Marianne
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Hi Shaahayda and James and Stephen,
I like everything everyone here has said about this dream of Joe Campbell. I like how a dream does not have to have any one meaning (nor subscribe to any one dream theory) and how all the dream characters can intermingle–Jung did say that all the dream characters can be representational interchangeably with the dreamer. So if you are also Campbell in the dream, perhaps you are annoyed at yourself (see paragraph below) about something you feel is antithetical to Joe. It is interesting to me that here you have distinguished your voice from Joe’s voice but that being adjacent they are parallel and you perhaps on your path walk parallel to Joe–because I know you, I am aware of how vital his works and teachings are to you and how you really do live by and with them. And what is in the present is also always unfolding, so in a sense the present is already what is present in the future, in its unfoldment.
Also, I like what you say at the end of your response to James, Shaahayda, which is, “but it does play into why Joe would not be happy with my present thinking” [emboldened mine], which does remind us that perhaps it is not dreaming of something in the future but something in the now–of course, the now always leads to the future, so perhaps a sign of changing sails to hopefully shifting winds of whatever it is that you are not happy with in the present time.
I also agree that a dream analyst can help guide a dreamer into the meaning of their dreams, but it is the dreamer who uses the analysis or dream analyst as a tool. Just as Stephen and James have said, since I am not you I cannot tell you exactly what you should think about your dream or reveal to you any one actual meaning, but any of us can only help guide or steer the dreamer to possibilities to sifting and winnowing grains of truth. You will probably feel what is real after examining all these possibilities. A note in general to anyone who has not tried analyzing their dreams: once a dream is examined, it is easier to understand and come to meaning(s), but when it is not examined, it often stays mysteriously puzzling to the dreamer. I think that is why I have always had a strong desire to write down and examine my dreams–for my need to understand their puzzling mysteries. It is fun, like putting a puzzle together–but more fun sometimes when you can get many picture images out of the pieces!
Fascinating dream!
Best,
Marianne
James, I love what you write here,
Joseph said something which to me is truly profound; “we are standing on a whale fishing for minnows”; which symbolizes this deep fathomless ocean we are riding on all the time concerning the inner depths of our being. This powerful deep inner mystery that is informing us all the time in this language we are constantly struggling to understand. In one metaphor he used: “it’s like a captain on the bridge of a little ship steering it across a vast ocean with all kinds of things swimming around under it that goes way down deep into the abyss of our inner being: “where the dark jewels glow”; and like this deep darkness or cave where our Shadow may be that may come in the forms of dragons or sea creatures we must deal with what represent these powerful forces. These may also represent our inner child that has pain or has been wounded in some way and is trying to get our attention; but Joseph also states; or at least in the way I understand it; that these forces must be interpreted or assimilated and they often come to us in the form of our dream life.
This is so nice and good to keep in mind in regards to any dream, or dreaming in general, whether our asleep dreams or our awake-time day dreams. Day dreams are dreams also–they reach consciousness or awake time consciousness more easily or immediately for most people.
Hi Everyone,
I am responding here to my own post about the shamanic/mystical attributions given to Whale, which was # 5118 and to Robert’s (R3’s) response post # 5040.
I mentioned that Whale is said to hold the records of life on this earth. Meanwhile, the ocean it lives in is often called the Ancient Mother of us all. So I responded again here just to post another “whale song” (or dolphin song?–dolphin is the breath, and the breath produces voice/song) I enjoy so much called “Ancient Mother” by Robert Gass. At the end of the song, there are also some whale (dolphin) song sounds. I have posted it before on the Facebook site I used to go to (I do prefer this forum!) and I might have posted it in this forum before too yet I do not recall whether I did so or not.
Enjoy, en/joy, in joy,
Marianne
Dr. Smith,
I am listening to Tim Buckley’s “Song of the Siren” now on You Tube, and find it to be a beautiful adaptation to the song. Thank you for sharing it.
~Marianne
Hi Stephen,
Now it is letting my type be seen! The first few times I tried to respond to your beautifully compelling questions, this site would not let the type be seen. Now it is working again–
Stephen, the questions you write at the end of your post are lovely:
Where, then, lies the danger? What is the risk to hearing that song?
I return to Circe’s warning, that those who hear the Sirens’ song will never find home. Brave Ulysses must be lashed to the mast, his sailors’ ears plugged with beeswax, his men warned to ignore his entreaties to free him to follow that song. It would seem the danger isn’t so much hearing the song as pursuing it once it’s heard.
Is this an experience only for the rare soul – the shaman, the epic hero, the astronaut floating in space? Must we plug our ears with beeswax and bend our backs to the oars – or is this an opportunity within our reach? If so, to what mast must we be bound to be saved? Who are our oarsmen, to see us past this compelling peril?
It sounds like a good intro to a very good book. I love this poetic thread.
Thank you, All, so nice to hear people’s voices!
~Marianne
Evans and Robert, and All,
Thank you for sharing the whale song. In some shamanic traditions, the whale’s sound carries ancient records of knowledge of life (back to prehistoric) on earth. The frequencies of their sounds can tap into the mind of the Great Spirit to tell the secrets of the ages or else what you might want to know about yourself, since the whale medicine can teach us to also find our own sound and frequencies. What sounds do we humans share in common?: laughter, crying, yelling out…but we do not have our own whale song per say or we do not all have a howl, and while we do have a collection of music from music history, we do not have just one song that we all sing in uni-verse. If we did, I wonder what it would be? Would it be a piece by Beethoven or something by the Beatles or perhaps a blending of the two or of the entire reservoir?!
And thank you Evans and Robert and all who mention the belly of the whale where a challenge and rebirth takes place within what I see now as a sort of concert hall and echo chamber!
I once saw a whale in the Pacific ocean while fishing with my dad in the Hawaiian seas. It was so beautiful to see it surface and dive. It is so wonderful to see the “depths” surface in this way. That entire trip (vacation) was my initiation into my teenage years, my rite of passage. There were many spectacles, and so it was spectacular! Writers, artists, musicians, historians, shamans, any kind of record keepers such as dream keepers/journalists, etc. all love Whale. In a sense I can see where every totem animal carries its sound strongly or uniquely enough to lend us our ears to hear our own voices and our own calls and responses/answers, like the howl of the wolf or the hoot of the owl, yet Whale is specifically known to carry various frequencies to life as we know (or do not know) it.
~ Marianne
Dr. Smith,
You are welcome for the link! No, I am not familiar with Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren,” but I will be sure to listen to it now that you have recommended it–thank you so much!
–Marianne
Hi Dennis,
I was unable to see your response until now because of computer issues then being without a computer for a while. I thank you for your warm response(s). The story about the woman feeling the whole poem of Dante’s Inferno as she was reading just a part of it sounds like a rather transcendent experience/view. I am thinking what an interesting experience it would be. The only thing I can compare to that in my own experience (I forever associate it seems) is when I was in high school I once had a dream that I was writing a poem about life under the ocean and it was a poem in three columns; I could read each column as its own own vertically written poem in and of itself but if I read the lines across the three columns horizontally across the page they also made up a poem. I woke up unable to replicate the poem(s). It was like reading one vertical column poem I also could know/read the whole poem horizontally. I have never endeavored to create such a thing!
I associate a lot as most my life is somehow imbued in memories/memoirs/personal myth, and I suspect it is my way of attempting to understand the world from the “I”/eye of the self out to the world and vice-versa. In a sense, our five senses are all we have with which to make sense of this world–oh and then add on our sixth psychic/intuitive sense and maybe sometimes the 7th might be instinctual although that could overlap with the sixth sense. It is also nice to understand the world through reading/hearing/seeing others “I’s” and “eyes” or ears and listen to what they carry in their hearts such as in a beautiful piece of music, and how a sound can be an archetype just as a visual symbol can be an expression of one. It is so nice to hear a poem recited as it is to read it sometimes. In any case, I seek forever to relate somehow, and usually the arts and myths are the best ways I find I can relate to the marvels of life on this marvelous planet. To me, as it also might to many of us myth-lovers, it feels like myths make the world go round.
I also have purchased and worked with your and Jennifer’s and Deborah’s book Deep Creativity. I did this when the book was first released. I loved it, it was extremely helpful, and I do recommend it to anyone wanting to dig into their creativity–for whoever is wondering: whether you feel your creativity is a dried-up well, whether you feel you have had no inspiration, or is gone way too deep inside yourself, or if you have too many distractions, etc. It helps you focus on creative prompts to do. I also think this could be a good book for people who feel depressed during these times to work with–in keeping a journal one can always do the workbook in one’s journal.
` Thank you, Dennis for all your kind and detailed replies.
~ Marianne
Shaahyda writes,
“Then later when the sleeve is turned inside out the myth would be revealed. So, my first big question is, do myths always have to have that time lapse?”
I am wondering if there can be a whole bunch of answers to this question at the same time and not one or the other being the correct one–like many things at once, like the inner lining is still there with the outer material even if not seen all the time, that it could depend upon one’s perspective at the time. Some mystics refer to this as the “inner planes” and the “outer planes,” that the inner planes are always there in the outer planes.
Inner and outer do exist at the same time but most the time we can see only one layer at a time, either the inner or the outer, unless we do fold up the sleeve while still looking at the outer suit material. Since they can exist at the same time and if we apply this to myths, perhaps no time lapse is needed for the outer material or events in history to become the myth–we mythologize life all the time as we go through it. However, I would suppose that in the “actual” myths that got recorded and handed down through time and generations there would be at times that time lapse when people look back in retrospect. This is one reason why I never tire of the old myths. I hear so many people say the old myths are outdated now and tiresome, yet Campbell all his life looked at the old myths and constantly found new things to say about them and I think many a time we here on this forum do the same thing, as well as adding in newer myths a Campbell also did.
Another time for me in which I have no time lapse in myth-making or in psyche is during a moment when I experience synchronicity, when a seemingly non-causal meeting of the inner and outer worlds meet, the inner as if there is something deeper at work behind the scenes. The coat and the lining of the upturned sleeve seems also like a great metaphor for synchronicity when looking at them both together.
Just a few thoughts. It is probably that later if I came back to this I would find I could have said these things in a different way–I am being more or less in stream of consciousness mode here as I write. I am sure thoughts on these subjects could roll on and on…
~Marianne
This metaphor and story is so beautiful. I loved hearing this. The speaker in the video appears to be Dr. Stephen Aizenstat.
James,
Thank you so much for that link here to the website of Jean Shinoda Bolen. I finally looked through it/read more thoroughly this evening and there are so many points in there I want to explore further–perhaps in journals or perhaps in threads here?
~Marianne
Shaahayda,
Thank you for sharing your paper with us. I wrote about how much I enjoy it and your other writing to0, elsewhere.
~ Marianne
Hi Shaahayda, I do remember that paper of yours and it is so scientifically well-done and well-written. I very much enjoyed reading it and have enjoyed our conversations on the topic of the elderly and death and dying, dismal as they can seem, feel, or be. It is vital that the elderly have good care; many of us do not think much about it until our grandparents get very old or we lose them when they die or when we lose a parent who “passes,” to use the euphemism to soften the harsh reality of death. I enjoy your work on this subject very much as I enjoy so much of your more personal writing as well. I am thinking too of a sort of in-between world in the writing world, I guess which carries the descriptive term of “creative non-fiction” in memoir or travel journals and such. I very much enjoy the tone and style and topics of your creative non-fiction, your memoir material that also contains your tales of your personal myth.
~ Marianne
And so we have both changed the spelling of our names! As you know, but perhaps I am writing this to others here, I went from Mary Ann (or sometimes just Mary) to Marianne–many reasons.
