slow trekking

 page 54 in Sierra could have been cited in full in Kaminski

without any reference to society or even to a community

without any sense of belonging

most truthful feelings  . . . people like her did not need . . .  a sense of community, let alone a sense of society  

always alone in the rain in the woodshed at her grandparents' house

and yes the power of Kaminski's book still with me and has convinced me that the otroic underlies all else, encompasses or situates the whole interior landscape before anything such as the glyphic comes into play

Frank Bowling's paintings!  yes.  much better than Rothko's, much more life and feeling.  He is apparently 90 now.  Sir.  British  Guyana.

Strange that after finishing Kaminski's laser sharp analysis-presentation I get emails from Larry I telling me about his experiences over the past three years with group dream analysis.  Three years with eight people---started by a doctor

"My most interesting “hobby” post-retirement has been my participation in a “dream group” run by a local retired emergency room physician.  We’ve been together 3 years with the same 8 members and have evolved in unplanned and unexpected ways.

"“The first rule of Fight Club: Don’t talk about Fight Club."

"First Rule of Dream Group: Don’t Talk about Dream Group.”

OK.  I can’t talk about specific people or specific dreams, but I can explain the dynamics that govern our weekly meetings. It is based upon the approach to dreams developed by Montague Ullman, physician and practicing psychiatrist. Unfortunately, Ullman’s books are plodding and boring and his best advocate and explicator is his protégé—a fellow named William R. Stimson-- who describes Ullman as having done for the study of Dreams what Jane Goodall did to the study of chimpanzees and Dian Fossey did to the study of gorillas.  He replaced deductive theorizing with experiential inductive field work—"learning from and communicating with the infinitely vaster intelligence that underlays our own mind.”

Stimson,

“He (Ullman) deftly lifted dreams completely out of science, no matter how correct that science might be, and he lifted them entirely out of psychotherapy, no matter how legitimate that psychotherapy might be, and he even lifted them right out of mythology or religion, no matter how true that mythology or religion might be.  And he returned dreams to the domain where they legitimately belong and can do the greatest good.  He gave dreams back to the dreamers who dreamed them.”

Only the dreamer knows what the dream means because every dream has its own scientific theory, psychological discovery, and mythological or religious illumination embedded within it---- borne in and through the experiences and body of the dreamer. But the dream ego cannot unpack these things on their own without the aid of a group of fellow  “students” because it’s hard to see one’s unconscious mind through the experiential images that “dress it up.”  It’s like trying to imagine how you’d look to yourself if the mirror didn’t reverse the features of your face. Or see through your waking thoughts with the clarity of a child who blurts out the unabashed truth, “Look the Emperor is naked!”  It helps to have a group for that.  In fact, only a group can do that!

Making sense of a dream in an Ullman Dream Group involves uncovering the deep inner core that knows the dreamer better than the dreamer knows themselves.

I’ll save you the step-by-step protocols that go into this process.  We’ve streamlined them over the years and learned a few things about how to remember dreams and their relationship to other dreams and their often-astonishing timeliness. Like metaphysical poetry, most dreams appear mundane and meaningless to the dreamer until their intricate formal dynamics are revealed and the revelations arrive on their own wings.

That's about the best I can for now. Thanks for asking.  L

---

and this morning a p s  "The book that most clearly explains the dream interpretation process per se along with "active imagination " is Robert Johnson's "Inner Work."

Larry 

the reference to fight club put me off a bit.  I remember reading Robert Johnson a bit years ago when Nicholas was super keen on dreams and dream analysis.  

this group dream work seems so far away from where I am at the moment   

and page 54 in Handke confirms this----Handke is my companion guide for this year and perhaps a while

The Gredos book is very long and very strange, like some of his other strange books, and I am comitted to reading it super slowly in the slow spiritual reading sort of way---same with Genet's Rites now too 

dream group would be so much like a committee meeting it gives me the willies just thinking about it, imagining it   ---  dreams themselves have never been that key for me ---  I sort of envied Nicholas as he talked about his vibrant and vivid and memorable his dreams were/are   Is that why his only? and primary activity on social media is posting images of paintings on facebook.  He has collected over the years in this way an exceptional body of work---huge and varied collection of photos of paintings, a curatorial masterwork of sorts, his private-public journey through images.  

H:  "at all public or political speeches she would make herself scarce, render herself invisible by going to sit or stand behind a curtain  . . . felt surrounded by a space entirely different from the one out there in the social realm." 55

not having music and sitting in the dark   as a way of life    taking half a day to walk to the airport 

the line in K's book about the woman willing to pay for first class prompted this extrapolation during the night----maybe when I was coming to the end of high school the anxiety about what would happen next as we all headed off to college was such that I "chose" going into the monastery as a way to sacrifice everything in order to get a First Class ticket for the flight into the next phase of life as a way to insure more private space and distance from lots of other people!  Irony of course almost immediately was that I had no time to myself that first novitiate year, could not get away from the group at all and could have no time for one-to-one encounters. And friendships were even forbidden!!  "particular friendships" something I had never heard of and tried to puzzle out---was the particular nature of friendship not exactly the point, the pleasure to talking all night with one friend who returned full attention and interest?   No wonder I had to crash out, eject from, my first class seat through Eugenia Memorial, where I could finally be alone and sit in the dark with nothing bothering me in any way.  a space entirely different from the one out there in the social realm.