Robert Johnson, Joyce Rockwood Hudson: Dreams

Robert Johnson, Joyce Rockwood Hudson: Dreams

“If we go to that realm (the inner life or unconscious)  consciously, it is by our inner work: our prayers, meditations, dreams work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination. If we try to ignore the inner world, as most of us do, the unconscious will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses. “Robert Johnson, Inner Work, Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth,  p. 11.

My spiritual director best helps me and others connect with God through dreams. Dreams are certainly one way that God, the dream maker, speaks to us. Working with our dreams is like studying a new language. It is the symbolic language of the unconscious. We connect to the unconscious with dreams, imagination, and incidents of synchronicity or coincidences or serendipity.

We study our dreams learning about personal symbols that may be specific to us like sea and trees for me. There are collective symbols which may be universal, such as water representing the unconscious, light being our consciousness, a child being the creative part of us, animals representing instincts, vehicles representing energy or how we get along with a car representing our independent energy and buses, planes, trains being collective energy.  

Dreams also speak in the language of mythology, fairytales, religious rituals, music.

 Consider learning about dream work as a spiritual practice. Join a dream group, for the gold in dreams can be so much richer with the help of others. Two books to start with to learn more about dream work are Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. by Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson, and Natural Spirituality: Recovering the Wisdom Tradition in Christianity by Joyce Rockwood Hudson. Both are also good books to read together in a group.

If this spiritual discipline interests you, just start by keeping an electronic or old fashion notebook by your bed and write down your dreams as soon as you awaken, and see what happens!

Joanna                 joannaseibert.com

Bridget Hyde 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.

Buechner: Tell Secrets 3

Buechner: Telling Secrets 3

“It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.” Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

In Telling Secrets, Buechner comes to believe that he can be happy even if those around him are not and that we all have a sacred commission to be happy. This happiness presents itself when we begin to surrender our life and that of those we love to God and stop trying to manage ourselves and them.  He writes how the church has much to learn about surrender and trust from Alcoholic Anonymous (AA), those meetings in church basements where people learn to tell the truth, lending each other a hand when they are failing, which is perhaps “the only work that matters in the end.”

Buechner has so much to teach those of us who want to be spiritual friends. He in essence in his writings has become the spiritual director of so many others in our times. One of his great contributions is his insistence on our learning to tell the truth and stop keeping secrets. One of the AA principles that “we are as sick as our secrets” is constantly a premise of Buechner’s as well. As he speaks to those of us who are trying to be spiritual friends to others, he asks us to look for times when we like Peter in the courtyard are unconsciously telling the truth.

Spiritual guides and friends are to provide a “safe place” for secret telling, secrets which block us and others from knowing that connection to God. Buechner’s promise is Jesus’ promise as well. When these barriers disappear, we will be able figuratively to reach out and “touch the hem of his garment.”

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Buechner: Telling Secrets 2

Buechner: Telling Secrets 2

“It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly-edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing.” Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets.

sharing stories

 In Telling Secrets, Buechner shares his secrets, the story of his father’s suicide, the inability of his mother in live in reality in her nonlife, and his daughter’s anorexia. Buechner also begins to understand his parents through a dream where he is looking for a room named Remember, telling him that remembering would bring him peace.

Buechner learns that his father’s death did not end their relationship. Buechner resolved issues of his relationship with his father by dialoguing with him by writing with his non-dominate hand.  Buechner also realizes that he carries a part of his mother in him.  Buechner becomes aware that in ways he shares his mother’s and the dwarves’ deafness in CS Lewis’ Last Battle to what is going on with God and the people around him.

He writes that we really do not know God.  God is always beyond our grasp, except maybe once when we touch the hem of his garment, often when we tell the truth and may not even consciously realize it, as Peter was telling the truth outside the high priest’s courtyard that he really did not know the man!

Like so many spiritual writers such as Nouwen and Merton, Buechner also sees that what deadens us the most to God’s presence within us is the inner dialogue within ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com