Archetypes

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If you’ve been struggling in the dark trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams⁠⁠⁠⁠ from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

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Paying Attention: What Are You Spending It On?

We plainly pay attention, using the finite currency of time and energy issued in the 24-hour increments that add up to a life - well spent? We have choices and constraints about how we allocate our attention, and today’s world competes fiercely for it in unprecedented ways. No wonder, for power is the ability to command or hijack attention, even if it warps reality with untruths.

Jung particularly valued the attentional dimension of “dreaming, or fantasy-thinking” experienced in reverie, dreams, and creativity. And like mothers, lovers, and psychotherapists, we can give others the unconditional attention that brings soul into being. All we have to do is practice paying attention to what we pay attention to.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“A large lesbian woman, Sally, has four adopted boys. Their home is the top floor of a brick industrial building (like a power station) in the shape of a square, with a quad in the middle. They are visited by Kirsty and Phil (hosts of British TV shows about property/home improvement), and the first room they visit floods with seawater as the tide rises and falls, leaving tide marks on the furniture. One of the boys (aged 9) insists that the room is not fit for purpose and tugs on the sleeves of the adults, but Sally says it is OK. The other boy runs around like he has ADHD. As they move around the building, Kirsty and Phil discover all kinds of problems. There is an industrial kitchen covered in grease and grime. The roof leaks and the home isn’t warm or protected. In the one habitable room, two boys (one black, one white) are stored in a Walls ice cream freezer. Kirsty and Phil worry that the freezer is on, but they touch it and think it is off. The boys both have their eyes open. Kirsty and Phil realize that their cheerful, anything-is-possible attitude won’t work this time. They don’t sugarcoat things for Sally, telling her that the building is condemned and they need to move. They suggest that she sell at a loss. Sally nearly argues with them: she is angry and feels betrayed, but then she comes ‘round. Sally is a life skills coach, and Kirsty and Phil ask her for a session, which she says she will provide for free, but they want to pay her in full. This will allow Sally to recoup her losses and find another property. The 9-year-old anxious boy should have been listened to.”

REFERENCES:

Marzel, Charlie, “I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age.” The New York Times, 4 February 2021 by Charlie Warzel. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opinion/michael-goldhaber-internet.html

The Social Dilemma. A docudrama filmed by Jeff Orlowski in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma

Ian McGilchrist. The Master and His Emissary. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300245920/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_1W6M13WYQRW5X006XFHW

Daniel A. Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, and Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. Brain-Based Parenting. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393707288/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_SG8Q283NW3NSTAV3BQBP

John Gottman. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553447718/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_8XM6QBQMXNJ8M7K8X9GR

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The Cosmic Meaning of Consciousness

In Answer to Job, Jung states, “Whoever knows God has an effect on him.” If, as Jung claims, individual human consciousness affects God, what we are matters monumentally. When we serve our neuroses, the gulf between ego and Self widens. Pursuing individuation not only sets our personality in right order, it permits our personal experiences to enrich the collective unconscious – who we are is added to God. When Jung visited the Navajo, they told him they helped the sun, their father, cross the sky each day, a spiritual observance that sustained the world. Jung said, “I had envied the fullness of meaning in that belief and had been looking about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation, that in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world....” Human consciousness weaves meaning into the dance of life. Our psyches companion God crossing the sky each day and so participate in creation. As we confront the mystery of our lives and uncover the unique meaning unfolding in us – we become conscious co-creators.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZED:

“I stand up from the couch and move toward the hallway. Three older women have entered the house. They look to be in their 50s or 60s, with long, draping clothes. They look like ordinary women and do not appear threatening, but I immediately feel menacing energy. I ask them who they are and what they are doing in the house. The women brush off my questions and mock me for my concern, suggesting that I am frightening the little boy. They have pushed past the hallway and are now in the kitchen. Their forcefulness tells me that they are here with ill intent, and I fear that they are here to rob the family. I grab the little boy and take him upstairs to hide him in his room while I deal with the old women, but when I am closing the boy’s bedroom door to go back downstairs, the women are already on the second floor of the house, entering all the rooms, opening drawers and cabinets, and taking things. They seem to be everywhere, and yet their movements are not chaotic but very controlled and methodical in a way that is unsettling to me. They seem particularly intent on taking books, paper files, and personal documents. I begin to think about what the family might have that the women want, what value is here that I had not known about. I remember or realize that the father is a famous novelist, and I wonder if maybe the women are trying to steal his work. I try to stop them, but they won’t listen to me, and I wonder how I am going to explain this to the family later. After following them around for a bit, I take the boy back downstairs. I decide to call 9-1-1 and leave the house until help arrives. I am barefoot and carrying the boy on my hip as I walk away from the house. While I wait for the 9-1-1 responder to answer, I realize that I do not know the house’s address. The dream ends before I find out whether help arrives.”

REFERENCES:

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Robert Moore

Memories, Dreams, Reflections. CG Jung

Answer to Job, CG Jung

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