Join us for Northeastern Tarot Conclave 2014, October 25

Once again, Diane Brandt Wilkes has crafted an exciting gathering for Tarot lovers of all levels of experience--the 2014 edition of Northeastern Tarot Conclave on October 25 in Fort Washington, PA. This year's focus is on dreams. I will be teaching a workshop on nightmares, and I want to share this day with you! Click below for details on Early Bird savings and our wonderful events--including workshops with the fabulous Rachel Pollock, Paula Chaffee Scarmadalia and...me! See you there!

http://www.tarotpassages.com/Conclave2014/index.html

Dreaming the porous boundaries

When the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn arrived in a small village deep in the Amazon, people slept largely outdoors in an open thatch house, surrounded by other people. They would wake at night to drink tea, because it was cold, or because of the calls of animals. "Thanks to these continuous disruptions," he writes, "dreams spill into wakefulness and wakefulness into dreams in a way that entangles them both."

To my mind, the intriguing question is whether different sleep cultures encourage different patterns of spiritual and supernatural experience. That half-aware, drowsy state is a time when dreams commingle with awareness. People are more likely to have experiences of the impossible then.

--from "To Dream in Different Cultures" by T. M. Luhrmann, The New York Times

Read more from Luhrmann's essay here.

When you're ready to move beyond Oprah...

The gorgeous, always imaginative Rubin Museum of Art is well into a series of seven Wednesday evening conversations called Tibetan Book of the Dead Book Club in association with its special exhibitions, Bardo: Tibetan Art of the Afterlife and Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures. Each Wednesday, curator Ramon Prats explores the TBD from different perspectives with an expert representing a particular discipline. They inquire: Does the TBD have relevance, wisdom and practical application for us today?

This week, I attended Prats's talk with Jungian psychoanalyst Morgan Stebbins on "The Analysis of Dreams," a topic of perennial relevance. According to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, dreams will always be relevant as long as humans exist, as long as humans remain unenlightened. Enlightened beings do not dream. They no longer have to, for to dream is to open onto an altered level of awareness in which we come face to face with avoided, unknown or normally inaccessible issues.

Stebbins discussed how Tibetan ideas and traditions around this heightened state of awareness parallels the theories and practices of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychoanalytic approach, he said, represents a journey into the "totality of one's being--the Buddha nature" where one can gain information on unconscious patterns of behavior, insight into so-called symptoms that are actually "symbolic attempts to get to somewhere new." Dreams herald a shift towards liberation.

And the TBD considers this liberation through hearing, as Prats mentioned, in his intriguing introductory remarks. Why hearing, I wondered? One sentence from a TBD passage read later suggested the reason: "So, recognize what I show you without distraction." We are simply too distracted by illusion to get with reality. Like children in school, we have to be brought to attention and made to hear. The Bardo afterlife process, Tibetan Buddhists believe, first brings the soul to that required place of attention and learning before it can move on in its journey. But dreams offer powerful opportunities for growth within our lifetime.

And what of the images of deities of wrath, featured in so much Tibetan art? And what of our own terrifying nightmares?

"Psychologically speaking, nightmares are great news," says Stebbins. "Wake up! Look at this! It has a lot of energy. You have a lot of energy you're not using. Change is scary."

Upcoming TBD Book Club sessions will feature Rabbi Neil Gillman on "The Death of Death" (July 28), Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg on "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" (August 11), medium Jesse Bravo on "Channeling the Dead" (August 18) and Roshi Enkyo O'Hara on "How to Die" (August 25)--all at 7pm. Click here for full information and tickets, and promptness--in both ticket purchasing and showing up to get a good seat--is strongly advised.

Rubin Museum of Art

150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan

Directions

The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

The long-concealed mystery of Carl Gustav Jung’s “Red Book” is about to be revealed. Read The Holy Grail of the Unconscious by Sara Corbett, The New York Times Magazine, September 20, 2009.

While the Solar Self sleeps

Ask your guide(s) to speak to you, instruct you and work with you while you sleep.

MP3 File

Eternal sunshine of the dreaming mind

Think you've never had a lucid dream? Think again! Remember all those nightmares you had when you finally said, "Enough of this crap! I'm outta here!" and yanked yourself awake? Lucidity! Of course, you could have hung in there--the shamanic way--and actively worked with the nightmarish elements of your dreams to find what secret treasure they hold for you.

And then there's the forgetfulness factor; you've probably forgotten lucid moments or entirely lucid dreams. My sense is that this sort of thing is natural, normal and common, although seldom remembered by the conscious mind when awake. The lunar self has all the fun!

Here's a rather well-done piece by Stephanie Rosenbloom of The New York Times about lucid dreaming: Living Your Dreams In a Manner of Speaking (Sunday, September 16, 2007).