Category Archives: dreamwork

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CAN DIVORCE LEAD TO HEALING?

Is it possible that divorce can be a positive thing, in terms of spiritual growth?

I’ve written on this topic before (Divorce as Spiritual Growth, 2017), but that was eight years ago. Since then, however, the experiences and the memories of the divorce intrude, unbidden, showing up on the scrolling feed of my consciousness. Sometimes, this is quite upsetting. “Aren’t I done with it?, I muse.

In a recent dream, I enjoyed a very heartfelt and honest conversation with my ex-wife. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 12 years, which feels unbelievable that it’s been so long. Initially, we were speaking to each other from the opposite side of a glass barrier; but at the end, we sat side-by-side in a booth, like at a soda shop. With a sincere heart, I said to her, “I want you to know, I forgive you. I know you had to leave in order to be true to yourself.” She looked a little blinded by my words, but receptive.

Had I forgiven her before? Yes. But never in such a heart-felt way. Was this what Paul talks about in I Corinthians: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (13:12) To love as God love is not, in my experience anyway, a frequent thing, if I’m honest. If it happens at all, it’s pure grace, because that is what God’s love is – an undeserved, unconditional gift.

I haven’t called my ex-wife yet to tell her the good news. I’m considering it, though.

I haven’t called her, in part because I think the dream is more about me. What I know from my understanding of Jungian psychology is that characters in dreams are most often about parts of myself. Was I actually forgiving me for all those qualities I projected onto my ex-wife. It certainly seems so. That would be true to the purpose of dreams – to help us grow.

But, this is what we do in romantic love. We project aspects of ourselves onto our beloved partners. My shy, introverted self, projects my outgoing, social self or uninhibited self into the other, so I can – unconsciously love myself through loving her. “She completes me,” we’ve heard in books and movies over and over. Unfortunately though, this trick of our psyches robs the other of a bit of her autonomy and freedom. She returns the favor, and all is well….Until it’s not.

As the rose-colored glasses lose their tint, and we see more clearly, we see behind the veil of romance – the rough edges, the bad breath after a night of eating and drinking, the competing needs and petty foibles, and irritating compulsive habits – we all have them you know. But if we’re truly responsible, we use what annoys us to take a look at ourselves – those qualities and characteristics in ourselves we’d rather ignore or disown.

Divorce can be a revolving doorway to yet another relationship and another and another; or it can be a doorway into openness to what that mysterious Self within is trying to accomplish — the project of becoming whole. The challenges and the gift of becoming the persons we are meant to be. Can I love the light and the dark within myself? Maybe only then, can I see clearly how to love another fellow traveler, setting them free from the laborious task of carrying my projections. Supporting them in their own journey towards wholeness.

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THE SYMBOLIC LIFE: HOW I GOT INTO DREAMWORK

Jacobs Ladder - Chagall  Before beginning group dreamwork, I had a dream. I had heard Joyce Hudson speak at the Summer Dream Conference at Kanuga, and when I came home, I began to wonder how I could develop a dreamwork community in my hometown. So, here’s my dream:

I am in a bookstore in an old two-story house, and I’m upstairs on the second floor. There are tables of books throughout the room, and an elderly gentleman, dressed in a grey suit and white shirt is standing behind me. I turn and ask him: “Do you know where I might find a book called ‘The Symbolic Life’?” He points to the table beside of me and says, “Sure, it’s right there.” I look, and there on the table is a large volume with the title, ‘The Symbolic Life.” I wake up from my dream.

When I awoke, I felt as if I had received an important message, but I had never heard of a book called “The Symbolic Life.” I had a few minutes before seeing my first client for the day, so I decided, “What the heck! I’ll glance through the titles on my bookshelf to see what I might find.” So, there on the shelf where I keep a number of Carl Jung’s volumes from his collected works, I found a book with the title, The Symbolic Life (Jung, 1939/1950, [CW 18, pra.638]). I attached no real significance to this discovery. But I was certainly curious, so I opened the book. There, in the table of contents, was a chapter entitled, “The Symbolic Life.” Now I was excited. What had my dream done?

Later that day, I took time to read this chapter. It was a presentation that Jung gave in 1939 to a group of Catholic and Protestant clergy in London. In it, Jung outlines his basic approach to the psychology of the unconscious, but it’s the ending of his talk that hooked me. Jung tells these clergy that Christianity must stop looking to Jesus to save us from our sins. Instead, Jung went on, the faithful must be as courageous as Jesus was so that they might “take up their own crosses.” This idea is Jung’s basic view of individuation. But Jung goes on to say that the path of individuation leads straight through “the least of these” Jung says, “What if ‘the least’ of these is actually in me?” What if what is most valuable and most essential to my own path of individuation is what I consciously or unconsciously reject or dismiss?

To say that a lightbulb went on for me is an understatement. In reading Jung’s words, I knew what it meant for me to do group dreamwork. I would equip others with the tools they need in order to connect with their own shadows – the “least of these” in me and in them, so that we, too, might live courageously and live with a sense of meaning and purpose, just as Jesus teaches us to do.

So soon after my discovery, I invited people in my church and community to a public presentation on “Dreams as a Spiritual Path.” I put together a PowerPoint presentation, and about 50 people attended. Afterwards, 10 people signed up to study Joyce Hudson’s book, Natural Spirituality (2000), and we agreed to meet every other week for two hours to learn about Jungian psychology and to practice dreamwork by using the projective method taught by Joyce Hudson.

Over the ensuing years, enough people took the course that I offered, that I started two dreamwork groups. I later moved to Charlotte, losing touch with the dreamwork community for a while. But since then, I was invited back to Davidson to join a dreamwork group made up of some of my original group members plus some new folks. This has been an amazing journey and a wonderful coming full circle for me. I continue to be in awe at the ways in which our dreams guide us and serve us in the life and work of the soul.

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Hudson, J. (2000). Natural spirituality: recovering the wisdom tradition in Christianity.                 Danielsville, GA: JRH Publications.

 

Jung, C. G. (1950). The symbolic life. In R.F.C. Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C.G.                 Jung (Vol. 18, pp. 267-290).

John Rowe is a psychotherapist and spiritual director in private practice in Charlotte, NC. John is also an ordained United Methodist clergy (since 1978) and received his Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2007. He has participated in several Summer Dream and Spirituality Conferences and he completed the Spiritual Direction training through the Haden Institute in 2016. John now serves on the board of the newly formed Haden Foundation which raises funds to provide scholarships for those who wish to receive dream leader or spiritual direction training through the Haden Institute.

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CALLING ALL DREAMERS

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