At one point, when the marital struggle has reached a point of frenzy — when the full force of the joint family neurosis has hit like a bomb — all that remains is the sense of burned-outness and death. From all this darkness a new capacity for relationship emerges, hardened like a metal that has been switched time and again back and forth between the fire and the ice-cold water.
So many natural phenomena support a bipolar view of life that the number two has come to symbolize a very important reality: the opposition and conflict that initiates all development and leads to equilibrium. The creative tension of two-ness pertains to both the outer and inner life.
trusting my dreams and imagination has allowed me to discover my creativity and fulfill my purpose in life. This is why I say, “My dreams are my life, and my life is a dream.”
Dreams that stand out from childhood are very often Big dreams. A Big dream may contain one or more of four characteristics. First, it makes a powerful emotional impact on us that is impossible to ignore. Second, a Big dream may have a numinous or sacred quality about it, filling us with awe and making us feel it might contain a special message from God.
Lots of people think I’m a Jungian analyst, but I’m not. I’m just obsessed with Jungian psychology because when I discovered it, it hit my inner environment with the force of a Florida hurricane! Hurricane Jean, I guess.
All my books but the first, which was an outgrowth of my dissertation, are essentially memoirs, and dreamwork has been invaluable to me in this endeavor. Writing has always been a deeply satisfying means of expression for me, and when it’s combined with working on my dreams it’s my fundamental “practice” that brings enormous meaning to my life and helps me tie up all the disconnected threads of my personal history.
In my previous post I shared a dream from 22 years ago that dramatized a conflict between my ego’s career ambitions and the Self, the central archetype of my psyche that was “encouraging” me to trust my creative instinct. I didn’t understand the meaning of the dream because of my ego’s resistance to change.
Carl Jung believed we have five instincts: nurturance, activity, sex, reflection, and creativity. Sometimes our dreams contain images and activities suggesting how we feel about them or how well-developed they are in us.
I began recording and working with my dreams in 1989. In those early days, many of my dreams had to do with conflicting feelings about
We’ve been watching an outstanding Showtime series called The Borgias about an infamous Italian family in the 1400’s and 1500’s. The plot revolves around the father, Rodrigo, who became Pope Alexander VI in 1492, his favorite son, Cesare, whom Rodrigo made a cardinal, and Cesare’s beautiful and gentle sister Lucrezia. What makes the show so fascinating is the frank exploration of the dual nature of all three.
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