Benefits of Dream Work Susan Rosen: Hi this is Susan Rosen and Im here today with Jeremy Taylor.

A world renowned dream expert whos written many books, who has practiced dream work for I think over forty some odd years and is going to be doing a workshop at Miriams Well called Dreams and Resilience November 9-11 here in Saugerties so first let me say, again for the umpteenth time, hello Jeremy.

Jeremy Taylor: Hello, Susan.

SR: Its wonderful to talk to you. So lets get right into dreams and the title Dreams and Resilience. First lets talk about dreams in general.

JT: Sure.

SR: Why dont you think people know about dream work like they know about other forms of self-inquiry?

JT: Thats a very interesting question. I suspect the primary reason is that dream work as a practice regularly turns out to be too big and too unpredictable to fit into peoples theoretical models of how psychological insight and spiritual development and the promotion of physical health ought to go. That the dreams are constantly jumping the fence and making everybody feel anxious and the more committed one is to a particular tradition in the long run, the more anxious the dreams are going to make me feel if I am that person.

SR: And Im trying to avoid feeling anxious.

JT: Yes, as most of us do.

SR: So whats the biggest misconception about dream work?

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Benefits of Dream Work

JT: That it is wholly and trivially personal and the people who hold that misconception I think are to be forgiven because there are layers of the dream that are always completely personal and the dream regularly make reference to moments in waking life that the conscious mind has dismissed as trivial. The problem with the conscious minds dismissal of any experience as trivial is that when we are awake, with any luck, were running around, trying to make a living, trying to be on time, trying to win friends and influence people and those absolutely reasonable waking life agendas blind us to the forest of symbols that we are wandering through even when we are awake. So even if I have dismissed the casual encounter at the bus stop with the person I didnt know before the bus arrived, that encounter, symbolically, if it comes back to me in a dream, was carrying a great deal more emotional and psychological and ultimately, perhaps, even spiritual weight than I was aware of at the moment. And I use that example because the encounter with the stranger is certainly one of the endlessly repeating basic metaphors of spiritual development. That its very hard to develop spiritually without encountering things I did not know before.

SR: Represented by the stranger.

JT: Represented by the casual stranger at the bus stop in waking life.

SR: So that is a symbol for, as many things are symbols for the deeper meanings in dreams

JT: Absolutely.

SR: -- and the spiritual container that dreams bring to us.

Benefits of Dream Work JT: Yes. Thats the greatest mistake in all of these inquiries is mistaken literalism. Thinking that my dismissal of something in waking life is correct and based on the whole truth.

SR: So talk a little bit about mistaken literalism. What exactly do you mean by that?

JT: That all us human beings, and I suspect its not just limited to the human species, but thats another question, but all of us move through our waking lives experiencing the world as a literal event. If I get splashed with muddy water in the rain as the bus goes by, its literal muddy water and I do not think of it as a symbolic event about being outside the vehicle for collective transportation thats warm and well lit and being on my own out in the rain and having insult added to injury and being splashed. I get very irritated by the event because I think of it as a literal experience only and I dont notice that the quality of my irritation is larger than the event itself would actually warrant.

SR: Now does some of that agitation come from memory or history?

JT: Absolutely, yes. And if Im standing with my friend Susan and we both get splashed by the bus as it roars by, our separate histories will have us respond to that event in ways that are fundamentally different, even though were both annoyed by being splashed.

SR: Right. Were both going to have a different relationship to it.

JT: A different symbolic relationship to it. Yes.

SR: Are you really talking about different levels of reality?

Benefits of Dream Work JT: I would be very comfortable with that kind of language. Not everybody is but yes, I think thats a perfectly reasonable way to talk about it. And we are trained to hold our perceptions in when we are awake one set of realities and ignore and shut out the others. And it is actually those other layers that we shut out when we are awake that come back to us again in dreams.

SR: So we dont get a lot of support from the culture in thinking that there are different levels of reality. Most of the time, especially as kids, were told that this is real and this is make believe.

JT: Yep, yep. Absolutely, yes. Unfortunately so. Which is one of the reasons Im so excited about dream work, because dreams regularly bring us back to waking events that we consciously took only as literal events and if they werent of tremendous importance in terms of the hierarchy of values that we were pursuing consciously at the moment like making money and being on time and winning friends and influencing people, then we tend to dismiss those events as trivial and unimportant when at their symbolic level, they may, in fact, have been some of the most important things that happen to us all day.

SR: And we cant really see that unless we are learning how to look at it differently. How to accept the information differently then we normally would.

JT: And the dreams regularly come in the service of health and wholeness to help us do that. As you know, my experience convinces me that the generic message of every remembered dream is wake up, pay attention, there is a creative, transformative health and wholeness promoting role for my waking mind to play in the further unfolding of all the various level that the dream presents. Particularly, including the symbolic ones that I
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Benefits of Dream Work missed at the time.

SR: Right. It may not be the creative way that I want it to show up, however.

JT: Oh, indeed. It seldom is.

SR: Right. And I think part of a maturing lifestyle if you will, not chronologically, but to become a mature adult is to accept that thats true. That life comes and were no really in control of it.

JT: Indeed.

SR: And that the dreams come to shed light on that in a way that is helpful, not scathing or making fun of or trying to hurt us and to me, it shows not only the benign, but in a way the loving nature of the divine or the universe or whatever you want to call it, even though it doesnt seem like that in the moment because it can bring a lot of discomfort and pain when it reminds me of what it is that I was trying to avoid to begin with that the dream is now reminding me about.

JT: Yes and my experience is, is that the dreams do not remind me of it unless there is something I can do about it. The dream will never make me suffer gratuitously. So if there is suffering, it is a marker of how important the information is. [INAUDIBLE] predisposed to pay more attention to information that comes into our field of awareness in some sort of nasty and threatening way then we are to pay attention to precisely the same information if it comes into our field of awareness in more gentle and soothing and seemingly benign way.

Benefits of Dream Work SR: The other thing for me that is incredibly supportive is the fact that this is done in a group of people who are interested in creating or in participating in a very safe environment for this to happen.

JT: Yes.

SR: Which permissions everybody to be honest and real and forthcoming and, of course, you always say dreamers choice which is a way of putting a kind of a governor on things. If I dont want to talk about it, I dont have to.

JT: Absolutely. No dreamer ever has to answer a question or respond to a comment or do anything that he or she does not feel like doing. And so the invitation to go deeper is always responded to voluntarily. And certainly, my experience with Miriams Well is that the self-selection process that brings people to those dream circles is just superb.

SR: Yeah, it has a way of attracting, I dont even know what to call it, it feel like a soulic connection to me like souls decide rather than just kind of personalities deciding to show up. The personality may be making the decision, but the soul is what shows up.

JT: Right, the soul is prompting the personality to make the I agree very strongly.

SR: So when you talk about dreams as being over determined, what does that mean?

JT: Oh, thats a $25 psychological, technical term that means that it has more than one influence that causes it to appear in the shape that it does. In other words, it is over determined. It doesnt manifest because of one
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Benefits of Dream Work thing. The linguistic technical term is polysemic and the anthropological term is multivocal. And in that sense, the anthropologist talk about multivocal clothing and multivocal tools and implements. And they arent saying that these things speak, but that they take the shape that they do and they are used in the way in the way that they do for more than one reason. Multiple reasons converged to make it the way it is.

SR: I see. And for me, multiple things are going on at the same time.

JT: Always. Yes.

SR: Our minds, or at least my mind, rarely goes to that. I think Im just focused on one thing and practicing dream work as long as I have, gives me the ability to realize theres more than one thing going on right now.

JT: Even when Im awake, yes.

SR: Exactly.

JT: Its one of the reasons I am even more enthusiastic about group projective dream work now than I was forty years ago forty plus years ago when I first stumbled on it is that I have seen folks grow and I have seen lives change as a result of doing this work. Ive seen lives changed in immensely positive ways.

SR: Can you give an example of that or your experience of that? A few examples of how youve seen that work?

JT: Oh, sure. The only problem is picking from the countless numbers of examples that I have. I have seen people who, for instance, constantly made bad choices in terms of potential partners, who got to the point of
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Benefits of Dream Work noticing that the same things seem to go wrong with their relationship each time, and come to the point of realizing, I must have something to do with this. Which happens so often in such a patterned fashion, if I werent doing something and I dont know what it is that Im doing. And then the dreams come along and say things like, well, my dear, you were a child of narcissistic parents and the thing you decided you wanted most in the world was for these narcissistic people to come out of their self-obsession and notice me and love me. And that desire perfectly reasonable for the small child got so unconsciously woven into my adult life that the only people that I allow to enter my awareness as potentially exciting and enjoyable partners are narcissists. And sure enough, the repeat the same experience that I had with my parents and to the extent that the dreams reveal this, it means there is a creative transformative health and wholeness promoting path for my waking mind and decision-making process to take to heal this wound. Break this unconscious repetitive pattern. And I cant tell you how many people that sort of generic story fits. There are also people wonderful, sweet, intelligent people with low self-esteem who are constantly projecting their bright shadows out onto other people who really are intelligent and creative and beautiful and dynamic who realize as a result of looking at their own dreams, that they wouldnt even have noticed these traits in other people, if they didnt exist within them as well. And that it has been easier to see these traits in other people than actually recognize them in the mirror of self-reflection that the dreams hold up. And with a certain amount of nervousness, folks begin to embrace these previously, not fully embraced aspects of themselves and begin to express themselves in much more intelligent and creative and satisfactory ways in the world.

SR: So this

Benefits of Dream Work JT: I believe that you and I both have specific names that we could hang on that general story.

SR: Yeah, for sure. So this lack of self-esteem, which seems to be incredibly prevalent right now maybe it always was can really be transformed and healed when the dreams point out or even in waking life when we become aware of this bright shadow that we project onto other people. So if Im enamored of someone or Im wishing that I were more like that person etc. etc., thats actually something that I couldnt see in them unless it lived inside of me.

JT: Exactly. Which is one of the reasons I say that we swim in an ocean of projection all the time. It isnt just a thing we do occasionally when were upset. Although, occasionally when we are upset, it gets more intense. But were projecting all the time. And our dreams are constantly reflecting our projections back to it so that we can recognize them and take responsibility more consciously for those parts of ourselves which prior to looking at the dream, were so much easier to see in other people than go, oh, thats actually me. Wow. Who knew?

SR: Who knew? And thats a whole that can open up a whole other kind of intense way of being in life when Im really switching to realizing thats me, sometimes its easier to think, wow, thats not me because thats the habits of a lifetime. Thats whats known and the change can be thats why I love working in groups because theres so many people around to help reinforce and support that.

JT: Yes and it is, we are all we are the only one who can say what our dreams mean and what they imply with any sort of reliability. But in solitude, we are all inevitably going to be uniquely and selectively blind to our own dreams because once again, the easies things to see in our dreams
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Benefits of Dream Work will be the reflections we already know. And its the things that we arent conscious of that are the most valuable gifts that the dreams have to give us.

SR: Right. And other people in the room are going to give us those gifts.

JT: Other people in the room will be able to see those levels of the dream so much more easily than we can ourselves. If those levels are actually there when they mention them and go well, gee, when I imagined this dream for myself, this and this and this is true, everybody realizes, damn, thats right. And one of the remarks that people usually make at that point is, you know, I never would have thought of that. And I am inclined to say, never is a long time.

SR: Yeah, but I hadnt thought of it till now because nobody brought it up to me.

JT: Thats right and I certainly wouldnt have thought of it now even if you hadnt pointed it out to me.

SR: Exactly.

JT: Its there and I wouldnt have seen it.

SR: Yes, thats an amazing way, really, of communicating with each other that we dont even talk about. But the communication is by bringing up things that we know in ourselves and can project out onto other people and then we get to share all of that. I mean we really get to teach each other.

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Benefits of Dream Work JT: Oh yes and it makes for a level of depth of communication and relationship that is hard to match in the world of other activities. We get to know each other and in some ways to care about each other at levels of depth that only loving partners get over periods of time. And sometimes, the loving partners dont even get there because we unconsciously collude with our partners to not bring up the stuff that makes us uncomfortable.

SR: Exactly. And thats sometimes why we choose those partners.

JT: Exactly, yes, without even knowing consciously that thats why its happening.

SR: Exactly. So this really opens up the world of the unconscious which we dont talk about because its unconscious and because its such a mystery. I think people have such projections on even the word unconscious.

JT: Absolutely. Its one of the reasons why I prefer, actually, the old Anglo-Saxon phrase, not yet speech right. And Im always suggesting that anytime anybody hears the word unconscious or reads the word unconscious or even thinks that, just try, experimentally translating it in your mind with the phrase not yet speech right, and I think you will immediately have a much clearer idea of whats going one.

SR: Yes, because it automatically elevates it out of some kind of dark, depth space, into a place where, ah, its almost here. It is alive.

JT: Yep.

SR: It is rising to the surface, I just cant articulate it yet.

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Benefits of Dream Work JT: And often, so often that Im only surprised when it doesnt happen, when get together in groups and share our dreams with one another, the comments of other people make speech right the implications of the dream in ways that the original dreamer would not have been able to do at the time without the help of other peoples projections.

SR: Exactly, exactly. So lets talk about resilience.

JT: Sure.

SR: Because thats the name that were using for this particular weekend. What does resilience mean to you?

JT: The ability to continue to be and to express as much of my authentic self as I can even the face of overwhelming adversity. Emotional adversity, physical adversity, even spiritual adversity and resilience is a tremendously important psycho-spiritual capability. And I dont think a lot of spiritual teachers spend anywhere near enough time talking about it and lifting it up and making it speech right.

SR: Yeah, because its one of those things that we dont talk about a lot that seems to live for me in the spiritual realm along with you know, if I know about it, if Im conscious of it, if Im aware of my resilience, then I think I can actually call on it. Whereas if its some way kind of hidden and it pops up every now and then it [INAUDIBLE] a mystery. But it appears to me as a way of going on in spite of some very challenging difficult times when Im in real suffering.

JT: Thats right. And the conscious mind may in fact be absolutely and sincerely convinced that I do not have the resilience to survive whatever it is that Im going through. Because one of the reasons dreams are so
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Benefits of Dream Work valuable in times of crisis, because if I do indeed have within me the energy to survive these crises, the dreams in the service of health and wholeness will bring those energies to my attention. And it will turn out that I can survive these difficult situations. I didnt think I could. And it wasnt just being petulant or self-indulgent. I really seriously didnt think I could do it and my dreams come along and point to hidden resources that I didnt even know I had. But once the dreams point to them and once someone helps me see them, then I begin to recognize consciously that I do have them. And that there is a creative, transformative role for my waking mind to play while, as the old song has it, walking this lonesome valley.

SR: Yeah. So what are some how does resilience show up in a dream? Thats why they pay me the big bucks.

JT: Well clearly, yes. In my experience, one of the ways that it shows up is in the guise of being a disembodied observer in the dream. So I dont have the sense of being physically involved with or threatened by whats going on in the dream. I may be distressed as an observer at whats going on, but I dont feel immediately threatened by it. And from the elevated and relatively protected position of the disembodied observer, I suddenly see in the scene often because symbolically and seemingly literally in the dream, I am higher up than the embodied dreamer would be so I can see further. And I will see that there are escape hatches or places of calm that I didnt know where there. And I see them from this removed perspective which is still me. And thats one of the ways that in my experience resilience shows up. Resilience is symbolized in the dream.

SR: Might it show up as an animal or a

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Benefits of Dream Work JT: Oh, absolutely. Yes. A cunning animal, a strong animal, an animal who is not distracted from its own life tasks: eating, procreating, sleeping, avoiding predators. Animals have much clearer agendas than we do. And resilience often involves seeing our agendas more clearly. Recognizing, oh, this is whats happening. This is what I am really called to do. I wouldnt have thought so necessarily but its not what I have habitually believed I was capable of but I know I am.

SR: Which goes back to the resilience that I have in order to get through whatever it is that I need to get through.

JT: [MUMBLES] Well, at the moment to say, most instances I am not certainly fully aware of and I may not be aware of it at all. In those situations, the dreams will do amazing things to draw them to my attention. I was just thinking another Jung would call it an archetypal symbol about resilience, is the ability to breath under water.

SR: Oh, yeah. I dream about that all the time.

JT: Yep, yep and my experience is that whenever the dreamer and its usually with some surprise the dreamer notices, oh, Ive been under the water a long time and I havent been holding my breath and Im fine. I must be able to dream under dream under water, right breath under water. Water in general, one of the basic metaphors of water has to do with emotion and feeling. And when I dream of being able to breath under water, one of the inescapable implications, at least 999 times out of 1,000 is Ive been here before. My emotions have been drowning me before and every time Ive been immersed in my emotions I havent been able to breath. Ive been gasping and choking and unable to live a normal life and here I am just as deeply in these emotions, only Ive acquired a kind of emotional maturity that reflects itself naturally and symbolically in the
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Benefits of Dream Work ability to breath. The dream does not say the emotions are any less strong than they were before. Im just as much under water as I was before but instead of being panicked by that, I am focused on other things and Im able to breath under water as a result. Definite archetype, if you will, of resilience. Basic metaphor of resilience.

SR: Of resilience and also dont you think I mean, you say this all the time the fact that I even remembered the dream, to me, is a sign that resilience is present.

JT: Absolutely. Absolutely. Everything its one of those things that I know on the basis of my experience, which is forty plus years of intense dream work pretty much on a daily basis and my knowing on the basis of my experience and other people knowing it on the basis of their experience are two different things. So I cant honestly ask anyone to take my word for it, but I know its true. I have never met a dream which turned out to be saying, nah, nah, nah youve got these problems and theres nothing you can do about them. So if I have a dream and often its sort of nightmarish, and often the dreamer will wake up an know, well, the dream is about this thing in my life that I cant do anything about. Why are my dreams torturing me with this? Which, form my point of view is a perfectly reasonable questions, and the answer invariably in my experience is my dreams are torturing me with this because there is something I can do about it. If I sincerely believe there isnt, the dream, in order to serve my health and wholeness, has to draw my attention back to the thing that I can, in fact, do something about even though I believe in all sincerity that I cant.

SR: Right. So who should come to this weekend?

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Benefits of Dream Work JT: Anybody whos interested in deeper relationships with other people, anybody whos interested in dreaming in general and particularly anyone who is struggling with resilience issues in his or her own life. The focus on resilience with undoubtedly bring all of us in the circle because thats a thing thats worth mentioning also. Anytime anybody shares a dream, the rest of us have no other choice but then to imagine our own version of the dream. And if, for instance, its a dream of breathing under water, which is a universal image of resilience, then all our own resilience issues will be given shape in our imagined version of the dreamers narrative and we will all have an opportunity to work that leading edge issue of our own lives in projected form on the gift that the dreamer has given us. So even if I come to this weekend and my name does not come out of the hat, or in this case the basket. Miriams Well uses a beautiful basket. Even if my name isnt picked to be one of the dreamers who works directly on his or her own dreams, I will have this immensely valuable opportunity to do my own resilience work in projected form on the dreams that are shared.

SR: Right. Exactly.

JT: I have say, with only a minimum of embarrassment because I am absolutely convinced Im not the only one, I regularly find it easier to do this kind of leading edge work, on the leading edges of my own life, in projected form on other peoples dreams, than to do precisely the same work on my own dreams because I am uniquely and selectively blind. Layers of meanings in my own dreams.

SR: So I am really its a much, I dont want to say easier, but its less challenging and its more open.

JT: Yep.

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Benefits of Dream Work SR: Its much easier to see things in other people than it is to see them myself. But if Im constantly aware that the only reason Im seeing it in other people is because it lives in myself, then I can take back the projection and that I think is what this work is largely about.

JT: And I know of no other work that has that marvelous result, as reliably and consistently as group projective dream work.

SR: You know, I agree.

JT: Thats something we can get from great art from time to time.

SR: Yeah. Now you know I agree with you.

JT: If I weep at the opera, its because the opera was about an issue in my own life.

SR: Absolutely. Absolutely. Or any kind of story telling or any kind of

JT: -- art [MUMBLED].

SR: Yeah, artistic encounter. So were talking about this weekend, November 9-11th. Its a Friday evening and Sunday at noon. You can register if youre registered online. You can call me at 845-246-5805 or email me Susan@miriamswell.org. There are places to stay here, no a lot and we fill up fast, but its fun staying in the house and there are many places to stay in the area and

JT: That are very close to the house and

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Benefits of Dream Work SR: -- that are close by and I think this will be the 33rd time that youve been here.

JT: I think thats right. That was my guess when I was thinking about it. Thats a [INAUDIBLE] number.

SR: Yeah, we could talk about that number. So thank you Jeremy. I really appreciate it and hopefully this has helped encourage people to attend and to learn more about dream work. Thank you so much.

JT: Oh youre as always youre more welcome than you know.

[End of Transcription]

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