Having just returned from attending a four day Dream Retreat, I want to share a little about the experience I had there. Out of respect for the tribe that gathered, and the impossibility of ever fully articulating the essence of what transpired between us, I'll share an experience that relates to what I have been writing and sharing here …
Category: Depth Psychology
Dreaming with animals
I really enjoyed reading The First Gates blog post “Dreaming with Animals,” an insightful look at some primary differences between the works of C.G. Jung and James Hillman.
“What is the single greatest predictor of a hero’s success in folktales around the world?”
A professor who had studied the subject at length once posed that question in a psychology class. The answer, he said, was finding an animal helper. More than any other human or supernatural guide, an animal ally can lead the hero or heroine through trials and dangers to the end of their quest.
The professor was a friend and colleague of James Hillman (1926-2011) who loved animals and began collecting animal dreams in 1956. Toward the end of his life, Hillman helped compile and update five decades of essays and lecture transcripts for a ten volume collection of his work. Five volumes have been published to date, including Animal Presences, 2012, which I am currently reading.
After serving in the US Navy, Hillman studied at the Sorbonne, at Trinity College, Dublin, and in Zurich…
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Born at the Right Time
"By means of personifications my sense of person becomes more vivid for I carry with me at all times the protection of my daimones: the images of dead people who mattered to me, of ancestral figures of my stock, cultural and historical persons of renown and people of fable who provide exemplary images--a wealth of …
Jump Start or Tow me Away
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens." Carl Jung Although the whole of my therapy experience was the start of a whole new psychic rearrangement for me, there was a particular dream event that reshuffled, and reignited my being. From this …
Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
"Picasso said, "I don't develop; I am." And the puzzle in therapy is not how did I get this way, but what does my angel want with me?" James Hillman Although continuing to meditate, I stopped attending Ananda after a brief conversation with one of their ministers. I asked him how he would know when …
Continue reading Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
Theoria 