Sunday, June 7, 2009

Ritual For A Dream Pt. 1




In Inner Work, Robert Johnson recommends "acting consciously to honor dreams" (1986, p. 97). He writes, "this... requires a physical act that will affirm the message of the dream. It could be a practical act... or it may be a symbolic act--a ritual that brings home the meaning of the dream in a powerful way" (p. 97). I've spent the last ten days or so absorbed in the process of creating and executing a ritual in honor of a dream figure that I wrote about in the post titled "Recovering Fragments of the Feminine". In that dream, a female friend of mine appeared covered in cuts and bruises, bitterly sad and angry about having been kicked out of her house by her abusive male partner.

I felt it was important to do something for her, to take an active role in her healing process. I came across a recipe for a salve in a magazine, and decided that I would make a salve for healing cuts and scrapes. I liked that it required gathering ingredients, and that I would be working with herbs--calendula, comfrey, and St. John's Wort. I also liked that the process required the herbs to be cooked in olive oil over low heat for three hours. I believe that the longer you spend on something, the deeper you go into the experience, and the more deeply you are affected. In other words, it felt healing to do something that would require me to be present to a process for three or four hours. I am tired of moving so fast all the time. When we asked our professor Gary Penn what he got out of his six years in psychoanalysis, he said, "just to slow down." Whenever I manage to slow down, I know this is no small win. 

This post is the first in a series of posts in which I'll go into some detail about the work I did with this particular dream and dream figure. In addition to making the salve, I set up an altar and made a little book based on the structure of a mandorla, which is the almond-shaped form that appears in the middle of two intersecting circles. I'll write more about all these things--the salve, the altar, the mandorla, and the book--in upcoming posts. 

For now, I just want to inspire readers to try this for themselves--take action on behalf of a dream and write a post about it. It doesn't have to be complicated, and I genuinely believe it is transformative and awakening. If it's not, you never have to do it again. I hear my inner midwesterner saying, isn't this all just a bit self indulgent? In truth, I think a case could be made that not honoring your dreams is self-indulgent. We do a lot of self-indulgent things--watching hours of TV, for one; talking at great length about trivial matters, for another--but taking time with our unconscious is not one of them. But I'm not here to debate, or to judge, my inner midwesterner and how she spends her time or what she thinks is right or wrong. I'm here to do inner work, and maybe you are, too. If so, I'd love to hear from you. 

(A quick thank you here, to Matt Silverstein, who provided the space and time for some of us to present our dream work, in conjunction with the Jungian Dream Workshop he offers at Antioch. It was vitalizing to connect with other dream workers--to give from my own unconscious and receive from the unconscious of others. Thank you, Monica, Adriana, and Laurette.)

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