Falling. Spitting out your teeth. Getting lost. Being chased. Reuniting with the dead.
The world of dreams can be exquisite, startling and terrifying.
What interests Carol Weiss about these visions are not just what appears, but what each element of a dream can tell us about ourselves.
“Dreams are from the depth of our psyche, not the surface,” she said. “What we do when we dream at night, what we are trying to do is solve our problems – the meaning of life problems.”
Weiss, a marriage and family therapist, has been working with dream therapy for the last 40 years. Weiss is a Jungian psychotherapist who specializes in dream analysis in her Lopez practice. Over the years she has learned that these subconscious visions provide us with “a deep storehouse of wisdom” within ourselves that can gives us psychological and spiritual support.
In celebration of the power of dreams, Weiss is presenting the DVD “Appointment with the Wise Old Dog – Dream Images in a Time of Crisis,” Thursday, Sept. 27, 5 to 6:30 p.m., at the Lopez Library meeting room.
The film features writings and drawings that grew out of David Blum’s dreams. Blum was a musician and conductor, and wrote the script and finished the work while dying of cancer.
“The images are so beautiful and so eloquent and are shown in a way to give credence to how important dreams can be,” Weiss said. “So many times people attribute dreams to just something they ate or saw on TV.”
This dismissal of our sleeping visions can be unhelpful, added Weiss, because a culture that does not study or validate dreams may be missing an opportunity to unite over a shared instinctive wisdom.
On Orcas, Nancy Ayer is facilitating a dream group beginning Monday, Sept. 24, 7-9 p.m. at the Parish Hall of Emmanuel Church each Monday for six weeks – Sept. 24, Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. The group is free and open to the community.
“Dreams are messages from our unconscious to our conscious minds and come to us in the service of our health and wholeness,” Ayer said. “Dreams are sacred, highly personal and filled with images, symbols and metaphors which can give us important road signs along our path or journey through life; yet we often need help in discerning these images and meanings.”
She will be using Jeremy Taylor’s method of dreamwork from his book, “The Living Labyrinth,” but it is not a pre-requisite for the group.
Taylor has worked with dream interpretation for more than 35 years and advocates “projective dreaming,” allowing the dreamer to consider, or not, someone else’s interpretation of their dream. Often new insights in the form of what Taylor calls “aha moments” can shed light on an otherwise indecipherable dream, Ayer said.
Most dreams are elusive, said Weiss, especially to the dreamer, and can often feel random or without meaning.
Weiss compares dreams to the production of a film. We all have an “inner” producer making the dream, a director that creates the action, a scriptwriter to tell the story, a casting director for characters and the prop manager.
The “inner” prop manager picks things from the day to use to tell the story. Weiss said even seemingly random images from TV can symbolize something that has meaning in our lives.
“Why would we go to all that trouble if there is no meaning – it’s a big job doing this for ourselves each night,” she said.
We all dream, Weiss added, but we often don’t remember.
The nights that fill our sleeping minds with startling or beautiful images or strong emotional content are the ones that hold repeating themes that may be telling us “to pay attention.”
“A new kind of spirituality, not connected to any religion, is emerging in the 21st century which calls for, in addition to some kind of contemplative practice, self awareness and an awakened consciousness,” Ayer said.
