Dreams speak in the language of mythology - symbols. Join us to learn how your dreams are your unconscious mind speaking to your conscious mind, how to interpret dreams in the Jungian fashion to illuminate the most powerful symbols in your own psyche.
The Red Book of Carl C. Jung: It’s Origins and Influences - Library of Congress
Carl Jung and the Psychology of Dreams - Messages from the Unconscious - Academy of Ideas
Jung on Neurosis: Part I Definition and Causes - Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences
Active Imagination - Learning Mind
The Wisdom of Your Dreams book by Jeremy Taylor (this is the updated version of the book Erin’s dream group used)
We want to hear from you! Please rate and review us wherever you find this podcast. Join our Patreon: patreon.com/yourmythicu
Dreams speak in the language of mythology - symbols. Join us to learn how your dreams are your unconscious mind speaking to your conscious mind, how to interpret dreams in the Jungian fashion to illuminate the most powerful symbols in your own psyche.
The Red Book of Carl C. Jung: It’s Origins and Influences - Library of Congress
Carl Jung and the Psychology of Dreams - Messages from the Unconscious - Academy of Ideas
Jung on Neurosis: Part I Definition and Causes - Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences
Active Imagination - Learning Mind
The Wisdom of Your Dreams book by Jeremy Taylor (this is the updated version of the book Erin’s dream group used)
We want to hear from you! Please rate and review us wherever you find this podcast. Join our Patreon: patreon.com/yourmythicu
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Mythic U. I'm Karen Foglesong.
Erin Branham:And I'm Erin Branham. Today we're going to be talking about the mythology of dreams or the places where dreams and mythology overlap and come together, and how you can learn things from your dreams. We have a great quote to kick us off today from Carl Jung from the Red Book. "Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?" I love that - "riddling images of our dreams". And so why shouldn't we consider them as Jung is suggesting and Jung had very specific ideas about dreams. It was one of the places that he broke from his mentor, Freud, and that they fell out over a variety of differences, and dreams was one of them. Freud considered dreams to be - everything in them had a hidden meaning that you were supposed to uncover. And that was sort of a one to one equivalency. But Jung looked at dreams differently. And we're going to talk a little bit about his point of view, and how you can learn things from your dreams. You want to tell us how Jung saw dreams?
Karen Foglesong:Yes, I would like to. I have several people that call me on a regular basis to tell me their dreams and ask me what they mean. And you'd think by now they have figured out what I'm going to say because they're always disappointed. Because I say -
Erin Branham:(laughing) There's a formula.
Karen Foglesong:Yes, Jung says every image, every piece of your dream is an aspect of your subconscious trying to communicate with you. And these are connected to the archetypes which we've talked about a little bit in a previous episode, and we'll continue to talk about the archetypes. So if you dream about - say even if you dream about your father, then Jung's perspective is that the image of your father represents the masculine side of your psyche. Right? So what does your father mean to you then helps you get into what your subconscious is trying to say to you.
Erin Branham:Absolutely, it's a little tricky at first when you have to consider that because he did say, not only is every single person in the dream an aspect of you, everything, everything dream is an aspect of your own self. Now, for this, let's take a break and talk again about sort of how Jung constructed his idea of the human mind. Right we're talking about - Jung was one of the first of the people who helped to create our theories of psychology of the mind. Freud was the first sort of big revolutionary one, Jung was one of his students, they split because Jung had a lot of different ideas. Freud said Superego, Ego and Id was the way that our psychological structure went. Yes. But Jung had a different point of view. Why don't you tell us about Jung?
Karen Foglesong:The Jungian idea is basically centered around Self and we're looking at Self, Shadow and individuating the Self, right? So it's not so much about compartmentalizing the pieces of yourself. It's about integration of the pieces of yourself.
Erin Branham:100%. So Jung was about - so his structure of the mind was Ego, Shadow and Self and his idea of what you should be doing to be the healthiest possible - or to deal with neuroses. Actually, every time I go back, and I read Jung, I remember, these folks were dealing with the idea that there was sort of a normal frame of mind. And then you had neuroses. And their job was to sort of address the neuroses and get rid of them. I think today, we have a more involved model of the mind. But we talk a lot about Jung, because Jung is - loved mythology,Jun was deeply involved in mythology. And there's a lot of overlap between those things. So and especially when it comes to dream when I learned how to do dream analysis, it was in the Jungian way. I used to belong to a couple of different dream groups where we would meet once every other week or so, and everybody would bring a dream and we would talk each other through them with the idea that understanding your dreams was useful to the health of your consciousness.
Karen Foglesong:Yes, I agree.
Erin Branham:And what is it that it's that, it's doing there? Yeah, I mean, how is it, how is it helping you to become more healthy?
Karen Foglesong:There's lots of evidence that the subconscious speaks in imagery. It doesn't speak in language, which is kind of what Jung's idea of the archetype is based on that we have a kind of language beyond speaking language that we can interact with one another about, like, for instance, the image of Mother we can understand no matter what language we speak it in, right? So I think that Jung brings you to a place with his
Erin Branham:Right, absolutely. Thinking that there's some process that allows you to do the research for yourself. That it's a conversation between your inner self and your outer self, where other methods tend to send you outside of yourself to look for this means x, that's not going to be the best conversation for your psyche, laying some definition on top of it. Right? universal meaning like, for instance, say a key, right. So you can look up dictionaries of dream symbols, and they will tell you a key means x, y, and z. It means these things. I'm highly suspicious of those because I'm like, to who? You can even go, like, even if you're talking culturally, what? You might go, oh a key obviously means unlocking something, opening something, something like that. It might mean that in our culture, doesn't necessarily mean that in somebody else's culture, and depending on what you've experienced, that may not be what that symbol is to you in that dream, at that time.
Karen Foglesong:Exactly.
Erin Branham:So there's a process that you can go through to look at what's happening in a dream and to try to get some meaning out of those symbols. Because, as Karen is saying, Jung's idea was that your unconscious mind is trying to speak to your conscious mind, not necessarily trying to, it's just doing what it does.
Karen Foglesong:Right.
Erin Branham:However, as conscious creatures, we can look at what it's doing and glean meaning from that. We can find out things about ourselves, we can find out things about our neuroses, we can find out things about how we're coping with stuff. So the symbols that come forward, if you can process them, can really lead to insight. And so it can be a really, really useful and very fun process to -
Karen Foglesong:That's a great way to say that!
Erin Branham:Yeah, you just have a great time.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah, that's a great way to say that, that the subconscious is just doing what it's doing. And we can consciously glean information from that. That's a great way to say that Erin, all that time in the dream group.
Erin Branham:Thank you. I guess. I guess so. And just so people don't get confused, we're both using a couple of different terms - unconscious and subconscious which basically mean the same thing. Jung talked about the conscious and the unconscious mind. In regular everyday parlance, most people say subconscious, when they mean what he was talking about, as the unconscious, right, because now we use unconscious to mean somebody who is knocked out.
Karen Foglesong:That's, that's true. Yeah, good point.
Erin Branham:Yeah, so I think I think that's what happened there. I think that's where subconscious came in to the language, was that everybody's going unconscious - was he, was he passed out? So to keep a little information there, but basically the differences between that are, we all know what our conscious mind is, right? Our conscious mind is the part that is up, paying attention to stuff, solving problems, and there's a voice in your head too, right? Your voice is talking, it's talking to, you hear, you'd say things to you, I kind of tend to think about that as the ego. And the ego is who the self thinks it is. And, and the, the voice is talking, right? And there's a hearer, there's a listener in there too, right? You know that somebody's listening when that voice is talking. So the voice is the ego and the listening is the self. Yep. Right? The self is the whole you it is all of you, it includes the ego, the shadow, the unconscious, the conscious, it has all of that in there. So Jung's whole idea was trying to integrate the self so that the self has actually as much in it as it can, and is aware of as much in it as it can be.
Karen Foglesong:Yes. And the more aware of itself, it is the I think the greater the chance. I'm saying this really weirdly, but the greater the chances are that you will have less psychic disturbances, the more integrated the aspects of your psyche are.
Erin Branham:Correct. Absolutely. Because that was the way that Jung saw neurosis was - that was where you had some energy, something in yourself that you needed to explore or that was rising, or that was sort of churning the waters and if you don't deal with that energy, you develop a neurosis, which means you know, which is all the things that we talk about these days, you know, you're anxious, you're depressed, you're scatterbrained, you're whatever, whatever, whatever - all of these different things arise from the need to sort of address some of these things that are coming up in yourself, these energies that are swirling around. Because we all have these energies swirling around ourselves, right? At least from the Jungian point of view. And from a mythological point of view, we're super, super complicated creatures. We have all, we have everything and more inside
Karen Foglesong:Yes. of us that we are trying, that our poor little conscious mind, which is like a, like a telescope, it's like a very small aperture through which is channeled all of this, the energy of the universe, because we're conscious. Let me tell you here on the other day, I was having a little moment, it's one of those moments and I was like, Are we - is the thing that makes humans human that we're the only creatures who will literally just sit up in the middle of the day and go, am I wrong? Like, am Ijust wrong in my whole being? Right?
Erin Branham:Am I doing being a human wrong? Like, no, I'm looking at my cat, and we're gonna my cat never sits up and goes, am I catting wrong?
Karen Foglesong:Right?
Erin Branham:wrongly? Am I being a bit like, am I being a bad cat? No, that just doesn't happen.
Karen Foglesong:I was just thinking about that in relationship to lions and zebras the other day. Exactly. Like, does the zebra ever go - Dang, I'm not sure I like being a zebra.
Erin Branham:So exactly. So the whole problem with being human is that we have this teeny a little aperture, that can look at things and see if see, sharply see it all. And it's just all the energies of the universe are coming through it. And sometimes it's just too much and we develop a neurosis. So again, we're constantly processing and constantly
Karen Foglesong:And neurosis can also come from your external processing. environment as well. Like if you were abused by one of your parents, or by an adult in your life, that can cause a feedback loop in your mind, as well, that sets up neurosis. Of course, it's happening internally. So it's just right back to what Erin has described. But the it doesn't have to be the swirling waters inside of your consciousness alone, it can also be caused from the outside.
Erin Branham:Exactly, that's kind of what I mean, like when you get out there in the, in the big mean world. And you realize, you know, here we are sensitive little creatures, and terrible things can happen. And yeah, you start to that, that sets up all kinds of repercussions in one's psyche, that then have to be dealt with throughout the rest of your life. And if you don't, that's sort of the whole idea behind psychology and mythological living, or this idea of sort of coming to awareness and seeking for this richer form of life is to not just be tossed about by these things to not just be subjected to, you know, all of whatever things have happened in your life. Both Karen and I have experienced some levels of abuse in our lives and in our childhoods. And you know, you can go alright, I can be bitter and put up about that forever and ever. Or I can try to find a way to reconcile this truth of the universe that I have learned, which is there's cruelty.
Karen Foglesong:Right.
Erin Branham:And it can be, I can be a subject of it, like it can happen. And then, you know, as you get older, and you see this all happening all around you everyone can be subject, how do you cope with the truth of reality, which is difficult for our little brains to grasp.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah, and this is, I think this is why I gravitated towards Jungian ideas to begin with is because this gives the power to the seeker, not an outside source. And that that's very important to me, for my building of life, right? All the experiences that I have learned have led me to this thing of not wanting to ask, like, I don't want an outside answer. I want it to come from inside of me and that connection to the universe.
Erin Branham:Very much so.
Karen Foglesong:Jung brings me that. And I think that's what we're hoping to do with this episode is to show you some techniques of speaking to your other selves, right?
Erin Branham:To be able to hear that just to have that communication be clear, and useful. Right. That's, that's what it's all about. So okay, so let's go into sort of what you do when you have a dream. You have a dream, you remember this was sparked because I had a very sharp image of a dream. And Karen and I met to talk about what we were going to do in our next podcast and I said, Well, I have this really strong dream, let's talk about dreams.
Karen Foglesong:It was a great dream.
Erin Branham:I'm still puzzled. I'm still riddling that image because I because I have done this kind of thing, when something comes through that clear, I'm like, Oh, I have something to deal with there. I better meditate. So anyway, so when you have a dream, and when you're really practiced at this, you keep a dream journal, which is where you can, you know, a little notebook by your bed so that anytime throughout the night when you wake up, you can jot down things from your dreams. And then in the morning what you do, the first sort of first thing is you try to remember as much as you possibly can from your dreams. And if you do that on a regular basis, for the most part, you will start to remember, not only a single dream, but often three, four or five dreams a night, when I was in the thick of the dream group, I can easily pull four or five in a night.
Karen Foglesong:And that's important what Erin is saying,
Erin Branham:100%. when she was in the thick of the dream group, that means this is a practice, y'all, it's not going to happen immediately. And
Karen Foglesong:And right by the bed, y'all. there's also different reasons why you could not remember your dreams. But if you have the dream journal, right besides your bed, and you create a habit of writing down, I've even read
Erin Branham:And yeah, I can't remember anything. All I some techniques even say to write down I can't remember anything, so that you just get in the habit of consciously recording something at that moment. remember is a feeling. All I remember is somebody, somebody had blue eyes, right? All you know, start with whatever you can, you can capture, even if it's not much. And then you start working with that. So once you have, and you can work with anything, even if it's just a little bit. So yes, once you've written down the dream and as much detail as you can remember, then you start basically associating everything in the
Karen Foglesong:I want to say this to you said describe the dream, dream as if you were describing it to another person who is from Mars.
Erin Branham:This is part of the -
Karen Foglesong:Don't take anything for granted! Grab it.
Erin Branham:Right this is part of the association processes It can handle all that stuff. And the more and here. We used to do this, because in dream group, you would tell a dream, and then people would start to ask you questions. And the idea of the dream group method was that you did not say, Oh, you dreamed up, going up a staircase? That means- or you would, if you had a thought about what something more symbolic something becomes the sort of the harder it is for might symbolize you would say,"if it were me, I might think that that could mean this". The whole idea is to not pollute the waters of the individual who's having that because your interpretation may be entirely different from theirs. And the dreamer should be the one saying I think this means x or I think this has to do with that. So yeah, you start associating and you start saying things like, Okay, what and this is just basically exploring symbols. What is really interesting to me about this is when you think about your unconscious and your our conscious minds. Partially because symbols can - are very conscious mind, our conscious minds are - it's almost like the left brain/ right brain thing that's been debunked. Right. To me, our conscious minds are pretty concrete. We can dream, we can, we can handle symbols, but our conscious mind sort of slips on them. Whereas like, right, like words, linear words, yeah, conscious mind is in! Math? Sure. Conscious mind is in. layered. And they can contain multiple meanings, even contradictory meanings. And certainly for the Western mind, that gets really hard to hold on to. We don't, we're not very adept at paradoxes, and mythologies,
Karen Foglesong:Sitting in the contradiction is not a Western thing.
Erin Branham:So mythology, dreams, and symbols, all of these things are, these all operate in this ground, that our conscious mind is not necessarily super comfortable in. And that's why you have to sort of pick it apart, you have to go you have to meditate on it. You have to sort of roll with the association. So you started doing that sort of free association. Okay. I saw a red car in the dream. That's what I remember red car. So then you start going, Okay, what, what is, what could that, what are the associations? So like, if you were to associate red car, Karen, what would you associate?
Karen Foglesong:Well, the first thing that pops into my head is sex and media.
Erin Branham:All right, so symbol, right. I teach kids y'all, right. So I was teaching them about - I teach art, so we talked about symbols a lot. What's the symbol and even little kids, seven year olds can usually come up with a symbol is something that means something else. Right? So points, it's a pointer toward something else. So exactly. You nailed it right there. Red car could very well just could mean sex. Could mean death, could mean danger. Could mean, could mean maybe your mom had a red car and that was what you drove the grandmas in every year. So a red car could mean safety to you. That's the part where it's tricky to start doing universals, right is to say that I had a red car that was my absolute favorite car ever in my entire life. She was my, with me through like my tough 20s. And I drove everywhere with her, I drove out see Karen 4000 times in that little red car. And yes, so when I think of red car, I think of my Gracie and which is just a very comforting symbol of, of like, dependability, you know? Right? So you start associating, that's why you have to associate because you may have personal things that in your life that affect what that symbol could mean.
Karen Foglesong:And red, the color red, and the car can be separate things that you riff off of and then bring them together as well. Yeah. Yeah. Because red, I mean, in our culture, we tend to this put red and like anger, or heat or passion or those kinds of things. And it is red is also associated with the lowest chakra, the deepest, like energy center in the body. So it is usually associated with the physical realm. But that doesn't. That's not true. Like Erin thinks safety when she thinks red car, I think ugh!
Erin Branham:That's because I have a red, I have a specific, personal experience with a red card that changes what that symbol means. So that's exactly what we're talking about. You have to be beware of anybody who's like, oh, well, this symbol means this.
Karen Foglesong:I can tell you what it means!
Erin Branham:Yeah. No, you have to, the other thing, like this Jungian dream analysis and dealing with symbols is very personal. And you have to do it for yourself. There is nobody else who can tell you what your dream means.
Karen Foglesong:No. And you guys remember at the beginning of this podcast, at the very beginning of the series, we said a Jungian quote that says, if you can follow the religion of your fathers, or the story of your fathers, then do it. If you can't, you're out in the woods with a machete. And this is true. This is the woods with the machete, you are here and you do the work. There's nobody that's going to come in and say you should or how to.
Erin Branham:There you go.
Karen Foglesong:And that's, that's, that's happiness for some people. If this is not happiness for you. That's different.
Erin Branham:Definitely.
Karen Foglesong:So the next step would this be active imagination, then?
Erin Branham:Well, no. You associate, you associate through everything as far as you can, in the part about - Describe it like it's from Mars, as we would ask each other in the dream group. When somebody would said, Okay, I saw a key. And we would say, tell me what that is, like I'm from Mars. Right. So that what do you say at that point,
Karen Foglesong:Yes. right? Key doesn't mean anything to me. You have to explain to me what that is. And so then that forces the person to go another layer down into the symbol and say, Okay, what it, well, okay, what is the key? It's a thing, it's shaped like this. It has this function. Sometimes it's used like this, you see it, and that Oh, my God, I just remembered that I read one of my favorite books when I was a kid- had a key in it. Right? So that's how you start to (laughs) Yep, there's the connection!
Erin Branham:- to really dig, dig, dig down into what that could possibly mean. And and also should remember that in this kind of method, no meaning contradicts another meaning. It's not that oh, this Oh, I found it, it means this. No, all that stuff you went through to get to that big point that all counts too.
Karen Foglesong:Yes.
Erin Branham:And if you'll give yourself some time, that stuff will roll back around into your consciousness.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah. And remember that -
Erin Branham:And let you know all kinds of interesting things.
Karen Foglesong:These techniques are about letting your conscious mind grab a hold of this symbol. So like, it seems like well, I've already said it's a key, why do I have to keep describing it? Because just like Erin went through that process, at some point, your conscious mind will make another connection. And that's what you like, you're making words with your conscious mind so that you can grab it.
Erin Branham:Exactly. You want to connect, connect, connect, because it's about that - it's always associated, it's always connected into the web of your psyche. And you want to figure out what those connections are. So yes, you go through all of that. And so now I think you can talk about active imagination. So this will help you like once you've done all that stuff, you can sort of figure out if there's a particular interpretation, or several, that may affect - and you typically will know if you've resolved the conflict or the issue or whatever, if you, if you have truly managed to pull it into your conscious mind. You will not have the dream again.
Karen Foglesong:Right.
Erin Branham:So
Karen Foglesong:and we're not lying, you guys, it really - what's your, what's your unconscious is like it's chewing on something. It's chewing on something, once it's done with it. Once it's done its work. It'll let go of it completely. It's it doesn't care anymore.
Erin Branham:Right? Well, and there's also you know, there's always more. There's more to bring forward. There's, you know, life never stops throwing stuff at us. So our psyche never stops evolving. So once you have worked through something, your psyche is like fine, I got more for you.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah, here's the next batch!
Erin Branham:Push that - Yes, and I know this because I worked through with the Dream group I work from these anxiety dreams I had that are almost always people will recognize. Of being in a car going fast. I would, I imagined these kind of big overpasses, being on these giant overpasses over and over again. And that would be I would realize that I was driving and that my eyes were closed and that I couldn't open them. And I just had that dream over and over and over and over and over again. And somebody in my dream group said, Why don't you try - after I'd gone over it and I was like plainly this has to do with anxiety, plainly this has to do it, you know. And I would go into all of my - I was very anxious kid and I had this problem and that problem and that problem, but it wasn't resolving it, wasn't getting all the way to it. And finally, somebody in the dream group said, Well, maybe you should go the other way. Instead of trying to control it, trying to, trying to get the car under control, trying to open your eyes. Maybe we should just let go and see what happens.
Karen Foglesong:Wow!
Erin Branham:And they said - And I was like, well, hmmm, I was like, it - because that's another part that we should talk about this is this will be the good segue into active imagination. You can give yourself prompts for dreamwork
Karen Foglesong:Yeah.
Erin Branham:You can, if you have an issue, so say like you had a terrible situation, you have a conflict with a coworker, and it's just driving you crazy. You don't understand what that person drives you crazy and why you just can't resolve this. Normally, you get along with everybody. You can say to yourself, I need some help with this. I need a dream. And you have to - it doesn't work instantaneously. And it doesn't work all the time, obviously, obviously, if you but if you kind of keep planting that, planting that, planting that, you will eventually have fruitful dreams to help you with that problem.
Karen Foglesong:Yep.
Erin Branham:So I took that suggestion with me into a dream. Somebody said, why don't you just let go. I remember to this day vividly the dream that I had that followed that, where I did in fact, let go. I was rolling off the side of the road, I could tell because I could feel it, you know, you feel the bumpy and you hear the sound of you're going off onto the shoulder. And I was coming up on an overpass and if I let it go, it's gonna crash into the overpass. But I let it go. And I flew, the car took off and flew over the overpass.
Karen Foglesong:Wow!
Erin Branham:That's all I remember. But I remember that the going from the bumpy to the flying. And, like woke up the next morning and went - Wow! That completely worked. Never had the anxiety dream again, never.
Karen Foglesong:That's awesome.
Erin Branham:So I moved on to a slightly different version, but still didn't have that one.
Karen Foglesong:I used to have a dream. Well it shifted a little bit but it was always about something chasing me and it was usually kind of reptilian or amphibious kind of chaser for some reason. And same thing, learning through my dreams. And I finally came to this idea that I should turn around and face the aggressor. What's Why are you chasing me? Just ask that simple question. Why are you chasing? The instant I did that, the monster turned into like something in a furry costume, like, totally benign. And it took off running from me. And I chased it through the rest of the dream, trying to get it to answer. It would never talk to me. And I never had the dream again, like something, like I just needed to stop running was part of, was part of the process for me.
Erin Branham:Absolutely. So this is the kind of thing that can occur. And this can take any amount of time. I know people have had very immediate results with dream work. I've had people who worked for years and years and years before they had - some people are like I really can't remember my dreams. And it takes a long time. Like you really have to work at it to get that or you have to jump on it the minute that you have a dream that you remember.
Karen Foglesong:Yes
Erin Branham:and go okay, I'm starting my dream work now. Right? Yeah, but it's a very interesting process. But the other flip side of it is you ever want to connect with your imagination in a new and completely different sort of way. This is one of those ways. The images that started to come out of my dreams once I really started doing dream work were amazing. Just think I would, I would wake up and go like, I would be so impressed with my mind. You know, you're going along living a very mundane life, I mean, may need to start some framework. You're living very mundane life and doing all the things that you know every day that you're supposed to do as a responsible citizen and blahdy blahdy blahdy blah, you can really start to think oh my god, I'm a very limited creature. Do some dream work. You will.
Karen Foglesong:You will discover how unlimited you are.
Erin Branham:It is impressive. I was - so after he did the scary driving dream. Anxiety dreams. The next set of anxiety dreams I had was that I had lost my car. I'd parked my car somewhere and couldn't find it. Right?
Karen Foglesong:It's all that flying around.
Erin Branham:They would go on for, they would go on for ever and ever and ever while- I figure it was my way my conscience, my mind's way of going no, you're not - really that was good, but you're not really ready to fly. Get back on the ground.
Karen Foglesong:Right?
Erin Branham:And so they would involve these, involve these searches that would be all these just journeys trying to find my car. They would be the dreams and then that evolved into what I call the labyrinth houses, which are like my, I still have these because I love them. I wil,l I just have these dreams where I'm in some giant house that no matter how far I explore, there's always more of it. And they're sometimes they're amazing, like, postmodern sculptures, and sometimes they're old Victorian houses. And sometimes they're sort of the back rooms and storerooms of museums or like, they're great treats. I love them.
Karen Foglesong:Wow. I bet
Erin Branham:that's what it's like, I would wake up in the morning and just go oh my god, I can't believe I imagined that. Very cool. So anyway, we're talking about taking a, a suggestion into your dreaming, which has to do with like active imagination and lucid dreaming. So you want to talk about that, Karen?
Karen Foglesong:So active imagination is a technique by Jung to bring an image out of your dream and have a conversation with it. Like literally bring the image out, like meditate with the image, think of, hold the image in your head and ask it what it is trying to tell you. And it seems really weird and, and I think it's okay to giggle at yourself. Because I've been in, in the situation where I had to ask a flying teapot, what it meant. But remember, it's it's only you doing the asking and answering it. Nobody is judging you from the outside. And nothing is off the table. In the, in the subconscious everything is fair game. If anything, it might have even been something you saw when you were three years old, that made an impact. And it's still trying to speak to you. And you'll eventually discover where it comes from, or you won't, you'll discover a meaning and that'll be enough. Your psyche, your psyche will let go of it, but it'll answer you. And then treat that active imagination session the same way you do a dream, once you come out of the session, write down what you remember happening so that you can continue this conversation with your consciousness.
Erin Branham:That is very cool. And I want to say because it just occurred to me, we were talking about sort of letting go of issues. Again, this comes from the fact that Jung was working with neurotic patients. And even he would have probably told you that letting go of a an issue actually means that you've integrated it into your psyche, which I said is always the sort of purpose of Jungian psychology, which is to take these disparate parts of yourself, these energies that you cannot reconcile with other parts of yourself to reconcile them, and to bring them inside of yourself and to make so that's one of the things I really like about Jungian psychology is this idea that we're kind of infinitely complicated.
Karen Foglesong:Yes.
Erin Branham:And there's always another turn. It's kind of the labyrinth. Yes, yeah, there's always another corner to turn, and another hidden area to find inside of your own psyche.,It never kind of ends and you will constantly find these pieces of like, pieces of things that are disturbing that your ego or your conscious mind does not want to cope with.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah. And so it pushes it down, pushes it down, pushes it down into your unconscious or subconscious. And then it has to get recycled up through your dreams because your that's the rest of your mind trying to tell your conscious mind. You can't just push this down. It's not gonna go away like that. You actually have to cope with this. Yes, we're not garbage down here. Thank you. Yes!
Erin Branham:Yeah. And it's also well, just the idea that you can have some say, disturbing experience and just put it away.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah.
Erin Branham:You can't, your psyche is going to is going to still hold that and hold that disturbance. And the things that rise up out of yourself as you, as you grow up. I'm have two adolescent daughters at the moment. And when you have adolescent kids, you are, you revisit your own period of life, that's the same as theirs. And you see the same things going on. And I have just a number of people I know right now who are in the launch phase, which is what I call is called ages 15 to 25. And those are killer, man. Those are killer years.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah.
Erin Branham:tThey are really tough and we don't give enough credit, I think, to how hard they are to go from being dependent to independent It is absolutely one of the greatest, you know,
Karen Foglesong:Yes. trials that every human goes through. And it is and it's you know, when we talk about Joseph Campbell and be the hero of your own story, you are a hero, when you manage that. You, you've overcome the monster of self doubt, and insecurity and not knowing how to do anything. And all of these things to get into that. So it's, you know, it's something to think of just living through life - is we don't give enough credit. It's part of the reason we like sort of mythological thinking, Yes.
Erin Branham:Because it sees everything. You're having a conflict with your boss at work, because they're a narcissist. You got to slay a dragon. That's the only way. You got to figure out, what
Karen Foglesong:Yes! are you going to do? We do have these things happening in our lives. And we've in some ways, in our modern life, we've stripped a lot of the mythological significance out of this stuff. Yes.
Erin Branham:Dream work is one of the best ways to really you want to immerse yourself in some deep and meaningful, especially to you individually powerful mythological imagery. Get into your dreams, right?
Karen Foglesong:And, and also be careful you guys don't don't lay your definition of symbols on someone else too, right? Like, what the symbol means. You can always say, Well, it means to me, like when Erin and I are talking dreams, we we say have you explored this symbol? Have you seen this kind of interpretation? Have you? Not hey, I'm telling you what this means. That's that's not it either.
Erin Branham:Very, very true.
Karen Foglesong:I was just gonna mention dream and symbol dictionaries are excellent resources for kickstarting yourself. But remember, it has to ring true with you. So don't let an outside expert or an outside source tell you what the key means or what the key is. You decide.
Erin Branham:100% There are a number of books that are out there that will tell you sort of or give you tips on how to do dream work. I'm trying to find the the ones that we used back in the day, but I'm sure there's better ones now that are out there, but they're not hard to find. There are ones using this method of association and exploration to figure out what your dreams mean.
Karen Foglesong:I think Steven Eisenstaedt does that sound familiar? So they have, he's part of a dream group, probably.
Erin Branham:And I mean, there's a bazillion dream work books. Yeah, out there. There were a couple that were big bestsellers back when we were doing that dream work, which was how it all got started with somebody ran across those books and started them up. Right. But anyway, says are a great thing to find out about.
Karen Foglesong:One great resource, Ted Andrews, his books are the main book that I utilize is called Animal speaks. And he has spent a lot of time correlating symbols from several different cultures. And he proposes that you use this method like if you're walking around and you see a dog on your path, then you can treat that dog as a dream symbol because it interacted with you in your conscious life and look up what it means. Again, tampering with your definition of the symbol, but it can also give you little indications from your subconscious or subconscious as well and use his ideas in relationship to your your dream interpretation for hints and starting places
Erin Branham:Very cool. We would love to hear from you about any interesting experiences you've ever had in attending to your dreams and interpreting them other. Also other ideas about how to interpret dreams. All of this is very good stuff, as well as your thoughts on symbols, powerful symbols you may have encountered. You want to do - you have any kinds think of a powerful symbol you've encountered in a dream, Karen that you remember?
Karen Foglesong:The spiral has always been really big for me, and it's kind of phenom shaped spiral. You know, the Phenom is when you like press your eyes and you get those weird like sparkly shapes on the eyelids. It's that simple kind of spiral from that kind of world like maybe a cave painting spiral. Yeah, it's it goes my whole life. I don't think I'll be done with the spiral before I die.
Erin Branham:That's good. Oh, I always remember I had one dream I never
Karen Foglesong:How about you? did quite really settle on an interpretation of it. I didn't feel like it was sometimes you will encounter these dreams to like I'm not putting any words to that. Yeah, just is what it is. And so it was lovely dream. I was standing on the edge of a pool that was filled with gold water, golden, I mean absolutely shining gold water and something was moving inside of the water such that I can actually see the, you know, the wave front of it moving around there. But it was the water was not transparent in any way it was literally shining gold all the way down to the bottom. So all I could see was that something was moving on it and I was standing on the side of it and I had that kind of a thought that this is a sort of awareness that I am inside my mind right now. And so that golden pool has stuck with me for a long time. That's amazing that the thing moving towards you didn't have any fear attached to it either. You don't know -
Erin Branham:Not a drop. Not a drop -it was very wondrous. Yeah.
Karen Foglesong:That's amazin, yeah, yes. I bet.
Erin Branham:That's a good one. Tell us about your wondrous dreams.
Karen Foglesong:Yeah. Tell us about your wondrous dreams. Alright. And don't be afraid you guys, you're you're your own best supporter. Right. Don't let anybody pull you off of it and keep on the path.
Erin Branham:Absolutely. We'll talk to you again. Bye!
Karen Foglesong:thank you for joining us at mythic you, we want to hear from you. Please visit our website at mythic u.buzzsprout.com That's mythic u dot Buzz sprout.com. For more great information on choreographing your own spirituality. Leave us a comment and donate if you have the means in the interest. If you'd like to support our work more regularly, visit our Patreon and become a member of mythic you. Depending on the level at which you join members receive early access to new episodes, bonus episodes and free mythic you gifts