Archetypal dreamwork

[Guest guest]

Dear Jung-Fire friends,

Alice has asked that I introduce the topic of Archetypal

Dreamwork as it is studied and practiced within the North of Eden community.

I also suggest that you check out the website at www.northofeden.com.

I come to this work via a strong Jungian orientation.

I spent four and half years in weekly Jungian analysis and I studied Jung

diligently, making my way through a considerable portion of the collected

works. I went back to school at age 56 and got an M.A. in psychology. I

also graduated from the Assisi Conferences two-year program in archetypal

pattern recognition and did clinical work

with a brilliant psychiatrist. That work was life-changing, terrifying and

often pleasurable, but it also left me feeling like there must be something

more. Too often for me, the Jungian work was dry, academic,

intellectual. I could get very excited about the intellectual aspect of

it, but there remained a hollowness inside that it didn’t address.

When I met Marc Bregman, founder of North of Eden, in 2003,

I felt defensive and arrogant. I was sure that I knew a lot about the

structure and operation of the psyche and that I might even know more about it than

most professionals, including Marc. In that first interview, Marc

impressed me with his approach that went right to the heart of my dilemma,

literally to my heart, where the emptiness I first experienced as a young

child, lived. I realized that if I worked honestly and diligently I would have the potential of a direct experience of the

Divine, which eluded me all my life, and that the hollowness might for the

first time be filled.

“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks

inside, awakens.” These words, attributed to Jung, are tacked on

the wall next to my desk. Good words, but they are still just

words. The North of Eden dreamwork has made them live for me, daily,

hourly, minute-by-minute. The deep unconscious wisdom that I’ve

experienced through my dreams has brought me directly and experientially into

the world of the archetypes, where I now spend a good deal of my time, even

though I am full-time employed in the world, am very involved with my extended

family, write for publication and am passionate about gardening.

I recently became a North of Eden staff teacher and am

really excited about a new assignment, which is to bring this dreamwork to the

attention of the Jungian community. I struggle with this challenge,

wondering how this heart-felt approach, will be received. Yet I know from

years of communicating with Alice and others on this list that many of you get

it -- that we may experience the Divine directly by going within, to the

place where, in Alice’s words, the Divine Guest dwells.

Three books have recently been published that speak of these

matters in detail: “The Deep Well Tapes,” and “The Secret of

the Pomegranate,” by Marc Bregman, and “The History of Last

Night’s Dream,” by Rodger Kamenetz. All can be purchased at www.amazon.com.

A recent review of “The Secret of the

Pomegranate” on the Amazon website, reads:

OPENS

THE WAY IN DREAMS, October 3, 2007

By

Metaphor, Inc.

" truewords " (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

Marc Bregman's extraordinary dream work reveals how dreams can

lead us to the deepest part of ourselves, and to a connection with the

holiest experiences. One feels that Bregman has an x-ray into the psyche

and into the soul and that he has rediscovered a path that was known in the

ancient world and lost today. This is a book on dreams and their power worth

savoring.

The foregoing is meant to be no more than a short

introduction.

I will be writing more to this list about this work and I hope

that some of you will take a look at the website and one or more of the

books, so we can spark a discussion, as Alice has suggested. I look

forward to your feedback.

Peace and blessings,

Burmeister

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Burmeister

Vermont Milk Company

P.O. Box 760

Hardwick, Vermont USA 08543

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