In The Garden of the Dreaming Mind

 Serena Carroll reviews The Dream and Its Amplification 

"Amplification of Dreams" is not a light book, but one rich in its variety of earnest expression. These fourteen authors assemble their wisdom and experience under one great umbrella. They reach down into their depths to bring personal insights about the mind's (or psyche's), dream capacity -- or you may say, the amplification thereof. Every chapter is different, rich and interesting and very different in each author's approach. It's a book to keep nearby, pick up and read over parts again, as I have been doing, and enjoying it more as I do so.

What stands out for me? To mention a few:
Isler's Alpine Dreams making their way into the regions centuries old fairy tales, Wikman's own near death experience embodied as a dream, Swift-Furlotti's dream wherein an actual snake ritual and initiation, or new birth, takes place. Snakes, which are probably the oldest recognized key dream image around, come up again in Singer's heart touching story.

Abramovitch's attitudes on Jewish dream work from early Talmudic times, is similar to the 6th century Ancient Greeks, in the Temple of Asclepius, where seekers sought the priests' counsel in the dream abaton or temple.

Shalit mentions the power of archetypal or dreams of the collective, like Jung’s rivers of blood dreams, 1913, just prior to of World War I. He dispenses a large amount of Jungian information here – his section is a perfect description of the Collective Unconscious. 

If you're a thinking type you may respond one way, a feeling type, then you'll have another reaction.

Gilda Franz writes with all her heart in 'Dreams and Sudden Death' and gives us some practical advice on how to delve into and amplify one's dream.

Dream work is not new, Jung just expanded upon it greatly for our present era and in doing so brought a whole new dimension to the science and art of psychology.

These fourteen scholars manage to bring all of their wisdom and experience under one tent. I wish I had had this book in psych grad school 18 years ago, so much would have been made clear, although one does not need to be an academic to appreciate its scope and depth.

This is the 2013 Portable Jung!

Serena Carroll is a trained therapist, astrologer and writer, with over 35 years of experience. Serena is on the board of the Sarah House, a hospice care home for low-income individuals including those suffering from HIV; and has also moderated hospice groups for individuals suffering from grief and loss. Serena has also served on the board of the Pacifica Center for Depth Psychology. She currently authors a blog on practical spirituality for MariaShriver.com. Her website is http://www.serenacarroll.com/.



Product Details:
Paperback: 220 pages (Large Page Format 9.25" x 7.5")
Publisher: Fisher King Press; 1st edition (June 15, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1-926715-89-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-926715-89-6
Also available as an eBook
Order from Amazon or Fisher King Press

The Complex - Messenger from the Gods

Joseph Camosy writes on Photography and the Complex:

A photograph is an image. An image that's "magical and powerful" is an image which has "charge" or generates "Affect." Put these two ideas together and you have the concept of the "charged image." This happens to be the very definition of a complex. Now as created images, photographs can be evocative of individual complexes (what Barthes called the "punctum") or of collective cultural complexes (what Barthes called the "studium").

I recommend you read The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego by Erel Shalit. If you do, you will see that the complexes are soul food - they are the way our psyche's can relate to and be nourished by the soul/archetypal/spiritual realms.

Here is a short excerpt from the book:

"...Jungian psychology postulates an objective psyche, or collective unconscious, made up of forms, molds and energies that serve as blueprints for common and universal human experiences. These are the archetypes which, Jung clarifies,"correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of the instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the archetypes, so long as they do not manifest themselves concretely." (pg 24)

As "possibilities of representation," the archetypes manifest only when some level of consciousness comes into play. Thus we find archetypal ideas and images in myths and fairytales, in religion and in literature. Archetypal motifs, for instance the stages of childhood and coming of age, unfold in a person's actual experience. These motifs exist prior to the individual child's development, and whatever unexpected realizations the encounter with old age might bring, there were those who came of age before oneself.

However, what for mankind is a small step might sometimes be a giant leap in one's life. The archetype does not determine one's life course, and the actual experience is not shaped by a predetermined mold. to this end, we need complexes, for they are the path and the vessel that give human shape and structure to archetypal patterns as they unfold in personal experience. The complexes provide the link between archetype and ego, enabling transformation of the archetypal into the personal. Just like dreams, which attain their garments from the complexes, writes Jung, "[Complexes] are not subject to our control but obey their own laws... In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws."

The complex is, thus, messenger of the gods, or the archetypes, rather than that of the ego, though the personal life is its object."

The iconic, magical, powerful photograph is in fact, a messenger from the gods.

"The Complex" is a masterpiece.

Joseph Camosy

Researcher, Integral Theory

http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com

Charged Images by Joseph Camosy


Erel Shalit Amazon Author Page