by maureen
Do you ever have dreams? Not wishes or hopes, not those kinds of dreams. I mean the weird movies that play in your brain as you are sleeping. Of course you do; everyone has dreams. Many of us don’t remember our dreams, but they happen. I want to “talk” a little about dreams, and expect to share a bit more about dreams over the coming weeks and months. That’s my hope, my goal. But I see it’s been two years since we posted on this site. Life happens when you’re not paying attention. Actually, so do dreams. (I will also say, in the two years since we last posted, a lot has changed on WordPress, and I’m not sure I know what I’m doing with it now, but I’ll keep keeping on.)
I’ve been part of a dream group for about 10 years now. I’m one of the original members and we’ve had people leave, including the woman who actually started the group who passed away from cancer shortly after the group started, and we’ve brought in new people over the years. Four of us have been a consistent part of the group for several years, and one of our former members, who moved to the Midwest, has joined us on Zoom, one of the “gifts” of COVID-19.
We take turns sharing our dreams and try to discover what the symbols in the dreams mean to the dreamer herself and how those symbols apply to her life. We operate under the Jungian premise that dreams are a way our unconscious tries to make us aware of important things that we haven’t paid attention to. Our dreams are tools to try to help us integrate the various parts of ourselves into wholeness and an authentic person. It’s been eye opening and we learn so much, not just from our dreams but from the dreams others in the group share. At this point all of us are at least 70 so we are facing some similar issues. And most of us are single and have been for years. We are also on fairly similar spiritual paths and our dreams are often about spirituality.
A couple months ago I got this brilliant idea to write a book loosely based on our dream group. I invited my blog partner, Cari, who also helps facilitate the dream group, to join me in this endeavor. We each created three characters and will share their lives over the years of the dream group that the novel will cover. We will share dreams — some real and some we create for the book — and show how the women come to understand the symbols in the dreams and how their lives are enriched by their dreams.
I’ve found this has been an great incentive to read some of the books on dreaming I’ve had lying around for, well, 10 years. I also tuned into a Jungian workshop focused on dreams and learned a lot from that. The result is that I have been able to remember my dreams more frequently and have been much more religious about logging them in my dream journal. So I’m getting lots more dreams to weave into the book as the need arises.
I hope you’ll continue to follow us as we pursue this latest venture. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and maybe drop some little tidbits from the book in here from time to time. IF I can figure out how to use this new format of WordPress, that is. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy and be well.
womenbecoming 