Conflict – Do you dream of danger? Natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and flooding? Do you dream of war, of robbery, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply? Conflict is inevitable. It is necessary – birth pangs seem terrifying and sex can look like war. In dreams we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.
YouareaForceField. You are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. This comes byvirtue of being born, assuming your physical incarnational state. Others may tell you to standback, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universetriggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.
CHALLENGE – Force stirs up resistance. Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth inour determination and direction. We clash and crash. Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did Ido that?” Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we are immobilized. The challenge is toassume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction. Get out your dream Journal. Consult your dream buddies.
DANGER – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKShe wins every fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will betoppled and lose your heart’s desire.
OPPORTUNITY– Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower. Otherpeople are force fields, too. If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the samedirection, we will be invincible.
Models & Mentors – “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg
“Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James
“Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet”
– Michael Douglas
“If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” – Lao Tzu
Loss & Suffering – Sometimes dreams are an escape from the unbelievable horror of existence. In that case, they are our art form, and we must curate them to prepare a bearable future.
Ugly World – every religion and philosophical system has to account for the misery we see around us -storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration an animal predation. Do your dream explore inner and outer pain? How much is fear, how much is anxiety, how much is collective unconscious and shared human history? We fear everyone CAN’T be happy at once. How do we educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma? Let’s get out our Dream Journals.
What’s the happiest dream you’ve ever had? Why? – How could it even more satisfyingly responsive to your present crisis?
Lucid Dreaming – Is dreaming when you’re aware of it. it’s trying to guide the dream and use it to replenish your spirit. Your psyche is accessible in dreams to those you choose to include. What spirits do you invite?
Pain is Joy’s Shadow – Joy is an excess of feeling and so is suffering. When we long to “numb out”, we numb everything. If we live our lives in fear, we avoid the potential excitement of holding breath on the edge of discovery.
Challenge – What would become of us if we allowed ourselves to feel it all? Poets feel they must indulge – artist of all kinds explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. Possible philosophical coping mechanisms can be Buddhist – “It’s all illusion” “Practice taming the wild mind” or religious – “Suffering brings us closer to God in developing compassion for all creation” and “Birth pangs are necessary to bring new life.” Any way we can keep our mind and soul responsive and deepening benefits the whole planet. Cultivate Dream Partners. Share your dreams with them.
Danger – Too much suffering breeds helplessness. Our angel needs to recover from her burns and acquire some new feathers. If we stop even trying to better our human situation we attract predators to such easy prey. Even worse, we become predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without manufacturing more.
Opportunity – Imagination itself comes from discomfort, even misery. We see a need to expand our mental repertoire, to magically increase the very dimensions of thought that seem to imprison us. As a species we have broken through this many times. There must be further epiphanies awaiting. How does this apply to you? Ask your dreams. Open and relax your mind. Keep track of your dreams in your journal – not just actual dreams, but your thought possibilities in reflection. What if you could not fail? Turn to your dream partners for ideas. Who are we really? Who could we become?
Models & Mentors – “You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered”
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”
– A.A. Milne
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer such deep sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them”
– Leo Tolstoy
“What we once loved we can never lose for it becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller
“Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live” – Norman Cousins
CREATIVITY– If your dreams are particularly imaginative and enjoyable, you are probably an artist. You have launched yourself already on the absorbing quest of reinventing the confusing realities that buffet us.
Wekeeptrappingourselvesin themaze but thereisalways awayout. Close your eyes. Breathe. Don’t we all possess inherently the goddess’ power of making Something out of Nothing? Think. Feel. Give yourself permission to explore. Look at the tactile world around you and reach out yourhands. You are the pilot of your own life. Create your own dream.
Artists are immortalized by their own thought and effort. If their productions are intriguingly beautifulthe rest of us are drawn in and our critical senses – our rejection and our fear – are tranquillized whilewe allow the artist to work their magic upon us. Artists aspire to be magicians of the mind and soul.
CHALLENGE – If you create something unforgettable you will never be forgotten. You have thepower to open hearts, minds and brains as yours were first opened, when you looked upon this amazingworld for the first time and tried to understand what you saw.
DANGER– There is possibility here for such overweening pride that you place your own psyche aboveCreation in importance. If you seek worship your own soul will be hardened unto death.
OPPORTUNITY–You will join the gods in creating something really new that the world cannotlive without. The joy of sharing, the rapture of being known, the ecstasy of expression, of beingunderstood, will be yours.
Models & Mentors – “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.”– Albert Einstein
“Creativity can’t get used up. The more you use the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“Creativity is just connecting things.” – Steve Jobs
“There is no innovation, no creativity, without failure.” – Brené Brown
“What’s so fascinating about life is the constant creativity of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra
REGRET – Many anxiety dreams are about regret. When we try to impartially study our dream content, the moods flood in, rocking our precarious stability. Why are people so afraid of lookinginside? Because of Regret, that’s why. The things we’ve already done that we can never change. Seemingly hopeless sorrow builds – now we are helpless, we hate ourselves and we can’t fix anything. We are in for a bad, cold, frigid winter of discontent.
YOU CAN LIGHTEN YOUR OWN LOAD – No one can do it but you. When you serve as prosecutorin your own life – guess what? – that’s not fair. Fundamental Attribution Error is people blamingindividuals for actions that were the result of systems; mass decisions or circumstances over which theyhad no actual control. Look into it, if you want to. (Sometimes we need to.) Or you can just forgive yourself and move on. After all, we’ve got the future to think of.
CHALLENGE–Let’s get out our Dream Journal. What would you change NOW? How doyou WANT to change? Forgive yourself. You were held hostage by fortune (we all were)and you went full-on Stockholm Syndrome and identified with your attackers and tried toplease them. (We all did. It’s called Society.) Now you’re madder at yourself than you areat them. Forgive yourself. We’re starting a new life. One where it’s US who’s in charge.
DANGER– You’re in another part of the forest. Surprise! This wasn’t the plan but here you are. TheDanger is always that you’ll give up. Surrender. Don’t. You can easily see from every fairy tale andhero’s journey you’ve ever studied that now we’re getting to the Good Part. By testing your muscle, youGROW your muscle. If your muscle is never tested, it withers. So let’s go!
OPPORTUNITY–We don’t know everything. Even Jesus demonstrated surprise about the way thingsturned out. Be gentle as a dove, he advised, but wily as a serpent. Serpents can get out of anything. (Aska herpetologist.) And so can you. It’s just a bigger world than we knew – both inner and outer – so getmapping. I guarantee you – IT GETS BETTER.
Models & Mentors – “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t done.”
– Lucille Ball
“There are no regrets in life, only lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
“We have only one life, and the second life begins the moment we realize that fact” – Confucius
“I was designed by my Creator to not only feel pain and love but to become whole inside it. I am a Warrior” –Glennon Doyle
“Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile” – William Cullen Bryant
DREAM CONTENT–RELAX – Take a deep breath as you face the content of your dreams.
YOUHAVEINNERRESOURCES – FOCUS your power by closing your eyes and – relaxing. Are youafraid you might fall asleep? So much the better – we need these dreams to be our map and guide.Dreaming of hot summers, beach, umbrellas, ocean, sand? You are longing for a “getaway” and the verybest and most refreshing vacation is to disappear inside yourself. Let’s learn to “see” with that Third Eye– the Wisdom Eye. Like every effort, it takes not just concentration but practice.
DREAMS OF REAL EVENTS – Is your brain flipping through its memories, disguising them, trying to make sense of them or imagining horrific detours? These are anxiety dreams. You fear that the causality of existence is basically nonsensical and cruel. The cure? Develop a “human flourishing” worldview. Use your models and mentors to investigate the requirements of life enhancement. What about love? When your dreams fear it doesn’t exist, you need to develop loving relationships in your daytime life.
DREAMS OF FICTIONAL EVENTS – Are you trying to process fiction read about and seen (often dystopian). Your shy heart is shocked to its core and your inexperienced brain is trying to make sense of it. But we know much online fiction is a race to the bottom, trying again and again to go over the top.
PRACTICE SELF-CARE – Prioritize your well-being. If you spend four hours a day watching or playing nonsensical vitriolic junk, you should spend equal time on your improvement and self-soothing regimens. Think of it. EQUAL TIME. Obviously you need to start developing self-care regimens that are way more pleasurable than passive viewing.
CHALLENGE–Check your immortal soul. Don’t think you have one? No wonder you’re scared, if you reduce yourself to chaff like yesterday’s lawn clippings! You are certainly aware that all of human history has been devoted to exploring whether we have souls, where they come from and what happens to them. Probably you like – everyone– is turned off by the idea that in order to have a soul you need to follow some religion’s requirements, laid down for you by its boss.
But seriously, think about it. If part of yourself is immortal, with supernatural capabilities, doesn’t it, by definition, exist OUTSIDE all that stuff? Who put them in charge? If your immortal soul is the freest part of you, set it free indeed. Use your imagination to imagine THOSE possibilities, instead of scaring yourself almost to death. And then – relax.
Insideyourself is you find everyone you have ever known, everyone you have ever loved, is there. Ifthat’s a tough one – and I know it’s making you gulp – here’s one tougher – everyone you ever WILLknow is in there too. You can learn to reach forwards as well as back. No, it doesn’t come immediately. But the exciting news is – you have all the time in the world.
DANGER – You fear you will lose yourself. The worst fear is that you have no self to lose. You areyoung at this, and fresh, naïve and simple. A beginner. Accept that power. It is a wonderful thing whenthe baby begins to see. But what about Evil? Isn’t that a thing? If I have Everything inside, then don’t Ihave Evil, too. And the mystic answer is Yes. But it can’t hurt you if you don the armor. The armor isLove, and I recommend you begin to study the subject. It isn’t strong enough yet, but you can strengthenit by Will. You must educate your will.
OPPORTUNITY – You realize now that our dreams are forcing a choice – it really comes down to thatone thing – you must choose between Evil or Love. Evil promises it will “get the job done”, it will offer“special” unique opportunities, single you out for goodies, bring you hostages and slaves. But here’s theFact about Evil – it breaks all its promises because IT BREAKS YOU. Love promises Eternity and Joy,and it takes effort. It takes discernment, knowledge, commitment and growth. Love asks you to enter aprocess. Evil says you can just “take”, or even lie inert and be showered with benefits. One choice makes you beautiful, an athlete of the Soul, the other makes you hideously ugly, a blot that sucks in lightand depresses all who look at it. Will you make mistakes? Inevitably. But we have been assured by the greatest minds of all time that we cannot lose. So, relax.
Models & Mentors: “Everything you want is on the other side of fear” – Jack Canfield
“What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you become” – Buddha
“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a world where exhaustion is a status symbol” – Brene Brown
‘You are the silent watcher of your thoughts. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the joy beneath the love and pain” – Eckhart Tolle
Do You Fear Sleep? Afraid of nightmares? Do you wake up gasping and trying to forget what you’ve just experienced?
Nightmares mean you’re paying attention. Life is scary, but we need to grow, and growth requires we learn to cultivate risk if we are ever to expand and venture outside our comfort zone.
Challenge – Study risk intelligently. No point being afraid of dragons if dragons are only symbolic. No point being “afraid” of “foreigners” if the man telling us to be afraid has a reputation for befriending people and then fleecing them.
Evaluatng Risk :
Don’t rely on rumor and innuendo
Dangers provably Real
Dangers Historically verified by data: “How likely is injury?”
Assemble Risk avoidance strategies that have performed well for others in your situation.
What exactly is your situation? Quantify.
Know who your friends are
Be prepared to alter strategy to maximize success and to learn from mistakes
Opportunity – You get to find out who your friends are. Friends want the best for you, but the relationship must be reciprocal. You have each other’s backs. Know the difference between a Team and a Gang. Gangs work to suck power from individual members and concentrate it in one individual. Teams work for the success of all. Coach can’t win if the team doesn’t win.
Surrender is The Worst Alternative – Be alert to the danger of trauma bonding in which we try to pacify attackers by taking their side. Doesn’t work.
Models & Mentors – “Extreme Fear can neither fight nor fly.” – William Shakespeare
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear”
– Mark Twain
“If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will return stronger” – Deepak Chopra
“We’re more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” – Seneca
Meditation –
Haiku: Risk
Regret Fear of Fearlessness: Launch Wise adventures
DO YOU DREAM OF MAGIC? Magical people, animals, happenings? It is the purview of dreams to manifest supernatural happenings. The Goddess represents the power – the force – to get things doneand to bend unfriendly circumstances to your desire and will. If dreams are wishes, this is understandable, because isn’t that what we all want – a little magic?
BEHIND THE WISH, LIES THE FEAR – Do we long to be the 8-ball, to control the 8-ball or to be under the 8-ball? Don’t we fear all these at the same time?
RECOGNIZE YOUR POWER – You are iconic. The Goddess suggests your yearning to discover theinherent magic that is especially, irreplaceably You. You have a power no one else has, incorporated inyour being, your possibilities, your desires and your memories. This takes a lifetime to accept becausewe all fantasize being Someone Else and experiencing existence through the armor of Having only an Outside instead of just the very vulnerable Inside in which we all feel imprisoned. Your dreams bring allthese passions together as psychic poetry, elucidating what you think you want, what you hope you wantand what you are afraid you want. The ultimate magic is to seize conscious control of this potent powersource. Invite the Dream.
CHALLENGE OF THE DREAM – The challenge is to truly connect with others, reveal our worldInside, and avoid blasting their apparently impenetrable Outside with our terror, our longing and ourfear.
DREAM DANGERS– We must never take hostages and we must never become a hostage. Freedom is afine line to walk. If we wish to reach out, we must treat others with respect and claim like respect forourselves. Accept your dreams as “experiments”; do not fear them but learn to look at them, impartially, as messages from the Other World. Allow them to take you where you need to go.
DREAM OPPORTUNITIES–There will be stumbles and terrors aplenty, also successes that LOOKlike stumbles and terrors, but which we only realize on reflection were real leaps forward. This is whywe must carefully assess our daily efforts without being harsh with ourselves. You are your own MostBeloved Child. Speak gently to yourself as you would to a most treasured child.. It is not selfish tocommit to this belief, it is simply placing the oxygen mask over your own face FIRST so that you canadminister this life-saving force to others. Find someone with whom you can share your dream journey,without fear or judgment. This connection will teach us everything we need to know about how toconnect with others. Explore Models and Mentors – this is how we learn.
“I awoke to find the rest of the world still asleep” – Leonardo Da Vinci
“Marvelous the dream and great the terror: we must treasure the dream no matter the terror.” – Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh
ARE YOU LOST? Do you dream of nature, forests, trees, overgrowth? As you you’re your eyes and fall into the moss, does the forest speak to you, become your friend?
DEFEATING NIGHTMARES – In your terror, the forest is a hostile place, determined to punish you for invading its magnificence. Fear is a reaction, but courage is a choice. Speak to the forest, apologize for the cruelties of the past, and promise to listen to its song in future.
JOURNALING – You need to find yourself. Your own map is the only way through. These dreamspulse with an energy that is gathering within you as you ready yourself for some great task.
YOUAREAPOWER– You struggle to find your force. You feel the power and strength of undefinedwishes and the longing to create your place in the world. No guide exists to this wilderness, you willhave to map this forest yourself. Be brave.
CHALLENGE–There are plenty of traps ahead. Do not become discouraged. Accept that the flow ofenergy pulses with your every heartbeat, with your sleep/rest cycle, with the obligations you willinglyseek to smooth your path.
DANGERS – Some of these obligations become too heavy, others seek to deter you from your setcourse. Still others offer false maps that seem to promise the ease of “I don’t have to do this alone.” Weare all alone inside our heads and you – and only you – must be satisfied with the map you create. If youaren’t there’s no fellowship or wealth that can compensate you for that loss. When the forest loves you, you must love it back.
OPPORTUNITIES–We revel in and with our fellow travelers. There could be a soulmate among them– for a time or for a life. Accept the wisdom of others, the wisdom of the path, consult other maps indesigning your own. Be prepared to alter your map – joyously – with each new and fresh discovery. There will be many. Open your Dream Journal. Close your eyes. And draw your future. Salut!
Where we explore our dream together, uncovering meaning and enhancing psychic and spiritual growth.
YOUAREASEEKER– You are self-defining. You are on a quest. You wish to experience to the fullthe nature of having a self. You are becoming alert to the possibilities inherent in your particularmomentary incarnation and you wish to explore them.
DANGERS – The danger of self-regard is that in turning our eyes inward we miss important signalscoming from other people and the world around us. Yet “retreating inward” is a vital path to self-knowledge and growth.
CHALLENGE -The solution to this challenge is to set a Spirituality Schedule to reflect our needs andinterests. Appoint time to be absolutely alone, for meditation and reflection. If you cannot find a room toyourself, a closet will do. You can sit in the meditation position or assume any position that allows youto be comfortable enough to become physically forgetful. Concentrate first on building a life that allowsboth inner and outer growth. Surround yourself with people who respect this decision.
OPPORTUNITIES– This is a journey. Accept it. Begin a journal with 1. “I” and write down yourmeditation thoughts and desires. Tis can be a poem, a fantasy, a checklist – whatever pattern occurs toyou as supportive of your desires. Make a list of goals. Push shame away. This is about YOU. Of courseas you evolve, your goals will evolve, and your journal will reflect that. When you have completed yourTime Alone – ten minutes to an hour – whatever works for you – pat yourself on the back. What anachievement! You are started on a path of making changing Nightmares into Dreams and making dreamscome true.
Get a notebook. We are starting our Dream Journal.
Jung tells us that in your dream, you are everyone. You have dreamed of an Eye. The Eye is You. YourEgo is under threat. What does this mean?
STUDY YOUR SURROUNDINGS – Who? What? When? Where? And Why? We will begin mapping the people around you to determine whether you are in a growth or destructive environment, and building better patterns. Open your Dream Journal.
WHO? List the people around you and try to capture their chatter, their effect on you. It isn’t necessarily what they say directly to you, it is how they feel entitled to speak, it is what you are forced to hear. Sometimes we “correct” these oppressive effects with the conversation of dramatic personae in screen, literature & song. We flee into art to protect ourselves from the cruelties of existence. List these characters also – your heroes and villains – and what you like and need about them. We are going to assemble a ragbag team of defenders and collaborators for Dream Group.
WHAT? When you list what they say, note how that makes you feel. We are going to assume control over these emotions.
WHEN? At what time of day or night do these characters attempt to assume power over you? What is your state or rest or readiness?
WHERE? Where are you when this is going on? Work? Home? Friends’ place? Café? Bed? Inside your locked heart? Where do you feel safe? Where are you most yourself?
WHY? How did you get here? What was the plan? How has that changed? What’s the plan now?
CLOSE YOUR BOOK – Close your eyes. Let’s end with a meditation.
Creator GoddessesAre Surrounded by Magical Possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Creation the boundaries of the other disappear in growth perfection. Obeying the call to flourish is the only commandment. Goddesses merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.
Creation Goddesses Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for human enhancement – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that goddesses protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.
Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew the meaning of life but it seems we have forgotten. As goddesses we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes the dead universe come alive.
Love Is The Creator’s Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the goddess who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic.
Goddess Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions. Answering the mandate of Creation, Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own gratification, Love dies.
Goddess Opportunity – The possibilities of a goddess are endless because we have chosen, in our flexibility and understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.
Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”
– David Viscott
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn
“Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso
Alysse Aallyn 