Quote from John Philip Newell
It was through a messenger from the East {in a dream} that I heard a deeply personal word.....
I draw from dreams because they have been important in my life and journey. But I draw from my dreams also because I believe they issue up from a place within us, not simply from within me. They are a way of accessing our depths, not simply my depths. Jung speaks of this shared wellspring within the human mystery as the collective unconscious, that unknown realm from which our lives and all life emerge. Dreams, he says, are "saying things beyond our conscious comprehension." In dreams, the unconscious, which is shared and deep within us all, is trying to enter consciousness through the particularity of our individual lives. A dream will often speak of what is common to us all, even though it comes through the radical uniqueness of our own individual experiences and dream life.
Robert Johnson, a psychiatrist in the Jungian tradition, says that dreams are "the speech of God." That is not to say that we do not need to argue with them. Arguing or wrestling with dreams, as Jacob did with the angel who visited him in the night, is part of the revelatory process. .....In any discipline of revelation we need to wrestle our way toward clarity rather than simply accept passively what we have received. And we do this not merely on our own but together. It is in the most significant relationships of our lives and in communion with the people and inherited treasure of our wisdom traditions that we are called to wrestle our way together toward greater consciousness.
A New Harmony by J. Philip Newell, Chapter 2, pp. 28-29
Jossey-Bass (2011)
