From the author: A book written by me in collaboration with Evgeny Naydenov and Andrey Isyomin, published in 2008 by the Bakhrakh-M publishing house, Samara. Part 1. (It is advisable to read from the beginning , from this part) Archetypal Study of Dreams Vladislav Lebedko Evgeniy Naydenov Andrey Isyomin St. Petersburg 2007 “One way or another, the Soul is one. Being present in all private souls, as if immersed in everything, it does not lose its integrity, just as science, consisting of many sections, is integral and united, as a seed is integral and united, giving, according to nature, the beginning to different parts of the organism, in the material sense divided, but meaningless outside the whole.” Plotinus “Enneads” IV “Self-knowledge is its own goal and has no end... There is no other goal except the very act of creating the soul, therefore the soul is infinite” James Hillman “Archetypal Psychology” “Myth is the most necessary - it must be said frankly, transcendentally necessary - category of thought and life; and there is absolutely nothing random, unnecessary, arbitrary, fictitious or fantastic in it. This is the true and most concrete reality. Myth is not an ideal concept, and also not an idea or a concept. This is life itself. For a mythical subject, this is true life, with all its hopes and fears, expectations and despair, with all its real everyday life and purely personal interest.” Alexey Fedorovich Losev “Dialectics of Myth Contents: Introduction: dreams in us and we in dreams. Chapter 1 Dreams, archetypes, soul. Chapter 2. Mythological consciousness. Chapter 3. General instructions for working with dreams. Chapter 4. Reliving dreams. a) Reliving: a simple technique. b) Reliving with additional techniques. c) Reliving death in a dream. Chapter 5. Free associations. Chapter 6. Working with images. a) On 2 chairs. b) Getting used to the image. c) With active imagination. d) Working with a dream as a whole image. Chapter 7. Archetypes in dreams. Chapter 8. Dream - an archetypal journey. Chapter 9. Crystal of dreams. Chapter 10. Working with short episodes. Chapter 11. Working with more active interpretations of the Leader. Chapter 12. Self-interpretation. Afterword: comprehension and liberation. Introduction. Dreams in us. and we are in dreams. Despite the knowledge that has filled the ever-growing amount of literature about dreams for centuries, dreams always remain a personal sacrament. Dreams that come to us from the kingdom of Hypnos, Morpheus or Navi are an integral part of our life, a part whose significance cannot be overestimated. Over the many thousand years of eventful history of mankind, many views and approaches to dreams and ways to understand and realize their meaning have developed. They can be very different, but everyone agrees that dreams can be healing, creative and prophetic. At different times and in different countries, people, wanting to see such a dream, organized special rituals. Descriptions of such procedures have come to us from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Babylon, Greece, and Rome. In India, people believed that in a dream the soul travels to the higher worlds. It was also believed that dreams are the soul’s response to everyday events. There is another type of dreams, which has been considered the most important and significant since ancient times. In such dreams, the gods descended to people and they could communicate with them and even receive something. Ancient people firmly believed that in dreams people could communicate with gods. Dreams are the most important means of communication with myth; dreams are our personal myths. In Homer, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon, Athena to Penelope. Asclepius, who became a god, sent healing dreams to those suffering who performed a certain ritual. Patterns of prophetic and healing dreams are found in all times and all cultures. Dreams can play an important, decisive role in creativity and scientific discoveries. The devil played Tartini's famous sonata in a dream, D. I. Mendeleev saw his periodic system of elements in a dream, Eilas Howe completed the design in a dreamsewing machine, Kekule discovered the molecular structure of benzene. Edgar Allan Poe captured the origins of his “The Raven” in a dream. Voltaire's Candide, Dante's Divine Comedy and many other works of art were inspired by dreams. If we carefully consider the dreams of famous people and their role in shaping the history of mankind, it will be clear that they play no less important role than waking events, summarizing experience and giving prophetic insights. However, as we will further show with examples from practice, any dream is a message from one or another god. As a rule, these messages require unfolding and unraveling with the active participation of the dreamer. The pillar of modern Western psychology, S. Freud, called working with dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.” And it’s true that, having mastered the technique of revealing dream images, you can quickly, gently and safely, unfold the entire basis of daytime problems, and moreover, following the dream, the message of the soul, you can, you can resolve it exactly as needed for the dreamer. Freud believed that dreams are symbolic images of suppressed , mainly sexual desires and are deceptive or symbolic in nature because these desires are unacceptable in reality. And that each element of a dream contains an encrypted meaning. He revealed the meaning of dreams using the method of free association, which is still widely used in psychoanalysis to this day.K. G. Jung viewed dream images as revealing the content of mental life rather than being silent about it. He believed that there were many contradictions between daytime and nighttime events and that dreams could reflect something that had not yet happened or something that a person was not prepared for in the waking state. He also highlighted the connection of dreams with the “collective unconscious” and the ancient knowledge of ancestors. Another outstanding student of Freud, A. Adler believed that the processes and images in dreams are a processing of a person’s daily experiences and thus determined its function. But not as a way to get rid of repressed feelings and desires. What is important in his approach is that he did not divide the psyche into day and night states and considered them natural continuations of each other. And since dreams are a continuation of a person’s life, they reflect both his personality and his life rhythm, therefore, by working with dreams, you can find the best ways for a given person to solve his problems. The creator of Gestalt therapy, F. Perls, compared working with dreams with the road to a holistic personality . He argued that by working with dream images, one can become aware of the various masks of the personality and unite all the cut off and repressed parts of the personality and soul. This happens through the playback, embodiment and reincarnation of the dreamer into various images and parts of the dream. The founder of process therapy, A. Mindell, believes that we dream not only in our sleep, but also while awake. The "Dream Maker" continuously emits strings of images reflecting symbols of the various layers of our inner life. The structure of his work can be seen using the metaphor of a lake, from the bottom of which bubbles continuously float up. Originating at the very bottom, the bubble is a small droplet of gas, approaching the middle it gradually increases in size and, rising to the surface, spreads out into a large bubble. The same goes for working with dreams. On the surface of the dream we see images, going deeper, we can realize the feelings behind the images, turning even deeper, it is possible to discover what dreams are born from - the “creator of dreams” and come into contact with him. Representative of the holistic movement in psychology S. Kaplan Williams offers a technique for reliving dreams, especially emphasizing the ability to relive those moments of a dream that made us wake up from fear or pain, relive our own death or other dramatic event from which we fled even in a dream, let go of fear and experience rebirth, renewal and, thereby , to be healed by completing some unfinished process, which appeared in a dream as a threat of death orsomething else terrible. Kaplan-Williams also offers a very convenient tool for analyzing dreams in their entirety - the “Dream Crystal”. Jung’s student and reformer James, the founder of archetypal psychology, James Hillman revives the ancient tradition of dialogue with the gods, exploring dreams using the method of active imagination. We do not consider which -the approach is more or less correct or exceptional. In our work, we came to the integration of all of these methods. The main thing for our approach is that in the process of actively working on dreams, a person revives his main wealth - the soul. What are human beings if not vessels through which gods, spirits, demons meet each other?.. There are thousands of them in each from U.S. They control the world of our dreams and reality, and we help them realize the divine plan. In complex, multi-level relationships with God and his many faces - the gods, with chance and with each other, we go through the forks of life's path, this "garden of forking paths." And at every fork in the road we all change: I, you, God, chance, the heroes of our imagination, the past and the future, drawn together in one bundle along the inscrutable paths of mutual creation... And how this or that god is to manifest itself in each person ( and whether it is to manifest itself at all) is the subject of a very complex and multilateral agreement, the participants of which are thousands of other gods, demons and archetypes, the spirit of man himself, and finally, the consciousness of the planet, which can sometimes significantly limit, and sometimes, on the contrary, expand the free play of the gods according to motives known to him alone by expediency... A person’s fate is decided by a complex mosaic of desires (passionate desires) of thousands of spirits, gods and archetypes, his past deeds, the tasks of his family and much more... And the study of dreams allows us to actively engage in an exciting, sometimes dangerous, unpredictable game mutual creation of oneself and the world.1. Dreams, archetypes, soul. The main content of dreams is images. They, the images, are the exponents of the will of that deep essence from which we come and which we are, the essence of what we live by. The word Archetype can be translated as prototype, that is, the original image, the source. Consequently, our dreams are largely filled with archetypes, and, perhaps, even all dream images, if we trace their origins, will turn out to be archetypal. The gods live in the space of origins, in the mythological space. Where the gods are is our deep memory, the memory of the original world order, and when we fall into a dream, we, one way or another, come into contact with this space. Our dreams are our personal miniature myths and worlds created by the creative power of our soul, myths about its endless return to the world, resurrection and transformation. People of antiquity had knowledge about the nature of dreams and consciously used them to communicate with the gods, to organize and correct their world . For example, among Australian aborigines, American Indians, Siberian shamans, most eastern healers, as well as in those peoples and nationalities where dream culture has been preserved, it is believed that one of the first signs of loss of connection with oneself, with one’s spirit and soul is that a person does not remember his dreams and does not understand their language. In cultures that have preserved dreaming traditions, the morning usually begins with a retelling of what was seen at night, and what was dreamed can often influence the planning of the day's events. Most shamans and healers of various cultures even today begin their appointment and diagnosis of a patient by asking him what he is dreaming about. Often the shaman extracts most of the causes and origins of the problem from there. There are also those who, in especially difficult cases, arrange their own immersion in a dream and sleep until the reason and ways to resolve the situation of the person who turned to them for help are revealed to them. It happens that the healer sees a dream on the eve of a person’s visit. Speaking about dreams from the point of view of their healing function, we should remember the famous Greek husbandAsclepius, who became a symbol of the science of healing. Like many mortals who later became immortal gods, Asclepius was the son of an earthly woman and the god Apollo. His mother was killed by an arrow from a jealous lover while pregnant. Tormented by remorse, Apollo saved and delivered an unborn child, and when he grew up, he sent him to study with Chiron, a wise centaur who raised many heroes. Asclepius became such a great healer that they said he could even revive the dead. The ruler of the underground kingdom of the dead, Hades, complained to the gods that Asclepius was stealing the souls due to him. Zeus killed Asclepius with a lightning strike, but came to his senses, restored his life, made him immortal and gave him a place among the stars. Asclepius was especially famous for his ability to heal through dreams. The sufferer came to the temple and prayed to Asclepius in the hope of seeing a healing dream. Falling asleep within the walls of the temple, he hoped to see a dream sent by God, which would be filled with information about the causes of the disease and methods of healing. If the patient did all the preparatory procedures and rituals correctly and achieved the required degree of purity and clarity of consciousness, then he saw such a dream. Sometimes the patient spent several months in the temple to achieve results. When the desired dream came, the dreamer was obliged to write it down. The most effective healing occurred if the patient and the doctor saw the same dream at the same time. The priests of the temple helped to solve the dream, and then prescribed a medicine based on the message contained in the dream. Information about communication with the subtle world in the dreams of saints and adherents of world religions, the phenomena perceived by them in a dream are numerous and well known. People of our time, for many reasons, mainly this ability lost, and now she is perceived as an exception. The progress of morality, technical and philosophical thought has quietly but steadily created the conditions for a false sense of separation and independence from the world in general, and from the world of gods and archetypes in particular. We, modern civilized people, have lost what was natural for the natives and aborigines. So will the ability to reveal the meaning of dreams remain the privilege of the chosen few or the initiated? And the lot of the majority will remain dream books that do not give full answers? How to perceive that ancient, many-thousand-year-old wisdom that we carry within ourselves? How to revive that sensitivity and receptivity, caring attitude towards the surrounding world, so characteristic of the ancients? - Through dreams, through working with dreams. It is possible and necessary to restore this ability, first with the help of a specialist, or in group work, and then independently. Working with dreams is a complex matter and requires an individual approach. We would like to warn the reader - do not overuse the interpretation of dreams using dream books. Basically, this only leads away from the perception of the meaning of the message of the soul into some speculative forecasts and assumptions intended for the ego of the individual. It is preferable to use methods that include direct contact with dream images and living them to unravel messages. These methods will be described in detail below. All dream images are personal images that relate only to you, the meaning of which is unlikely to coincide with the interpretation accepted in one or another analytical school, be it classical psychoanalysis, structuralism, Jungianism, or one or another occult school. Behind the images themselves, of course, there are archetypes, but we still need to find a way to them. For this, the best and safest method is the associative method, of course, if you do not have direct vision. Use the methods described in this book, methods that will enrich the storehouse of deep memories and help correlate them with the archetypes, which will also be discussed in this book. Archetypes most often visit us and speak to us when something is upset in our soul. Very often, the first thing that happens in the process of activating the imagination is the “emergence” of our deeply rooted problems and complexes. So, to get on the pathActivating the imagination requires courage and a sense of responsibility. This is not a game at all. But the process can lead to the discovery of the archetypal source of our problems. Activating the imagination is a flexible technique, it can be used simply to create a “day dream” consisting of images of daily life, in which you can also come into contact with the archetypes, live them and transform yourself and your world. To do this, you need to do almost the same as when working with dreams - relax, free your mind and dive inside yourself. Now there is no need to restore the dream picture - just allow the images to appear to your inner gaze. In most cases, you will not be able to immediately meet any character or archetype. Most likely, you will see some simple image, such as a butterfly in flight. Don't let your gaze wander, otherwise it will simply go through images, from butterfly to grass from grass to sky from sky to clouds and so on. Do not let go of the image of the butterfly until you understand why it appeared and what it means. With frequent practice of activating your imagination, you will gradually begin to receive more and more complex and vivid impressions, you will meet archetypes that appear in dreams and will be able to talk with them. Thus, you will have a chance to face your deepest problems and their origins. One of the main tasks now is the rehabilitation of the soul, returning its events, states and images to their original value, accepting what is happening in it. And this is not at all the point of view of psychoanalysis, this is the point of view of the soul. The psyche is not at all the “unconscious”. The soul is very intelligent, independent, active and, moreover, very interested in manifesting itself in a person. She is constantly in the process of interacting with the world, creating dreams and states, symptoms, fantasies and moods, she is extremely purposeful in her desire to feel the world and thereby live. Imagination, that is, the ability to perceive and create images, is the main tool and need of the human soul. It is through imagination that a person can encounter deep images, and the therapist’s task is to create conditions for the perception of mental material and ensure clear living of the richest and most important meaning inherent in the images. Therapy in this approach is, first of all, awakening the imagination in a person, or healing attitudes to imagination. As a result of work, a person develops a spiritual, creative sense of imagination. Here, the spiritual is such a quality of fantasy that generates only those images that really resonate with the depths and do not close the soul from further imagination. It should be noted that immersion in such fantasies is not at all an easy matter. If a person really lets himself go and fantasizes, then he often gets scared of his fantasies and is ashamed of them, because he doesn’t want to see himself “like that.” This is possible only in the most intimate moments, in prayer, in confession, between lovers and friends, in creative self-expression. Therefore, in order not to destroy the often very timid frankness of the soul, therapy in this case should be an example of motherhood, not in relation to the ego, but in relation to images. Here we are faced with a fundamental lack of knowledge about the soul, no matter who, at least the patient sitting in front of you for the first time, or a well-known friend with whom you decided to embark on a study of some long-known condition. This has nothing to do with the quality of your training as a specialist or lack of experience. It’s just that the soul always knows better what it wants. This is why Active Imagination is necessary. Both the therapist and the patient have the opportunity to find a solution, following the wisdom of the soul, its original structure and aspiration, traveling through the images that it offers for awareness and living. Here is an example of work: in a dream or fantasy, a door will open, and a little girl will come in with a bouquet tulips. Then there are, for example, two main possibilities. First.Use the system of interpretation used in psychoanalysis, and then you can “explain” to the patient - this is your childishness and infantility, or your anima that has not yet grown up. In this case, the image is sent to the negative treasury, so that later it can be corrected or cured, which is what psychoanalysis does. But in this case, most of the meaning and vitality, almost all of the image spontaneously revealed by the soul, is lost. Second. Save the “little girl”, keep the event, phenomenon intact. She is what she is – a phenomenon. If in your imagination there are no actions with your and her participation, then you can try to play with her, talk, offer her something. And the main thing is to be aware of what is born in you in response to its appearance. Are you confused, embarrassed, tense from her presence, or, on the contrary, do you feel an influx of warm, almost religious experiences? Or fatherly feelings? Allow all the feelings to manifest themselves, fill the space where you are with her and, in the end, there will be a strong desire to let the image speak and act and the girl’s voice will begin to sound itself and say why she came and what she wants. Any interpretation of the dream or fantasy experience requires the therapist not only to be seriously armed with conceptual baggage, but also to give priority to the conceptual apparatus involved in this hermeneutics over direct sensory experience. On the other hand, the method that puts imagination at the forefront deals with the phenomenon itself, the phenomenon. Things shed light on themselves, they shine, they can be seen when we interpret them, we darken that light because we make an assumption about them instead of letting them speak as they are. The therapist is, first of all, a “naive realist”; he himself tries to become, first of all, a phenomenologist. Those. to have a chance to encounter the imaginary event as it is. Not to move away from the image, through the formula “this means that” recognized in psychoanalysis, but to follow it and through it. And if the first significant step here is taken together with the founders of the genre, both Freud after 1900 and later Jung already recognized the importance of images, their pervasiveness and fundamental significance in mental processes. Then further - a fork. James Hillman, many of whose ideas we share, dares not to translate images into crystallized symbolic meanings, not to assign permanent meanings to them, not to interpret the dream as an Oedipal situation or penis envy, thereby depriving it of vitality. Instead, he preserves the image's quality of being alive, fundamentally unknown through intellectual interpretation. Considering dreams to be extraordinary phenomena, Hillman passionately resists turning them, and therefore the whole miracle of human life, with all its absurdity, surrealism, saturated energy images, “into the dead, stupid, very serious, very unimaginative.” Hillman’s audacity is not so much that he argues with the greats, but in the fact that he encroaches on the serious protective structures inherent in the human consciousness. “When I sleep at night, I am in images, I imagine... I plunge deeply into the internally understandable, sensory-created, clear, amazingly purposeful dream life. And whenever I wake up, even if I wake up very slowly, my understanding and interpretation of the dream begins. I cognize, I turn the dream into understanding it, even if I don’t want it, and at that moment the dream fades. It becomes unclear and loses its intelligibility. Why is this happening, why? The dream is hidden from my interpretation. It always happens like this, as if the inner poet is hiding from the inner critic.” This means that there is always a temptation to follow this inertia, automatism, habit with which the mind turns a miracle into routine, into a flat projection. At the same time, trying to resist this temptation is truly daring! The therapist’s job is to “bring the dream into life,” to keep it open. Moreover, the priority of sleep is so great that sometimes the dreamer ceases to matter.The therapist's sensitivity to him loses importance. “I talk more to the dream than to the patient,” says Hillman, “the dream has dragged me into the fire, and I burn talking about it, or better yet, talking to it.” Emphasizing the need to overcome the “rational routine of the world” again and again In psychological work, however, we pay tribute to the necessity for us, as for modern civilized people, of conceptual knowledge. It is useful to remember that conceptual language is a kind of trap in which we are caught. It is a language that leaves us captive to the ego, and where images fail to enrich us. But you can't throw it in a landfill. Another way to talk about an image is to play with language around the image, to start playing with words so that they become puns. Verbal work with images should acquire the quality of poetic work, liberating the meaning of the image hidden in etymology. Moreover, the word itself in a dream is not a concept. It is an image that comes from the imagination and has a broader meaning than its dictionary meaning. It is important to work more with the fixed meanings of words in dreams and with our language. Again, hermeneutics does not reach the multi-level, polytheistic speech of dreams. Hermeneutics is monotheistic. We see the philosophical basis of our approach in the works of Lacan, his destructuralization. This is what deprives hermeneutics of its monotheistic approach and leads to a type of conversation about images that is just as “crazy”, as polytheistic, as the image itself. If the therapist is able, through the above-mentioned destructuring procedure, to loosen the grip of conceptual dogma, release and protect the energy of active imagination, then the scientific word, conceptualism in the form of a kind of mosaic hermeneutics, can sparkle, clarifying and displaying individual facets of the image. By and large, one thing is required from the conceptual approach, namely: to stop claiming the totality of your control over the psychological, over the soul. The therapy system often projects the "unconscious" onto the patient's psyche, then because of the polarity it is implied that the analyst must be conscious, it is he who must "understand". But the problem is that consciousness floats; psychic fluids, as Mesmer might have called them, move around and through the analytic session. They are not owned by any party. Sometimes the patient has insight, is more conscious, and other times the analyst is conscious, and the next moment consciousness is really in the image. It is important for the analyst to go beyond his own subjectivity, to observe the phenomenon, to see what is happening. If a black snake appears in a dream, then conversations about anxiety, repressed sexuality and other interpretations can take a lot of time and effort, and most importantly, the snake itself will be pushed to the periphery of the process, it will become only an excuse, but not the essence of the work. It is much more important to preserve the snake itself, to keep it, this black snake, in the core of the space of the analytical session. A peculiar fascination of the analyst with what is happening is possible and shown. Thoughts about the complexity of the situation cease to be a priority, the head recedes into the background. The revealed image attracts, attracts and, finally, thanks to the energy of such passionate but also calm attention, it is revealed. The priority of the dream itself, its images over the patient and the analyst’s interpretations is for us directly related to the question, what is human existence? The images force us to accept that both analyst and patient are only relatively real. Images are what really matter, and they take up so little space in our world, so my job is to let them speak and speak to us. If we recognize that mental reality has the same concreteness and givenness as the objects of the material world, then this gives a special mood. A person can become attentive, restrained, receptive. The therapist, as a person, must step back so that the images can come forward. The analyst must get out of the way. The analyst doesn't know as much as he knowspsyche. In contrast to many psychological theories that emphasize the conditionality of what happens in a person’s dream (and not only) reality by external factors: family, social, biological, Jung suggested these events are self-generating, although they include all these historical, biological patterns. In fact, it is argued that the psyche is not only an active, but also a creative force. This means that it is necessary to approach it and the products of its activities with aesthetic criteria. Although the conditioned coexists in it with the creative and spontaneous. The conditioned is one of the raw materials, the old that gives rise to the new when handled creatively. And this is exactly what the psyche can do, despite all the sophistication of a person’s ego-constructs. However, creative doesn't always mean romantic. And this also comes from Jung, who said “creative means destructive and constructive together.” So there is no need to give a happy assessment to the word “creative”. However, every person is creative from the beginning, according to Jung, creativity is the same basic human instinct as eating or fighting. This does not mean that everyone can or should become an artist or writer, but one form of creativity is continuously open to us: psychological creativity. And psychological creativity is only the task of generating psychological reality in one’s life, resuscitating life. It can happen everywhere, at every moment of our lives, in everyday work, in the family, on the street among the crowd. To be included in this process, a person does not need to make any special efforts; it is enough to open up to what is already in him. We start from the premise that we want to teach people to fantasize about themselves as an artist of life, rather than a boring teacher or a serious business person. At the same time, it is important to go beyond creativity in the romantic sense, to provide a person with contact with both his genius and his demon. We don't have to be artists, but we can change the model, the fantasy that we live in, so that we don't imagine ourselves as stupid, sensible, rational and critical, but change the situation to invite the puerile and all its dangers too. Here questions arise. First, the theme of danger. During therapy, a person gets the opportunity to see his demons. It is believed that only if a person has a strong ego can he face such a dramatic reality without harm to himself. On the other hand, a strong ego is also a kind of imaginary figure. This is the one who does not lose control, does not let what comes take over. This is the overwhelming master of the psyche, an idealized figure with whom we are obliged to identify and lose awareness of it. If we, having identified with this figure, are on the defensive in relation to the psyche, then the latter has no choice but to break through to us and break through our defenses. The psyche becomes an invader. We feel violence, we are being dragged somewhere, destroyed. This causes fear and even greater emotional and physical spasm. If we give up fantasies about the Strong Ego and simply invite everything that comes as a good host: a girl in a blue dress with tulips: “My goddess!” Is this an angel?! Is this a demon?! You will immediately become interested in it and want to know where it came from, why it came, what its message is. Who are you, beloved child? Why did you come into my life? You might get hooked on the image. Simple, naive, phenomenal. The key issue in resolving the topic of danger is not the question of strengthening the ego, but the ability of a person to make the decision to unclench his fist, open the gates of his own fortress, and move from the position of a defender to the position of a hospitable host. The psyche will not be able to leave us alone, stop disturbing us, stop sending signals of different strengths. Such inertia is not in her nature. BUT - the psyche is still our faithful ally, as noted above. It may not be immediately understandable, sometimes frightening, but it definitely speaks for us, bringing ushealing, although this does not always mean peace! In many ways, the patient’s ability to more comfortably accept incoming fantasies depends on the fears and concerns of the therapist himself. The classic projection mechanism works here too. It is precisely his own fear that often forces the analyst to move away from living images into interpretation and interpretation. As a result, the session becomes safer, but the psyche remains undisclosed. The therapist is a human being, therefore the demands of complete impeccability for his professional position are illusory. Therapists are concerned, they have their fears. And they are afraid that the patient will reach suicide - fear number one. Either the patient will seduce them, or they will seduce the patient - fear number two. Violence is fear number three. The patient will be aggressive or already aggressive at the appointment. We could call all this the fear of regression. And, of course, the fear of psychosis. (And the fear that he won’t pay should not be neglected either). So everything that turns out to be spontaneous, like the appearance of a girl with tulips, awakens fears, all these deep fears of the unexpected and destructive. We place slightly different emphasis. The tragic is not a priority in therapy, but our practice itself is often associated with the events of death. Not so much with success and not even so much with cure. The challenge is to accept everything that comes. And this is the basis for the position of the therapist, who is first and foremost a person, and only secondarily a psychoanalyst. This is the soul's point of view. And accordingly, the inspiration for ensuring such total acceptance is drawn not from youthful ignorant impulse and maximalism, but from deep trust in existence. Just like the theme of death is not so much fate or tragedy, but a source of awakening a sense of individuality. Something has to be touched that makes you freeze for a minute - that makes you shudder and say, "Oh my God! Something happened here..." Whether we can do it or not, who knows - but that important moment comes through connection what we do and what we talk about with death. Death is not tragic, it gives gravity. The tragic develops a huge ego. Feeling your own tragedy makes you feel terribly important. The goal of therapy is different, thanks to contact with death, what comes becomes very significant and necessary, although at the same time there remains an openness to the comic. As a result, an atmosphere of some kind of timeless, and therefore extra-egoestic maturity is achieved. That maturity that is not related to a person’s age, his gender, his education, his social status, his era, i.e. everything that is connected with the ego and which the psyche has nothing to do with, as can be seen in particular from the fact that incoming dream images are not strictly tied to all of the current realities listed above. For our approach, the ego is just a pawn on the chessboard of life. A pawn designed to protect the soul, and not vice versa! However, the accuracy of identifying the person coming is very important. There is a connection between the figurative, mythological background and the patient’s personal history. We operate with a large, but very specific set of archetypes - gods of different pantheons. And the appearance of precisely those images, and not others, provides a hint and motivation for the development of a person’s personal dynamics. The system for deciphering the archetypal component of dreams or fantasies naturally relies on the basic positions given above. This is a community of active imagination and a complex of knowledge about gods or other archetypal images. Of course, it helps to know a little about their styles in advance - how they tend to appear. But it is very important to be able to allow them to show their own face, without pushing them, without artificially attracting them. The way of listening and perceiving the client’s information is important. You don't create connections, they already exist. You have to listen to what comes in, to an ear that is not tuned to the same wavelength as the patient's story... I listen to the rhetoric and observe the behavior, of course. But using myth or mythical figures as shortcuts doesn't helpat all. Therapy is not a demonstration of the Gods. It must be intimate: it must come to the surface and surprise us. At the same time, it is important to take into account that the most sacred, deep quality of the image may not immediately appear on the surface. Just because it's hairy, shaggy, red and has a tail doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing... The first face may be a mask; the second one too. These images change. And the image works just like a container: a container for thoughts, events, reflections, memory. Thus, thanks to patient peering into the space of fantasy, felt expectation and knowledge of archetypes, it is possible to form open relationships between a person and his psyche. A person can become an equal partner of the gods in matters of his life’s creativity, and find the desired dynamic balance of his own mental processes. Here is another quote from James Hillman’s book “Healing Fiction,” which can become the motto of our work with dreams: “When conducting in-depth analysis, conversation is not limited to the analysis of the story of one person by another person and everything that happens in a therapeutic consultation - ritual, suggestion, eros, power, projection; the conversation is also a competition of bards, reviving one of the most ancient forms of cultural pleasure. This partly explains why therapy claims to have a creative role. I use this word to refer to the emergence of meaningful imaginative patterns (poiesis). Thus, successful therapy is a collaboration of fiction, a revision of the story on the basis of a more reasonable, more imaginative plot, which also presupposes the presence of a sense of myth in all parts of the story." At the same time, the concept of "fiction" itself is not an alternative to the so-called reality (that is, than something false or artificial). He is also a reality, the reality of the inner world, the act of creating meaning - a creative, transformative and healing reality. 2. Mythological consciousness. For mythological consciousness, everything that exists is animate. Mythological space is the space of the soul. Accordingly, further sketches will be presented on behalf of the soul. The earth is an animate living being that is in constant dynamics. Someone and something here and there is incarnated or disembodied. Let us assume that some or even several creatures have disincarnated, completing their cycle. The resulting living energy space can be seen as a notch - a lack of many qualities at once in a certain proportion. The attention of many “customers” - forces that possess these qualities - is immediately drawn to this recess. These are gods, daimons, creatures of the upper and lower worlds, natural spirits, ancestral forces, for whom it is important to pass on certain tasks to new generations... Having met at our recess, they form the space of the Aggregate Customer, who attracts one or another suitable for a given complex order, the disembodied spirit of a person awaiting embodiment. A multilateral “agreement” is concluded taking into account the interests of the Aggregate Customer and the spirit, according to which the spirit is embodied in certain circumstances (country, family with its many characteristics - psychological, “medical”, social, energy, genetic, ancestral, etc.). The human spirit is aimed at fulfilling the “contract” with the Aggregate Customer, and it is precisely this force that steadily attracts a person to fulfill the terms of the “contract” (no matter how they are perceived by the human ego - joyful or cruel). We can say that this “agreement” is a purpose, but this will be a simplified view, because there is not only a monistically oriented spirit, but also a polytheistically minded soul, which gives, depending on the development of the soul, a variety and multivariate forks in the initially unambiguous movement of the spirit. The soul is a space of living channels that connect, through feelings and images, the ego and spirit of a person with each of the “customers” that are part of the Aggregate Customer, andalso with the souls of other people and (with a developed soul) with their “customers”. Activation of certain channels, awareness of them, makes it possible to make amendments to the initial “agreement” (sometimes not only your own, but also another person’s, which occurs in psychotherapy or magic). The compass indicating whether this or that action of the soul is adequate to the planetary Whole is the body, which reacts with tension (situational or chronic, turning into a somatic disease) to inadequate steps. Detected inadequacies can be discharged (if you learn to notice them and “listen”) by activating certain channels of the soul (manifesting conscious feelings or creating images). From the point of view of mythological consciousness, the task of man can be seen in the creation and activation (awareness) of the channels of the soul, connecting it ultimately with all the creatures of the Universe or at least the planet. Those. this means animating the world and consciously connecting one’s soul with the World Soul, simultaneously healing it, because even with a partial connection with the World Soul, the body will react with deformations due to the inherent defects of the World Soul, accumulated as a result of the inadequate actions of individual souls. A person who has decided to connect his soul (on one scale or another with the World Soul) will have to compensate for these tensions by activating certain channels of the soul and rewriting many “agreements” with various “customers” on different scales. This will lead to some healing of the World Soul. This is the evolution of human consciousness. And it is on this path that knowledge of oneself and the world occurs. It is on this path that one’s own ego ceases to be the center of the universe, although it remains as one of the figures of life. On this path, you yourself and everything that surrounds you and meets you becomes alive, comes to life, lives. One of the mechanisms by which the fate of many (practically most) people unfolds from the point of view of Mythological Consciousness can be described as follows: Separating from the unconscious space of the Soul initially, the Ego begins to claim to control reality. This is impossible in principle, but in some particular context it is doable (manipulation of people, for example). Often, for example, in childhood, the Ego is faced with a situation of impasse (probably it was “planned” in the primary agreement of the Forces) and cannot resolve it on its own. Then the Ego turns to various Forces of both the Lower and Upper worlds (gods), depending on the situation, and asks them for strength (this happens, as a rule, as a result of dreams and fantasies strongly colored by affect - for example, about revenge on someone and so on.). Power is given to the person asking - by one or another god (a contract is concluded), and the person breaks the deadlock and acquires a certain siddhi, for example, the ability to influence others in a certain way. But this agreement also has a reverse side, since, being unconscious, it replaces part of the Ego with a complex of acquired power. Further, this can be experienced as a neurosis with corresponding defense mechanisms. Part of oneself is replaced by introjected force. In adulthood, this leads to many problems (considering that there were many similar situations in childhood and agreements with different gods, too, often forming a bizarre pattern in a person’s fate). Awareness of such contracts and attempts to terminate them and give away someone else's power, or rather, to digest the introject and return to oneself one's integrated part, can become the beginning of the individuation process. We can say that the gods want people to be aware of them (not necessarily personified and named, but precisely aware of the flows of experiences). For this purpose, an initial “contract” is drawn up at conception, taking into account the possibility of the beginning of individuation. But the Ego has freedom of choice, so each person moves at his own speed. In addition, the gods have a Shadow, and if we want to get closer and realize the World Soul, then we will have to face the Shadow of the gods (upper and lower). When a person realizes, the gods willingly meet halfway and willinglyterminate contracts, which leads to integration. More and more immersed in the mythological vision of various processes, we saw in a new way, including working with dreams. Working with dreams, from the point of view of mythological consciousness, represents communication with the Aggregate Customer at different levels and the possibility of receiving messages from him, as well as “negotiations”, as a result of which not only personal mental and energy structures are involved, but also generic and other components “parts” of the Aggregate Customer up to resonance on a planetary scale. In the course of archetypal work with dreams, we have a chance to realize, complete or terminate all contracts and become a free being, playing on an equal basis with the gods and other forces in a single Universal Game, to realize ourselves as this A game. The path to this is long, difficult and very exciting. Another important conceptual note. If the Spirit can be described in the language of classical philosophy with its hierarchical “tree” structure, then the Soul goes beyond the scope of such a model. To describe the Soul (and, accordingly, to work), we need models of post-classical philosophy. We will turn to the concept of RHIZOME, which was introduced into postmodern philosophy by one of the founders of poststructuralism - Gilles Deleuze [1]Rhizome is an alternative to structure. The rhizome has its own creative potential. This is a self-organizing system. Apparent chaos actually conceals the potential for an infinite number of new transformations. And this ensures the unlimited plurality of the rhizome. In a rhizome, it is fundamentally impossible to identify any fixed points. Each of them in its development appears before the observer as a line drawn by it along the trajectory of its own movement. In turn, each such line escapes rigid fixation. The existence of a rhizomorphic environment can only be understood as endless dynamics, and this dynamics is determined by lines of flight. These lines turn out to be mobile in relation to the rhizome, but they also imply some kind of breaks, transitions of the rhizome to a state in which there is no rigid universal structure. In general, a rhizome, unlike a structure, is not afraid of rupture. The rhizome may be torn or broken in some place. Its lines can be rearranged one after another. They can constantly transform into each other. In principle, a rhizome does not and cannot have either a beginning or an end - only a middle from which it grows and goes beyond its limits. The process of rhizome deployment consists of the manifestation of more and more new possibilities, including linear ones. Such versions of the organization of the universe that were described by classical philosophy, where there was a center, a root cause and all that. But any of these options in the rhizome, in principle, cannot be considered complete. At any given time, any line of the rhizome can be connected in an unpredictable way to any other. And then, at the moment of this absolutely unstable, momentary connection, a certain pattern of the rhizome is formed... An unpredictably pulsating configuration appears. You can't grab her, you can't catch her. She is unpredictable and always new. This is almost beyond description... The most “tangible” image of the rhizome was given by Umberto Eco [2]: “Instead of the concept of a “picture of the world”, which is based on the principles of consistency, subordination, progress, the image of a labyrinth appears as a symbol of completeness and the Idea of ​​the world . It has branched corridors. But unlike the classical labyrinth, at the threshold of which Ariadne’s thread immediately falls into your hand, leading to the only exit (this is a kind of metaphor for the path of knowledge in traditional thought), there is none here. There is no center, no periphery. Paths are like a grid - it is a rhizome. It is designed so that each path has the opportunity to intersect with another. The space of culture, spiritual forms of activity (art, philosophy, religion, science) is the space of the rhizome. Such a structure is potentially limitless, although in reality it is not fully completed. Our exploration of the world -“labyrinth” is like a journey through the equivalent possibilities of the paths of the rhizome. Thus, the idea of ​​the unity of the world completes itself in the pluralism of forms, methods, principles, directions of its development, which now does not need the transcendentalism of absolute truths." A similar labyrinth - a rhizome - represents the space of the Soul, where each archetype and each image reflecting it can in an unpredictable way intersect with others, overlap one another, mutually transform and transform along completely unpredictable, nonlinear trajectories. Here everything is potentially connected to everything, there is no center and periphery, here we are presented with an ever-fluid, constantly reconfiguring labyrinth. And dream images lead us through this non-linear fluid labyrinth. It is very important to understand this, because all attempts to interpret dreams, from ancient times to Jung and his followers, were in line with classical structural models. We offer something fundamentally different. Intuitively, James Hillman came very close to this. But in our method, for the first time, we are trying not to interpret dreams, but to live with them, play and transform (both the dreamer and the therapist) together with images and archetypes, weaving into the bizarre and, at the same time, extremely filled with vital energy patterns of the universe. To rise to the crest of the wave of existence, plunging into the exploration and living of sleep and, at the same time, experience the mystery of alchemical transformation, holding on to this crest. This is a process consisting of an ongoing cascade of transformations. This is Life - in the most intimate sense of the word...3. General instructions for working with dreams. a) Methodological notes. The actual basis of the method is active open creative imagination, or representation. This is the ability to see and feel an image, which manifests itself to one degree or another in all people. To some extent, we find a similar approach in Mikhail Chekhov in his system of acting training [3]. Activation and disclosure of creative imagination is possible to varying degrees for each person. There is an undoubted connection between the form of a visual image that appears in a dream from the depths of the soul into everyday consciousness and its deep meaning. There are simply no random images or hallucinations in the mind; each image contains its own meaning and is charged with a certain force. Most often, dream images reflect precisely unlived, unaccepted, unfelt feelings, thoughts and phenomena of life in the waking consciousness. What a person did not accept and what he did not agree with. There are certain, and, in general, simple rules, with strict observance of which, a fairly full experience of entering the image occurs.1. First person narration in the present tense.2. Displaying desire, intention and internal action, the atmosphere of the image.3. When general words like fear, panic, joy, strength, etc. appear in the description. it is necessary to present them as a visual image.4. Permission. If events go in a direction that is undesirable from any point of view, allow them to happen and experience the transformations that they present. Active creative imagination develops and trains. It is also a unique part of the soul. It also works for reception, that is, for the perception of images and, at the same time, is capable of creating its own images that have never before appeared to the world. In essence, this is a comprehensive eye that allows you to look into yourself and into the world, see yourself and it, and also show yourself and the world a certain image or state that is needed now. This is a kind of sacrament. Very difficult to describe. The mysterious center of dreams where images are formed. Each image is, to one degree or another, saturated with feelings, sensations and emotions. Often there is a hidden movement in it - the tension of some forces (which the waking mind tends not to notice), and which actualizes the appearance of this particular image on the surface of consciousness. This is one of the properties and needs of the soul - to respond to the world, reflect events in it and cleanse, freefrom the tension present, including through such imaginative creativity. The soul, as it were, expresses its needs, its pain in the form of bizarre dream images. Even the most unreceptive people have the ability to associate, and for the initial development of the creative imagination of an adult there is nothing better than wandering along the bizarre paths of dream associations. This is how the ordinary rationally intelligent state of consciousness of an average adult person is revived and enriched, saturated with feelings. In a sense, feelings are the material from which images are formed, and they are often the reason for their creation (thoughts can be conditionally classified as a type of feelings, because we feel when and what thoughts we “think”). If a person is impoverished in feelings, “dried up” in his daily life, then, most likely, his imagination will work poorly, cloudy and weak. Association helps and allows you to go beyond the usual utilitarian image, open it and allow it to live and interact with the world precisely by joining it through accompanying images. The next degree of complexity will be the attempt to become an image, enter inside it and speak from it. Here, oddly enough, for such an irrational activity, language, rational language, turns out to be decisive. Behind every word of the language there is a complex of feelings, sensations and other things, which we get used to from childhood and are adapted to feel and perceive it as if automatically, even if often without realizing what exactly we are extracting along with the word from the depths of consciousness. That is, the very description of its state, properties and qualities brings consciousness into an image. This description begins with becoming an image. I am from such and such a dream or such and such. A name or denomination is a mysterious magical act. As soon as I called myself something, of course, with the sincere intention of becoming it, and subject to the presence of a certain state or atmosphere (M. Chekhov, about the atmosphere and its creation), the characteristic signs of what I gave my name. Tables from a dream, holes in the floor, the space of a stone yard, a tree of a road, etc. In each image, as already mentioned, there is an internal force contained in it and which actually brought it to life. It can be felt emotionally and somatically, or better yet, both ways. The most important condition is to live the image here and now, for which the narration by the living MUST be in the present tense and in the singular. As soon as the assistant notices the words in the narrative: he is she, etc., it is immediately necessary to return the dreamer to the image, reminding him of who he is. With a little skill, the image is held quite easily. And if one of the ultimate goals is liberation from a heavy or obsessive image that parasitically exists in the mind, then bodily living through action helps very well. It is possible to realize through physical movement the force contained in the image in order to finally release it and stop holding it back. Any movements are suitable for this, the nature of which is suggested by the image itself. The basic principle is that here you need to follow the lines of tension and move the body until the internal impulses dry up and until the release of bodily tension occurs. The same is with the feelings contained in the image, in order to free themselves from it they must be realized, allowed to go in their natural rhythm and in their own way. Scream, cry, etc. The next level of difficulty would be to have a conversation with the image, such as asking it questions about why it appeared and what it means in this vision and journey. Here there is an expansion of consciousness and a transition from the level of feelings and sensations to the level of meaning. There is a broader view of what is happening. The meaning of the image becomes visible as if through it. There is an awareness of what is happening on a larger scale. Moreover, sometimes this awareness can occur simultaneously with living in the body and in the feelings. The processes occurring in the soul and body are multi-layeredand parallel. In the end, the worked out and discharged image disappears, the picture of a dream or dream journey changes and is replaced by another image or the desire to travel disappears. This concerns the ordinary, earthly, everyday needs of the soul. The road to archetypes is awareness the essential quality and orientation of the image. More precisely, an essential conflict with something deeper and more comprehensive than this image. It is through such images that archetypes appear in dreams. The most simple and basic thing at first is the detection and definition of an archetype in a dream, through awareness of the conflict and the essence of the opposites of its components. For example: retention, a strong attempt to stop something - a conflict with time (Kronos, Saturn, Veles). Beautiful - ugly - Venus, Aphrodite, Lada... Scary, cold - Hades, Viy, Kashchei, etc. Each state of need or desire has its own power. The soul, striving to fulfill its irrational desires, often comes into conflict with the forces of the world, represented through divine archetypes. Thus, through interaction and struggle, experience and learning occur. Archetypes are precisely on the border of the worlds - the inner world of the dreamer and the outer world, with which the inner world has some kind of relationship. With a certain skill and experience, sometimes when traveling archetypes appear unexpectedly and unexpectedly. Possessing their own consciousness and will, they seem to be waiting until our consciousness is illuminated at a sufficient depth and we can hear what the gods are telling us. We will take a risk here, without, of course, claiming in any way to be finite or absolute , to imagine the composition of the human soul as a universal mirror capable of reflecting and displaying the whole world in all its manifestations. This is a model, a cross-section, and of course not comprehensive. To reflect the world, the soul has everything, in one quantity or another. The powers of all archetypes, all the gods that exist and even those that are not realized are represented in various proportions, and lie in the depths of very ancient or still unknown to science mythologies, waiting for their time to be understood. Here we see the law of resonance in action, or that like attracts like. That is why it is possible to communicate with the gods because they are within us. In a sense, they are us. Just the proportions are different. And no matter how strange it may seem, in a sense, the gods are more constrained than people. They are defined and “cannot depart from their functions.” A person can communicate with any of them, unless, of course, he is bound by a decision or obligation and is free to choose, then, of course, when his choice is free. Actually, if you look closely, then any image leads, through a chain of mental images, to some archetype. Simply because the whole world is permeated by them and everything that happens happens in one of their spaces, which in turn is subject to a very specific deity. Archetypal space is present everywhere, but the archetypes themselves purposefully appear to us infrequently. This phenomenon can be called, following the terminology of Stephen Kaplan-Williams[4], the Great Dream. It gives the experience of a deep and strong transformation of the inner essence, in contrast to the smaller scale of ordinary dreams. In order to adequately meet and go through such a dream, preparation is desirable, which actually consists in acquiring the skills of fully and easily experiencing the images of an ordinary dream and reaching the archetypal level by “building up” » imagination. To ensure an effective process of immersion and travel in the dream space, a special atmosphere or, in other words, a state of consciousness is required. Creating and maintaining it is a special art, the mastery of which largely determines the success of the process. In this case, the working basis of the state, precisely what allows one to soften the rigid images of everyday life and saturate the work space with the strength and mobility necessary for travel, is the dream state itself . Everything is possible in a dream. Can't argue with thatnobody. And remembering a dream, entering its space, we find ourselves in its atmosphere, inhale and feel the state that is there. The main task of the Presenter is not to destroy this atmosphere with rationalism, and not to impose on the dreamer any moves and patterns of thought. The main tool of the Leader is the question. It is a correctly asked question that allows a person traveling in the space of dreams to get an answer to it, move to where they need to and feel and experience what they need. The weapon is the question and the goal is the answer, that is, the discovery of the unknown, the unexpected. Therefore, the art of the Leader in archetypal travel consists of two main parts: the ability to create an atmosphere, state and convey it to the traveler, and the ability to see and feel what question is now most appropriate to reveal the essence of what is happening on the journey. Questions begin with simple ones, designed to help make adjustments, for example: what do you see in front of you? What's going on around you? How do you feel? Often beginners or people who are not very mobile in perception, not having the skill of looking inside, answer that they don’t see anything. Here you should ask, for example, the following question: what is this nothing? Dark or light, scary or not, soft or hard, cold or warm, etc. and, in the end, it turns out that the traveler sees “something” in front of him and is able to describe it, and has some kind of relationship with this “something”, this is the beginning of a chain of travels, transformations and transformations. This is necessary if there is an archetypal journey into some space. If there is a journey into the space of dreams, then everything is much simpler. The journey begins with remembering the dream with which you decided to work. Next come questions that help to draw the image that has appeared, for example: what is it - color, size, shape, distance, clarity, etc. Next are questions about the essence of the image: in what relationships is this image located? with the world around him, what he wants, how he intends to achieve what he wants... At this stage, when it becomes clear what kind of desire is present in the image, it is already possible to identify with it, be called by the appropriate name and then work from it or from it . Sometimes it's easier to do the opposite. First, become an image, be called by it, and then find out what he wants and what kind of forces are present in him. And, probably, the last stage of questions is to determine which of the archetypal spaces this image belongs to. To do this, of course, you need to be familiar with the world of the gods at least to some minimal extent. After acquiring some skill, the essence of the archetype becomes clear intuitively, you simply feel and know, being in the role of a leader, who is now in front of you or who you need to turn to in order for the experience necessary now to gain greater integrity to happen. And, of course, you should not get carried away with a rational approach - except at the stage of skill training. We have already written that the space of the Soul is rhizomorphic, extremely nonlinear and irrational. Therefore, the main tool of the Leader is intuition and imaginative vision. b) Instructions for work. The first difficulty that a beginner may encounter is that he supposedly does not remember his dreams, is too lazy to write them down (and writing down dreams is a must if you want to work with them) and then quickly forgets. These difficulties can be easily overcome if you have the desire and determination to begin systematic work with dreams. Keep a special notebook for recording dreams. On the first page, write a phrase like the following: “I, so-and-so, begin working with dreams and undertake to write down my dreams at least three times a week immediately after waking up.” This self-commitment will spur you on whenever you want to shirk work. Keep this notebook next to your bed so you can grab it without getting out of bed. This could be a bedside table, a chair, and sometimes it is useful to put a notepad with a pen under the pillow. Train yourself to wake up slowly. Don't jump up when your alarm clock or phone sounds. Extend the waking phasetrying already in this half-awake state to remember what you dreamed or at least several episodes. Then, reach for a notepad and immediately write down everything that remains in your memory. At first, these may be several disparate images or episodes, sometimes just associations or words. Maybe sometimes you can write one phrase, like “I dreamed about my father (mother, wife, childhood friend, someone N., etc.” or “I saw a lake in a dream (I found myself in a strange city, running away from someone...) ”, or even simpler “after a dream, a joyful feeling (sad, angry, guilty...). Don’t shy away from the simplest notes and images at first. If you do this regularly, then even if you never remembered your dreams before, you will gradually remember. more and more details and within two to three weeks you will remember a fairly coherent plot of the dream. The next difficulty that stops many people is that they believe that they cannot see images, citing an undeveloped imagination. This is a common excuse for work. with dreams :) However, experience shows that after two or three sessions of immersion in the atmosphere of dreams, especially in a group atmosphere or in a couple, even the most self-doubting skeptics begin to discover the ability to work with images. Even if at first these are rather chaotic, abstract, elusive or “mental” images, this is not a reason to stop. With each subsequent session, your affairs will go better and better and your inner world will reveal its innumerable riches to you. The main thing here is determination and persistent desire. It is easier to start working on dream research in a small group (4-8 people) of like-minded people or in a couple. If this group also includes a leader who has a psychological education and comprehensive training, this will be even more effective. And for the leaders of psychological groups themselves, our book will provide a rich arsenal of methods for working with dreams and active imagination. If you want to master the art of activating archetypes, archetypal journeys and the experience of living communication with the gods, not only at the level of imagination, but also at the level of powerful psychoenergetic experiences, try to get to our seminars or consultations. But in many cases, contact in the imagination is sufficient for a good effect. To successfully work with dreams using the methods we propose, you need at least a general familiarity with the terminology of analytical psychology by C. G. Jung, as well as with the mythology of various peoples. To begin with, this information can be gleaned from simple dictionaries and abstracts, however, as work progresses, it is useful to read more and more advanced literature on world mythology, cultural studies, psychology and philosophy. Serious work with dreams is not a one-time job. Before you become a Dream Master, i.e. a person who can independently immerse himself almost daily in the images of his dreams, wander along the roads and corners of his soul and receive healing, transformation, important information from this - it may take several years of regular work in a group or in pairs, or, if you have enough determination, even on your own. But it is truly worth the effort! Below we present the texts of voice recordings of work with dreams in the group that we lead, as well as an analysis of the dreams of several patients undergoing individual work. The group members have been studying for about a year and already have some experience, so don’t be surprised if your work doesn’t go so easily during your first attempts. As you gain experience, it will become easier, more interesting and exciting for you to navigate the space of your soul. 4. Reliving dreams. Reliving dreams, a simple technique. The task of the Presenter is to ensure that the following conditions are met: The dreamer always narrates from the first person in the present tense. It is extremely necessary to be in the now and in the image that is displayed at the moment. An attractive mysterious and unclear image in a dream needs to be asked the question: “Who are you or what are youthis and what you mean in this dream and my life.” Then listen to the answer. If the answer is unsatisfactory, the Presenter invites the Dreamer to become this image, name himself (I, for example, am a cave from a dream or vision of such and such) and narrate on behalf of the image also in the first person and present tense. When general words appear in a story-description of an image, for example: fear, joy, resentment, panic, heaviness, and others, you should immediately ask the Dreamer to see this in the form of a visual image. Fear can appear as a black cobweb, resentment as a swamp-colored cloud, etc. Then you need to become this image revealed in this way and speak out on its behalf. The basis of the Presenter’s work is questions; he must contribute as much as possible to the disclosure and expression of the image, its deep essence and the desire contained in it. As soon as this is expressed, awareness and transformation occurs in some form and the image changes. If you find yourself in a semantic or plot dead end (the edge of a cliff, a dark cave, an approaching killer, deadly elements), the Dreamer should be given the attitude to allow the worst to happen, not to resist and observe your own feelings and images around you. This is how the most significant transformations occur. Periodically inquire about how the Dreamer feels physically and mentally, about his condition, in order to keep the Dreamer aware of himself and his body. In some cases, when the Leader deems it necessary, he pronounces to the Dreamer his feelings, sensations and associations. This often helps to move the process along if there is a freeze. It is most convenient to start recapitulating a dream from the place where it began or where you were able to remember it. The further development of the plot of the re-living may coincide with the dream, or it may go far to the side. It doesn't matter. At this stage, we get acquainted with the very method of active imagination and traveling through images. You can start from any place, and then the Presenter focuses attention on certain images or feelings (or even thoughts) of the dreamer, and the plot may change, but it will still be a journey along the paths of your soul that are relevant to you and will not be wasted. Let us remind the Presenter once again that, having asked the dreamer about his feelings, it is necessary to translate them into a figurative series. The Leader does the same if the Dreamer is distracted from the images and says something like “I’m at a dead end, I don’t know what’s next” - in this case the Leader can respond with a guiding question: “Describe what the dead end looks like. Does it look like a wall, a cage or something else. Try to break into the cage, dig a passage under the wall and move on…” and in the same spirit. Often the Presenter will notice that he himself begins to see what the dreamer is talking about. Sometimes, when the dreamer’s attention is tired, the Presenter can share what he sees at that moment in the proposed picture. This will give an additional impetus to the Dreamer, and perhaps, with good dreaming experience of the Leader, open the way for him to those areas of the soul where he was afraid or could not look. However, at first, the Presenter should not abuse this technique, but use it only where the Dreamer begins to “slow down.” Below we give an example of a simple recapitulation, which began not even from the beginning of the dream, but from a certain important moment associated with the Dreamer’s experiences. Yuri's dream. Yuri: I am in a place familiar to me, it is almost the same as in reality. Sand quarry, twilight, there should be a race there. There are some somewhat sinister-looking men present. I seem to know them, but their faces are vague. I find myself in one place of the quarry, then in another, closer or further from my house, which is not far - a couple of kilometers. And I’m still trying to choose what vehicle to drive. One unsuitable one - reminiscent of a Volga car - does not drive on sand, it slips. The other one, with huge wheels, seems to be good at driving on sand, but it’s standing on a steep slope and for some reason it doesn’t go either. People are also preoccupied with something, tension is clearly felt in them, just like in cars. Now I have a feeling thatthese people know more about what is happening than I do. They are more experienced, I was there for the first time, but they have been there for a long time, regulars. From time to time I feel sliding, I am pulled down a little along the sand, the sand moves slightly under my feet. I change places, see all sorts of descents, ascents, grooves, and so on. The sand is a beautiful golden color and gives off a very warm feeling. These people are vague, as if they are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Among them are three main people - the rest are shadows. Like furniture. And these three have an inner light. They are not kind, rather indifferent. They resemble bikers in bandanas, tough, stern, aimed at winning. I need advice there, but I clearly feel that they will not advise anything, they are like wolves. I feel lonely. It seems like there are people, but there’s no use in it, you have to do everything yourself.. yourself.. yourself.. Presenter: What is the most significant thing in this dream for you? Yu: A feeling of loneliness. Q: Let’s move on to it right away. How do you see the feeling of loneliness? Comment: through the Leader’s question, the Dreamer realized the basic feeling in this dream, and the picture began to come to life, movement appeared. Yu: Loneliness is such a veil of gray-brown-greenish-marsh color, superimposed on what is happening . Like glasses. Everything around is colored with this. And through this veil sometimes light appears from people in a dream, warm light from the sand. But more often I am in it, alone, and this is the basic state, loneliness. Now I see that this veil began to swirl and began to color differently, into less dirty colors. Dark crimson, blue, green appeared. In general, there was less darkness. A flow began to flow through the body. Q: What does the flow look like? K: the traveler’s attention is directed to living and integrating the action that has begun to take place in the soul through visual images in order to expand, expand and deepen the process Y: Like a golden light that is in everything and in parallel in me in all at once directions passes. It brings peace to the heart and soul. Q: What does peace look like in the soul and heart? Further unfolding of the picture. Y: The seashore is sandy, the setting sun, 25-30 degrees above the horizon. Small rocks to the right and left, sand, seagulls. Q: I see a boat or boat in the sea, 200 - 300 meters from the shore. Intuitively, the Presenter saw and felt (or perhaps manifested, created) a plot-important moment in the image, reflecting a certain aspiration , the inner tendency of the traveler, and focused attention on it, which was one of the turning points in the process in terms of choosing a travel direction. Yu: Yakhtochka.V: Yes, yacht, do you see it too? Yu: She goes from right to left. She passed under the sun, a sail on the mast, a flag, very small, probably a two-seater. V: Aren’t you there? Y: Yes, I ended up there, or rather almost there, part there, and part above the yacht, above the sail. I stretched out like this. I have a broad outlook, I see the yacht up close and around, and now I’m looking from the yacht towards the shore. The shore reminds me of a place I know in Crimea. There is a feeling of peace. Everything is there and there is no need to rush anywhere. Q: What does peace look like? Here comes the awareness of the traveler’s own deep understanding of peace. An idea that, ultimately, superimposed on ordinary life, slowed down its flow. Yu: Peace is an almost endless snowy plain. Q: Snowy? Yu: Yes. She came through. In the distance, a little to the left than straight ahead, there are rocks, rounded, not sharp, and so... No one is in a hurry there - no need. There is not a single footprint in the snow, not a single one at all. There is no one there and no one to rush. Q: Day or polar night? After this awareness occurs, the image comes to life and the forces associated with it are activated at the level of subtle bodies. The warm, revitalizing movement in the soul continues and gains strength. Yu: Day, but closer to sunset. You could say it's a polar evening. Oddly enough, the comfort from this white silence is warm. I am filled with palpable warmth on all sides. The flow of heat has become even more noticeable, felt at the level of the etheric body. Q: What does it look like? Yu: More silvery. Whitish - milky - silver. B: Shape? Widening and deepeningprocess.Yu: It starts out roughly like my body, a little larger, and on all sides there are clouds and thin streams. It gathers towards me from all sides at once and also spreads in all directions at once. My consciousness is now upset - one part sees the image of white silence, the other is where the yacht is, and the third part is in myself and some other part that is to my left, it is dark, brown, it makes my heart hurt. And a feeling of melancholy. V: Look around to the left. The presenter again intuitively directed attention to the part of space that is important for the process. Y: There is darkness on the left. Brown but not cold, it can be cold, but this one is not. V: Move there. With the help of the Leader, the instinctive and will-binding desire to hide and try not to notice unpleasant images has been overcome. Yu: Now, I’ll turn around completely. I’m moving, I managed to turn around and this brought relief. Q: What does relief look like? A question with the goal of expanding the process. Y: Like the veil falling from this darkness. She moved away, and a free space appeared between me and her, such that I couldn’t even reach the darkness with my hand. She used to hang in front of me and press on me. I try to approach her - she retreats, but a part of her is still in me. I'm going, she's going with me. It feels like laughing. Like, you still can’t get away from me. Now there is a feeling as if it is a Shadow. Q: I see in this darkness the outlines of various laughing cartoon creatures, then here and there eyes and different parts of the bodies poke out, someone with a beard, and others, stick out, laugh and disappear back. Happened coincidence of images, that is, the Presenter literally saw what was happening at that moment in the soul of the traveler, and helped to concretize and reveal the essence of what he saw. The active resonance with the body continued. Yu: Yes, there is something similar... The darkness changed a little more after this conversation. She moved away some more. There was such a main tunnel left, and my left hand and index finger began to ache. Something buzzed in the little finger. Q: What does it look like? A question to expand and deepen the process. Y: What exactly? Q: An aching hand, a buzzing little finger against the background of this darkness with protruding mugs. Y: From this darkness a tube is reaching into my heart, kind of curved. And when something happens to the darkness, then something happens to me. The presenter again helps the traveler overcome centripetal processes and realize and feel his unconstructive inner action. Q: Notice, are you not resisting this tube and trying to hold it? Yu: I’m trying to push it out in order to free myself. Q: Now stop resisting and give in. Yu: After your words, something happened to me. I thought: “And why am I holding on to everything. Let him come in." Now the itching and numbness in the hand began to be replaced by a pleasant warmth. Living and expanding. Expanding the process and spreading it to the associated details of the image. Q: What do you see? Stop resisting and surrender, let the darkness consume you. Yu: I allow it, it is approaching and as it gets closer, it turns into something else. First into the mess, and then even into the world. Enters me and fills me. In some places this is accompanied by pressure and other side effects. In general, there is a feeling of fullness throughout the body, especially on the right side. There was a yawn. There is a blurry floating state inside. Q: I see that you are still resisting in some places. Where and how do you do this? One of the culminating points of the process, an intense experience of internal hidden hostility towards the dark, vague and cold, perhaps echoes of intrauterine and birth processes, has been achieved. Yu: In the head in the chest and large joints. I resist by holding the state. Q: What does this habit of holding look like? A question for comprehensive awareness of the revealed internal tendency. Yu: A person who has clasped his arms bent at the elbows, knees bent, shoulders raised, head slightly retracted. Reminds me of a fighting stance. He is tense. V: Let him relax. Overcoming behavioral stereotypes at the sensory and bodily levels with the help of the Leader. Y: To himreleases his head, shoulders, arms, back, pelvis and legs in turn, and he falls and lies. I'm lying down and something is covering me from above. All colors at once. The filling and expansion in the body is further intensified and leveled out. The left half of the body is almost the same now as the right. There is still a slight feeling of roughness on the left side. Q: Try to see your resistance even deeper. I see it as a hand grasping a stick. Yu: There is resistance at the ideological level. Q: What does it look like? Gaining volume in the awareness of one’s resistance at different levels of consciousness. Yu: Like a veil thrown over the top. Compressed foggy. At the top is the fist that directs this veil. Q: Let the fist relax and let what will happen. Overcoming the binding force of another familiar image. Y: The fist unclenches, and the veil gradually turns into a stream flowing from above, filling and washing. Like living water. But he hasn't completely changed color yet. The process is underway. From cold and silver to warm, golden... Severe lethargy, difficult to speak. Relaxation. I don't want to talk. The yawning is strong. Q: What does lethargy look like? Deepening the process and helping in the process of transformation. Y: Like a dried up branch. She is alive, but has dried up and withered. That's what it looks like. And she doesn’t have enough strength. V: Sprinkle her with water. Y: Gradually, although with resistance, she comes to life. From dark green to bright green. I feel in my body that something is being pulled out of me. Q: Try to see what is being pulled out, and most importantly who is pulling it out. Expanding the process and giving it greater volume and indirectly establishing connections with the outside world. Y: They are pulling out sticky dirty swamp mud to the right - with huge lips up, it’s even difficult to say who... An old man from whom one head is like Pushkin’s, which was blowing at the hero. Only here it’s the other way around – it draws you in. Without a hat, so shaggy. Who he is is not yet clear to me. Layers of this something continue to be pulled out of me, accompanied by a nasty state. Q: What does a nasty state look like? Another awareness of an internal parasitic state. Yu: Like weak-willed mucus. Q: Weak-willed by what definitions, visually? Disclosure of its essence. Yu: She herself is nothing does not do, but only clings to the environment, sticks. Q: Please see what and what you are clinging to, I have a feeling that it is you who are clinging. Translation of awareness from outside to inside, into the cause of the state. Yu: This is the habit of being in what -that state. Q: What does a habit look like? Help in feeling and understanding the process. Y: Habits are like boxes, like a chest. There is a figurative “opening” of the internal sensory component of the situation and a revolution of forces from a centripetal hidden state to a centrifugal open state. A manifestation of some hitherto pent-up inner quality. Q: Open it. Y: It’s old and tattered on top, I open it, and there are jewels inside. Suddenly. A crown, a scepter and an orb and something else. Q: Take all these jewels and decorate yourself according to your position, put on the crown, take the scepter and so on, and use the rest of the jewels in your clothes. Allowance and agreement with your inner impulses through figurative action. Yu: The crown is like a hat with stones, I put it on. There is an orb in the left hand, a scepter in the right, and a chain around the neck. There are also rings and something like a cross, but not a cross, but rather a medallion of the most outlandish appearance. Gold. A chain of complex shape, it’s not even a chain, but a kind of necklace, each link of which has its own shape. On the chest they are larger, elongated and longer, and shorter on the sides. These are curly rectangles, and I feel that each has its own purpose. There are still rings. A robe with shiny stones. Q: Are you wearing this? Y: Yes. Q: What do you feel? Y: Peace and confidence. Q: What does peace look like? Checking to see if the next figuratively sensual layer will be revealed, checking the completion of the process. Yu: And this is what it looks like, I’m sitting in all this and emitting light. Q: Are you satisfied, can we finish? Yu: Yes, you can still sit in this state. I’m even sitting in the air above this chest, there’s still light coming from the chest. I'm sitting with all thisand emitting light, I illuminate everything around. This light keeps me hanging. Like this. Gradually, barely noticeable small wrinkles are smoothed out inside. Re-experiencing with additional techniques Once you have mastered the techniques of simple re-experiencing and active imagination, you can move on to more complex techniques. These techniques themselves - free association, talking with images and discovering archetypes - we will consider in the following chapters. Here we give an example of reliving a dream using additional techniques. We suggest that for now, during your first reading, you focus on the topic of reliving. Lena’s Dream. Lena: I'm attending some kind of party. Everyone is having fun, loud music is playing, and, as often happens in noisy companies, I feel somewhat detached. I'm looking for a small company to have a more intimate conversation. I'm somewhat unsettled by what's going on at the party - that gaiety turning into aggressiveness. And I see that three men are sitting in a circle on the floor, separate from the rest of the company. In the center of the circle there are some ritual objects - I don’t remember what, most likely there are candles there, because the faces of all three are illuminated by a reddish flame. I sit down with the trio and feel their mood. They all have a mood as if they are going to death. They emanate coldness and horror - not in the sense that they are afraid of something, but rather there is a feeling of high stakes in the Game. Men ask me if I'm willing to do something. I don’t remember what exactly I have to do, but I feel that I can do it, I can do it, and it will be good for me if I do it with these wonderful men. So I agree. The one sitting opposite me says that you need to drink to the agreement. He takes out a bottle of a golden-brown drink, like cognac, and pours it into my glass. The rest have already poured it. Someone warns: “Don’t give her too much.” I also think that you really shouldn’t drink a lot and ask how many degrees there are in the drink. They tell me two numbers, one is about 20, the other is about 30, and I understand that the strength of the drink depends on the dosage. The more you pour, the higher the degree. And in this situation, I understand that the degree is within just the right range for me, because less will not work, and more will cause me to lose my head. I drink this drink. My head becomes clearer, I feel an expansion of consciousness. Understanding of so many things, clarity. Some alcohol, on the contrary, does not cloud, but brightens. Then two of these men disappear, I am left with the third. We don’t communicate, but it’s clear that we have some kind of connection, a common process. I feel irritated. I wonder where the rest went. Even the party disappeared somewhere. According to the “scenario” it is felt that this is how it should be. Host: Say a few words from the preliminary context. At what period of your life did you have the dream? What preceded it, what events? Comment: to immediately expand the field of dream awareness, the Presenter intuitively introduces a temporary semantic context. There is a change in state from a dream narrowly focused on “understanding” to free “swimming” in feelings and experiences.L: Then I read Vlad Lebedko’s novel “Communion (The Great Heresy)”, as well as his interpretation of the fairy tale “At the Command of the Pike”, which describes the process agreement with the forces, and thought about going to St. Petersburg to meet the author. Nothing special happened in life - but there was an expectation of something new. After the dream, interesting events began. Q: What do you associate a party with? The leader’s identification of one of the significant semantic threads of the space of a given dream and the focusing of consciousness on the flow of associations associated with it. L: With the expression “I am a stranger at this celebration of life.” A party is life without thinking, life is careless, aggressive, catching others, deliberate, masked. Yes, the people at the party looked like participants in a masquerade. Life without a heart. When a person thinks that he is doing well and looks quite confident, but he hurts the world around him and has been dead inside for a long time.Colliding with such people leaves an unpleasant feeling. Q: Next, you look for someone to communicate with in solitude and sincerely, and you find three men. Are there any associations? L: Rublev’s “Trinity” immediately comes to mind. I don't know why there are three of them. That's how it happened. Three Angels and a Lamb in the Chalice. Awareness with the help of the Leader of the hidden contradiction present both in dreams and in life. Q: What is associated with some kind of ritual, the present atmosphere of death? L: Mystery, Sacrament, Sacrifice. Sacrificing something dear to a person, but hindering development. The collapse of some important ideas. And the atmosphere of horror - like the understanding that no one will have it easy. Q: Ritual objects, candles... Further revelation of the meaning. L: Perhaps this is my need to ritualize, sacralize, turn into a ceremony and solemnly furnish. And candles are similar to a certain fire of vitality, fire from the depths of the earth. The fact that this fire illuminates the faces of the trinity is perhaps some kind of rooting in life, a touching of the deepest sources. Q: What about the degree depending on the amount of drink? Further elaboration of details and branches of meaning. Disclosure of the volume and scale of the dream.L: Initiation, test. I expect a certain loss of self and bitterness from this drink - and then I am surprised at its properties, surprised that everything did not happen as I expected. I thought I would feel bad, but I felt good. The drink is the Cup, not necessarily suffering. Perhaps just a situation that does not fit into the usual ideas about the world will destroy something. This is a drink of clarity, it brings some kind of clarification into my life. Q: Then everything disappears, and you are left with one of the men... L: Firstly, this is the Sacrament. Secondly, it's a bummer. These masks irritated me, but when they disappeared, I felt a bummer. Where did it all go, there was so much around... Annoying, but familiar. Against their background, I could feel my exclusivity. Q: Do you think this dream warned of some events in your life? Awareness of the connection with everyday life, the dream also carries some prophetic meaning. L: Yes, it all started with it. When I decided that I needed to separate myself from the merry company and not become like them, but look for something of my own, this was reflected in some ritual objects. It was like a test of my readiness for future events and my firmness of decision. If I am not with the cheerful masks, then where am I - this needs to be understood. If I’m in a ritual space, then how ready am I for changes, for the degree. How seriously do I take the situation. Q: Can you now give offhand your interpretation of the meaning of this dream? What is the dream about? After a fairly deep and detailed immersion in associations and details, the Presenter felt the opportunity to make a transition to a higher level of awareness of the dreamer’s dream. L: At the surface level, the dream is quite transparent and understandable. From the “celebration of life” I came to some kind of spiritual work. Of course, this is an initiatory dream, revealing to me what will happen in the near future. A departure from the usual way of life and view of the world. Destruction of ideas about reality that do not correspond to the new one. A more mature, serious attitude towards life. After all, in a dream I am looking for entertainment, and the company I find myself in is incredibly serious. The horror of the presence of death that emanates from them makes me feel the value of what is happening to me. After filling the dream space and the internal spaces of the Dreamer’s soul with the power of attached images, it became possible to deepen the experience of the dream itself and work out the messages hidden in it through figurative and sensory living. Q: Imagine party image.L: It's a cold structure, not particularly intelligent. She gets people involved. So as not to think about it. If a person begins to think, he will begin to act purposefully, and the party cannot allow this. It would be better for people to be empty than to gain the ability to change something in life. Q: What does it look like? L: It’s hard for me to describe. Q: Okay. Does it have a color? L: So bright, carnival-like iridescent. Q:Can you be her and tell us about yourself? L: I’m immersing myself in it now. Using the technique of reliving dreams to fully and accurately enter the image. Q: Say: “I am the party from Lena’s dream.” L: I am the party from Lena’s dream. Q: Tell me about yourself. L: I’m cool and funny. Frivolous, I don’t think about anything. I like it when people have fun in my stream and I attract new ones. So that they feel good and they don’t think about anything either. People become unbearable when they think about something. My purpose is to prevent them from doing this. Q: Do you have any message for Lena? Discovering and living the deep meaning of the dream. L: I don't like what she does while in my stream. She distracts people from entertainment. Translation The presenter pays attention to the relationship with the image and, accordingly, to the hidden forces that control the Dreamer. Q: What do you feel for her? L: Pain and irritation. Q: Even pain? Where is this pain located? L: Left shoulder and a little around the heart. As if pierced by a steel rod or arrow. Conviction and reification, awareness of the influence of the image on the body. Q: Be this pain. Name yourself.L: I am the pain inside the party from Lena’s dream. The presenter directs attention to the deep cause of what is happening and one of the decisive key moments of the process is revealed through the disclosure of the image of pain.Q: Tell me about yourself, pain.L: I am the longing for the eternal. I am a memory of something long forgotten, lost, but very dear. Q: What do you feel, pain? L: Separation from the One Whom I loved very much. Separation from God. Separation. I strive for Him, I want to overcome this division. I want integrity. I strive for the eternal. Q: Who caused the division in you? The archetypal layer of consciousness is already visible here. L: That's what happened. The person chose it himself. Q: What kind of person? L: Anyone. People separated from what was dear to them in order to strive for unity and integrity. Q: Are you talking about Lena? L: Not only. I am the feeling that any person can experience. Expanding the contexts of the image. Q: I see. Take a breath and exhale and feel like men who are sitting surrounded by candles in a ritual setting. Opening the figurative space of a dream through the channel intuitively chosen by the Leader. L: I am the men from Lena’s dream. We look at her. She is valuable to us in some way. Q: How do you feel about her? L: We like her. There is something bright and magical about it. This is striking. She is interesting because of her condition. She has access to two different spaces - the party and where we are. We cannot penetrate into the party space, it is alien to us, no longer interesting. The party won't let us in. And Lena can be both there and here. Q: Tell me a little about your ritual mood, the feeling of the presence of death. L: It’s Lena who feels the horror of death, is afraid to die. And we died a long time ago and are no longer afraid. Expanding the field of meaning through a completely ordinary question made at the appropriate time. Q: What do you mean in Lena’s dream? L: Her life, her path. Q: Her path is dead? Living and accepting what previously caused fear image within yourself.L: No. We just lost everything that was unnecessary. And it scares her. She says we smell of death. Yes, we experienced some deaths. But we are much closer to real life, to the roots, to the source. Like Lena, I now feel that a wave of intense heat is passing through my body, coming as if from underground. The next important plot point and the power awaiting awareness. Q: Thank you. Inhale and exhale and please be a drink with a changing degree. L: I am a drink. I feel aliveness, mobility, mercury, fluidity. Clarity, interest in everything. My interest bites into, flows into the surrounding space, I am curious about everything, I want to know everything, to expand to the maximum. Probably, I pass on these properties to everyone who drinks me. Q: Who prepared you? Detection of causal relationships, structure and awareness of the essence and direction of the image. L: These three prepared it, according to Mercury’s recipe. My image - a golden drink - is used in rituals invoking the god Mercury. Access to one of the archetypal dream customers,having a message for the Dreamer. Q: Please ask the god Mercury what message he conveyed to Lena through you? L: Mercury says: “Let her get ready,” and smiles slyly. Q: What does she need to prepare for? L: For work, which I applied for. If she wants to work, let her work. Q: Tell me, Mercury, why does she need this? Revealing the essence of the dream image and the message contained in it through a conversation with the archetype. L: I wanted to. She probably doesn’t know why she needs this. I agreed to work. Probably because she doesn’t really know why. Let it work and it will become clearer. By the way, I, Mercury, don’t feel very comfortable in the image of Lena. I feel a headache – probably because Lena is a human and her consciousness is limited in comparison with the consciousness of God. I think I understand what she wants from working with me. She wants her consciousness to expand. The same through living oneself in an image created in the process of reliving a dream, a joint product of the creativity of the Leader and the Dreamer. Q: Please remain in the expanded state of consciousness that occurred when you drank the Mercury drink. L: I am Lena’s expanded consciousness. I am calm, transparent, heightened. Heightened perception of life. Q: What do you feel? Disclosure of the essence of the image through the feeling of the state it evokes. L: Peace and lightness. I can expand to the size of the Galaxy, I can shrink to a point. Calmly, without fuss and extra effort. Just because it's interesting. I still feel sad. The longing of infinity. The doom of human existence and existence in general. Everything repeats itself, everything is cyclical, day follows night, universes are born and extinguished. Existential abandonment. Cosmic cold. The time has come to realize the cornerstone of the process and the dream itself. Q: Please tell me, do you have a message for Lena? L: Don’t strive to become perfect. All this has already happened. You will have time for everything you need. Do not rush. You have other tasks. Q: What tasks? L: To live. Don’t rush back into space, don’t capture the galaxy with awareness, this is not the most important thing right now. Let the longing for the eternal and infinite remain in her - as a reminder. But now Lena needs to live a human, humane life. If you enlighten too early, you may not understand why you were born. Additional disclosure and awareness of the semantic relationships of the dream. Q: Be the man with whom you remained at the end of the dream. L: I am the man with whom Lena remained in her dream. Q: What do you symbolize in Lena’s inner world? L: The consequences of her choice. What she will face, what she will have to work with. The destruction of outdated structures of her consciousness. Q: Why did everyone disappear? The party and the other two.L: The other two simply became invisible. We stepped back to allow the Sacrament to take place. But the party has become uninteresting to Lena and she doesn’t notice it. Lena forgot about the party, the party forgot about her. Q: Lena, what are you feeling now? Reaching a kind of intermediate finish of understanding the meaning of the message and the whole process. L: Lightness. Longing for eternity and infinity. Another irritation is that some of my ideas are crumbling, that everything is not turning out the way I thought. I am also enveloped by the warmth of love. I feel loved. An integral re-experience of an almost entirely lucid dream is designed to complete, merge and smooth out the roughness, turning the entire process, including the dream, into a single stream of conscious meaning and feelings. The image being relived now after work and the states it evokes are significantly different from the original ones. Q: Do you want to relive all this? The starting point is the same, but where you will end up is unknown. Tell it in the “here-and-now” and don’t be afraid, no matter what happens. L: I’m entering the space of the party. This is a nightclub. There are a lot of people, they are dancing. I feel good, I feel comfortable. I can enter and leave this space, my internal state has become more stable, it is not so easy to change. I can have fun in a fun company without losing myself, my comfortable state. I remembered that in this space there used to be threemagician from my dream. And they appeared in the center of the club, as if in another space, in a parallel world. This world resembles a ball - a colored ball in the center of a nightclub. Three men sit in this ball, in a ritual mystical atmosphere. This atmosphere is familiar to me. The walls of this nightclub, with dancing people, with semi-darkness and light music - everything begins to spin, forming a vortex. People become like the undead - vampires, skeletons. It doesn't scare me or disgust me. I accept them as such – dead. The flow of their deadness cleanses me, carries away what has become obsolete, what has died. The nightclub became a whirlwind of necrotic energies, killing me and leading to transformation. I become larger than this entire space. I am transparent, and a whirlwind passes through me. Everything is dense, opaque, clings to the necro-flow and is carried away by it. I stay where I am, it doesn't bother me. I know that this is how things should happen. In the whirlwind of death, I see a living colored ball in which three magicians are sitting in a ritual setting. I want to get to them. Something is resisting this. The word "hermeticism" appears. The situation is hermetically sealed from change. Purified by the flow of death, I am drawn into a ball of ritual space. I sit with them. They transform. And now they look like mythical animals - an eagle, a lion, a bull. I turn out to be the fourth, human. The Eagle gives me the Cup. Q: What do you feel? Fixing the experiencer’s attention on the state of mind in order to launch the process of awareness and transformation to denser levels of consciousness. L: I feel like I am part of this structure. This is how it should be. Q: Is the state blissful? Obviously a spontaneous joint experience of the Leader and the Dreamer. Not such a rare thing.L: Yes. With elements of excitement. I feel good, and I know that the dream will unfold in my life for some time after. Q: Can you give an interpretation of this dream from a new point of view? L: Bringing me back to Life. Q: Did this happen now, during the reliving? More a large-scale, strategic vision of what is happening, which arose as a result of working with a dream. L: This is a decision that I made at the time I had this dream. I was in the process of making an important decision, and a dream I had at that time showed me a possible way to implement this decision. If earlier I sought to escape from life into a ritual, a mystery, then in a dream I turned towards the Mystery of Life. Reliving death in a dream. What we do not want to see in reality comes to us in dreams. And if you look a little closer, dreams provide meaning, atmosphere and direction for working with what we, as a soul or as a person, reject in reality. An experienced Dreamer can go through a figurative death-rebirth according to the plot of a dream. He sees the world around him as it is, and, therefore, can create from it what he wants. By ceasing to fight and following the natural course of sleep, leading to any outcome, even death, the dreamer transforms the reflexive habitual negative, repulsive action into permission and acceptance, while transgressing the boundaries of one’s behavior patterns and sensory habits. Thus, one of the most important fears is overcome - the fear of failure. In essence, the fear of failure is the fear of refusing to forcefully interfere in the course of life in order to fit it to one’s own pattern; it is a reluctance to see anything other than some selected pattern of the course of events and the manifestation of feelings. In our practice, there are cases when dreamers in sessions of reliving dreams accumulate a large number of complete dream experiences with all sorts of endings. For example, the death of the dreamer or the image he embodies in all kinds of forms. After such a process, you are left with a feeling of mental relief, deep relaxation and goodness. Subsequently, in real dreams they manage to live through the tragic ending of the dream without turning off the path. Such dreams have great healing power; they leave behind a feeling of wholeness, completeness and peace. Death or execution in a dream is especially valuable here. Living through death in a dream shows how it is notparadoxically, to rebirth and renewal. Waking up from sleep before the most terrible or exciting, attractive thing happens, for most people, occurs from the fear of experiencing strong feelings or seeing something frightening and “unfavorable.” There is a premonition of possible pain and a way out of the situation by waking up into reality. But, one way or another, one day we have to face what we are afraid of. Perhaps most people fear humiliation most of all. To go through your fear, the fear of humiliation, means to go through the risk of humiliation, destruction in an image or in some capacity and erase boundaries, accept the challenge of the unknown. This is the paradox: by going through fear, we are healed. It is fear that builds walls in us, dividing us into what is necessary - obedient and good, and what is not necessary - uncontrollable and bad. This is not a fashionable “lucid dream” today, in which we need to remember that what is happening is a harmless non-existent dream and thus, in general then, although you can take complete control over the images, you will deprive them of their spiritual origin. On the contrary, the dreamer with full responsibility accepts his dreams as completely real, and lives in them, taking risks, being afraid and going through the terrible unknown and confusing. This is not a toy. This is the path to a liberating and healing dream. It must be clearly remembered that dreams are real and sometimes dangerous. By going through them, the dreamer gains the ability to cope with various fears, after passing which one can see a liberating dream. This is a dream in which the experience of true existence occurs, and the crisis is resolved by the creativity of the dreaming “ego” together with a deeper center, with the source of dreams, which is the soul. This is the moment of merging and loving the soul and ego with life. Healing can be seen as the resolution of contradictions in the soul, body and in life. The obvious expression of any contradiction is the enemy. The way we behave with the enemy in our dreams clearly shows our approach to ourselves and to life in general. If we avoid our opponents in our dreams, it is not healthy. This expresses unpreparedness or unwillingness to face reality. The unhealthy part of us tries to make us sleep longer than we need to and avoid the reality of the outside world. Unhealthy means anger at the world when something doesn’t work out, and living in fantasies that are not manifested in the real world. All attempts to separate your dreams from life are unhealthy. Dreams with manifestations of darkness, chaos, horror and all kinds of difficulties and absurdities are not evidence of neuroticism, psychoticism, other mental defects or criminality of the person who dreams of them. Such dreams just indicate exactly what and how to work with to achieve greater integrity. People experienced in dream work have a broader, more sensitive and accurate vision of life, and can deal with much more serious situations than the average person trying to live a normal “correct” life. An attempt to develop spiritually and make opponents and “demons” disappear in dreams cannot be realized, since these characters are present to balance us and make us aware of ourselves and our real capabilities. By trying to identify only with the positive, we upset the balance and are deprived of choice, practically cutting off half of the world from ourselves. The ego calls good what it can control or somehow satisfy the need for control, and strives to discard, cut off, forget what it cannot control. Our “demons” are what we cannot control. Until we decide to meet them and acknowledge their existence, we will have to fight with some incomprehensible “fate”, a mysterious “fate” to which we always lose. Ultimately, there is no other choice but to face what we fear most. An adversary in a dream is any dangerous situation, or character perceived as destructive or contrary. Instinct and some personal experience suggest that it is better or easier to run away than to calmly face the opposing force. This is temporarydeferment. “Hostile” forces will destroy us because of our own resistance in the form of flight. By running away, we give power to the one who is chasing us. Thus, by running away we weaken, we betray ourselves. Most of all, we are usually afraid of what we could not accept within ourselves, we are afraid of being “not like that”, “not right”. Fear itself arises from possible loss. We are afraid of many things, images, possibilities, and most fears are associated not with real, but with probable loss. That is, basically, we are afraid of possibilities, probabilities. Should we be afraid of something that doesn't exist? Here, healing from fear comes from keeping oneself in the present moment, without making possible projections into the future and without being distracted by the past. When this state happens, you will understand that it is simply possible, and if so, why shouldn’t it be? The inability to sleep is often associated with the need for awareness of repressed impressions and experiences. Due to the tension of feelings, it is impossible to relax due to repression and sleep does not come. Allow yourself to feel and see the events of your own life. First, transfer impressions from your head, and then from your soul, onto paper. If you do this sincerely and conscientiously, sleep will come. Write down your dreams. Upon achieving integrity at the internal level, relationships with the outside world also improve. The need for healing, the very memory of integrity, is entirely spiritual in nature and the Creator of all things is its source. Resistance to any force makes it destructive. Here the main meaning of the word resistance is that it destroys the one who resists, coloring the active force in a destructive shade. Including it in the circle of potential transformation will allow the destructive forces representing the archetype of the enemy to take a natural and life-giving place. Next we give a description of a dream in which the dreamer woke up at a moment of danger, and the re-experience of death-rebirth. In this case, as in the previous one, techniques are also used, which we will get acquainted with in the following chapters. Nikolai's dream. Nikolai: My sister and I (somewhat similar to my wife, although I don’t have a sister) are sitting in the room. It looks like we are children about ten years old. We are waiting for mom. We are watching TV. There are two doors in the apartment. Someone opened one - probably mom, but for some reason it doesn’t come. I'm worried where mom is and who opened the door. I'm going to have a look. I open the second door and with horror I see a shadow on the floor with an ax raised (someone is hiding and is ready to hit me). It's inevitable. I cowered in the opening between the doors, paralyzed with fear, trying to call my sister in a silent, missing voice. I wake up in a cold sweat. Comment: there is a build-up and filling of the travel workspace with the power of feelings and movement. The general context comes to life, expands and is enriched, the Dreamer and the Presenter receive new, sometimes unexpected opportunities and images for work. Host: Let's start with associations. First, general associations from the entire dream. N: I remember my childhood. Situations where I was alone at home and really scared. I was afraid of some ghosts. And he sat in tension until his parents arrived. I remember several shots from that time. I remember a friend with whom I was friends at the age of 7-10 years. By the way, her name was the same as my wife’s - Olya. By the way, now I don’t lock my apartment during the day when I’m at home. I also remembered that last night I was thinking about one of my friends, who will soon be forty years old. He acts everywhere as a kind of all-knowing preacher and knows how to speak intelligently. I once wanted to point out to him that he had grown accustomed to this guise of a preacher, but he smugly defeated me in this argument, and after that I no longer tried to prove anything to him. And yesterday I was thinking something about astrology and about the Uranus-Pluto opposition, which usually takes place in the horoscope at the age of about forty to forty-one years. During the action of this aspect, a lot of husks fall off from a person, and those who are especially fused with their masks have a particularly hard time, some even die along with the mask that shoulddie. So I thought about this friend that now he is complacent, but in a year he will somehow start singing again... This association leads me to the idea that behind the image of the murderer who is going to kill me with an ax in a dream, there is the archetype of Uranus. Precisely Uranus, and not Pluto, since Uranus acts quickly and destructively. In a dream, he is going to kill me at the age of about 10 years, that is, it turns out that he is going to kill a certain infantile part of me. But, unfortunately, I wake up. That's why I want to relive this dream and let it happen. And indeed, now there is a period in my life when it is no longer possible to remain childish. From this point of view, the dream is quite transparent. A vivid example of the resonance of the Leader and the Follower and the joint synchronous energetic experience of the process. Q: When you reached the place with Uranus, I began to yawn very intensely. For me, this is always a sign that some kind of transformation process is taking place. Talk more with the dream images. Revealing the essence of the image through addressing and asking questions to it, conversation, in this case a whole stream of conversations with different images. N: The girl from the dream says that she personifies my immaturity, but, nevertheless. devoted to Anima. It is she who I want to call for help at the last moment. The TV symbolizes the stream of everyday consciousness, containing various rubbish. This is exactly what my infantile part is doing. Two doors mean double bottom. One of the doors is open. This means that I am an adult and play the role of an adult, but my second bottom is infantilism. The figure behind the door is Uranus himself, as he is telling me now. And he is going to break this infantile face of mine. By the way, in my horoscope Uranus is now also in a very active position. Strengthening resonance and synchronization. Q: I yawn even more often... N: A few more associations. I had repressed cruelty towards children. Several times I seemingly unintentionally caused minor physical injuries to small children. I pushed one off the swing. He threw a pebble towards another and hit him in the head - an abrasion. And I remember a few more cases. Then, as an adult, I was afraid to hold babies in my arms. For some reason I thought that I would definitely drop them. That is, such repressed aggression. Even at one time I had a fear that I could do something to someone who was fragile and defenseless, cause harm. Fear is like the tip of the iceberg - repressed aggression. Fear of the death of a child... The desire for the death of a child... the desire for death for oneself... These are free associations... Maybe the mother wanted to have an abortion when she was pregnant with me?... Then it turns out that there may be shapeshifters in a dream meanings. Mom who wants to kill me... In the dream I was waiting for my mother... I want to kill someone, some child... I want to kill myself... With these associations the dream is still less clear to me than with superficial...The transition to reliving the dream in feelings and meanings. Q: I feel that you have developed the associative series quite well. It does not have to be understood intellectually. But now you are ready to relive the dream. N: Yes, I am in a deep state, surrounded by images. Q: Start reliving. N: I am a little boy of about ten years old. I'm sitting in my children's room. There is a girl lying on the crib in a robe, possibly my sister. As a child, I often dreamed of having a younger sister... I switch TV programs. The TV is old, where programs are switched with a round lever. The Olympic Games are shown on various programs - I loved watching them as a child. One is hockey. On another program - skiers. Figure skating... And suddenly, I hear that someone opened the front door. The girl says, “probably mom has come.” I keep flicking the program switch. But no one gets through. Mom doesn't show up. I understand that the door has opened, but no one is there. Fear and tension arise. As the work progresses, the need arises to reveal the image expressed in a general word by creating a visual image. Allowing the most terrible thing to finally happen, transformation after that. Q: Imagine an imagethis tension. N: I imagine a man holding a pistol with a cocked hammer to his temple. a pistol with a drum, that is, this man is playing Russian roulette. He doesn't know if the cartridge is blank or real. And then there was a minute of tense anticipation before the shot. Such an image. This is exactly the image of my tension in a dream. I don’t know what’s behind the door, but I have a feeling that it might be something very scary. This man finally fired. There was a real cartridge there. There's a hole in the head. Complete relaxation after tension... Q: How do you feel now? N: Strangely enough, I also relaxed. I know that someone is standing behind the door, but I’m no longer afraid. And I go into the hallway. I feel that as soon as I open the door, something fatal will happen. After returning to the dream space, the process changes its course and sensory coloring. Q: Are you going to let it happen? N: Yes, I'm going to let it happen. A stream of heat and goosebumps runs through the body. I open the door. There is a large man standing there with an ax raised. I look at him for a few moments. He brings the ax down on my head and cuts it open. It's dark before my eyes. I was killed. And I feel calm. I feel like my body is sliding down the wall. The sounds become distant and fade away. Silence. Numbness... ...Now I am floating above my own body, the body of a boy. I see this already from the outside. I see a severed head, blood mixed with brain. But there is no fear or disgust. Calmness. Some pause while the transformation process takes place in the depths. Awareness of the new in oneself, the establishment of a different relationship with oneself at the level of the past transformation. Q: What do you want? N: But the fact of the matter is that you no longer want anything. Everything has already happened. The painful tension was resolved. I'm relaxed and calm. A girl appears at the door. She suddenly begins to grow and grows into a beautiful woman. She has a bottle of some liquid in her hands. She pours liquid on the severed head and the head grows back together. My consciousness returns to this body, which comes to life. I feel inside again. But I'm no longer a little boy. I'm a man my age. The woman takes my hand and I rise. We hug and leave the apartment open. We are leaving this house without taking anything for ourselves. This is a children's apartment. We are leaving for the adult world. This woman is my Anima, but already matured. By allowing myself to be killed when I was little, I grew up. Very pleasant sensations in the body. I am confident and my Anima is safe with me. We are walking down the street. Now we are somewhere in the countryside. Summer field. Flowers, smells, evening, haystacks. It's getting dark. I'm alone - she imperceptibly fluttered into me from behind. I'm making a fire. There is a village somewhere nearby. I understand that I am at home. This rustic summer area and fireplace is my new home. I feel good and free. Easy, free, blissful - normal states after a good process. V: We can finish here. N: Yes. It was important not only that I allowed myself to be killed, but also that I was later reborn as a mature man. A new life has begun.5. Free associations In order to get to the depths of the soul, to the area where the archetypes live, which are behind most dream images, when studying dreams, we consistently apply several techniques to clear the path of the imagination to these depths. And the first technique on this path is free associations. Each image that appears in a dream is associated with certain memories, feelings, values ​​and meanings. By letting the imagination fly free, the starting point of which is an image from a dream, we find ourselves in a whole world of memories, associative chains of other images and various feelings. This action in itself allows the imagination to delve significantly deeper into the world of the soul, to get closer to the origins of dream images and feelings. The method of free association sometimes, without the subsequent use of other techniques designed to further deepen the world of dreams, makes it possible to reach archetypes, those initial prototypes that set the soul in motion. This is the realm of spirits and gods.Technicallythis is done quite simply. After listening to the description of the dream, the Presenter identifies the main images (or invites the Dreamer himself to do this); each chosen image then successively becomes a starting point for the free flow of memories and feelings. Next, the Presenter can ask additional questions to clarify details or connections between images. Already at this stage, both the Dreamer and the Presenter can fall into greatly altered states of consciousness, immerse themselves in the world of primary sources. Below we present to your attention an example of working with several dreams, where several techniques are used, but the work always begins with free associations. Notice with what ease and grace after this procedure the imagination of both the Presenter and the Dreamer begins to penetrate into increasingly mysterious areas. It is as if invisible gates are opening, hiding the deep layers of the soul, which are becoming more and more clear. If you work on your own, and you have enough determination and attention, you can independently travel through the associations of the images of your dreams. Only, it is advisable to pronounce your associations out loud, especially in the initial stages of working with dreams. Speaking out loud and writing on paper are indispensable techniques for independent work. By speaking out loud and writing it out, you will definitely gain access to the meanings and feelings that lie behind the dream images, which at first glance may seem absurd, incoherent, and chaotic. The free association method will allow you to find connections and see meaning even in completely confusing dreams. Sergei's dream. Sergei: I remember a piece of the dream. I should be executed. The chosen method is through drowning. Moreover, they are going to drown it in a canal like Obvodny, only without an embankment. Very shallow, musty water. And on the bridge there are several posters instructing what prisoners should do before execution. Among these instructions are the following: read a sermon to those around you, tell everyone to go to hell, say succinct or apt aphorisms or a quote appropriate to the occasion. These are the three recommendations I noted. This amused me a little. Meanwhile, I see two black corpses floating under the water. Then it turned out that these were not corpses, but scuba divers who had to hold me at the bottom so that I would not surface because it was shallow there. I stand in a doomed state and before I wake up I shout: “I’ll poison you, I’ll poison you!” Comment: the Dreamer's attention is directed to associations to the main motive of the dream. Host: Exciting! So, if I understood correctly: the very fact of execution, the choice of method, the chosen method and its circumstances. Let's start from the beginning. The theme of execution in general and your execution in particular. S: The theme of execution in general has been attractive to me since childhood. As a child, I really loved going to movies, like “The Star of Captivating Happiness” or about Emelya Pugachev. These were films where someone was hanged, Pugachev was quartered. These topics fascinated and excited me very much. And with a school friend in the second grade, it seems, we discussed what methods of execution we would choose if we were executed: hanging, beheading, quartering, impalement, etc. This was a favorite topic of our conversations during that period of childhood. And now it’s amazing to remember how seriously we took it and discussed it. This was very interesting for us, the topic of execution. Later, as an adult, I imagined heroic scenes of my violent death. Either I am a rebel - a revolutionary, or I am a dissident, and the junta has seized power in the country, and I, like some kind of hero, go out to be shot. Moreover, I feel that death by execution is not as terrible for me as natural death. As they say, “even death is fair in peace.” I even often thought about what last word I would say, how I would behave, etc. It was somehow invigorating, oddly enough. The topic of violent murder and execution invigorated me. Even in adulthood. Interestingly, I didn’t think about drowning, and I think it’s an unpleasant thing. As a child I drowned aloneonce in the pool, and I remember that it was a very traumatic experience. I remember I was jumping on my big toes for about ten minutes, swallowing water, not knowing how to swim, until I grabbed onto some tall guy who was passing by. It was an extremely unpleasant experience. The presenter highlighted a certain feature of this scenario. Q: That is. in children's fantasies there was no such execution scenario? S: There was no drowning. Intuitively, he decided to develop the theme of death. Q: What sensations does natural death evoke? S: Natural death is much more frightening than execution, and the execution is heroic, solemn, with the last accusatory word. Q: In the dream, the choice of death was made by you or did it happen without your participation? S: In my opinion, this has already happened without me. It so happened that we were already near this channel. Opening the space of dream meanings, expanding and clarifying the space through association. Q: And what do you associate the channel with? S: Well, as I said, with the Obvodny Canal, with some kind of dirt , a landfill, with waters where all sorts of crap is dumped. For some reason, I also remember our childhood games, when we hung a rope with a stick, like a Taganka, on a tree bent over a small dirty river. It was quite a daring and risky adventure to ride over this ditch. There was drive in this, the teenage theme of risk was expressed. I fell into the water a couple of times, which was also considered an adventure. We ran there from class and could get a beating from our parents. And somehow I fell there and came to class all wet and covered in mud. It was very bantering. Also a kind of action in the world, a buffoon, buffoonery. And the slogans that hang over the bridge are also associated with the theme of buffoonery. “Tell everyone to fuck off” or “Quote some aphorism”, “Read a sermon”... This corresponds to the letter of what I fantasized about, some kind of bright action that could be buffoonish, trickster-like and at the same time pouring out deep emotional experiences, contempt for the world, but rather for power, for the social system... for the power of the strong, the powerful. Maybe this was due to the fact that at school I was the shortest in stature, I was oppressed, I was not ranked among the girls. There were problems associated with this, but here it was possible to somehow show up heroically, commit an act. They say they will regret it, they will see what a hero I am, and they will regret that they did not appreciate me. Q: And who are they? By asking the question at the right time, he grasped a whole area of ​​life in which the Dreamer has tension. S: All those who offended and oppressed me as a child, starting from my parents, school teachers, classmates, some older kids from the yard who used to offend me, and the whole aggregate of such people, offenders. We can say in a general word - offenders. Next, the decoding is revealed, the meaning of the symbols and images of the dream is revealed, the meaning of the symbols and images of the dream is penetrated into a deeper layer of meaning. Q: The image of shallow water and divers swimming there?! C: The image of shallow water is also a kind of amusing image . I remember the film “Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano”. There, the hero, in the heat of his best dramatic feelings, ran to drown himself, threw himself off a cliff, and there he was ankle-deep. Such intensity of drama, drama, drama, drama, and then “bang”, it turned out to be a fool. Those. again the theme of drama sounds, and on the other hand, buffoonery. A combination of the tragic and the comic. The revelation of deep and adjacent layers of meaning continues, the semantic volume previously compressed in simple, even with a touch of comical images is revealed. Q: Divers?! S: Divers? As a child, I perceived this as an interesting job. I probably wanted to become a diver, because you look respectable, cool, a suit like an alien, some kind of mysterious activity under water, in the underwater world. Accordingly, the underwater world is a world of the subconscious, a world of deep feelings. And the person who is there will learn something that we, ordinary people, do not know. At first I was scared, I decided that they were some kind of swollen corpses. At first there was a feeling of disgust. I remember incidents in my life when I encountered on the street or somewhere elsedead people who had not yet been taken to the morgue. The topic of death on the street, corpses in the morgue, evokes a very unpleasant feeling. On the other hand, another story comes to mind. For a long time I had fears of death. I was twenty years old. To overcome this, I specifically went to the crematorium to see how it was happening. From the beginning it was creepy, this whole atmosphere..., dead man. I joined the procession; they were burying some major figure. I walked past him, looked at his corpse and then was imbued with an atmosphere of some sublimity and drama. Then I walked for a long time in calm feelings around this crematorium, looked at the columbarium, the cells for urns, looked from some philosophical side. This was the first experience in twenty years of touching the topic of death. It began with panic and ended with an atmosphere of solemnity and sublimity. Here’s something else I remembered. In the last cry: “I’ll poison you, I’ll poison you!” - there is also something clownish and ironic. This is the slang of the so-called “bastards” who are found on the Internet, like: “Afftar zzhot, give me yada!” This is an ironic, tongue-in-cheek joke. The phrase “I’m poisoning you, poisoning me!” means an attitude towards the text that there’s such crap in there that it’s easier to get poisoned than to read it. Or give the author poison. Q: And in a dream, why is this attitude? S: And I have the feeling that no one forced me to participate in this execution, and I exclaimed: “I’m poisoned, I’m poisoned” from the comedy of this stupid situation. What kind of bullshit is all this action? This is an emotional exclamation that something crazy is going on with these posters, with these divers, with shallow water. Nonsense! A line between drama and comedy that ultimately turns out to be a dud. Something like this. Q: It seems that the director of the dream knew that you would figure it out! S: The director? I think so, because the symbols are so grotesque! A larger vision of the meaning of the dream is revealed and a connection occurs with life in reality. Q: What do you think, what is the director’s intention? S: Now, having said all this, I think that the director’s intention - show me a certain mess in my life. I get along in my attitude towards life and death, including. In my excessive hypochondriacity and some insignificant fears. Those. this is sarcastic irony over some stupid things in my life. “Come on, say a sermon, fuck everyone, or say a quote on the topic of the day, please! Do you want to be executed in plain sight, please! But it’s all so comical and stupid!” It is somewhat reminiscent of the repentance of Harry Galer from Steppenwolf, who saw how much he had done unnecessary nasty things in his life. And about me, he lived for forty years, did some things, but in fact it’s all some kind of crap! Nothing will come from this in the world, nothing will be lost. Those. Instead of living and living this life, I basically posed, posed with tragedy, comedy, buffoonery, drama, a mixture of this cocktail, and life itself flowed by. This mess probably appeared in a dream. Q: Do you have an image of this director, an understanding of who he is, what he is? A way to realize the archetype of the person who ordered the dream. S: You know, you asked, and Woland immediately came to mind. How Basilashvili played him in The Master and Margarita. It immediately appeared before my eyes. Not otherwise, he shows such stupidity to people, stupidity from his own life. A joint resonant vision of the dream space. Q: I also got a picture that while your action from a dream is going on, a certain figure is standing to the side and watching. S: UghV: With him Can we talk? S: Let’s try... Well, he says that I understood everything correctly when he spoke. Test. Q: Is this really Woland? S: This is not Woland, it is rather an archetype of the Joker type, on the edge of worlds. Maybe the Joker himself or one of the borderline archetypes. Q: Does he add anything else to what he said? S: He adds that if you understand this, then there is no point in playing the gum anymore. What I noted after this dream was that the feeling of life and living it became a little more complete. And on the contrary, the reluctance of pretentious poses, both internally and externally. Q: Has this exhausted the message of the dream, or is there something else? The presenter is tryingcompletely clarify meanings and feelings, apparently intuitively feeling that there is something else. S: He says that you can, of course, drown yourself in order to start over, but in principle this is not necessary, what is more important is the awareness itself that the desire to drown is filled with falsehood, it is a mess. In fact, drowning has already happened metaphorically. Now it is in good condition, even. I would even say mature. Q: I have a feeling of completion. Spontaneous revision - reliving the transformed dream space. S: Perhaps, yes. I have some kind of revision of the dream, but this is a different state. I see a beautiful embankment, bridge arches, houses around. An excursion boat floats by and I decide that it is much more pleasant to take a ride on it, enjoy the views, the greenery along the banks, the landscapes, and actually live! Don't arrange a stupid execution for yourself, but live. You can see banks, trees, buildings, just a beautiful landscape. River walk. Q: You can thank the director of the dream, Joker. S: Yes. Thanks to Joker and everyone who took part. Here is a description of another dream, in the process of analyzing which, the Dreamer managed to come across archetypal images associated with alchemy. In his own way, Carl Jung often found alchemical symbolism in dreams - for a long time it was one of his favorite topics. For Jung, a dream with alchemical symbols was a great success. He himself usually guessed alchemical meanings in dream images. Here the Dreamer himself, only superficially familiar with the works of Jung and alchemy, comes to the very experience of alchemical transformation, which subsequently changes his life. At the same time, the dream itself, at first glance, looks ordinary and does not carry any sacred symbolism. By surrendering to free associations, the Dreamer gains access to the powerful process of Transfiguration, the remelting of a number of values ​​that directed his destiny. As a result, fate itself changes. Oleg's dream.Oleg: A meeting of classmates is taking place. Almost twenty years have passed. Someone became a respectable businessman. Fedor is the same goofball as he was in his youth. Everyone talks a little about themselves. And then suddenly Semyon asks to find Maxim, who, according to him, by morning may already be lying dead near the Finland Station. I see another girl - Masha, who was not a beauty, but sexually excited me in the 9th and 10th grades. It seems to me that now sex with her is finally possible, and this excites me. Then a certain Natasha appears, a bright and pretty classmate, and openly seduces me. She says she loves fivesome sex. I'm even ready for that. But for some reason I know that she is cunning and can arrange things in such a way that she will then be sent to prison for rape. I’m trying to put on some kind of condom that was lying on the ground. It turns out it has already been used, and I almost pulled it on. Disgust...Host: Let's start with associations. What is a meeting of classmates associated with? The opening and saturation of the dream space with creative power through associations. A: Firstly, these are people with whom I have lived a lot, and most of whom I have not seen for almost twenty years. The first years after leaving school, I dreamed that when my classmates met ten or twenty years later, I would make a bright impression, and everyone would see that I was not such a goof as I was in my school years, that I would become a professor or academician, some kind of laureate, etc. And then everyone will understand how wrong they were about me. Now it doesn't matter to me. Now meeting classmates for me is associated with an unpleasant confrontation with the past. A reminder of that stage of life when I often felt humiliated, inferior, unrecognized... Further revelation of the meaning of the dream through new layers of associations noticed by the Leader. Q: Is there anything else besides the association with an unpleasant period of life? A: An area in consciousness, in the inner world, which is associated with images of childhood and early youth... Mostly gloomy images, but also cheerful ones, however, Same. In some way these people are close to me... There was a lot there. Q: It seems to me that there is something else that unites them. A: I saw this dreamsoon after I learned that there is a site on the Internet where classmates from all schools in Russia are registered, and this way you can find out about your classmates. I registered, saw a couple of guys I knew there. Q: Maybe there is also a certain condition characteristic of that period of life? A: A wide range of conditions. If we single out the dominant, then this is precisely the state of humiliation, misunderstanding, unrecognized by both teachers and the majority of classmates, both girls and boys... Translation The presenter pays attention to the quality absorbed, hidden by humiliation. Q: Isn’t there some kind of creative potential or expectation of creativity hidden there? A: You can say. This was a period when creative plans, dreams and plans matured. With two friends, we created a rock band, and one person who was mentioned is a pianist-synthesizer and, it seems, still plays in some rock band. Then he showed very high hopes. More detailed insight into the essence of the images to establish a more tangible resonance and decipher the message of the dream. Q: Let's move on to specific individuals. A respectable businessman. A: In the dream it was Kostya. The boy was quite balanced in childhood. A C student, but not a bully and not a quiet one. He belonged to the group in the class with which I was at enmity. But Kostya himself was loyal to me. He and I were not personal enemies. His father was some kind of great scientist. And a respectable businessman... So the guy has made a successful career. In the inner world, this is a part of me that symbolizes success in some areas of life. In the same material sense, my income is still slightly above average. Q: How is he perceived in a dream? A: He is perceived as such a sybarite. Imposing, self-satisfied, self-confident. Feelings towards him are calm. Q: And the next classmate - Fedor? A: He is one of those who constantly humiliated me, with whom I often fought. He really was a terrible goofball. A bully, a loser. I drank and smoked since the eighth grade. A few years after school, I heard that he was an alcoholic. Maybe he’s already drunk himself by now. Q: What can it symbolize in your inner world? A: In my inner world, this is my feeling of being a loser. Inner loser. I can also say about myself that I am the same goofball in some contexts of life as I was at school. Q: And Semyon? A: He appeared briefly in a dream. At school I had friendly relations with this Semyon, but not particularly close ones. His best friend was Maxim - who is a pianist and rock musician. Already in the 10th grade, Maxim had a rock band that performed somewhere. Everyone considered him a rising rock star. He composed good songs. And Semyon seems to me like a passing figure. Q: But does he symbolize something after all? A: Perhaps he symbolizes Hermes, the mediator god. A mediator between the world of the living and the world of the dead - after all, he warns that Maxim will be dead by morning. Q: And Maxim himself? A: I have already told a lot about him. Symbolizes inner creative impulses and hopes. Q: And Masha? A: The girl is a little ugly in person, but with a very sexy figure. Sometimes I dreamed and masturbated to her image. But I didn’t think about it seriously. And in general, when I was at school, I had not yet thought about real sex; it seemed to me that quite old people, after the age of eighteen, have sex. Well, in general, I considered myself ugly, unlucky and unworthy of love and sex when I was at school. Q: And the next girl - Natasha? A: She was an interesting girl. Everyone thought she was beautiful, and she was quite pretty. I have a traumatic story connected with her. Back in the fifth grade, she was friends with a certain Ilya. Either out of envy, or because of something else, I wrote a story in verse, which included lines about how Ilya was lying on Natasha. Without details. He just lay on top of her. I wrote this opus in class - the teacher took it away and called my parents. I was given a hard time by both the teacher and my parents. I was very ashamed. I think I even got sick later. And I liked Natasha, but I was in love with another girl.But I also used to masturbate to the image of Natasha. The last time I met her on the street was ten years ago. Even at school, I thought she was depraved, and the fact that in a dream she wanted sex with five of us fully reflected my perverted views of her. Sex with five of us is something very tricky. I can't even imagine how it is. And in the mouth and in the back and in the front and with both hands - something like that. There is something both exciting and vicious, disgusting about it. I remember an episode from my life, when I was twenty-three years old, I called a prostitute for the only time in my life. Moreover, there were four of us, quite drunk, and called two girls. With one I retired and quickly did everything, and then entered the next room, where I saw the second girl being simultaneously fucked in the ass and mouth by two of my friends. This was the only episode of watching group sex live. By that time I already had women (since I was eighteen), but this episode of a group sex caused a strange reaction in me. At the same time, excitement and disgust, and also a feeling of some kind of humiliation of this girl, for whom for some reason I was worried. Q: What do your words from the dream mean “I know that she is cunning and can arrange things in such a way that she will then be sent to prison for rape"? One of the key memories associated with blocking creativity and the ability to express oneself through actions in the outside world. A: By that time, in my dream, I was already aroused by Masha. Then Natasha came, and I got even more excited. Half awake, I remember that I had a powerful erection. And there was a period in my life when I was ready to do almost anything for the sake of sex, being in such a state of excitement. And although with age I began to have a more relaxed attitude towards sex, the dreams again revealed the experiences of that period when I was ready for anything. The desire was so strong. And the fact that she is ready to frame the monastery, as they say, is apparently connected precisely with the memory of the fifth grade, when it was precisely because of her, indirectly, however, that I received a powerful reprimand for telling a story about her. That is, there was a punishment for sexual fantasies about her, in essence. The story is absolutely innocent in modern times. But the punishment then was serious. Yes, I really got sick then, so much so that I didn’t go to school for almost a whole quarter. Accompanying the blocking was a kind of enveloping layer of sensations associated with expressing oneself. Q: Okay. Then in the dream there is a scene of you trying to put on a condom that was lying on the ground. What associations are associated with this? A: I immediately remember that when I lived near a student dormitory, I often walked in the evening before going to bed, and, passing by the dormitory, I came across a huge amount of used condoms lying around the dormitory building. And every time I thought: “Who is it that fucks so much there?” A used condom is the thought that someone has recently fucked. There is some kind of voluptuousness in this and something else forbidden from childhood. Maybe thoughts about how my parents fucked. And disgust is associated with dirt and fear of sexually transmitted diseases. Q: Why did you try to put on a used condom? A: I have no idea. There was some kind of condom lying around, and I really wanted to fuck. But there is something very perverted here. Five of us, a used condom... And at the same time, acute sexual arousal, and then disgust... Reliving the dream with an emphasis on feeling. B: Okay. Let's start reliving the dream. Start over.A: So, I see myself in the classroom. Desks painted green. There are about a dozen people sitting behind me. In front of me is a teacher. The teacher suddenly turns into the girl I was in love with back in the fourth grade. First love. Q: What is the reason for this transformation? A: It’s not clear. The only association is that this girl was a little overweight, and the teacher was fat. Q: How do you feel? A: I’m sitting calmly at my desk. People tell us who has achieved what success in life. I'm tempted to get up and leave the class and send this meeting and everyone present therefurther away. I have nothing to tell. I'm bored listening to this boasting, it's essentially a lie. Q: Will you leave? A: No, I think I'll listen to the end. Maybe I'll leave before I have to say anything. Or I’ll just say, screw you all - I won’t lie about myself. An active resonance begins and a peculiar “evaporation” of a certain blocking state begins, accompanied by drowsiness of the Leader and the Follower, which occurs in the depths of the soul in parallel with the reliving of the dream, or rather its key moments. Q: I was overcome by some kind of sleepy state. To me, this is a sign that we are approaching something important. What's going on? A: Kostya, who has become a businessman, is speaking now. He is wearing an expensive suit, a colorful tie... He says that he became the director of a large bank. Then I began to listen with interest: the man was a C student, but became a big banker... I suddenly became interested in how the fates of the other guys turned out. Here I see Fedor. He is drunk. There is even a basin in front of him to vomit in. Everyone looks at him with regret, and I also look with regret, although he spoiled a lot of blood for me. But it’s also fate. Now Masha appears in a miniskirt. She gives me a little sexual trepidation and thoughts of “wouldn’t it be better to retire with her somewhere in the next class, because now it will be easier than in my youth. And indeed, she and I quietly leave the class, start kissing in the corridor, run in into the next class, we lock ourselves in. We fuck on the desk. We fucked. They sat down and returned to the class one by one, judging by the expressions on their faces. But no one said anything about themselves. Semyon. And, having finished the story about himself, he says: “Let’s go look for Maxim, otherwise in the morning his corpse will lie near the Finland Station. For some reason, it seems to me that a train ran over him.” Exit to one of the key times in Oleg’s life. processes, its essence and the archetype that initiates this process. Q: Ask a question to the corpse crushed by the train - what does this mean. A: I will turn into him. I am Maxim’s corpse, crushed by the train. I was thrown onto the rails as a result of the attack. and some group decided to kill me. I was thrown under a train, but no help arrived. My friend Semyon was going to organize help from his classmates, but they didn’t have time, so I’m lying like a cold corpse. Q: What do you mean in Oleg’s inner world? A: I mean the process of decomposition. Decomposition, decay and decay. Three stages of Nigredo. Nigredo takes place at the very core of Oleg. I see Oleg's brain. The bark is still intact, but Nigredo occurs in the subcortex and trunk. The melting process is underway. Yes, I am Nigredo Oleg. This is not a pathological process, but rather the beginning of the alchemical refining of his being. Accelerating the process and eliminating obstacles to it by paying attention to the desire and essence of the identified deep image, as well as turning to Hermes - the archetype manifested through this image in this case. Q: What do you want, Nigredo? O: I want to rot and decay faster. And again I feel Hermes, the patron saint of alchemists, nearby. Hermes tells me that everything is fine - the process is up and running. A transition to the next stage is planned - Albedo. For success, you need an increase in degree, some kind of sublimation. Hermes says that perverted sexuality with Natasha and a used condom will just increase the temperature. Although there is a risk. Hermes says that this is an alchemical dream of decomposition, decay and decay. About going through rock bottom (symbolized by both perverted sex and a used condom). Q: What's happening now? Are you still a rotting corpse? A: No, I am the stage of Nigredo myself. In one of Jung's books on alchemy there is a symbol of Nigredo - a skeleton with a scythe standing on a black ball. This is an important symbol in my life. About twelve years ago I had a dream with this symbol, after which I changed a lot for the better, and my life changed. After this dream, I remained in a state of heightened awareness and happiness for several months. Now I'm Nigredo. Oleg for several years now».