I recommend this book to you—the author is David Gordon: Mindful Dreaming: A Practical Guide for Emotional Healing Through Transformative Mythic Journeys.
This is a book that presents practical ideas and techniques for interpreting our dreams in an accessible language. And dream interpretation is a very complex matter. In Jungian analysis, where dream analysis is a primary tool of therapeutic work, learning this skill is the subject of many years of training. This is why I used to be skeptical toward books that present this topic in an accessible way. That is no longer the case—not with regard to this book.
It is written by a Jungian psychotherapist with more than twenty years of experience in dream interpretation, who has led hundreds of dreamwork groups, as well as a popular radio program on the same topic. And, as he himself says, dream interpretation is his passion.
As I was reading his book, I could feel that passion. His words are imbued with much wisdom and love for the people who undertake their “mythic journey,” whose aim is an authentic life in attunement with the deep needs of their soul. And this journey is by no means an easy process—the path is filled with many turns, crossroads, dangers, temptations, obstacles, and trials. It is not easy at all to face all one’s fears in order to claim one’s own truth and difference. There is so much coercion—outside and within us—that prevents us from undertaking the journey. This book helps us face that by giving us a roadmap through which to understand the messages of our dreams—the language of the unconscious, the voice of the soul—and not to give up.
And the most difficult part of this path is at the beginning. In the terms of this book, this is the moment of the “Calling,” when the fear of change is strongest. This is the period of nightmares, in which we live through our fears of letting go of control and accept that a greater force governs our lives. The subsequent stages are Journey, Enlightenment, and Return, which together with the Calling describe the four seasons of the journey toward oneself.
Knowledge of the roadmap that describes the different stages of the soul’s journey helps us place the interpretation of our dreams in the proper context, through which we can also understand their meaning. Part of this map is the knowledge of the different “strategies for gratification,” presented in this book as ten different lessons of awareness. Thanks to this knowledge, we begin to see in our dreams the various markers along the path of the soul’s development and to understand their images more deeply.
The beauty of this book lies in the fact that, without turning into a cheap dream dictionary, it offers a key to interpreting the individual symbolism of our dreams (the basic rule of dream interpretation is that interpretation always refers to the dreamer’s own system of personal associations in relation to their concrete life situation at a given moment). This key encompasses not only the means of reason—our “solar consciousness”—but also the means of intuitive thinking—our “lunar consciousness.” Moreover, by entering into the roles of the “dream images,” it offers the possibility of knowing them also through bodily experience. When we come to know the dream images, they become our “dream guides”—an inner source of guidance, support, and healing.
This is also the true purpose of this book.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
And if you enjoy books such as Women Who Run with the Wolves or Awakening the Heroes Within, this is definitely your kind of reading.
