Library » Arts & Literature » Dream-Art Science Handbook, Vol. 10 - Mint Tea
Compiled by Miss Blake
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Index:
- Carl Payne Tobey on Creative Dreaming
- James Hillman on Dreams
- Pablo Neruda Cat's Dream
- Construct and Interpret a Dream using Free Association
- D.A.S. Exercise - Construct and Interpret a Dream using Free Association
- Nancy Ashley - S/he in dreams
- The Seth Material - Am I Dreaming Right?
- Artists - Various
Writing itself is often a waking dream. What has happened is that I have touched off such a deep level of unconscious life that the women lose their separate and distinct traits and flow into one another. As if I were writing about the night life of woman and it became all one. The boundaries, distinctions, are erased; on that subconscious level, people are the same: emotions, instincts, dreams. As I lose my grip on construction, on realism, I seem to gain another kind of reality....
Anais Nin on writing and dreams
http://www.beautyandruin.com/findesiecle/earlymasters/rossetti1.jpg
"Throughout the centuries there were those who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."
Ayn Rand
D.A.S. Exercise
"Now: Consciously construct a dream. Tell yourself you are going to do so, and begin with the first thought or image that comes to mind. When you are finished with your daydream, then use free association to interpret it to yourself.
"Some of you will meet with some resistance in these exercises. You will enjoy reading about them, but you will find all kinds of excuses that prevent you from trying them yourself If you are honest, many of you will sense a reluctance, for certain qualities of consciousness are brought into play that run counter to your usual conscious experience.
"You might feel as if you are crossing your wires, so to speak, or stretching vaguely sensed psychic muscles. The purpose is not so much the perfect execution of such exercises as it is to involve you in a different mode of experience and of awareness that comes into being as you perform in the ways suggested. You have been taught not to mix, say, waking and dreaming conditions, not to daydream. You have been taught to focus all of your attention clearly, ambitiously, energetically in a particular way - so daydreaming, or mixing and matching modes of consciousness, appears passive in a derogatory fashion, or nonactive, or idle. 'The devil finds work for idle hands' - an old Christian dictum."
The Nature of the Psyche, Session 764, Page 45
Corinne Adams
"I Dreamt of a Fish in a Box"
http://tinyurl.com/43cxt
"In the same way, a steps-by-step illustration of the nature of the dream state might well make you too self-conscious. (Humorously:) You would begin to question: Am I dreaming right? Many people are in awe of their dreams. They are afraid anything they do not consciously control. Yet if you think of your dreams as extensions of your own experience in another context, then you can indeed learn?? to gain ease with them. You will recall them more easily,and as you do you will be able to maintain a sense of continuity between the waking and dream states."
The Nature of the Psyche, session 790
Clyde Anthony
"Ancient Dreamer"
http://tinyurl.com/6c4dd
James Hillman on Dreams
The classical Jungian attitude towards the dream is expressed very well by a term I would borrow from existential analysis. ... This term is: to "befriend" the dream. To participate in it, to enter into its imagery and mood, to want to know more about it, to understand, play with, live with, carry and become familiar with - as one would do with a friend.
As I grow familiar with my dreams I grow familiar with my inner world. Who lives in me? What inscapes are mine? What is recurrent and therefore what keeps coming back to reside in me?
The habit of looking at one's dreams which makes the inner world habitable can begin right within the family. At the breakfast table - as well as talking of what's happening in school today ... one can mention a dream image or fragment, in order to allow the unconscious a place within the family, openly, in simplicity.
There is no need to interpret a child's dream, or even to explain to everybody why one dreamed this or that. It is enough that the dream is brought into contact with daily existence. ... Interpretations and explanations are too often rationalisations ... Friendship wants to keep the connection open and flowing. The first thing, then, in this non-interpretative approach to the dream is that we give time and patience to it, jumping to no conclusions, fixing it in no solutions. Befriending the dream begins with a plain attempt to listen to the dream ... Befriending is the feeling approach to the dream...
James Hillman, Insearch, 1967
Genie Shenk
"Shaman of Discs, Dream I"
http://tinyurl.com/5gskb
"In the dreaming state the characteristics of the reasoning mind become altered, and from a waking viewpoint it might seem distorted in its activity. What actually happens, however, is that in the dreaming state you are presented with certain kinds of immediate knowledge it often appears out of context in usual terms. It is not organized according to the frameworks understood by the reasoning portions of your mind, and so to some extent in dreams you encounter large amounts of information that you cannot Categorize...
Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1, session 908
Carl Payne Tobey on Creative Dreaming
Dreams are influenced by both past and future to different degrees in different people. Years ago, I stopped dreaming except on very rare occasions. Instead, I work mentally in my sleep, or something works for me and I observe. Most psychologists will question this. Some will tell you, "You always dream. You just don't remember." But, I remember what goes on in my sleep. I have to because it is important. I always go to sleep with an objective. All night long, it's as if the cards are being shuffled. Then, they are dealt and the ones I need are there. The unknown factors begin to appear.
This all began thirty or more years ago and came about gradually, not at one sudden stroke. I would awaken in the middle of the night and could see the solution to a mathematical problem as clearly as if written on a blackboard but I would have to get up and write it down. If I returned to sleep, my mind would go off to something else and I wouldn't remember, but when I became interested the system began to perfect itself.
What kind of cards are dealt depend on your conscious interests, making it more important that you are conscious of your interests. What you have been thinking about before sleep is important. You are asking for it.
Carl Payne Tobey, Astrology of Inner Space
Cat's Dream
Pablo Neruda
How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
sleeps with all the rings--
a series of burnt circles--
which have formed the odd geology
of its sand-colored tail.
I should like to sleep like a cat,
with all the fur of time,
with a tongue rough as flint,
with the dry sex of fire;
and after speaking to no one,
stretch myself over the world,
over roofs and landscapes,
with a passionate desire
to hunt the rats in my dreams.
I have seen how the cat asleep
would undulate, how the night
flowed through it like dark water;
and at times, it was going to fall
or possibly plunge into
the bare deserted snowdrifts.
Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
like a tiger's great-grandfather,
and would leap in the darkness over
rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.
Sleep, sleep cat of the night,
with episcopal ceremony
and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams;
control the obscurity
of our slumbering prowess
with your relentless heart
and the great ruff of your tail.
Translated by Alastair Reid
Seth’s material on sexuality in `Psyche' is a marvellous antidote to Playboy and Cosmopolitan .The media reflect back and reinforce and perpetuate the prevailing social belief that men and women are very different from one another. the basic assumption is that men and women are inherently different from each other psychologicallythose who cannot or will not at least minimally ascribe to the prevalent belief system in this, most often have a tough time of it, feeling guilty, unattractive, angry, or depressed, defensive, rejected.
There is no such thing as a male psyche or a female psyche. Our larger personhood is male and female. our dreams clearly reflect our bisexual nature, where we encounter androgynous beings, or characters who change from one sex to another, when `we' as the main character find ourselves to be of the opposite sex from our space time orientation [then this once again is a clue to our greater persohhood]. Since dreams mirror the contents of our psyche [the sentence would be more accurate if Nancy had written since while within in the dream scape we express the contents of our psyche, dreams are not mirrors per se] how could a psyche that was basically male or female contain such images? [I think here she is saying the psyche can only express the things that it is]"
http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/streetlifeharlem.jpg
"Just the word sex tends to evoke physical imagery so too does the term bisexual, which is enough to scare off some, while affording others a sense of reliefimportant and far reaching are our psychological acceptance and encouragement of all traits within us, Tired of being stereotyped as intuitive women show how rational they can be. men disliking the macho image deny their assertive qualities and become passive, the trades of one set of stereotypes for another and the denial of one-half of being while embracing the other half.
[The following is a rejig of the last part of this chapter.]
"In dreams you become a member of the opposite sex, but you remain yourself. In this way the you have a different outlook form your waking self. Questions to ask in this dream landscape, it is okay for you to be you and have this different body. Does changing sex allow you to behave in ways you do not ordinarily? Why? The Dream is an expression of your desire to develop all of your potential and to accept your individuality and uniqueness...."
Create Your Own Dreams (A Seth Workbook), Nancy Ashley, page 154-6
http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/nude.jpg
".....If we can develop the ability to view waking life as the richly symbolic world that it is and see beyond the symbols ro their underlying meaning, then we can not only understand our space-time selves better but take an active conscious role in our reality, using symbols as tools playfully to build our lives.
"Playfully is the key word. Seth has said many times that we cannot hope to experience when awake the more flexible and expansive consciousness characteristic of the dream state if we take a sternly disciplined problem solving approach the scientific method. This approach may have its uses in space time but certainly not in an exploration of the psyche/mind/whole selfThe waking state of consciousness most akin to the dreaming state is active imagination, in which while fully alert we let our images flow, experiencing and observing events simultaneously, making instant associations based on felt significance rather than logic. It is in this state that creativity ha sits greatest range, where fruitful ideas are born, considered, brought into space-time and where waking realities are conceived...."
Create Your Own Dreams (A Seth Workbook), Nancy Ashley, page 121-122
P.S.
Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore to this Day. ~ Sanskrit proverb
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