Charcoal Drawing by Linda Mastrangelo
Dreams are an ancient practice going back to our ancestors thousands of years ago. These dreams or ‘night visions’ were not a separate state of consciousness as we perceive them today but rather an infusion of Mind, Body and Spirit. In the modern and post modern era we are more conscious of the “waking” state as the true and only ‘reality’ but with that came a disconnection to our indigenous ways of knowing. The good news is this wisdom is not lost only forgotten. So how do we re-member who we are and activate this primordial wisdom? The body is the vessel in which we keep this sacred knowledge. To know who we are we only need to ask our bodies. I took a class with professor , scholar and practicing dream worker, Karen Jaenke, PhD, called Dreams and the Body at John F. Kennedy University where we students took an unusual journey entering the flesh, blood and bones via our dreams. Through this process we learned to explore the ways in which we can access wisdom through dreams and the body.
Arnold Mindell, a Jungian analyst and prolific dreamer, discovered this ancient wisdom of our ancestors is connected through the body. In his book, Working On Yourself Alone: Inner Dreambody Work, he discusses how certain techniques, like amplification can tune us into what channel we are perceiving from. He describes this as the same process the alchemist use when cooking the prima materia. I have worked with this method and found incredible results, especially when locating the most subtle and more nuanced messages. For example, during meditations either in class or alone I often do a ‘body check’ where I screen the sensations in the body. If I locate perhaps tightness in the shoulders or fluttering in the belly I can use this process of amplification by exaggerating these feelings. Mindell calls the state proprioception. What I like to do is let an image emerge organically. By using the example of fluttering in my belly I might imagine a butterfly or if it is much stronger perhaps a windmill or a dancer. By giving the feeling an image and even more importantly embodying it, I can work with it in many ways. I can use a Jungian process called 'active imagination' where I can dialogue with the butterfly or dancer and see what arises from the conversation. If I am more visual I can draw, paint or sculpt them. If I am somatically focused, I can move like the butterfly, windmill or dancer and if I am more auditory, I can sing or shout or speak like them. I have always found a surprise or treasure when I engage in these processes that I would have ordinarily overlooked otherwise.
Through my own dream practices, I have uncovered not only the wisdom of my spirit but of my ancestors. It doesn’t surprise me that before my first day of class with Karen that I was serenaded in what is called the hypnapompic state. As I was not fully awakened, I was able to tap into an ancient song being sung by what I intuited as one of my ancestors perhaps of Celtic lineage. She is singing about being here and far away simultaneously. I also intuit the number 8 like this was 800, 8,000 and even 80,000 years ago. She is repeating the song for me to remember or teach it to me. There is a sense of longing like she misses me---like she’s far away however time and space are the same. She’s so beautiful but there is deep sadness. Clearly I was tuning into my auditory channel in this state.
For more info: Read Dreams and the body: Ways of seeking ancestral knowledge-Part II
Comments