For thousands of years, civilizations across the globe have been fascinated with dreams. Various temples throughout Greece had a longstanding tradition of practicing dream incubation for healing as well as for prophecy. Dream magick is featured in the Welsh medieval mythology known as The Mabinogion, in which the Roman emperor Macsen Wledig is compelled to to search for the woman who will eventually become his wife. Indigenous peoples have also revered dreams. This includes (but is not limited) to the Amazonian people known as the Achuar, who start each day with a retelling of dreams for the purposes of interpretation and guidance for the day's events. Of course, the usefulness of dreams ...
In the world of dreams, anything can happen and probably will. They take us to landscapes in which we are powerfully creative, and there are seemingly no limits to our capacity to generate extraordinary realities within the dream state. They say that life is but a dream, and in some ways, we can approach our waking life as the dreamer of the dream, able to create as if out of magic. In fact, there are techniques available to people out there designed to teach individuals how to manifest the life that they desire. The notion is that you can have absolutely anything you want in life; you simply have to learn a technique or two, and the life of your dreams is there for the asking. But is ...
Our Light and Dark SidesOur Shadow side, in our dreams and in our lives, is the counterpart or counterbalance to the Light. We need both to be whole. Shadow, a Jungian term, refers to those parts of ourselves that we wish to bury or disallow or not acknowledge. We unconsciously make invisible or dissociate from the parts that we are embarrassed of, of our hidden or forbidden desires, or even the strengths we have that we have not yet owned or lived up to. Jung tells us that, "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." We need to honor and ...
Scary dreams have so much energy! Even the most terrifying nightmares carry creative, healing, and spiritual gifts. When we unwrap our disturbing dreams and nightmares, we understand how these gifts can empower us in our waking life. Many people report anxiety dreams or dreams with distressing content. Nightmares have been on the rise since the outbreak of the pandemic, but the most common themes remain the same as always: that we are trapped, chased or attacked by shadowy men or aggressive animals, or we find ourselves in the midst of an apocalyptic disaster. Let's have a look at why such nightmares come, and how we can work with them to discover any personal meaning they may have for ...