A COLLECTIVE DREAM WORKING

[The Ace of Cups from the Rider/Waite/Smith Tarot]

Below is an excerpt from a lengthy letter I wrote to the editor of Dream Network, that was published about ten years ago in their paper format journal.

In this excerpt I refer to a Group Dream. However, I now would call it a collective dream working. But no matter what it is called, the process was inspiring. For all the shyness in the room, there was a lightness as one after another participant would speak up and offer their gifts to the writing.

[Excerpt]

“... I’d like to share a Group Dream developed in an exercise I led recently in a workshop on Using Tarot and Poetry to Explore Your Dreams. I defined the categories such as main character, environment, challenge, etc., and the group chose – from the dreams, Tarot cards and poems share in the workshop – which images were for which category. Then one member strung them all together in a scenario, which we fine-tuned. I feel this group dream thoroughly reflects the group’s hesitations and, more importantly, bravery. I was particularly struck by the sea image being both that which overwhelms and that which offers help (not uncommon in my own life experience). This group dream could as readily be called a myth, since mythology has been said to be the dreaming of the collective.

GROUP DREAM
by BettyJane, Daughn, Geoff, Laurie, Mac, Marty, Patricia and Speranza
September 21, 1996.

The smiling boy stands at the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover. He looks out, enjoying the sight of the turbulent sea. Suddenly, the first in a series of tidal waves crashes into the cliffs, reaching even as high as he. Threatening with each overwhelming surge to sweep him into oblivion. Huge hands reach out of one tidal surge, gently cupping him. He starts to grow wings, to become a bird! “If only I COULD become a bird,” he thinks. Then he could fly safely off this cliff that is being overwhelmed by wave after wave from the sea. But he knows he cannot shape-shift; he has no such fabulous talent. As soon as he thinks this, his budding wings disappear. He also knows his increasingly precarious footing at the cliff’s edge will not survive another assault from the sea. That being true, why NOT believe he can become a bird? He releases his doubt into the fountain of shimmering purple, that rises now like a blessing from the turbulence below and takes sweet flight, out over the ocean, into the wide, magical world.”

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Resource: DreamGate, dream and dreaming resources on the net.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.