Johnson: Inner Work
“All forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors—dream, vision, ritual, religious experience—are largely lost, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious. In our hubris and faith in our unassailable reason, we cut ourselves off from our origins in the unconscious and from the deepest parts of ourselves.”—Robert Johnson in Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth (Harper & Row, 1989).
My spiritual director recently posted this quote on Facebook. It affirms an alternative path that many are rediscovering. Our book group reread the revised version of Joyce Rockwood Hudson’s Natural Spirituality. Recently, in a clergy group, we announced that we were studying Natural Spirituality. Two members who had recently finished seminary had no idea what we were talking about. They were even more in the dark when we mentioned dream work and were perhaps a little suspicious. However, older clergy in the group had been studying dreams for some time and affirmed the value of that study.
We have been involved in dream groups for over thirty years. Dreamwork is one of the many ways to discern what God calls us to do. My experience is that it is vital to participate in a group that studies its members’ dreams, both their own and each other’s. Unfortunately, most of us find it challenging to discern dreams on our own.
There are many factors to consider. Dreams reveal what we don’t already know. Parts of ourselves may block new information.
Think of our experience in other discussion groups when novel ideas come up. At least one person invariably throws out an automatic “no” to an alternative way of doing things. “That is not how we have done it in the past.” It always takes time for the entire group to process the information and decide to go in a new direction.
Likewise, a dream group of friends, looking at a dream from outside our own ego, may gently guide us in a new direction that the automatic “no” part of us might have shut down. We look for these insights into our inner life until the light bulb turns on, both inside and outside us. I like Joyce Rockwood Hudson’s subtitle for her book, A Handbook for Jungian Inner Work in Spiritual Community.
Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/