The foundation of this book is laid here in this introduction. From the dreamtime came the waking dreamtime and from that came the awareness of the Authentic Self. So few people awaken from their culture slumber to the awareness of the dream. The dreamtime lays the foundation for life – all that is needed to live life is provided through the dreamtime and the waking dreamtime. Our task is to learn how to understand the signs and symbols of the dreaming and waking dream space.
My great grandmother taught me that dreams were important and from her I gained a great respect for the dreamtime and the dreamer of this dreamtime. In adulthood it became sacred space for me, and as a therapist I have worked with countless people to discover, recover, and reclaim the wisdom of their dreamtimes.
My journey of this lifetime is really a dream – in the dreamtime and in the waking time. The dream has opened me to the quest – and has put this bone of awareness in place. I have recalled dreams since childhood, and have actively worked w/ my dreams since my early thirties. This is the foundation onto which each bone is laid. It comes from my:
First Big Dream:
Dreams have always followed me; have been an important part of my life. My great grandmother, Sara, taught me to talk about my dreams, which allowed me to begin to remember my dreams as a young child. Theses dreams where childlike but in thinking back I am sure they were full of wisdom, as are all dreams.
The summer before entering college I began a recurring dream. The dream was that I was in college – at the end of a semester – it was final week – and I had not attend any of the classes that I must now go and take the final exams. In fact I was not sure where the classes were held. This dream followed me through my years at the university and on into my early career. I came to understand that this was my first “stress” dream, and to this day if I have any stress in my life (conscious or unconscious) I will have this dream. My dreams keep me honest with myself.
While still an undergraduate at the university I entered therapy/analysis. When I left the university to begin my professional career I continued with analysis in another city. At this time my work in analysis shifted as I began to delve into my deep unconscious process as a budding therapist in my own right.
It was during this second analysis that my first big dream occurred. This dream became a recurring dream during the early months of this second analysis. In this dream I am standing on the open prairie looking toward a skyline in the distance. The skyline is of a large city with tall buildings. On the prairie next to where I stand is a tall tower-like structure. I explore this structure looking for a way in, but there is no perceivable opening or door. I walk round and round this structure trying to find an entry point.
I took the dream to my analyst in session and we discussed it. He was perplexed by the dream. His training was Freudian and he saw the tower as phallic, but we both felt there was a deeper significance in this dream. He suggested that he would like a consult with a friend who was a Jungian analyst and eventually arranged for me to have a few sessions with his friend. The Jungian analyst immediately saw the significance of this dream. Carl Jung worked with symbolism and universal symbols. He even built a tower on a lake in his homeland of Switzerland. He built the tower at Bollingen next to the upper lake of Zurich. This was his spiritual retreat, and became a place of solitude, meditation, and for entertainment of those close to him. He added three sections to this tower until it became a stone representation of his inner understanding of psyche’s structure – the four structures of his tower representing psychic wholeness. The second story of his tower was added after his wife’s death in 1955, when he was 80. This was a symbol of an extension of consciousness achieved in old age; feeling of being reborn as his own individuation progressed along the path from the ego to the Self, toward death.
As I worked with the Jungian analyst we began to uncover the deep significance of this dream. I was in the very beginnings of my life. I was in the process of forming beliefs that would carry me into my profession and into my existence in my personal life. I stood on the prairie looking toward the skyline of a large city. The tower was next to where I stood. I took refuge from the hustle and bustle of life in the city, not unlike Jung at Bollingen, and my refuge would be this tower, but I lacked the ability at this time in my life to gain admission to this place of refuge.
Both my analyst and the Jungian analyst told me that this dream was important – a life dream – and both encouraged me to always remember this dream. I had been keeping track of my dreams for several years at that time and this dream was a part of my dream journal. I instinctively understood it was important, but at a conscious level I was young and a bit skeptical of their excitement at this dream. So I tucked this dream into my journal and into the back of my conscious mind and continued on with my early adult life.
In time I completed this analysis and moved on with living. I know now that this was my first big dream – and in time it was followed by two more similar dreams with towers.
I was married with children and a budding young therapist who had moved into private practice. In my second year in private practice I had my second tower dream. I was working with a client who challenged me on every level. At this time I was working with a consultant who was very analytical in his approach to therapy, and all client issues led back to me. I began to dream of this client. In the first dream we were in the ocean, he was drowning, I was attempting to save him but he was pulling me under water. In my dream I knew I would “go down” with him if I continued to hold on. Then a voice said, “Surrender, and go with the pull, you can breathe under water.” And so I did, and so I could and I woke from the dream.
I realized that this dream was telling me to delve into the deep unconscious process with this client who was rooted in linear and external thinking. This client fought going into the deep unconscious – symbolized by the struggle in the ocean of my dreamtime. I could not rescue this client. I had to sink with the client and let the client carry me to my own depths because I could now breathe under water.
So we begin the descent. A few months later I had a second dream with this client. We were standing in the conference room of my office. Two of the walls in this room were windows. This client was yelling and flailing his arms at me as I backed away into the corner created by the two walls of windows. As I stood in this corner of my dreamtime office I looked out the window. There was an awning just outside the window. I realized that my only route was to step through the wall of windows onto the awning and so I did. My client watched in wonder as I stepped through the glass wall and stood on the awning above the busy street below. I reached out my hand to this client, inviting him to join me in this new landscape. He hesitantly took my hand and allowed me to pull him through.
Later in consultation I arrived at an understanding of this dream. I was calling this linear, black and white thinking, borderline personality disordered client through the veil that divides conscious self from unconscious self, and inviting him to join me in this new landscape. My dreamtime told me he would come – and it also told me I had moved into a new evolution of self.
A third dream with this client came sometime later. In this dreamtime I am now living and working in a tower. My home is at the top of the tower; my offices a few floors below, and a beautifully appointed elevator takes me from floor to floor. I have now gained access to the tower that in my youth I could only observe and walk around. The top floor of my dreamtime tower affords a beautiful view of the river where I live in waking time, and my office is bathed in soft lighting, colors, and music. It is a cornucopia to the senses. This client is seeing me in this new office and I realize that only certain clients see me here, those clients with whom I am plumbing their inner depths and thus plumbing my own depth, simultaneously.
I interpret this dream as a symbol of my access to “Jung’s tower” of self-awareness. I had entered the fortress of my own psyche structure. The clients who came to the office in this tower were those who had stepped through the veil of illusion; stepping out of linear thought into a circular awareness.
This was my second big dream. The first big dream came in my mid to late twenties; the second came after my fortieth birthday. I recoded this dream, but at the time I did not remember the first dream. I had not moved deeply enough into my psyche’s structure to understand the connection.
At the time of my sixtieth birthday I had my third big dream. My husband had passed away five years earlier. I was on my own, my children were grown and gone, and I was re-weaving the web of my lifetime. This dream came as I was preparing to make a journey – a quest – to chart a new path in my waking time.
In this dream I am in a room that at the top of a building – that really is a tower. I am there with a man about my age – but I do not know him – he is not someone I have met in my waking life at the time. We are together – and I assume we are lovers. We hear sounds coming up the side of this building and go onto the balcony to investigate. Two of my young students are climbing up the side of the building. A young man who is being pushed up the side by a young woman, and I recognize both of these people. When they reach the top they climb over the railing and are startled to find this man and me waiting for them.
The young woman tells me she has brought the young man to me. I ask why? The young man shyly says he has come to retrieve a kiss from me. I am not sure what to do. I am here with the older man/my lover – and this young man has just scaled the side of the tower to receive a kiss. The older man laughs and says, “and you must give him the reward he has so gallantly come to receive – it is his honor and it is your duty.” And so I kiss him. I tell the couple they must now go back the way that they have come – because I understand that in their youth they have not yet earned access to the tower of wisdom.
When I wake and recall this dream I remembered my two previous tower dreams. With a little digging I find both recordings of these dreams, and understand that now my elder self not only has access to the tower – but also resides there with a balance of the feminine and masculine energies that are a part of all of us. It is a dream of integration.
And so my dreams became my most personal of teachers. This book is an outgrowth of many dreamtimes woven into the tapestry of my life. The dreams – both from the dreamtime and from the waking dreamtime are the bones of the structure of this work. They are the underpinnings – the skeleton of my authentic self. We will begin this journey with the telling of my first teacher, Sara, my great grandmother, and then of the legend of La Lobe the Wolf Woman.
So pull your chair up close your hearth – let the fire of your creative self warm you, and as you read the words written of the discovery my authentic self – perhaps it will lead you to your same discovery.
My great grandmother taught me that dreams were important and from her I gained a great respect for the dreamtime and the dreamer of this dreamtime. In adulthood it became sacred space for me, and as a therapist I have worked with countless people to discover, recover, and reclaim the wisdom of their dreamtimes.
My journey of this lifetime is really a dream – in the dreamtime and in the waking time. The dream has opened me to the quest – and has put this bone of awareness in place. I have recalled dreams since childhood, and have actively worked w/ my dreams since my early thirties. This is the foundation onto which each bone is laid. It comes from my:
First Big Dream:
Dreams have always followed me; have been an important part of my life. My great grandmother, Sara, taught me to talk about my dreams, which allowed me to begin to remember my dreams as a young child. Theses dreams where childlike but in thinking back I am sure they were full of wisdom, as are all dreams.
The summer before entering college I began a recurring dream. The dream was that I was in college – at the end of a semester – it was final week – and I had not attend any of the classes that I must now go and take the final exams. In fact I was not sure where the classes were held. This dream followed me through my years at the university and on into my early career. I came to understand that this was my first “stress” dream, and to this day if I have any stress in my life (conscious or unconscious) I will have this dream. My dreams keep me honest with myself.
While still an undergraduate at the university I entered therapy/analysis. When I left the university to begin my professional career I continued with analysis in another city. At this time my work in analysis shifted as I began to delve into my deep unconscious process as a budding therapist in my own right.
It was during this second analysis that my first big dream occurred. This dream became a recurring dream during the early months of this second analysis. In this dream I am standing on the open prairie looking toward a skyline in the distance. The skyline is of a large city with tall buildings. On the prairie next to where I stand is a tall tower-like structure. I explore this structure looking for a way in, but there is no perceivable opening or door. I walk round and round this structure trying to find an entry point.
I took the dream to my analyst in session and we discussed it. He was perplexed by the dream. His training was Freudian and he saw the tower as phallic, but we both felt there was a deeper significance in this dream. He suggested that he would like a consult with a friend who was a Jungian analyst and eventually arranged for me to have a few sessions with his friend. The Jungian analyst immediately saw the significance of this dream. Carl Jung worked with symbolism and universal symbols. He even built a tower on a lake in his homeland of Switzerland. He built the tower at Bollingen next to the upper lake of Zurich. This was his spiritual retreat, and became a place of solitude, meditation, and for entertainment of those close to him. He added three sections to this tower until it became a stone representation of his inner understanding of psyche’s structure – the four structures of his tower representing psychic wholeness. The second story of his tower was added after his wife’s death in 1955, when he was 80. This was a symbol of an extension of consciousness achieved in old age; feeling of being reborn as his own individuation progressed along the path from the ego to the Self, toward death.
As I worked with the Jungian analyst we began to uncover the deep significance of this dream. I was in the very beginnings of my life. I was in the process of forming beliefs that would carry me into my profession and into my existence in my personal life. I stood on the prairie looking toward the skyline of a large city. The tower was next to where I stood. I took refuge from the hustle and bustle of life in the city, not unlike Jung at Bollingen, and my refuge would be this tower, but I lacked the ability at this time in my life to gain admission to this place of refuge.
Both my analyst and the Jungian analyst told me that this dream was important – a life dream – and both encouraged me to always remember this dream. I had been keeping track of my dreams for several years at that time and this dream was a part of my dream journal. I instinctively understood it was important, but at a conscious level I was young and a bit skeptical of their excitement at this dream. So I tucked this dream into my journal and into the back of my conscious mind and continued on with my early adult life.
In time I completed this analysis and moved on with living. I know now that this was my first big dream – and in time it was followed by two more similar dreams with towers.
I was married with children and a budding young therapist who had moved into private practice. In my second year in private practice I had my second tower dream. I was working with a client who challenged me on every level. At this time I was working with a consultant who was very analytical in his approach to therapy, and all client issues led back to me. I began to dream of this client. In the first dream we were in the ocean, he was drowning, I was attempting to save him but he was pulling me under water. In my dream I knew I would “go down” with him if I continued to hold on. Then a voice said, “Surrender, and go with the pull, you can breathe under water.” And so I did, and so I could and I woke from the dream.
I realized that this dream was telling me to delve into the deep unconscious process with this client who was rooted in linear and external thinking. This client fought going into the deep unconscious – symbolized by the struggle in the ocean of my dreamtime. I could not rescue this client. I had to sink with the client and let the client carry me to my own depths because I could now breathe under water.
So we begin the descent. A few months later I had a second dream with this client. We were standing in the conference room of my office. Two of the walls in this room were windows. This client was yelling and flailing his arms at me as I backed away into the corner created by the two walls of windows. As I stood in this corner of my dreamtime office I looked out the window. There was an awning just outside the window. I realized that my only route was to step through the wall of windows onto the awning and so I did. My client watched in wonder as I stepped through the glass wall and stood on the awning above the busy street below. I reached out my hand to this client, inviting him to join me in this new landscape. He hesitantly took my hand and allowed me to pull him through.
Later in consultation I arrived at an understanding of this dream. I was calling this linear, black and white thinking, borderline personality disordered client through the veil that divides conscious self from unconscious self, and inviting him to join me in this new landscape. My dreamtime told me he would come – and it also told me I had moved into a new evolution of self.
A third dream with this client came sometime later. In this dreamtime I am now living and working in a tower. My home is at the top of the tower; my offices a few floors below, and a beautifully appointed elevator takes me from floor to floor. I have now gained access to the tower that in my youth I could only observe and walk around. The top floor of my dreamtime tower affords a beautiful view of the river where I live in waking time, and my office is bathed in soft lighting, colors, and music. It is a cornucopia to the senses. This client is seeing me in this new office and I realize that only certain clients see me here, those clients with whom I am plumbing their inner depths and thus plumbing my own depth, simultaneously.
I interpret this dream as a symbol of my access to “Jung’s tower” of self-awareness. I had entered the fortress of my own psyche structure. The clients who came to the office in this tower were those who had stepped through the veil of illusion; stepping out of linear thought into a circular awareness.
This was my second big dream. The first big dream came in my mid to late twenties; the second came after my fortieth birthday. I recoded this dream, but at the time I did not remember the first dream. I had not moved deeply enough into my psyche’s structure to understand the connection.
At the time of my sixtieth birthday I had my third big dream. My husband had passed away five years earlier. I was on my own, my children were grown and gone, and I was re-weaving the web of my lifetime. This dream came as I was preparing to make a journey – a quest – to chart a new path in my waking time.
In this dream I am in a room that at the top of a building – that really is a tower. I am there with a man about my age – but I do not know him – he is not someone I have met in my waking life at the time. We are together – and I assume we are lovers. We hear sounds coming up the side of this building and go onto the balcony to investigate. Two of my young students are climbing up the side of the building. A young man who is being pushed up the side by a young woman, and I recognize both of these people. When they reach the top they climb over the railing and are startled to find this man and me waiting for them.
The young woman tells me she has brought the young man to me. I ask why? The young man shyly says he has come to retrieve a kiss from me. I am not sure what to do. I am here with the older man/my lover – and this young man has just scaled the side of the tower to receive a kiss. The older man laughs and says, “and you must give him the reward he has so gallantly come to receive – it is his honor and it is your duty.” And so I kiss him. I tell the couple they must now go back the way that they have come – because I understand that in their youth they have not yet earned access to the tower of wisdom.
When I wake and recall this dream I remembered my two previous tower dreams. With a little digging I find both recordings of these dreams, and understand that now my elder self not only has access to the tower – but also resides there with a balance of the feminine and masculine energies that are a part of all of us. It is a dream of integration.
And so my dreams became my most personal of teachers. This book is an outgrowth of many dreamtimes woven into the tapestry of my life. The dreams – both from the dreamtime and from the waking dreamtime are the bones of the structure of this work. They are the underpinnings – the skeleton of my authentic self. We will begin this journey with the telling of my first teacher, Sara, my great grandmother, and then of the legend of La Lobe the Wolf Woman.
So pull your chair up close your hearth – let the fire of your creative self warm you, and as you read the words written of the discovery my authentic self – perhaps it will lead you to your same discovery.
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