David Gordon - Mindful Dreaming: A Practical Guide for Emotional Healing Through Transformative Mythic Journeys

Copyright 2007 by David Gordon, Ph.D.

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

MINDFUL DREAMING

EDITED BY JODI BRANDON

TYPESET BY GINA TALUCCI

Cover design by Conker Tree Design

Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press

All the names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of those indivuduals portrayed in the examples throughout the text.

For the poem Lost: Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. Copyright 1999 by David Wagoner. Used with permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

Printed with permission from Many Rivers Press, Langley Washington. www.davidwhyte.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gordon, David, 1947, Feb. 2

Mindful dreaming : a practical guide for emotional healing through transformative mythic journeys / by David Gordon.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56414-922-0

ISBN-10: 1-56414-922-6

1. Dreams. 2. Self-realization. 3. Myth-Psychological aspects. I. Title.

BF1099.S36G67 2007

154.6'3--dc22

2006025948

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This book is dedicated to my dad, who through the example of his life
has been the North Star on my Journey. For his compassion, love of life, and
fearless heart I am eternally grateful.

An ancient adage reminds us that the teacher and the student create the teaching. So it has been with Mindful Dreaming, a book that would not have been born without the devotion, creative contributions, and profound dreams of my many (anonymous) clients, friends, and family, as well as dream group members. Thanks in particular to those in our present group: Dianne, Gary, Carol, Barbara, Ray, Karima, Amy, and Sheri. A special thanks as well to my extended family of incredible dreamers and friends in the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) for their seminal contributions to the field of dreamwork.

I especially want to thank my friend Rev. Jeremy Taylor, whose contributions to the field of dream study and extraordinary talents as a dreamworker have been an ever-present inspiration on my own Journey. And for the guidance and unfailing encouragement of my friend, colleague, and coach Kathleen Brehony, I offer my great appreciation. Thanks as well to Jon and Robin Robertson and Lisa Ross for their astute editorial contributions. Special kudos to my editor Jodi Brandon, whose patience and equanimity carried me through the final days of this project.

So many people and so little space, but my heartfelt thanks (and smiles) go to Jessica C. and Robyn for your belief in menever forgotten. To everyone at the White Doe who made my creative retreats a warm and wonderful experience, many thanks to Beth, Bebe and Bob, Aishaand especially Myra.

To Jessica and Jonathan, please know my heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering belief in my dream over all these years. Many thanks as well to Hayden and Schyler for your neverending patience and understandingand for not confusing me with my computer. Thanks to Jackie, whose constant support and encouraging dreams kept me on track when no end was yet in sight.

And to my beautiful wife Dani, who has been my muse, spiritual inspiration, and tender mid-wife throughout the joyful highs and grinding lows of this project: No words can express my gratitude. Whatever may be worthy in this book bears her spark and genius.

I have known David Gordon for many years, and have come to rely on his good judgment, advice, and dream wisdom. He is both a valued colleague and a friend, and now he has written this extraordinary book. It is my privilege to invite you to read it, and to offer a few of my thoughts about its particular merits.

David organizes his insights into a pattern of archetypal psycho-spiritual categories derived from both Western and Eastern wisdom traditions. By writing in this way, he joins the ranks of post-modern dream explorers and ancient wisdom keepers who have discovered through their own dreams and the dreams of others that there are as many different legitimate ways to understand and make use of our dreams as there are dreamers who remember themall valid, all interesting, all worth noting and acknowledging.

The dream world is many worlds, all blending and melding into one, rather like individual people and nations of the Earth, often at odds with one another, yet still and always members of a single human family, striving toward the same human goals and aspirations. Each dream we recall from sleep is a revelation of the deeper truth of our own individual lives, and at the same time, it is part of a stream of dreams that feeds into a collective sea that bathes and nurtures and nourishes all living things. David knows this. He also knows that the many simultaneous meanings of our individual dreams cluster around and always point in the direction of the deepest truths we humans are capable of comprehending.

What is a dreamer to make of this ambiguous soup of multiple meanings and possibilities? David not only offers wise and gentle guidance to help us sort the levels of our dreams, but he also offers us a set of clear, concrete exercises to help us connect with the healing and transformative energies of our dreams in each particular instance.

This clarity and gentle, practical wisdom alone would make this book worth reading, rereading, and passing on to friends.

David also brings us other gifts, literary and emotionally expressive gifts gleaned from and reflecting his lifetime of reading and movie-going, living and working, playing and loving. thinking and feeling. He shares moving and compassionate exemplary stories from his own life and practice, and from wisdom traditions from all over the world. Like the dreams themselves, David's insights are not limited to or bound by fashion or convention. (It seems to me that he also makes it quite clear that he could tell us, and show us, even more, if we would only loosen our white-knuckled grip on our limited waking opinions about the passage of time, and our culturally determined insistence on linear cause and effect.)

This is a book full of poetry and possibility. David's wide reading and omnivorous interests give us back the whole world to play in and to learn from. All of David's wisdom is carefully presented in such a way as to invite us back to our own inner source, the unique wisdom and healing energy of our own dreams.