What are your dreams telling you? Dr. Raffa believes that "dreams show us who we are and what we can become." In this fascinating book of how to analyze dreams, explore the feminine aspects, and use dreams to grow emotionally and spiritually, Raffa combines the metaphor of a theatre with the practicality of a handbook to provide a practical guide to understanding your dreams.
What if you got a wrong memo about what God wants of you, and ran with (or against) it for years? Raffa helps you find and take joy in healing painful divides this could cause in yourself and relationships, and between values like masculine/feminine and spiritual/unspiritual in your world. She presents this process as an authentic spiritual practice--from a seasoned, progressive Christian Jungian perspective--to become wisely open-minded and open-hearted.
Humanity today is plagued by a loss of meaning and alienation from self and others. The result is unprecedented levels of divorce, depression, anxiety, addictions, suicide, and crime. Because societal institutions have failed to resolve these and other everyday problems, it is now the task of each individual to heal and unite their divided self: body and spirit, conscious and unconscious, feminine and masculine. Drawing on Jungian psychology and wisdom traditions from world religions, Dr. Raffa offers a self-guided journey to heightened self-awareness and compassion for oneself and others. A self-assessment tool called the Partnership Profile gives readers a personalized status report on their inner forces, including the maturity of four feminine archetypes, four masculine archetypes, and a newly emerging archetype of egalitarian partnership. This awareness, combined with suggested practices, empowers readers to address their imbalances and create the lives for which they yearn.
For fans of Eckhart Tolle—a guide to mastering self-awareness through direct experience rather than old presumptions or harmful thought patterns Through decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a state of not-knowing. Even the most sincere investigation of self and spirit, he says, is often sabotaged by our tendency to grab too quickly for answers and ideas as we retreat to the safety of the known. This "Hitchhiker’s Guide to Awareness" provides helpful guideposts along an experiential journey for those Western minds predisposed to wandering off to old habits, cherished presumptions, and a stubbornly solid sense of self. With ease and clarity, Ralston teaches readers how to become aware of the background patterns that they are usually too busy, stressed, or distracted to notice. The Book of Not Knowing points out the ways people get stuck in their lives and offers readers a way to make fresh choices about every aspect of their lives—from a place of awareness instead of autopilot.
Through Rachel Norments Dream Explorations: A Journey in Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization, you can learn contemporary methods of dreamwork inspired by Carl Jung and developed by Montague Ullman, Jeremy Taylor, and many others; and discover the deep inner wisdom you have within yourself that can guide you towards spiritual growth and physical and psychological health and wholenesstoward becoming the person you are meant to become. Rachel Norments Dream Explorations is a gift to us all! The combination of her careful attention to her own dreams over decades and her keen eye for the dreams and insights of other dreamers has produced a work of great depth, wisdom, and inspiration. It is a joy to read. Jeremy Taylor, D.Min., cofounder and past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) and author of The Wisdom of Your Dreams In this valuable and highly readable book, longtime dreamworker Rachel Norment offers us her collection of dream treasures with instructive reflections on common symbols and dream themes. This book clearly illustrates the rewards of a lifetime of dreamwork to guide and heal our lives. Chelsea Wakefield, Ph.D., LCSW, psychotherapist and author of Negotiating the Inner Peace Treaty: Becoming the Person You Were Born to Be Serious dream workers and seekers after self-knowledge will be delighted by this book. Rachels practical insights into her personal symbols and themes are sure to bring light and guidance to anyones inner explorations. I highly recommend it. Jean Benedict Raffa, Ph.D., author of The Bridge to Wholeness, Dream Theatres of the Soul, and Healing the Sacred Divide
How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
Some of the greatest thinkers and writers of our age meditate on play and the mysteries of inanimate life. This unusual literary collection contains writings from Baudelaire, Kleist, Rilke, Freud, Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Bruno Schulz, Elizabeth Bishop, Dennis Silk, and Marina Warner. The essays and reflections explore the seriousness of play and the mysteries of inanimate life - 'the unknown, spaces, dust, lost objects, and small animals that fill any house' - which have provoked many writers to take the side of these dead or non-human things, resulting in some of the most profound passages in literature. The collection is introduced and edited by Kenneth Gross. On Dolls includes contributions from: Heinrich Von Kleist 'On the Marionette Theatre', Charles Baudelaire 'The Philosophy of Toys', Sigmund Freud 'The Uncanny', Rainer Maria Rilke 'On the Dolls of Lotte Pritzel', Frank Kafka 'The Cares of a Family Man', Bruno Schulz 'Tailor's Dummies', Walter Benjamin 'Old Toys: The Toy Exhibition at the Markisches Museum', Elizabeth Bishop, 'Cirque d'Hiver', Dennis Silk 'The Marionette Theatre', and Marina Warner 'On the Threshold: Sleeping Beauties'.
A fast, easy method for dream interpretation is introduced in this guide that links color and visual imagery in dreams to the activity of the sleeping brain. Contributions from 16 dream experts report on psychological and physical evidence that dreams create their own logic -- operating not with words, but with visual images and colors -- and that these associations provide a key to waking emotions in personal, professional, and group dreamwork. Self-help exercises such as The 6 Magic Questions are included for readers looking to decode colors and symbols and uncover hidden emotions in their own dreams, and the book also covers topics such as nightmares, paranormal dreams, and dreams of spiritual enlightenment.
The Alchemical Actor – Performing the Great Work: Imagining Alchemical Theatre offers an imagination for an alchemical theatre inspired by the directives of Antonin Artaud.
First published twenty years ago, this revised edition of John Sanford's classic exploration of the psychological and spiritual significance of dreams draws on the work of C.G. Jung to show how dreams can help us find healing and wholeness and reconnect us to a living spiritual world. Featuring a new preface by the author and using case histories from his own experience as a counselor, Dreams traces the role of dreams in the Bible, analyzing their nature and examining how Christians, through fear and the constraints of dogma, have come to reject the visions through which God speaks to humanity, making dreams -- in Sanford's words -- "God's forgotten language."
