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	* CG Jung - Guide to the Inner Life* Back With continued work on oneself, these personal unconscious contents become more differentiated. There will be the projections onto people of the same gender, of the opposite gender, onto heroes and hags, onto saviors and demons. Once this clearing out of the personal unconscious is more or less complete, an entirely new territory begins to show itself, the collective unconscious, as Jung called it. Jung demonstrated that all humankind shares not just a collective consciousness but also a collective UNconsciousness. In the territory of the collective unconscious one finds the archetypal [arche = ancient and typos = imprint] images, motifs and patterns that underlie the common experience of humankind. It is a collective heritage to which everyone may lay claim. For Jung archetypes are simply the typical patterns of human behavior. Some important ones include the journey, mother, father, the hero, home, the child, birth, the savior, king, queen. Underlying all other archetypes, Jung describes the central organizing principle of the psyche and of individuality — the Self. It is the Self that gives rise to consciousness and our sense of individual existence. An important tool in one's journey into interiority is the dream. Like a key, the dream has no logic to its shape. Its logic is that it turns the lock. An example might be a dream in which a loved one dies. Taken at face value the dream is disturbing, even terrifying. Like a key, however, a symbolic understanding might allow the dreamer to "open a message that something "alive in the unconscious has died, ie, is no longer active there. Whatever energy the figure represented might now be available to the dreamer on a more conscious level and, therefore, more amenable to the will. Same dream, vastly different approaches to it, vastly different effect on the dreamer. In working with dreams we make a kind of "Pascal's Wager." We can't know with certainty what a dream means. Therefore, let's wager on a meaning that promotes growth and enhances life because we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Jung demonstrated clearly that dreams carry messages from the unconscious to consciousness, and they do so in a manner finely tuned to the attitudes, needs, and desires of the dreamer. Attitude is of critical importance. The dream messenger is Janus-faced. If one dismisses the dream as unimportant or irrelevant, that is just what dreams become. However, if one takes dreams seriously and pays attention to them, dreams speak with increasing and sometimes astonishing clarity.	If one thinks about all this, it makes very good sense. Humankind has always and everywhere felt the need for story. Dreams are primarily story. They can be extremely important because they are deeply personal and capable of providing meaning and value to the individual. Research has shown that, deprived of dream sleep, an individual will become ill in a very short time. Almost everyone has had an impressive, unforgettable, even numinous dream. Almost everyone has had the experience of waking in a particular mood determined by a dream. The old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," particularly applies in working with dream images. It hardly needs be said that dreams have always been an important component of psychic life and development. Only we moderns, with our "not invented here, therefore not of value" attitude, have denigrated the dream. When one has ventured deeply enough into one's own interiority that archetypal patterns, figures, and motifs begin to appear, something happens of singular importance. One begins to experience healing — often illusive, difficult to explain or prove, but definitively a feeling of wellness. In religious terms, this feeling is characterized by the word "salvation," or as something akin to "God's in his/her heaven, all's right with the world," but viewed experientially the feeling is a psychological fact. One's life becomes imbued with meaning and purpose, and even a seemingly mundane existence takes on great value to one gifted in this way. Jung writes poetically about this state (modified slightly in the interest of inclusive language): The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his/her wanderings among the mazes of his/her psychic transformation comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him/her to his/her apparent loneliness. In communing with him/herself, he/she finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner, more than that, a relationship that seems like a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvests. [From Vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Para. 623.] I think Jung is describing here the state of someone who has glimpsed that the Self is at work in his/her life and is sustained by that glimpse. Rose F. Holt, MA, is a Jungian Psychoanalyst in private practice in St. Louis. She will give a presentation, "An Evening with Carl Jung" at the CG Jung Soc. on Sep. 19, 1st Congregational Church, 6501 Wydown, Clayton, Mo. 63105. For more information, call 314-533-6808, visit cgjungstl.org or email gjungstl@sbc.global.net. top

	* Dream Keeper, cont. Back top Past Lives When people seem to be coming at you from all directions, sometimes you can' help wondering, "Why do I have to go through an experience like this?" But because the ECK teachings take into consideration the role of karma [the spiritual law of cause and effect], eventually you come to a greater understanding of these things. Many of the contemporary dream teachings, trying to work from a Christian background, do not recognize the effect of karma, and so they ignore it. Their explanations disregard the feelings and impulses that have been created in the past, sometimes in the far, distant past of another lifetime. Any study of dreams that is based merely on the happenings of this lifetime or on a product of the mind such as symbols, without taking into account past lives, is superficial… The teachings of ECK, which include the study of dreams, are the advanced teachings. We continue where the others leave off. But we continue in such a natural, low-key way that other people may not recognize that we have something special, something unique. … The first part of these teachings is the Dream Master. He usually appears in the form of the current Living ECK Master. Often he is accompanied by other ECK Masters… In ECK, your experiences are no longer limited to your daily, waking life. The Dream Master expands your experience to give you an opportunity to gain spiritual unfoldment twenty-four hours a day, whether you are awake or in the dream state. About the Author In 1981, American-born Harold Klemp became the spiritual leader of Eckankar. He travels worldwide, speaking at Eckankar seminars. From North America and Europe to Australia and the Pacific Rim, he shares the timeless truth of Eckankar. His teachings uplift us. They help us recognize the power of our own intimate experiences with God. He writes extensively, adding new titles each year to his more than thirty published works to date. For more information about Eckankar, write to PO Box 27300 Minneapolis, MN 55427. In St. Louis, call 314-427-1428. Back top	SIDEBAR: A Spiritual Exercise from the Dream Master I would like to give a technique that will help if you have a dream that you don' like. Close your eyes and go into contemplation for about fifteen minutes. Begin by chanting HU [pronounced like the word hue] – sung as a love song to God, this is one of the most beautiful words in the language of mankind. After you have chanted HU for a few minutes, rewind the dream that upset you or that left you somewhere you didn' want to be. Run through the dream mentally, from the beginning up to the point where you awoke. Then try to take it one step further. Perhaps the dream ended with you in a frightening situation – let's say a dark basement. In your spiritual exercise, take it to the point where you were left in the dark basement. Then use your imaginative faculty to get yourself out of there: Visualize an open door that leads to golden sunlight. Know that this golden light is the Light of Divine Spirit, the Light of ECK, the Light of God. Look to the Light, and listen for the Sound. Remember, when you have a dream that you would like to change, you can go into contemplation and use this technique to take the dream one step further. Always take it to a higher level. Move it out of the darkness, out of the silence and loneliness. Take it to the Light and Sound of God. Back top

	* Diamond Thunderbolt, cont. Back top
	For those more interested in their "inner world," which includes dreams, intuition and self-compassion, we can begin with a dream journal allowing it to become something of value. Having a more intimate relationship with anything requires attention to increase flexibility and dream memory. We can gain deeper understanding of personal dream imagery by discovering the art of symbolism, which is one of the main ways dreams express themselves. I suggest studying mythology and archetypal symbolism within the indigenous, esoteric, astrological, Jungian and a few other sectors. This allows the mind to begin to slowly focus and absorb new languages that the dreaming soul emotional body expresses at night. Another good beginner practice is to hold solid to that fact that every character in your dream is you, even the dark and scary ones. This helps build a foundation in the vast ocean of dreaming and its many dimensional levels. Edgar Cayce taught dreamers to make a decision about a topic they needed guidance on before going to sleep as a regular nightly practice and repeating it over and over as they fall asleep. Tibetan practices have a focus exercise each night with the third eye, which I personally love doing because it expanded my development from seership into remote viewing, a form of telepathy not of the mind but of the soul which travels beyond time and space. I would recommend staying focused on your healing journey by practicing letting go of illusion in relationships. I've found this extremely helpful in dreaming shifts. Learning to let go of any illusion-causing substances such as alcohol, pot or even medicine if you can become healthy enough to reduce or live without them is also helpful. Women's moon-time greatly affects her dreaming and its cycles, so learning about her story [is] a great benefit. How often we are in nature, how deeply we breathe clean air, and drink pure water effects our dreaming. I personally drink water out of a spring as often as I can, bugs and all, to dream with nature, which improves my dreaming clarity. When I lived in Seattle I would travel once a month to bring water home from Mount Tahoma (Mt. Rainer) and my dreaming increased tenfold. Just imagine drinking water without fear. Drinking water that is unfiltered with the sunshine, the bird's songs, the wind's air, the tree's blessings. Untouched is the most powerful water you can drink. I've been doing it for ten years. I even drank polluted water right out of the Meramec River. Water and dreams are inseparable and the fresher the better; it's our fears that keep us from understanding reality. top	Shaman Dreaming I had a conversation with a man overseas, telling him that I had experienced the entire mystery as a shaman. He replied: "Why would anyone want to experience and know the entire mystery. Wouldn't that leave nothing left?" It was his question that revealed his experience. As a Collective shaman, my initiations from spirit brought me to death's dreamtime. I knew intimately the difference between the course of collapse, misery and soul loss which were my initiations, and my previous years of collapse, misery and soul loss. Then there was no longer any way to navigate the difference between the dream world and this waking dream, both in my ordinary life and in my non-ordinary dreaming life; they were equal and could not be separated. In dreams, when we experience symbolism and image, sound and story, this is the way our soul-emotional body communicates as a living teaching of wisdom every night. More advanced dreamers, wiser elders and shamans accept that karma in dreaming is why we wake up in our nightly dream. So many wish to dream that it was they who were hurt in a past life and why their lives are difficult, when in a shaman's reality it is our previous actions across the unified fields as soul loss and karma being expressed in this life as a balance. Dreaming is the access to such soul fragments both in vision journeys and in our dreams at night. On this side we are connected to karmic injuries, and in the positive sense – if we accept this as a universal truth and reality – we can …master the building of a solid bridge between the mind and the emotional soul body to experience a deeper more ecstatic and fire healing. When we practice a dream discipline beyond advanced dreaming, we begin to enter the mystery, into the shaman's reality of dreamtime. This small, subtle, almost invisible reality is the voice of wisdom of the universe and is the exact mirror of our own small stillness, and voice of wisdom in our dreaming as life weaves them together. There are five different types of shamans on the earth: Earth Shamans who work with medicines such as herbs and plants to heal; Air Shamans who hold the mythos as storyteller and teacher; Fire Shamans who hold ceremony with spirit; Water Shamans who work with the emotional body called the Soul; and finally the Collective Shaman who roams the earth as Death initiating shamans in their eighth of eight deaths. I am a Water and Collective shaman, and when I begin to enter my grandmother stage after the next seven-year cycle, I will enter the fire… For more information on Mary Novak's Dream Circle, Seer Oracle Readings or Shamanic Soul Retrievals, Apprenticeships and Group Visions visit her website at http://people.tribe.net/dreamkeeper. top

	* Pluto's Gift to 2008, cont. Back top
	And now consider how one or more of those intense issues may have bubbled up into your consciousness the week of June 15th. If you can't recall, don't worry. You have until November 26th of this year to not only identity your personal "Achilles heel" but also to heal particular life issues that have caused you all the trouble. Best of all, the healing will just arrive on your psyche's doorstep, like a cosmic gift. You won't have to "do" anything to receive the present, although, being consciously aware of its arrival will only serve to accelerate its healing properties. The astrological explanation for all this cosmic gift giving, is the shifting of the (dwarf) planet Pluto back into the sign of Sagittarius, after a brief entry into Capricorn at the beginning of the year. 2008 is something of an unusual year, as, thanks to Pluto, the year is divided up into three distinct time periods: 1) January 25th-June 14th when Pluto transited Capricorn; 2) June 14th-November 26th when Pluto transits back into Sagittarius, and 3) after November 26th when Pluto reenters Capricorn. This suggests that during the middle half of 2008, we will have one more opportunity to heal some of the Sagittarius issues that we've been dealing with since Pluto entered Sagittarius in 1995. And, this cosmic gift of healing isn't limited to us individually; it includes the greater collective. If life is a school for the soul, then the planets symbolize the teachers. An astrological understanding helps to unlock the lessons of the planetary teachers. As Pluto transits a sign, it stirs up the shadow side of the sign's meaning, since Pluto is the guardian of the underworld, death and rebirth, compulsion, intensity and power. Sagittarian areas [or themes] include: religion, travel, communication/publishing, philosophy, ideology, exploration, law, sports… Since 1995, the world has seen an explosion of culture wars based on religious dogma, with the growing divide between [and among] fundamentalist world views. Thanks to the internet, we now have access to any ideology, philosophy or belief. All it takes is a keystroke to have instant communication with anyone on earth. Pluto in Sagittarius saw amazing growth in air travel, soaring home prices [and speculation], the cult of celebrity journalism and religious-inspired terrorism. As a great purveyor of healing gifts, Pluto has a dual application: our individual consciousness and the consciousness of the collective. It may seem scary when it does its "death dance," but the resultant rebirth makes up for its thorough cleansing action. Pluto heals by exposing obsessive excesses wherever it touches. We got a sneak peak of the next 16 years during the first six months of 2008, when Pluto shifted briefly into Capricorn. Since Pluto transits are where some kind of breakdown and/or breakthrough occurs, and as Capricorn represents structure, we can anticipate a healing of our major societal structures from late 2008 until 2024. For example, oil drives earth's societies, and we've seen an explosion of awareness and pain around the issue of higher oil prices. [As we work with Pluto's energy, we are beginning to demand practical ways to relieve our dependence upon fossil fuels]… although it might take us until 2024 to reach that goal. top	Astrology is the ultimate history teacher. Pluto was last in Capricorn from Nov. 1762 until Dec. 1778. This period marked the reconfiguration of many of the world's nations. The birth of the US came at the expense of England. Russia took over much of the Ottoman Empire. The Seven Year's War ended. Poland was split three ways among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. England traded Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida. In short, the stability of the world's governments was shaken to their core, ultimately transforming the power base of the world. Going back two Pluto-in-Capricorn cycles ago, from 1516-1533, we see how the power structure of the day, the Roman Catholic Church, crumbled at the hands of Martin Luther, as he denounced the enmeshed system of "indulgences" and church corruption. The Protestant Reformation shook the foundations of the world's attachment to the authority of one church [and its rigid dogma]. All planets are change agents. The Pluto style of change is volcanic, altering the landscape with the power of lava-like transformation. But when the explosive hot lava is cooled, the resulting mineral rich earth is perfect for the cultivation of new crops. Most of us have probably endured some major transformation of our own personal obstructions – negativity in some form – since 1995. Take this opportunity [June 14th until November 26th] to integrate the cooling lava, as Pluto reenters Sagittarius. Review what you're learned, how you've changed since 1995, and integrate the knowledge into your being. Healing is at your doorstep, as we await the next round of transformative change when Pluto shifts decisively into Capricorn by the year's end. Cassandra's regular column "In the Stars" has appeared in Pathfinder for many years. Her pithy renderings help focus on when the doors of opportunity for each of the signs open and shut. To contact her for an astrological reading or instruction, call 716-632-1004 or email .Sanjostar@aol.com

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