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ABSTRACT

 "Yume-Do" (The Way Of Dreams) - Using Dreams And Lucidity To Find The Wisdom Beyond Words

Reverend Jeremy Taylor, D.Min., S.Th.D. (hon.) Author of DREAM WORK, (Paulist Press, Mahwah, 1983), WHERE PEOPLE FLY & WATER RUNS UP HILL, (Warner Books, New York, 1992), and THE LIVING LABYRINTH, (Paulist Press, 1998), co-founder and past president of the international Association for the Study of Dreams

4. Summary: There is compelling evidence that recurrent psycho-spiritual themes recur regularly and spontaneously in the dreams of individuals, and also in the sacred narratives of the world's many religions. Carl Jung called these recurrent themes "archetypes". These archetypes manifest themselves not only in the specific manifest content of dreams remembered from sleep, but also in the form and structure of those memories. The patterns of developing ability to recall and remember dreams suggest even larger patterns of meaning in human experience.
These evolving tropes and patterns are discussed in some detail, with several examples from the experience of dreamers who have been engaged in developing their relationship with their dreams for decades.

5. Learning Objectives: (1) to familiarize the listeners with various techniques for improving dream recall, (2) to sensitize listeners to the patterns of memory itself as they reveal themselves over an extended practice of dream recall, (3) to suggest various ways of understanding and interpreting these "meta-patterns" of dream memory, (4) to offer concrete suggestions about the application of these understanding to on-going dream exploration practice.

8. Abstract: "Yume" is the Japanese word for "dream in sleep". "Do" is the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese "Tao", roughly translatable as "Way". "Yume Do" is the "Way of the Dream" as a spiritual practice. The evolution of this universal spiritual practice can be seen in the developments of the dreamer's ability to recall more and more subtle aspects of dream experience. The basic shape of most dream recall is determined by the seemingly mono-focused experience of waking life. The dream world offers a much wider range of possible experience than can be easily imagined in waking life, and the practice of focused dream recall practiced over months and years almost always yields a widening set of experiences that are basically similar in a large sample of committed dream recallers. One of the first to appear is often the experience of "bi-location" - experiencing "oneself" ("dream ego") as both an embodied participant, and also simultaneously as a disembodied observer. This experience often develops over time into the ability to remember multiple dream narratives and "realities" simultaneously. In waking life, these developments in dream recall often parallel psycho-spiritual developments of personality and character.