles of a dialectic, but two sides of the world, entered through dawn and twilight, and with us every single day of our lives.  I’m still intrigued with the notion that the darkness may be our brains normal state and all this waking activity is clever misdirection by the dreamtime.

    This will bear more thought and reading.

    I do know this.  The ancientrail of darkness is katabatic, like Persephone’s or Orpheus’s or Odysseus’s.  That is, it is the trail which leads to the underworld, the dark places within us and that it has always drawn me more than the journey toward the light.

    Let me say exactly what I mean here.  This is a bodily sensation, a sense of familiarity and comfort, a feeling of spirituality and it correlates to the increasing darkness.  It becomes most intimate this night, a night that is different from all other nights. Yet, the same.

    It’s not that I reject the light or feel oppressed by it.  The garden, the growth of plants and the chance to wander outside easily has its joys, certainly.  It’s just that for me the darkness is richer, takes me further.

    Does this have any correlation to my depressive or melancholic or dysthymic states? Maybe.  Does that mean it’s bad in some way or counter productive?  I don’t think so.  It seems to me that this is descriptive, not prescriptive or proscriptive.

    My guess is that our bodies and our early life experiences give us a tendency to lean more toward the dark or the light.  My guess further is that since waking activity has a natural though not necessary linkage with the day, in particular work and school, that we privilege those who tend more toward the light, perhaps even suppressing in ourselves a tendency to favor the dark.

    At any rate I’m of the dark persuasion and this is the moment in the year when I feel, as Tom Crane suggested, at home.

     

     


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Holidays Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • The Unreliable Narrator–You

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                           Thanksgiving Moon

    Beginning to play with the post-modern idea of the unreliable narrator, a staple of certain literary fictions and now understandable to me.  The most unreliable narrator of all may be our Self, or, rather, the work done by our mind to create a self.  As we attempt to weave a coherent notion of our story–how this, what, let’s use Heidegger’s idea of dasein–this dasein came to be here now, we impose on our memories a logic, a sequence, a string of cause and effects that explain, as best the dasein can, how it came to be in this moment.

    There are many problems here, but the one I want to focus on is the fungibility of our memory and what Kant called the a prioris of thinking:  space and time.  Our memory changes as we access it, as we put it into new contexts, as our understanding grows and that changes happens to a quanta that was shaped by the context in which we first had the experience, the understandings we had then and by the fog created by our senses, which, by design and necessity, edit our lived experience so we can utilize it.

    On top of this string of memory altering inevitables are the a priori categories of space and time, mental constructs which our reason uses to make what William James called “the blooming, buzzing confusion” worthwhile to us.  We see objects in four dimensions, in a space time matrix that changes as we perceive an object, event, feeling, moment, idea.

    (Henry and William James)

    What this means to us is that our Self has the demanding and ultimately futile task of seeing the plot in our life, its why and its meaning.  Why futile?  Because we change as we touch it, not Heisenberg, no, more than that we change more than the spin or the location of memory when we touch it, we change its content and thereby change our narrative, which, as a result changes our Self.  This is always happening, every moment of every day of our lives.   Modernist literature like Ulysses and Remembrance of Times Past was an attempt to give to us in written form this mutability at the heart of the internal project that is us.

    As I said a few posts back, this is descriptive, not proscriptive and certainly not prescriptive, and it does contain one kernel of great importance. Since we actively construct our own narrative from the experiences we can recall, we can enter into that stream and actively construct our future.  In fact, unless we enter that stream with purpose, Heraclitus’s famous river, it will carry us along without our intention.

    So, buckle up, strap on that orange life-preserver and take your seat in the raft that is your Self navigating the flood of your life.  It’s a thrilling ride no matter where it takes you.

     

     


    Dreams Faith and Spirituality Feelings Memories MOOCS Myth and Story Poetry Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • Sleep Drunk

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                Honey Moon

    Those moments after you awake, if you’re like me, have a certain sluggishness as the body shifts from the world of dreams to the world of waking attention.  Sleep drunk, I’ve heard it called which, if a little dramatic, is close.  My eyelids feel heavy, limbs have a languor but my sense of smell heightens.  Most telling though is a heaviness, a gentle constriction between the temples that warns me that mentation will not be as acute.  This last, more than anything else, is what makes this time, which I’m in right now, set apart from the rest of the day.

    (The God Mercury Waking Paris to Judge the Contest of the Golden Apple by Cranach, Lucas (1472-1553) )

     


    Dreams

  • Oneiroi (Dreams)

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                      Moon of the First Harvests

    Dreams last night.  Once again a farm with outbuildings, a farm where I had land, but in this case land I couldn’t access because the owner was a drunk and wouldn’t let anyone on the property.

    (Edward Robert Hughes, Dream Idyll)

    This was outside Fuller, Minnesota where I had gone with two friends.  We couldn’t make it back to the cities so we decided to stay in a hotel.  I’d stayed in the hotel before, but couldn’t recall Fuller.  In the hotel the rooms had beds in alcoves, private baths and when I ordered dinner it was on dirty table clothes in the hallway.  Other guests came and dined, too.

    They spoke of Bill, the poet, who was going to present his work at a local congregation.  I met him.  He seemed like an interesting guy so I offered to go with him.  “No,” he said, “It’s a closed congregation.” Oh, I said.   As if that made sense.  “Lutheran Brotherhood.”  Oh.

    I often go north in my dreams.  Still heading north after all these years.

     


    Dreams

  • Morpheus

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                Moon of the First Harvests

    Today started out busy, but turned slow.  I stayed up last night until almost 1 a.m. finishing a novel I had started only the day before.  Not a usual thing, but it hooked me.  Since I woke up around 7:00 and tried going back to sleep until 8:00 when I gave up and got up, I spent the day with that loggy feeling, not quite there.

    (Thee I invoke, blest power of Oneiroi (Dreams) divine, messengers of future fates, swift wings are thine. Great source of oracles to human kind, when stealing soft, and whispering to the mind, through sleep’s sweet silence, and the gloom of night, thy power awakes the intellectual sight; to silent souls the will of heaven relates, and silently reveals their future fates.  Orphic Hymn 86 to the Oneiroi)

    My nap helped a bit but it was the usual length so I still had sleep deprivation and after I got up I was still foggy.  So at 5:00 I took another nap.  Better now, and believe I’ll sleep the normal time tonight.

    Having been a poor sleeper, bothered with both insomnia and difficulty getting to sleep, I’ve worked hard to get my sleeping routine into one where I can get adequate rest.  I stopped reading in bed.  That helped a lot.  I read before I go to bed now, though that can present its own problems as last night shows.

    I try to go to bed around the same time every night, usually 11:30 and get up around the same time, usually between 7:30 and 8:00.  Sometimes, like tomorrow I’ll get up at 7:00 because I have spraying to do or because I have an early skype time with my brother and sister, early for me, that is, but otherwise I’m pretty regular.

     

     

     


    Dreams