Mar 3-5, 2006
The group-participation style of dream work Jeremy Taylor has pioneered and developed over the last 30 years has startling and profound effects on both beginners and seasoned professionals. Under Jeremy’s gentle guidance, people regularly uncover multiple layers of meaning in virtually every dream shared, from the tiniest fragment to the longest epic. This uncovering releases extraordinary creative energy, emotional awareness, and deep healing.
Carl Jung used the word “archetype,” from Heraclitus, to mean the repeating patterns of the deep subconscious, patterns that appear in our dreams, sacred narratives, and great art. These archetypal energies can change not only our individual, personal lives, but also our collective, cultural lives. Projection of these archetypes onto others is a natural, subconscious process that cannot be prevented, though we can become increasingly aware of our projections and in so doing act more creatively and responsibly. A conscious appreciation of these archetypal patterns enables us to see our shared, common humanity, despite the differences of class, race, gender, age, beauty, ability, intelligence, and mental and emotional stability. Lately Jeremy has been working with simultaneous translation in Korea and Mexico and finds the archetypes transcend cultural backgrounds as well.
Jeremy is fond of saying “Dreams are the best show in town!” In his hands, dream work is a “contact sport,” not a “spectator sport.” We all project our own inner work onto the dreams shared by others. It’s hard to see our own dreams with fresh eyes, but it’s easy to see someone else’s dreams that way. Only the dreamer can say for sure what a particular dream means, but the universal, archetypal language of dreams means that our guesses, speculations, and projections about another’s dream will likely awaken the “aha!” of recognition, not only in the dreamer, but in us all.
Jeremy Taylor is an internationally renowned innovator of group process in dream work who blends the values of spirituality with an active social conscience and a Jungian perspective. He wrote Where People Fly and Rivers Flow Upstream, Dream Work, and The Living Labyrinth: Universal Themes in Myths, Dreams & The Symbolism of Waking Life. He appears regularly on local, regional, and national radio and TV, pioneered on-line dream work as host of AOL’s innovative dream work show, and teaches at the schools of the Graduate Theological Union and with Matthew Fox at Wisdom University. He co-founded and is past president of the Association for the Study of Dreams and has been coming to Rowe for over 20 years. He has decended so deeply into the realm of myths and dreams that he has become a practicing shaman, with conscious roots in the Anglo-Celtic tradition.
“Working with dreams has convinced me we’re inherently interesting, creative, generously energetic creatures. The cosmos manifests itself in an endless dance of creation. When we’re deeply asleep, we reveal our divine origins and connections by creating whole, playful universes every night. The symbolic language of this collective hymn of creativity is as simple and clear as a blossoming wild flower and as somber and complex as the struggle of predator and prey.”
— Jeremy Taylor