by Lisa Catania, LCSW
I recently had the delightful honor of attending a 5 day intensive conference with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She is a renown Jungian psychoanalyst, master storyteller and the author of the classic bestseller, Women Who Run with the Wolves. For me, it was like going to hang out with a rock star - only better....like sitting at the feet of grandmother moon whispering her secrets, culled from watching us and the bigger world, faithfully night after night...
As part of the intensive, we explored dream analysis. Dr. Estes talks poetically about the "Dream Maker" who answers questions we ask in the form of riddles, or like "a letter from home, baked into a pie". She spoke about each individual's unique spark or soul, which arrives on earth with the gift of a body and a spirit (or "genius" or "angel" which might be known as intuition or instinct). Through human experience, she says, the body and spirit can become bruised or injured. Yet, the soul, which predates and transcends our life on earth, can never by harmed. She teaches that our soul has a purpose in our body's lifetime, but the understanding of this is in a different realm of conception than the language and understanding which our conscious mind can express. So, the "Riddle Mother" nurtures and guides us, communicating through our unconscious, using symbols and the vehicle of our dreams.
Our unconscious is pure, non-judging, and - simply as a conduit - records everything. As we venture through our everyday life, our conscious mind skims everything in our environment and edits information to support us with whatever task is at hand. However, our unconscious mind notices everything and records nuances which hold some thing of value....and the next thing you know, some small detail shows up in our dreams - underlined and highlighted. We often wonder what the message is.... in a tapestry of images, concepts, and messages that the Dream Maker weaves just for us each night...
Dr. Estes gives a very simple formula to begin to explore and understand the messages of the Dream Maker. Keep a dream journal next to your bed, and express the wish to remember your dreams. (This builds a new pattern and new neuro-pathways.) When you awake, record your dream right away, before any gross motor movements or thoughts of morning tasks. (She says that you may find over time that you can remember up to 5-7 dreams in a night - which research has found to be the average....and that they will start appearing like a chain of elephants each holding the tail of the one that comes before...(Don't you just love her imagery?!))
When you are ready to analyze, you identify all the nouns in the story of your dream. You take them one by one and write down what they symbolize to you (your individual connotations are the most important interpretation, though you can also research what an object has symbolized over time and over cultures). After you have done this for all the nouns, you retell your dream, but this time you substitute in the meanings they hold for you. You can ask in reflection, "where in my life am I experiencing this right now?" or "where in my life ought I be experiencing this right now?" You honor that interpretation, and stitch it in, as your own weaver of your life story. If you made the wrong interpretation, reassures Dr. Estes, your unconscious or your Dream Maker will correct it. Keep listening!
I hope I have you thinking, imagining and day dreaming.... Tune into the next post and I'll share a dream or two and my journey of processing it...
And more than anything I wish you sweet, rich, interesting, even seemingly bizarre dreams, that enrich and inform your journey....
Peace, Lisa
