FAIRY TALE

Dream narratives are often similar in structure and pattern to fairy tales. Both feature fantastic stories that require a suspension of reality as we know it. Both are filled with archetypal adventures in symbolic stories where anything is possible!

SCAPEGOAT: AN OUTDOOR DREAM PROJECT

Create a ScapeGoat using the twigs, leaves and rocks that you find in an outdoor setting by a river. Wrap, bundle and bind all of your emotional attachments to the dream into a tangle of of guilty memories, mistakes, frustration and anger. Then, let the bundle go. Send it away, down the river!

BOOK OF LIFE: A TEN MINUTE JOURNAL EXERCISE

Write a meditation on the themes of the season in the manner of song, poetry, prayer.

LANDSCAPE OF THE MIND: A TEN MINUTE JOURNAL EXERCISE

How does your inner dream landscape echo the state of your feelings and emotions?

MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM: A JOURNAL EXERCISE

Create a fairy tale based on your dream. Use the theme of the solstice to structure the movement of your story. Move the story toward the place where the momentum of the dream or your understanding of it may come to a standstill- a place that is still and unknown. Use all the heroic figures, the magic and wizardry you can muster up to find a shift in momentum where there is an illumination, a light that leads you to a mythic end.

DREAMS OF THE FATHER: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Dreams about fathers are often about authority, traditional values, religious philosophy, and wisdom. They can be about will power, a warlike spirit or the ability to be strong. Father dreams can focus on responsibility, discipline and domination.
A mythic father figure might represent intellect, reason, action, power, energy, assertiveness, fortitude, courage; or a need for safety, guidance, support protection and security.
Conversely, the father figure can represent aggressiveness, righteousness, judgment, punishment, betrayal or anger. The father figure can discourage our attempts at independence. He can undermine our self reliance and self esteem by making us submissive or putting constraints on our autonomy.
Write a letter to yourself. If every aspect of the father image is an aspect of yourself, how have you fathered yourself?

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Allow Alice to fall into your dream and to wander as an observer though your dreamscape. Listen to her as she politely asks questions of each of the dream images. Faithfully record the responses which may or may not make any sense at all.

LABYRINTH: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Like a Labyrinth, the dream mirrors the outer journey by invoking an inner journey. Allow yourself to remain open to the unexpected, the ineffable, the transcendent as you meander with your thoughts on paper in a stream of consciousness. Write in a spiral on unlined paper instead of left to right.

DR. JECKYL & MS. HYDE: A TEN MINUTE JOURNL EXERCISE

From early on we are taught to polarize dark and light, feminine and masculine, right brain and left brain, passive and active, wrong and right, bad and good.

Allow two opposite dream images to speak:

Invite one dream image to write in a voice that expresses pent up loss, sorrow, confusion, emptiness, guilt, hostility, humiliation or rage.

Invite another dream image to write in a wild voice filled with passion, impulsive energy and raw independence.

MY MOTHER / MYSELF: A TEN MINUTE JOURNAL EXERCISE

In dreams, the image of Mother can hold many meanings. She may reflect our relationship with our own Mother, or the archetype of the Universal Mother, the Holy Mother, the Mother Goddess, The Earth Mother, The Terrible Mother, The Devouring Mother, The Great Ambivalent Mother and our Inner Mother.
How many aspects of “mothering” can you identify in your dream?

ANIMA MUNDI: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Transform one or more dream images by finding the animating spirit that belongs to each.
Invigorate the soul and intelligence of each image by allowing it a voice.

THE HEART’S DESIRE: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

From the depths of your dream, allow your heart to burst open and overflow into your journal.
Let a torrent of words invoke the feelings brought forth by the dream images.

THE VOICE OF FREEDOM

Speak on behalf of dream images who have had no voice until now. Lament their lack of freedom and autonomy. Reveal unspoken feelings.

JANUS: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Janus is the presiding deity who holds the knife that cuts both ways in the dream. With the voice of Janus, the presiding deity of the dream, contemplate upon what is ending, and what is beginning in your dream

THE END OF TIME: A TEN MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Look for elements of change in your dream narrative. Is there a transformation? Is there an exchange of energy? Is there a conversion, a removal, a replacement. Is there a change of mind?
How does your dream usher you into the beginning of a new era?

PERPETUAL LIGHT: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

How can you rededicate and rekindle your inner light?
Is there a perpetual light within the dream that cannot be extinguished?

HOUSE OF MIRRORS: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

EXPLORATION
Don’t think, just look….(Ludwig Wittgenstein)
In a stream of consciousness style, write for ten minutes without stopping the movement of your pen.
Mirror the dream by reflecting upon the images with as many observations and details as possible.
Riff with whatever thoughts present themselves. Is there at least one image in the dream which has no split and offers a reflection of unity?

MANDLA DREAMS

A  dream is a microcosm of time, memory, and space.

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THE POLYMORPHIC SELF: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Shift your point of view.  Take on the identity of one of your dream images. Speak in first person with the voice of the image. Explain who you are. Talk about what you are doing in the dream  Elaborate on what you see, sense and how you feel.

Your mission sh…

Your mission should you choose to accept it…

WRITE FOR 10 MINUTES

With a still, calm voice from the center of your dream, speak about the images from your most sacred center.

THE JOURNEY HOME: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

• Is there a place or experience in your dream where you (or another dream character) feel secure, grounded, out of harm’s way or protected? If not, how could you bring the dream forward to find that place?

A GREENING TREE BEING: A 10 MINUTE JOURNAL MEDITATION

From my Seminar and Workshop Series:: JUNG, THE RED BOOK AND THE INNER JOURNEY ©2012

with Dr. Florian Birkmayer

ACTIVE IMAGINATION

In the desert the solitary is relieved of care and therefore turns his whole life to the sprouting garden of his soul…

I look down at myself. I am fully covered in green leaves, which spring from my body. A strange being grows through me. 

I am a laughing being of the forest, a leaf green daimon, a forest goblin and prankster, who lives alone in the forest…neither disposed nor indisposed toward men, full of mood and chance, obeying an invisible law and greening and wilting with the trees, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly inconstant and superficial…and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel of the world.

SOLILOQUY: WRITE FOR TEN MINUTES

I am a greening tree being, who loves nothing but greening and growing…

I let the wind and distant cries and commotion of opposites blow calmly through my branches,

I want to exist from my own force, like the sun which gives light and does not suck light….I recall my solar nature and would like to rush to my rising…

All quotes on this page are excerpted and adapted from C. G. Jung’s Writings.

 

Dreams: A Door to Imagination & Creativity: a Workshop by Victoria Rabinowe

San Diego Book Arts | Workshops