Hyde: Dreams 2

Hyde: Dreams 2

Guest Writer: Bridget Hyde

"...what I have continued to find in other situations is that dreams are sources of wisdom for problem solving and life enhancement. They put us in touch with dimensions of ourselves that are normally hidden and that we need in order to grow toward our full potential." George R. Slater Bringing Dreams to Life

The first dream that I took to spiritual direction was a dream about walking barefoot in the snow.  When my foot touched the ground in the dream, I became aware that I was dreaming, and then I started to pray.  Now, as I reflect on that dream, I see a person who is becoming conscious of the divine nature of dreams.  When my bare foot touched the ground, I became grounded in the grace of the unconscious.  I had been recording my dreams, sharing them with friends, and honoring them with symbol work, but I had not sought discernment in this work from a spiritual director.  When I told a friend this dream she begged me to work on the dream with a retired Episcopal priest and spiritual director named Allen Whitman. 

I followed her stern invitation and began a five-year study of my dreams with Allen.  From this inward study, I became aware of many different aspects of my character.  My work in dreams began to show me how to connect the symbolic language of a dream to the circumstances of my life.  For example, during a time when I was making a big decision, I had a dream that my airline flight was interrupted.  The dream plane was grounded and I was forced to wait before boarding another plane.  When Allen and I worked on the dream, we both realized that I had come to a time of waiting in the decision process.  Because of this dream, I waited to take decisive actions.  I am so glad I did.  It was a wonder to see my work in dreams as a kind of spiritual direction. 

I started to trust my dreams and their divine nature.  Looking back, I see how God has guided me through my dreams, and I honor spiritual direction in dreams as a holy gift.

Bridget Hyde

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Bridget will talk about dreams at the 26th Eleventh Step Serenity Retreat at Subiaco January 12-14, 2018. Call Coury House 479 934 4411 to make your reservations.

Hyde: Dreams

Hyde: Dreams 1

Guest Writer: Bridget Hyde

"...what I have continued to find in other situations is that dreams are sources of wisdom for problem solving and life enhancement. They put us in touch with dimensions of ourselves that are normally hidden and that we need in order to grow toward our full potential." George R. Slater, Bringing Dreams to Life

Dreams are a very dynamic form of spiritual direction.  They come to us in the service of wholeness.  A visit from a dream brings unconscious information to our consciousness.  Dreams carry a divine desire to make us whole, to integrate the conscious and unconscious worlds and find a balance between soul and persona.

There is much talk in spiritual direction about “ego” and how it keeps us from God, from our truest self.  My experience has taught me that ego is not in and of itself bad.  It is an ego out of balance that does harm.

Don’t we all need egos for our basic needs?  It is our ego that drives us to get dressed and go out into the world. My faith tells me that God gave us our egos so we might have the confidence to put forward our gifts, and accomplish necessary, daily tasks.   Sadly, some of us fall into situations here on earth that sap the vitality of our egos, our self-esteem.  During dark or denigrating times, people often dream of kings and queens.    Here, the dream seeks to balance a personal sense of worth by calling forth a regal, powerful archetype.

When an ego is out of balance the other way, it becomes inflated and sees itself above others, immune from harm or wrong-doing.  If this happens to a person, the unconscious will sometimes bring a dream of falling from a high place to land on solid ground.   The dream will seek to bring the person “back to earth.”  Thus, a person may have a dream that a plane crashes, yet they land safely somehow, or another example is a dream where a car stalls and the dreamer must get out and walk.  The main thrust of such dreams is to help the dreamer feel grounded, to avoid the fate of Icarus.

Bridge Hyde

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Bridget will talk about dreams at the 26th Eleventh Step Serenity Retreat at Subiaco January 12-14, 2018. Call Coury House 479 934 4411 to make your reservations.

Dreams

Dreams
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

 William Butler Yeats

I have been in a dream group off and on for many years, and much of our time in spiritual direction training at the Haden Institute at Kanuga was about dreams. (Unopened Letters from God: Using Biblical Dreams to Unlock Your Nightly Dreams, Bob Haden) In fact my present spiritual director always asks me as soon as we meet, “Do you have a dream?”

Three other of our friends some time ago took a dream group for several years to a women’s recovery center where most of the women had a choice of going there or to prison because of alcohol and drug related abuses. They had had an amazingly hard and grief stricken life. There were women just like the rest of us, but had not had the opportunities we had.  They were hardened and prematurely aging but still had a heart of gold. Almost all of their dreams had the same pattern, like nightmares, being chased by some awful violent creatures. Our hearts embraced them. Since we only saw them for a brief time, sometimes the best we could say was that the dream was letting them know that the “dream maker”, whom we called God, was letting them know that he or she knew about their terrible situation. There was someone who cared enough to let them know that someone knew how much pain they were in and how badly they had been treated.

 Joyce Rockwood Hudson in her book, Natural Spirituality (p. 105), believes dreams are the fullest expression of the unconscious. My experience is that dreams are certainly one of many ways God speaks to us, and can be a powerful tool to use in spiritual direction, but as always, dreams must be treated like the soul, held gently, honored as hearing a sacred message from one lover to another.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com