The Sage Within
Sunday May 24, 2009
At a recent DreamTending conference held at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I experienced a way of engaging with dream images that radically altered my way of being in the world. I’ve been recording and interpreting my own dreams for two decades. Until this recent workshop with Stephen Aizenstat, though, I never really had confidence that I had gotten to the bottom of a dream even after diligently following the four-step Jungian approach that includes association, dynamics, interpretation and ritual. In fact, I rarely followed through with the ritual step because I seldom felt confident that I knew what the dream wanted of me. I was approaching my dreams as artifacts rather than as living entities.
But a series of evocative dreams over the years nudged me to look for another lens through which to see these visitors of the night. For instance, I was met in one dream by the animals of the forest, who asked me to help their friend, a large brown bear. He wanted something to help him sleep, and I gave him a sleeping pill (it was an herbal, over-the-counter pill I myself had been taking for insomnia). No sooner had he swallowed the pill than we were transported to a hospital clinic where the bear became a businessman in a suit. This shamanistic dream interaction set me exploring my own insomnia from the point of view of the bear. The next night, as I lay awake past 1:00 AM, I asked myself what would Bear want me to do? I knew that taking a sleeping pill was no longer an option. Eventually, I decided to practice deep breathing and meditate. I also stopped fighting the insomnia and accepted it as the reality of the moment. Soon I was asleep and didn’t wake up again that night.
In another dream, I was told in very clear terms to go to Pacifica Graduate Institute and learn how to work with my dreams from Stephen Aizenstat, the Institute’s founder and director. So I signed up and attended the four-day DreamTending workshop in March. I was expecting to come away with some new tools that would help me better understand my dreams. But instead, I was shown how to open a door within and cultivate a healthy relationship with dream images as guide, muse and teacher.
Dr. Aizenstat’s approach begins with bringing the dream into present time and vivifying the images thus: _I am entering a clearing in Forest. Porcupine, Beaver, Deer, Rabbit, Owl and Bear are are walking towards me out of Forest. They are telling me Bear needs my help. I want to run away, but the animals are surrounding me. I am asking Bear, how can I help you? He is talking to me with his thoughts. ‘I can’t sleep. Can you give me something for sleep?’ I am giving him a pill. He is eating it out of my hand. We are being transported to Hospital. Bear’s body is transforming into Man’s body, dressed in business suit. _
After the telling of the dream in present time, the dreamer explores the images through association, amplification, animation and finally ritual. This sequence of perspectives takes us from the personal, ego driven realm into ever broadening spheres of consciousness. Amplification visits the image at an archetypal level, exploring the image’s significance in myth, fairy tales, art, culture and history. Animation takes the dreamer into the eternal living Now of the image, where healing and transformation are possible.
Instead of asking, “What does the dream mean? Or, “Why did this happen?”, we began asking, “Who is visiting now? and “What is happening here?”
Curiously, it is this very attitude of engagement that awakens the image and invites it to speak. I have found in my own dream tending experiences that the living image, once awakened, repeatedly transforms, returning in various guises to show me different angles on the same aspect of my unconscious that wants to be known and healed. By meeting and engaging with the changing images, I am led to an understanding of some hitherto unknown dynamic that has been blocking my growth.
This is only a brief summary of some of the fascinating and transformative techniques I learned at the four-day event. For more information about Aizenstat’s DreamTending workshops, visit the Pacifica Graduate Institute website:
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