Creating a Different Future: Soul, Imagination and the Mystery of Dreams
Date: June 5 & 19, 2016 – 1 to 4 pm
190 $’s (fee includes both days)
Application Deadline is June 1st, 2016
Location: Edmonton, Alberta
“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to the primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”
Carl Jung- The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)
“I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we’ve made of them, really. I’m quite Jungian about that. The dream state is a strong, active, potent force in our lives…the fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey. Combining the two, the place where the two worlds come together, has been important in some of the things I’ve written, yes”
David Bowie
Background for the Workshop
When human beings sleep they open to the dream. We have been dreaming by all accounts for a very long time. In ancient societies dreams were considered sacred playing a significant role in everyday life by providing a sense of origin, place and the future. This sense of the dream as a voice of soul and Mystery continues to be true in present day indigenous cultures and in depth psychology. It is in more “civilized” societies over the last few hundred years, a time of material progress, where the dream has fallen into neglect becoming only a biochemical process with no deeper meaning. And yet, just as human beings feel something deeply resonant awaken within them as they experience a special place in nature, in the moments right after awakening from a dream one can have the distinct sense something more profound is involved beyond simple chemistry.
The present is a time of extensive belief in rationalism and its offspring the scientific method as ways of explaining how the world works. They are forms of psychological distancing from something in order to analyze this other using the mind directed by the ego. Being able to breakdown the wholeness of something into its parts using this approach led to greater scientific “knowledge”, subsequently opening the way for the creation of powerful technologies and modern civilization. These accomplishments were a verification of the “truth” of this belief system and drew humanity into its “faith” in human progress.
Despite our belief that rationalism is the pinnacle of truth in this moment on Earth we are beset with crises at every turn. Climate change, resource wars, ecological destruction and economic instability and collapse are ever present and growing issues. Every society or civilization which collapsed in the past fervently believed, especially those in power, in the absolute truth of their stories and beliefs. The deeper the crises the more tenaciously the beliefs were held. Faith was put in the existing stories to carry society through difficult times. We need to consider what it might be in human beings or human society that so resists change, that needs to hold on to beliefs so tightly despite impending collapse and chaos?
To answer these questions one needs to look at the story. Human beings have told stories in one form or another since the beginning of our existence. Whatever the stories say they do three underlying things in order to provide the ground to live life. They explain where we have come from, who we are in the present and where we are going in the future. In essence they form a mythology of identity and belonging for human life in a given period of time. Yet these stories/theories are limited explanations of the world and our tendency because we live them mostly unconsciously is to turn them into dogma. In our modern culture the limitation of our rational way of seeing and interpreting the world is the dualism or separation it creates between the self or ego and everything else. This separating mode of mind, emotionally cold, calculating, piercing then begins to see nature as dead, soulless and without its own inherent value. It is no wonder that we began to see a machine in the reflection of the rational mind on the living world and created them.
Nevertheless, there is some “luck” in our present situation that comes out of the post-Enlightenment’s development of ego awareness and the scientific method. Through our growing understanding of ecology and human interdependence within the natural world human beings have begun to awaken to the seriousness of our predicament. Humanity can now see what our civilization is doing to the Earth and each other. We are reminded about what happened to other civilizations that clung to their beliefs as they faced collapse. Some individuals are beginning to sense the limits of rationalism as a way of describing the world. And it isin all of these growing a ha moments where humanity can glimpse the need to do something radically different in order to create a new future.
The root excluded from the “truth” and “faith” of our present beliefs are the experiences, perceptions and stories from the other part of life’s wholeness, the non- rational. When one opens to the non-rational the natural world becomes animate and full of meaning, we can hear our souls call to live a unique life, and there is a feeling of profound sacredness weaving through all of life.
Opening to the non-rational and incorporating it into our lives is a significant challenge to our egos and to the institutions the ego has created. If humanity continues to adhere to its present beliefs, this fundamentalism becomes deeply ironic in that the source of the stories underpinning the Enlightenment and rationalism, which then denied such a source, is the same source of something new we presently need. At a metaphysical level this situation is more deeply about creating a shift in human consciousness towards a reunion with the true ground of our own being, with what we forgot after the Enlightenment- the feminine archetype, our place in the natural world and within the cosmos.
So the source of something new is found through a relationship with the non-rational. This is where the dream comes in. In a dream the dreamer experiences symbol, archetype and myth often woven together and presented to us in the form of a story. Coming from a non-rational place beyond ordinary ego consciousness dreams appear to us in the form of metaphor. Think of dreams as the “imagination” of something mysterious beyond space and time that desires connection with us and is speaking in a foreign language to our rational ears. Our imagination becomes the translator of the dream story.
Through imagination each person is able to hear the song or voice of the dream in their individual way. Resonating with the dream voice through our own soul one begins to create or birth something new through their “story-mind” which is not tied to our present belief system, the voice of collective society or our own egos. Through this process the dream becomes a source of the future.
In this workshop we will explore the world of soul, imagination and dreams within the container of individual and group experience. There will be minimal focus on understanding or interpreting dreams as this often leads to control of the dream by the ego. Rather most of our time will be spent learning to use our imagination to connect with our own depths and with the dream as a source of something new and greater meaning for ourselves, the natural world and the cosmos. Activities will range from, group and individual reflection, play, active imagination, art, writing, movement and sound to anything else offered by Mystery.
Come join me and others in a journey into soul and artistry and the birth of a different future.
Please note because of the nature of this workshop an application is required. To find the application look for the sub-menu to the right of this page on the website.
Mike Daniel
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