Big Dreams Part I: Personal Is Political

“If we do not sort through our cultural as well as personal complexes carefully, we end up…feeling responsible for, identifying with, or being traumatized by events that belong to our cultural complexes far more than our personal complexes.” — Thomas Singer

Starting in 2012, I have had a series of “Big Dreams” that have been prescient of the socio-political-ecological events unfolding in our country and abroad. Collective Dreams are not simply meant for individual enlightenment but for the well-being of the community. Though these dreams appear to be quite dark, they illuminate a larger archetypal perspective on events and point to the potential for a positive and significant transformation. There is a light at the end of the dark tunnel we are in. Given the timeliness of the upcoming elections in the United States and events in the world, I feel compelled to post these dreams this week as a five-part series.

I was in the first year of training in Embodied Imagination with Jungian Analyst, Robert Bosnak, when I had this Big Dream (2012):

 I sit next to Robbie Bosnak in a café high up in the Empire State Building. He is deep in thought and says out loud, “The Self doesn’t develop fully until one immerses oneself in the Collective.” I look down and see that the Empire State Building is on stilts in the ocean. There are pink, cartoonish whales frolicking around the stilts. Suddenly, I am in the water. I see an approaching tsunami and know it will knock down the Empire State Building. I say to myself, “So, this is what it is to die. If I close my eyes, it will all be peaceful. It is only the transition that is scary.”

 A brief description of Embodied Imagination: Pioneered by Robert Bosnak, Embodied Imagination brings the immaterial psyche – whether it shows up in dreams, memories, imagery, or imagination – into the body. Image, the root of imagination, has substance, an embodied and living presence. When we slow our attention to focus on the image, that embodied presence and intelligence are felt in our bodies. The embodied image creates profound therapeutic effects, shifting our perception and transforming our physical stance in the world. 

This Big Dream and the work of Embodied Imagination put me into a psychic blender, shattering my self-orientation. In the past, this emotional turbulence would have set off alarms and sent me running to a therapist for containment. Instead, I leaned into my work with Tarotpy to support my dream work. Following the dream, I randomly pulled two Tarot cards: The Tower card from the Voyager deck and Sacrifice from the Psychic deck. The images that I randomly selected corresponded to my dream like a snapshot. On the left, you can see the tower collapsing, and on the right, the woman immersing in the ocean.                     

Tarotpy, alongside embodied dream work (EI), provided me with a psycho-spiritual container like glass through which I could see what was happening in the world of my psyche. Tarotpy became like scaffolding to hold my psyche while I underwent profound renovation.

Personally, this dream revealed the necessity to deconstruct the persona I had meticulously crafted over the years. Although I am an introvert and empath, I have masqueraded as an extrovert and relied on my intellect to survive in a patriarchal society. This pretense, driven by societal norms, compelled me to suppress my genuine emotional depth, resulting in a profound disconnect. In the dream, vivid, pink, cartoonish whales surfaced, potentially symbolizing repressed emotional fluidity. These figures, though seemingly whimsical, hold a depth that might be dismissed by a detached intellect observing from its ivory tower. I interpret the whales as beckoning the magical child within to reunite with the personal and collective unconscious.

From a collective viewpoint, the image of the Empire State Building collapsing is a harbinger of an empire in decline. The Tower archetype, in general, symbolizes the fall of established and rigid structures. My association with the dream was that the American Empire—its hierarchical and patriarchal structures—would be shaken to its foundation. There are many indicators of an empire in decline: a polarized congress in which legislation is at a stalemate; wars that deplete the national surplus, and economic structures that run up huge deficits and widen the inequality gap. Declining empires become vulnerable to attacks from the outside: 9/11 was emblematic of the tower archetype. Coincidentally, James Wanless, who created the Voyager deck in 1983, used the image of the Twin Towers to illustrate the Tower card, foreshadowing the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2001. A declining empire becomes vulnerable to attacks from the inside: Donald Trump is the epitome of the Tower archetype, his name emblazoned in gold on a huge, black tower.

The Tower’s collapse represents ecological and mythological dimensions as well. The dream’s Empire State Building, perched precariously on stilts, represents a vulnerability to the ocean rising which is one factor of climate change. In waking life, architectural students in New York are trying to work out how to raise buildings to survive the rising waters. On the right side of the Tower card in the Voyager deck, a golden idol plummets from the sky, recalling the myth of King Midas, who had a golden touch but whose pursuit of wealth destroyed everything he loved. Unbridled capitalism’s reverence for money over people and nature mirrors this destructive myth.

The rising of the waters is archetypal for the rise of the Divine Feminine. This dream presaged the tsunami of the “Me Too” movement that toppled major icons of the ruling patriarchy. 

As I embodied the images from the dream and the Tarotpy images, my heart broke open. I was plunged into a depth of grief. I felt anguish for the nation and a world in turmoil.  I felt aggrieved by a culture that devalues the feminine and denies the reality of a mystical connection between nature and Spirit. I surrendered to a tidal wave of emotions, dissolving all boundaries between myself, my soul, and the world.

The teacher (Robbie) in the dream states that achieving personal wholeness requires us to immerse individual egoism into the collective. We transcend denial and busyness and connect with the collective pain that reverberates throughout the world. This personal and collective surrender is about submerging into the emotional (fluid) body of the Great Mother. A universal lament becomes essential—a collective wail for transformation. Embracing our grief becomes integral to healing; a necessary step toward wholeness.