<\/p>\n
When I first began writing about \u201ckeys for the future of dreams,\u201d I had reached four key words when I had a dream that told me I had to add a fifth<\/i> word. Furthermore, the dream insisted, it had to be a fifth \u201cC-word.\u201d <\/p>\n
Having learned that there is more wisdom in obeying the orders of dreams than in refusing them, I consulted the I Ching \u201cdream gourd\u201d that has become part of my daily practice. <\/p>\n
The dream-gourd answered my query with Hexagram 3 (Zhun<\/i>, tr. \u201cbeginning\u201d). From the etymological pictograph, I discerned that the best C-word to convey the sense of this image was \u201ccultivate.\u201d This led to my question: What do we do<\/i> in our own lives and in relation to the lives of others to cultivate<\/i> dreams? <\/p>\n
In this post I intend to explore this question, as I promised. <\/p>\n
One way to deepen any exploration is to begin with an analysis of the etymology of the words one is using. In the previous post, I showed how tending to the etymological image<\/i> in the I Ching<\/i> produced the idea of \u201ccultivate.\u201d <\/p>\n
So, now, let\u2019s look at this English word<\/i>. Most of the time, a word\u2019s dictionary definitions do not add much to the word itself that one already knows. For example, one definition of \u201ccultivate\u201d is \u201cto improve or prepare land, as by plowing, for raising crops.\u201d But another definition, \u201cto nurture, foster,\u201d when applied to dreams, adds a nuance: to nurture and foster dreams<\/i>. So does another definition: \u201cto seek the acquaintance.\u201d \u201cTo seek the acquaintance of dreams<\/i>,\u201d is likely a phrase one has not heard of before. We might even put these two ideas together: To nurture and foster dreams, seek their acquaintance.<\/i><\/p>\n
The Indo-European root from which cultivate (as well as culture and many other rich words) derive is kw<\/sup><\/u>el-<\/b>, which has the basic sense of \u201ccircling with.\u201d (imagine oxen turning, back and forth, ploughing the field). Circling with a dream.<\/i> Note the \u201cwith\u201d here, the sense of something done together.<\/i> None of these phrases carries the idea of something \u201cdone to\u201d the dream. Nor is there any sense or emphasis on possession, as when we say \u201cmy\u201d dream. The dream is of something \u201cother,\u201d and our proprietary clutching is not warranted. This otherness may be experienced as threatening, pleasing, numinous, nonsensical, shrouded in mystery, or a hundred other such cognitive and emotional sequalae that follow awakening from the dream. If one is interested in dreams at all (probably a different kind of 1%), one\u2019s interest seems to focus primarily on what does this dream mean and how can I profit from this meaning? I don\u2019t believe that this common mode of relating to dreams is what is meant by \u201ccircling with a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n How then to cultivate dreams in ourselves and in others? <\/p>\n At this point, I\u2019d like to ask each of you reading this post to read the chapter entitled, \u201cThe Dream Wants a Dream,\u201d in Psyche Speaks. <\/i>Just mentioning the chapter\u2019s title is sufficient to give a sense of this cultivation: a dream wants<\/i> a dream. This idea itself came from a dream, and to take it seriously is to seriously consider that dreams themselves desire.<\/i> Freud developed the idea that dreams mask and hide our true desires and that this hiding and masking helps us to maintain some degree of sanity. Jung rejected the idea of masking, but accepted the idea that dreams are expressing our<\/i> desires in plain sight. But my dream (\u201cA dream wants a dream\/A poem wants a poem\u201d) asserts something else<\/i>: that dreams themselves (as well as poems) desire<\/i>. This echoes Baudelaire\u2019s assertion that the only proper \u201ccriticism\u201d of a work of art was another<\/i> work of art.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n As I argued in Psyche Speaks<\/i>, this wanting, this desire on the part of dreams, poems and art (and, of course, much else as well), is eros in waiting, <\/i>waiting for us to act<\/i> in return.<\/p>\n In Jung\u2019s most important letter, written to Herbert Read in 1960, Jung writes:<\/p>\n We have simply got to listen to what the psyche spontaneously says to us. What the dream, which is not manufactured by us says is just so\u2026<\/i>It is the great dream which has always spoken through the artist as a mouthpiece. All his love and his passion (his \u201cvalues)\u201d flow towards the coming guest to proclaim his arrival\u2026What is the great Dream? It consists of the many small dreams and the many acts of humility and submission to their hints. It is the future and the picture of the new world, which we do not understand yet. We cannot know better than the unconscious and its intimations. There <\/i>is a fair chance of finding what we seek in vain in our conscious world. Where else could it be?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Just about everything that is important to me in Jung\u2019s psychology is embedded in this letter and its implications. Some implications: every<\/i> dream is carrying the future, every<\/i> dream is an aspect of the coming guest, every<\/i> dream desires us to act<\/i> on the \u201chint\u201d of the dream. <\/p>\n Yet, look at the present world, so devoid of being informed by the unconscious and its intimations, so demanding of everyone\u2019s consciousness to be focused on and tethered to \u201cout there.\u201d <\/p>\n Pok\u00e9mon Go, in a few days\u2019 time, has already \u201ccaptured\u201d the attention, the frenzy, and the actions of more people than are relating to their dreams. Think about what this<\/i> future portends.<\/p>\n \u2026to be continued\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I first began writing about \u201ckeys for the future of dreams,\u201d I had reached four key words when I had a dream that told me I had to add a fifth word. Furthermore, the dream insisted, it had to be a fifth \u201cC-word.\u201d Having learned that there is more wisdom in obeying the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n