Avenues of Awakening
Avenues of Awakening
S2E3 Dreamwork: A Voyage Into the Unconscious
Dreamwork is a powerful modality for exploration, healing, and integration. Our guest today is Carrie Fields, who guides us into the nature of dreams, shares methods of dreamwork, and opens the imaginal realm for once-and-future dream workers. Thomas also shares a recent dream, which proves more insightful than expected with Carrie’s help.
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Carrie Fields offers services that integrate intuitive healing, transpersonal psychology, and creative modalities. She holds a Master of Social Work and completed additional certifications and training in clinical hypnotherapy, dreamwork, and art therapy. She lives in Wilmington, NC with her husband Alex and precocious chihuahua, Hermes.
You can contact Carrie via her website: https://www.innerlandscapeshealing.com/
Join the conversion and check out the show notes!
00;00;06;23 - 00;00;28;15
Thomas Whitmire
Welcome back to Avenues of Awakening. And today we're going to start to take a look at some of the modalities of healing and integration. And so what I wanted to start with is dreamwork. A lot of what's been coming up for me in the last couple of months is the recognition of unconscious patterns, or old ways of being that just don't seem to work for me anymore.
00;00;28;17 - 00;01;11;12
Thomas Whitmire
During these times, it's pretty normal for dreams to become more active. With that in mind, we're going to have a conversation with a long time friend of mine, Cory Fields, who's very gifted in what I would call the Numinous Realms. And she's trained in Dreamwork as well as art therapy, hypnosis, and originally clinical social work. So let's go ahead and talk with Kari, and let's just jump into some dream work.
00;01;11;14 - 00;01;43;24
Carrie Fields
Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, I think dreams are such an incredible gateway to the inner realms where we can actually communicate with the aspects are being that are, like, not always easy to access and that want to come up in these interesting ways in like our healing process. And I mean, I just think it's it sounds like it could potentially be a really fruitful avenue for you to explore and what you're describing.
00;01;43;26 - 00;02;05;06
Thomas Whitmire
A lot of the path for, for me, as I mentioned in my email to you, was like trying to intuitively find the right next kind of key or doorway to explore. And so like getting into, you know, dream work. I kind of realized I really didn't know much about it. I've I've had history. You know, we all dream and I've had a sort of instinctive interest in kind of grouping the kinds of dreams and stuff.
00;02;05;08 - 00;02;15;02
Thomas Whitmire
But I realized, like, I actually really didn't know what it means or is entailed. So like, can you tell me what's your what do you think about what is dreamwork, you know?
00;02;15;04 - 00;02;17;19
Carrie Fields
Oh, yeah.
00;02;17;21 - 00;02;18;22
Thomas Whitmire
In two sentences.
00;02;18;25 - 00;02;56;06
Carrie Fields
It's it's like everything. Yeah. I mean, I had an interest in dreams my whole life, and I've always paid attention to my dreams. And that's a whole story I could tell you about. But. But then when I started actually studying dream work and all the different approaches and philosophies there are about dreams, that was just, wow. Like, there's so much to learn and there's so many different avenues and there's I see it as a portal to this other realm, which is we call it the unconscious in Western psychology.
00;02;56;06 - 00;03;27;06
Carrie Fields
And I use that word a lot, but I don't know that, like, that's not the only word that you can use, you know, but it's also the collective unconscious, the cosmic field, the inner being as access points to communicating with other beings, other dimensions, you know, there's just so much there that's available. But there's also such a, on a personal level, just so much rich resourcing and content to work with our own material.
00;03;27;06 - 00;03;43;20
Carrie Fields
You know, as you know, who we are in this life. And to me, it's just dreams are a gateway to many, many different things. And, there are many ways to work with those. Yeah. And I'm interested in all of them.
00;03;43;23 - 00;04;02;26
Thomas Whitmire
Okay. We should do a whole podcast series on dreams then. I mean, like, I just did one on the history of A Brief History of Western Mind, something that's an entire podcast. You can make 200 episodes on this, you know? Yeah. So we've all had dreams. I'm sure. We've all shared dreams with each other and with our friends and family.
00;04;02;28 - 00;04;26;21
Thomas Whitmire
But my my background with dreams was about even being a psychology major. Background. Freud's book on dreams. And then I knew a bit about Carl Jung, and then that was about it. And then there's occasional like armchair dream interpretation right now. I got my third guy that I mentioned, Robert Johnson, who's a think is pretty well known in this, whom I had not even heard of.
00;04;26;21 - 00;04;43;18
Thomas Whitmire
I'm like, oh, gosh. So I'm sure there's all these people, all this work out here. So take us from like the difference between what we might be doing in an armchair, like, oh, yeah, I had a dream about, you know, a truck that was coming through the fog and, and said, oh, yeah, that sounds fun. As I'm like, reading this, I'm, I'm really understanding.
00;04;43;18 - 00;04;53;01
Thomas Whitmire
There's really a lot more to this than kind of what I had discovered to date on my own. You know, it's more robust.
00;04;53;04 - 00;05;28;16
Carrie Fields
Well, I guess first I'll say that one of the things that people say about dreams that is I think is true, is that they're overdetermined, which is a word I didn't know what that meant until I was learning about dream work. And it's a dream has so many layers of meaning, and there's so much content packed into the dream on numerous levels that the same dream, you could read it, you know, it could have many, many different messages and many different dimensions to how you can read and work with that dream.
00;05;28;16 - 00;06;03;24
Carrie Fields
So it could be simultaneously a, you know, a commentary on one's daily life experience and also a very spiritual dream or, you know, and then you could have many different possibilities of how that dream comes through to you content wise, and what it might mean to me. It's almost kaleidoscopic, like you could enter any piece of that dream, any image, any aspect of it, and then kind of unpack it and expand it in infinite directions, which might be also true of this reality.
00;06;03;27 - 00;06;36;21
Carrie Fields
But, so I think there's value in every single way of working with a dream. But what we sometimes get tripped up on, especially in our kind of cultural training or experience in, you know, the emphasis on Western rationalism is that our conscious mind or a rational mind like, wants to understand and interpret the dream based on the conscious mind's perspective, which is very limited.
00;06;36;23 - 00;07;07;21
Carrie Fields
And I would say the unconscious mind's perspective is much more expansive. And so we are it's like we can want to say, this means this, this means this, this means this. And while that may be totally true on one level, it kind of cuts off the opportunity to ask, well, and what else? And like, how can I open that up even more and experience something that, you know, was unexpected, like dreams always show us things that our conscious minds aren't aware of.
00;07;07;24 - 00;07;27;19
Carrie Fields
And so if our conscious mind thinks it figured it out, it often will set down that spirit of inquiry. And so I'm really a fan of, approaches that help us go past the rational mind and access that dream through the right brain, what you call the right brain, I think. Yeah.
00;07;27;22 - 00;07;28;11
Thomas Whitmire
Intuitive.
00;07;28;16 - 00;07;49;17
Carrie Fields
The body, the idea, intuition or a creative mind or imagination. Those aspects help us to, I think, deepen into the experience of the dream. But what's cool is that you can also pick up a dream a dream dictionary, which, you know a lot of people. That's as far as they'll go. And you tell me, will get something out of that.
00;07;49;21 - 00;07;55;09
Carrie Fields
You know? So it's not like wrong. It's just not the whole picture.
00;07;55;12 - 00;08;02;29
Thomas Whitmire
So how did you move from like that level into greater understanding and kind of what was the path?
00;08;03;01 - 00;08;20;04
Carrie Fields
I started becoming interested in dreams when I was ten, or probably younger than that. I was always interested, but somehow I was really young. I found out about Freud's book, about dreams, and I. It's not like I read it or anything, but I, I was telling people that I wanted to be a dream interpreter. A dream analyst, really.
00;08;20;04 - 00;08;43;22
Carrie Fields
So I found out that exist somehow. And then that's when I did my I don't know where that came from, but, I've, I've kind of held that as a key for my life, because if I knew that somehow at age ten, then, like, you know, I, I believe in kind of like the things we were really interested in as a child and as a child or like important keys to our soul essence.
00;08;43;25 - 00;09;21;27
Carrie Fields
But, but anyway, so like I did my, my six year science project on lucid dreaming and, I just was really interested in that, and I didn't really. I wrote down my dreams starting at age ten for almost my whole life, but never really knew my work. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, like, fast forward, like I ended up going into social work and really, I think because my interest in the sort of the psyche, you know, and helping people and like, learning about.
00;09;21;29 - 00;09;48;09
Carrie Fields
Yeah, learning about people. But I felt really unsatisfied with, that approach for myself, like, because I think social work is very practical. It's very focused on basic needs and addressing what's immediately kind of the immediate, concrete problems in people's lives, which is incredibly important. But for me, it didn't meet my hunger for like I was like, well, what about the unconscious?
00;09;48;09 - 00;10;07;22
Carrie Fields
You know, like, I really just wanted to learn about the mystery of the unconscious. And we didn't really talk about that at all. And so I was like, doing my community mental health stuff for a while and really burning myself out. I had severe chronic fatigue, and I eventually got to a point where I was like, I can't do this anymore.
00;10;07;29 - 00;10;44;24
Carrie Fields
And so I quit my job and this is when we were living in New Mexico. And I'm spending a lot of time just by myself. This kind of wondering what to do with myself and like really, really longing for this. Like, how can I feel like I can live more authentically with who I really am? And, I was also wondering a lot about the nature of reality, which I always am, but what we're really doing here and who I really am, and I guess because I kind of had hit not a rock bottom, but kind of like a just a wall.
00;10;44;25 - 00;10;58;24
Carrie Fields
It's like, not I can't keep doing what I'm doing. I wasn't until that point that I kind of surrendered and I was able to be like, well, what am I really? What do I really want to learn about, you know, like, what do I really want to do? And it was like, well, I want to learn about dreams.
00;10;58;26 - 00;11;04;28
Carrie Fields
I've always wanted to do that. So I think the first book I read, I read that Robert Jackson book that you're reading.
00;11;05;01 - 00;11;07;10
Thomas Whitmire
And Inner Work by Robert Johnson.
00;11;07;13 - 00;11;34;14
Carrie Fields
And that I'm loving it. That was a great introduction, and it's so accessible and it gives me some really useful techniques. So those are the first things I played around with, I think. And then I also read a book by I heard, podcast interview with Edward Bruce Bynum, who is a dream worker, and he wrote a book called oh yeah, it's called The Dream Life of Families, and it's about how dreams are shared amongst families.
00;11;34;14 - 00;11;58;15
Carrie Fields
And he is an amazing person. And just his work is amazing. But that book really inspired me and just opened my mind that there can be a lot more here than just this. Like even just the psychological component, you know, that's an ancestral component of dreams. Yeah, I just kind of kept opening the doors from there. And then I found I entered the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
00;11;58;17 - 00;12;29;29
Carrie Fields
That was really like the gateway for me once I passed. And if anyone's interested in dreams, I would recommend joining that organization. They have some pretty accessible online courses that I, I took that kind of give you a broad introduction to different dreamwork techniques, and it's just a good way to kind of connect and see the dream work, international dream work community, which is yeah, there are so many people out there working with dreams, but it's kind of a niche obscure thing in a way.
00;12;29;29 - 00;12;57;22
Carrie Fields
So like, I didn't at first know how to tap into that. So that organization is really awesome. I've been to their conference a couple times, and it just exposed me to a lot of different ideas and approaches. And then also through that organization, I ended up meeting some people, just do like these chat forums where we ended up forming Ireland Dream Group for a little while, and I, I met two individuals who I started, dream exchange partnerships with, one of whom I still work with.
00;12;57;24 - 00;13;20;10
Carrie Fields
And we meet every week and kind of back and forth like just do dream work with each other's dreams. And that's a really good way to get into dream like, because I don't know, there's more I could say about that. But working with other people and having a mirror and a reflection partner can be extremely helpful. Rather than trying to go at all on our own.
00;13;20;10 - 00;13;45;07
Carrie Fields
So, yeah. And then I ended up starting my own dream group during Covid, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but, I was reading Jeremy Taylor's book, who is someone like, if I would, to say one introductory book and dream like for me, that I would recommend would be Jeremy Taylor's The Wisdom of Your Dream.
00;13;45;10 - 00;13;46;17
Thomas Whitmire
Was that.
00;13;46;19 - 00;14;10;00
Carrie Fields
Okay? Yeah. That book gave me a lot of inspiration and ideas and yeah, I started a dream group and met with them for about a year and a half on zoom over the pandemic, and just from there have done lots of different trainings and, classes and read a lot of books and practiced a lot of things. And it's just kind of expanded out from there.
00;14;10;00 - 00;14;30;15
Carrie Fields
And, to me, I just really love exploring all these different possibilities of ways to work with dreams and trying different techniques, because it puts together more of a patchwork of of perspectives that I can expand into, like a just, I don't know, I really love expanding my perspective.
00;14;30;17 - 00;14;51;09
Thomas Whitmire
What is the experience to you of participating in these dream rooms? Because like, it helps so many times in the areas we're interested in or in healing to find people with sort of a similar like mind or intention or ways of reflecting. So kind of what how would you relate your dream work to sort of how that helps along your inner process?
00;14;51;15 - 00;15;00;26
Thomas Whitmire
Kind of what do you get out of it or what does that how does it leave you feeling and, fulfilling that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. Doing this kind of work, especially with groups.
00;15;00;28 - 00;15;25;18
Carrie Fields
I've been a participant and a leader and several dream groups. So I've gotten kind of a variety of experiences there. But if the spaces held well and there's a good container and there's, you know, we're all able to respect and honor each other's autonomy year round. Our, you know, because it's really vulnerable content. So I think it's important to set up a good container.
00;15;25;20 - 00;15;52;29
Carrie Fields
As long as that's there, it's I think it's an extraordinary growth experience. And it creates a level of intimacy that is very different than relating just on the level of the conscious mind, because we're really relating to these, you know, deeper aspects of ourselves and parts of ourselves that we might not know in other contexts. And, also just getting that feedback.
00;15;53;01 - 00;16;08;06
Carrie Fields
And I think that in many traditions too, around the world, like we have dreamwork traditions and Western psychology, but dream practice has been an aspect of many, many traditional cultures, probably as long as humans have then.
00;16;08;08 - 00;16;09;05
Thomas Whitmire
Had dreams.
00;16;09;08 - 00;16;43;00
Carrie Fields
Around, you know, and it has had such a huge role and ancient history and, prophetic dreams and oracular dreams. And anyway, so many, many cultures, there's a practice of sharing one's dream like, with other with the community and dreaming for the community and dreaming for the tribe. And so I think it brings us back to like, in a way, our, our roots of being an authentic community with other human beings and where we're, like, encountering each other on a soul level.
00;16;43;03 - 00;16;51;10
Carrie Fields
And it's really I think it's a really special thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00;16;51;13 - 00;17;08;16
Thomas Whitmire
I think I was, I probably was, would have been too scared to join one of those because it is very vulnerable as you mentioned, you know. But if I could see like getting a point right, I could do that. But also like I don't know, there's a lot of shifts taking place, you know, and, and I can really see the value of that.
00;17;08;16 - 00;17;16;18
Thomas Whitmire
It sounds pretty incredible. And then that's probably a little different than a dream exchange partnership where that's just one on one, right, with somebody else.
00;17;16;20 - 00;17;50;17
Carrie Fields
Okay. And, I also think that's a really wonderful way to work with dreams, because some people would say that I don't know the right person to quote here, it might be Jeremy Taylor, but like, we are uniquely blind to the content of our own unconscious. And so there's things we'll miss because our conscious minds have all these filters that are, you know, not I don't know, that's not the right way to say it, but we have filters and sometimes the reflection of another person can help us get past those filters.
00;17;50;20 - 00;17;52;01
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah, they'll pick up on stuff.
00;17;52;02 - 00;18;28;27
Carrie Fields
For me when I'm liberated. In a way, that's compassionate. And, a lot of times, what we do in dream groups, when there is projection that going that's going on. And not all dream practice is use projection where in certain dream practices you might just be asking questions and that it or working with dreams and each person is working with their own content, you know, but when those projection, the general rule is to use the words, if it were my dream and really look at the dream as if it were your own, and share how it lands in your system.
00;18;29;00 - 00;18;55;03
Carrie Fields
And that may or may not resonate with the dreamer, but the dreamer can receive that, and it might open something for them, or it might be a perspective taking exercise where we get to see our own through a different filter, you know, our own life and experience. And so there's I think that projection can be useful, but I do think it needs to be approached carefully.
00;18;55;05 - 00;19;01;17
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah.
00;19;01;20 - 00;19;11;26
Thomas Whitmire
Let's take a short break. We'll be back in 30s.
00;19;11;28 - 00;19;24;08
Thomas Whitmire
Rock.
00;19;24;11 - 00;19;33;18
Thomas Whitmire
Carrie has offered to share her dream with us that she experienced several years ago when she was in a major life transition.
00;19;33;20 - 00;19;55;04
Carrie Fields
This is my octopus dream. I can share this dream. And it's, I made a diorama of it while incredible, and one of the ways I really like to work with humans through art. I know we're not on video like for the podcast, so. But I pulled out a bunch of collages I've made about different dreams. Yeah.
00;19;55;04 - 00;20;17;09
Carrie Fields
In this dream, I'm inside of a watery realm that feels kind of like a a cave. Like like spelunking in this sort of watery cave. And there's a sense that, like in the I'm in the center of it, and I feel like I'm kind of, I kind of know where I am. I'm. I'm home in the center of this watery cave.
00;20;17;11 - 00;20;46;21
Carrie Fields
But I begin to sort of venture out into these, these kind of side channels and, and exploring and, and following different pathways and getting farther and farther from center. And it feels as if, like I'm inside of an octopus and going down these different tentacle. So that's kind of how I depicted it. But, you know, the farther I get from the back at the center, I realized that like, once you go down these pathways, you can't get back to where you started.
00;20;46;21 - 00;21;18;25
Carrie Fields
You just have to keep going. And, I mean, I become afraid because I want to I don't want to lose my kind of anchor to that original place. And as I become afraid, I'm moving faster and faster, and then I somehow take a pathway where I get spit out into what it feels like the waiting room of a theater, and there's all of these other people standing around as if they're waiting to go into the theater.
00;21;19;02 - 00;22;02;03
Carrie Fields
And here I am, getting sort of like popped out, almost like come an amusement park ride and landing in this vestibule with these other people who are waiting, and they're just looking at me and they're, taking their finger like to test. You came out too soon. You need to go back in and try again. And, so I run through, and I go right back in down this pathway, like, to get right back into the the ride, you know, the octopus and, there is so much about this, but to me, it was like a time when I think I was really starting to like, believe in reincarnation.
00;22;02;06 - 00;22;27;23
Carrie Fields
And having a sort of sense of this entire life realm where we go between lives and how in our lifetimes, I feel that there is a purpose, a mission, or a reason why we're here, a lesson we're supposed to learn. You know, that we come here into this reality world to learn, like, learn something and do something.
00;22;27;23 - 00;22;49;05
Carrie Fields
I don't know, since I feel felt some sort of purpose. And it's like if you get off track and you don't learn that lesson, you're going to have to try it again. And so it kind of felt like I was starting the lessons I was supposed to be learning by being on a path that wasn't really authentic to me, and that I wasn't really going to get anywhere with that, you know that.
00;22;49;05 - 00;22;59;23
Carrie Fields
And it felt like there was an urgent message of like, it's time to get on your real path. And also that something about letting go of the fear.
00;22;59;25 - 00;23;13;27
Thomas Whitmire
That's that's incredible. This was when you were in New Mexico, kind of in that in-between space, you know, of kind of realizing the previous path wasn't working and you hadn't really found the the right next to. Yeah.
00;23;13;29 - 00;23;36;02
Carrie Fields
Yeah, there's so much to that dream. But I would say that like, it also really confirmed my belief in reincarnation. Interesting. Yeah. And almost evidence to me, like, yeah, I am intuiting that I've always been like, yeah, I think that's what's going on, at least on some level. But that's not the belief system I was raised with.
00;23;36;02 - 00;24;19;02
Carrie Fields
And, that seemed a little bit like, kind of like a fantasy or like something I like to imagine or think about. But I started to realize, and this is a tangent a little bit, but I'm a hypnosis practitioner, and as I've learned more about hypnosis and worked in those realms with trance work and just explored more and those topics, I've started to realize that a lot of things I've been dreaming about throughout my life feel like they map on to that inner life realm between lives, and I can see where that shows up in my dreams and makes sense of my dream.
00;24;19;04 - 00;24;33;15
Thomas Whitmire
That's fascinating. I've never thought of that. That makes intuitive sense to me. Like the realm between lives and the dreams are indicating something about that. Wow. Oh my goodness. I did think about that for my upcoming dreams.
00;24;33;17 - 00;25;04;04
Carrie Fields
And I know a lot of people who dream, I've met a lot of people who dream specifically about what seemed like past lives, where they may be even speaking a different language, or having very specific storylines where they'll return over and over again to this lifetime and dream it like, I have a friend who, has been dreaming her whole life about World War Two, and in the dream she speaks fluent German, and doesn't know German in her lifetime, so.
00;25;04;06 - 00;25;24;29
Carrie Fields
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, there's not that shows up a lot, actually. Yeah, but I tend to dream more about the spirit realm. Like, not so much. That is, I think that's classified. And there's also like dreams where you might have encounters or visitations with people who've passed on. That's very common. I have those kinds of dreams.
00;25;24;29 - 00;25;50;09
Carrie Fields
I also believe we can connect in spirit with other souls who are incarnate in the dream world. Dom. And I've been doing that forever, you know, going and meeting up in the dream world with, people from other, you know, their shamans from other tribes and kind of collaborating or there's many ways that like, people have. Yeah, I've heard many stories about.
00;25;50;16 - 00;25;51;04
Carrie Fields
But,
00;25;51;06 - 00;25;53;03
Thomas Whitmire
See, this is see, now you're you're.
00;25;53;03 - 00;25;57;24
Carrie Fields
Telling me all this is where you got to make yourself you.
00;25;57;24 - 00;25;58;25
Thomas Whitmire
Got to do your podcast.
00;25;58;25 - 00;26;01;29
Carrie Fields
So this is mean. I keep going right here.
00;26;02;00 - 00;26;22;25
Thomas Whitmire
I am just coming out of Freud and Jung, and it's so very much focused on the unconscious, which I think is a huge component, you know, but, just that part is what I'm looking at right now, and it's completely rearranging how I'm seeing dreams. Yeah. He's like, it's not like, oh, we go to sleep and and we're happened to be dreaming.
00;26;22;25 - 00;26;46;26
Thomas Whitmire
And there were these animals in the bed. He's like, no, this is this. It's it's whole unique dimension that we like can kind of shift between. Yeah. And then his, you know, Johnson's postulate is the unconscious forces that that are falling through us, you know, the different poles and responsibilities and concerns and, you know, tensions and stuff kind of pop out in these dreams, dream symbols.
00;26;46;26 - 00;27;09;17
Thomas Whitmire
And that, to me, was sort of the more classic understanding of dreamwork, where, you know, those things that we do experience are actually in their more fundamental original state, appearing and generating these dreams. And then maybe all these energies somehow can at some point will manifest or surface in the outer world, whether they're already here or not, yet here.
00;27;09;20 - 00;27;24;03
Thomas Whitmire
But so that's basically the, the, the thesis of this book. But now you're getting into these whole different realms of, you know, astral travels and, and, you know, past lives. And I love the past life. And this is great. This is great.
00;27;24;06 - 00;27;55;26
Carrie Fields
So holy moly, I will say that I think I think that the what you're talking about is equally true and very important. And I have also noticed a tendency, you know, at times in myself to do like be really into the spiritual dreams and kind of shirk the psychological dreams. And so actually, as I've gotten deeper into, dreamwork, I've gotten really more I feel like it's actually really important to work on my content in this life.
00;27;55;29 - 00;28;34;15
Carrie Fields
The very nitty gritty inner work of like, this life. And so I think it is really important to work with that psychological content. And also, you know, I feel like Jung was a very multidimensional person, too. And he talked about the unconscious in the the personal unconscious, the family unconscious, you know, and the collective unconscious, which opens up into, you know, the all that is like the Akashic field or I don't think he knows that term, but he did talk about communicating with ancestors, working with spirit guides to explore the unconscious.
00;28;34;15 - 00;28;43;21
Carrie Fields
And so he was not, you know, just talking about the personal.
00;28;43;24 - 00;29;14;04
Thomas Whitmire
Let me just pause the conversation for a moment to do a quick cutaway about Carl Jung. A lot of us know he was a very prominent psychologist, and as a psychology major, I knew some of the broad strokes, mostly that he was born in Switzerland in 1875 and was known as a younger colleague and friend of Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s until they diverged philosophically, and Jung ended up establishing the field of analytic psychology.
00;29;14;07 - 00;29;42;17
Thomas Whitmire
I mostly knew him as creating or popularizing concepts like individuation, archetypes, and the collective unconscious, but since talking with Carey, it turns out that his interests were much broader than this. Now that we have his massive collective works, black books written in the teens and 20s, as well as publication of the Red book in 2009, which was a compendium of notes he made during the 19 tens and 20s.
00;29;42;20 - 00;30;20;04
Thomas Whitmire
We see a wide ranging interest and intensive investigation of things like mystical visions, spiritualism and seances, unconscious forces, psychic phenomena, alchemy, art therapy, and yes, even UFO's later in his life. Throughout his life, though, dreams were a tentpole topic that he kept coming back to, ranging from his early private correspondence with Freud to a 1912 book, psychology of the unconscious, and a book published a year after his death in 1962 called memories, Dreams and Reflections.
00;30;20;06 - 00;30;33;15
Thomas Whitmire
He was like the polymath of psychology and spiritualism. And yeah, these numinous realms. All right, let's talk again with Carey and get back into some dream work.
00;30;33;17 - 00;30;38;12
Carrie Fields
Jung is an excellent guide to all of this.
00;30;38;14 - 00;31;03;19
Thomas Whitmire
He's one of these guys that the more I learn about him, the more I realize I don't know about him. You know, it's it's coming out of, like, the Western psych major was, you know. Oh, he did, you know, analytical psychology and did dream work and explored the collective unconscious. And that was kind of it, you know, like, but you get into it as the things you're talking about, just all these other facets aren't really passed forward in the university too much, you know.
00;31;03;23 - 00;31;34;19
Carrie Fields
Yeah. Well, but I do think that there's kind of a bias to maybe water down some of his spiritual, what I would call, you know, the spiritual aspect of this work. Although he really tried to, like, distance himself from making metaphysical claims, but the fact that his most of his work in creating the field of analytical psychology came from his direct encounter with the unconscious and his work with his own doing material and visionary material like the Red book.
00;31;34;19 - 00;32;00;28
Carrie Fields
The content of the Red book was the birthing of a lot of what has now become, you know, important psychological theory. And I feel like that's often not mentioned, you know, you know, it's like, but that's where he actually derived a lot of his understanding of the psyche was his encounter with his own unconscious material, which was very fine, numinous.
00;32;00;28 - 00;32;02;16
Carrie Fields
And that's go.
00;32;02;18 - 00;32;03;21
Thomas Whitmire
Numinous. That's the word.
00;32;03;21 - 00;32;19;03
Carrie Fields
Yeah. You know, and pretty non-rational, you know, and, involved a lot of work with the dead and the ancestors and his spirit guide firemen who guided him into the inner realms. And so.
00;32;19;08 - 00;32;20;25
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah, that was not in my textbooks.
00;32;20;28 - 00;32;34;24
Carrie Fields
Yeah. We they don't talk about that. Not too much. But, you know, I'm sure I got I'm not like a trained union analyst or anything, but I have an interest in all that.
00;32;34;27 - 00;33;10;20
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah. So, like, that's the shift that's been happening for me just in having been reading this for the last week or two is even as I read Robert Johnson, he's really talking about letting yourself contact the unconscious. And I used to think of that kind of as like neck up. Oh, somewhere in here there's all that, you know, what it's like as my kind of spiritual viewpoint continues to mature, progress or change, I've really loosened the the and in getting older, you know, I don't feel as riveted as much to like this material realm.
00;33;10;27 - 00;33;33;26
Thomas Whitmire
And so in doing so, it's like the primary colors of, of this world are existing down in this, what is called unconscious. But I agree with you. I don't really like that word. It's like there seems like there'd be a better, you know, it's like a more anterior part of ourselves. You know, you're hooking directly into that now rather than having to go through the filter of the kind of logical mind and stuff.
00;33;33;29 - 00;33;43;01
Thomas Whitmire
As I read this, I feel like, wow, I'm like going into the ocean of this stuff, which is way more like primary. And yes, in its own way. You know.
00;33;43;03 - 00;34;10;06
Carrie Fields
I love that the metaphor of the ocean and I often it read the ocean in my dreams as the unconscious. And again, I'm just using that word because it's the word that I know to use. But yeah. And also that what you're talking about like going down and and going into the underworld, the subterranean. And so my, the inner life might be what you call the upper world, the shamanic perspective, but the unconscious would be more like the underworld.
00;34;10;06 - 00;34;39;03
Carrie Fields
And I think there's also a lot of imagery and dreams of like subterranean passageways and so I do think there's sort of a map, that exists of these different realms and that it's actually through, like alchemy izing our inner experiences, which can be kind of percolating under the surface. And, our hidden emotions are our challenges. Are you know, unclaimed parts of ourselves that we like.
00;34;39;03 - 00;35;00;22
Carrie Fields
There you go. Yeah. You know, if I if that's the sort of the union perspective which I love and does math on my experience, and that it's like this sort of could be potentially like an endless excavation. Yeah, yeah. But, I it's something I was going to say about let you. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. The direct, the directness.
00;35;00;22 - 00;35;10;13
Carrie Fields
I totally agree. And, one of my favorite quotes from Freud is that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.
00;35;10;15 - 00;35;11;25
Thomas Whitmire
That's right.
00;35;11;28 - 00;35;50;29
Carrie Fields
And what I think is so great is that like, you know, the unconscious is so vast and so there's so much content that our rational minds and our kind of conscious selves have to, have to have a boundary or a filter because if that those doors were just last open, we would be very overwhelmed by everything you know, and unable to until like there's a really important function to like our cognitive rational brains or the ego or whatever you want to call it, to be able to organize our experience in a way that we can function in the world.
00;35;50;29 - 00;36;14;19
Carrie Fields
And that makes sense. And that doesn't overwhelm us. But I really believe dreams give you just the right pieces of information that you are ready to digest and process in any moment, and that there is a sort of some people are called the guardian of the unconscious, that there's like a natural filter, and dreams can sort of deliver information in chunks.
00;36;14;21 - 00;36;25;01
Carrie Fields
And then if we work with those bits of information and unpack them, we can learn so much. But in a it's safe, like safely.
00;36;25;03 - 00;36;51;15
Thomas Whitmire
I really appreciate you saying that. I think that's important to remember, because often when we talk about, especially when I was younger, talk about the unconscious, it seemed like this almost scary realm. Or it could be, you know, and just the feeling of that. But in shifting the connotation of the unconscious and even the the definition of what I mean by that is sort of the more anterior realm of more pure energy, rather than like these hidden secrets and skeletons in my closet.
00;36;51;15 - 00;37;09;21
Thomas Whitmire
You know, this sort of changes the kind of it changes the connotation. And also is what you're saying is like, we do have this faculty that I guess you'd say protects us, or at least this faculty. There's like, we're not we don't have to give up our agency or, you know, we can steer the ship basically in the in whatever exploration we want to take.
00;37;09;22 - 00;37;12;16
Thomas Whitmire
Exactly. That's sort of like makes it a lot more approachable.
00;37;12;23 - 00;37;23;03
Carrie Fields
That's a great metaphor. Yeah. We're not trying to leave behind the conscious self or the, you know, we're just trying to build a relationship and like, open to more expansive.
00;37;23;03 - 00;37;48;21
Thomas Whitmire
Go build a relationship. I love that that's a good.
00;37;48;24 - 00;38;23;22
Carrie Fields
I actually had written a note like to talk about that. The fear of the unconscious, which I think is that primal human fear of the unknown of death. Everything that isn't conscious and part of our known reality. And so I think that's a very sort of healthy, normal fear. And it shouldn't be one that holds us back from these explorations, but it might be more of, something to work with and work through.
00;38;23;24 - 00;38;43;13
Carrie Fields
And that also sometimes lets us know and like, okay, you need to pause here and integrate that before you take the next steps. You know, and so I think there some natural protectors that we have that will kind of help us pace ourselves and, and the work, you know, which is there's a lot of thinking around that in the therapy realm.
00;38;43;16 - 00;39;25;23
Carrie Fields
Yeah. I think the fear of the unconscious is a primal fear. And also, our culture has loaded on kind of extra fear. Good point there. That isn't maybe necessary because the unconscious, I believe, is our friend and it wants to help us. And of course, it's a vast realm. So I'm not saying everything in there is always benevolent, but I think essentially, like our inner being wants us to become whole, wants us to heal, has a natural impulse towards growth and towards expansion and, you know, more integrated understanding of ourselves.
00;39;25;23 - 00;39;52;03
Carrie Fields
And so going into dreamwork with the attitude that dreams are here to help us, I think it's a very helpful assumption to make because I believe they are. And Jeremy Taylor again said one of his quotes is that all dreams come in terms of healing and wholeness. Even the nightmares, you know, even the things that like, feel dark and scary are trying to help us process something.
00;39;52;06 - 00;40;04;02
Carrie Fields
And there's often a lot of resources in there when we actually go and work with that dream, there's actually often a pathway forward that moves us to healing.
00;40;04;05 - 00;40;27;17
Thomas Whitmire
That's a that's a great double point, you know, between the normal feeling to feel that way, but the cultural overlay as well, because when you were talking about how other cultures have a very normalized way of sharing or exchanging dreams, just sort of being and feeling into that, it was like, oh, that's kind of nice. Like it's not a big deal, you know?
00;40;27;19 - 00;40;37;14
Thomas Whitmire
Yes. You know, it is in the sense that it's important, but in the sense that, like, you're not having social shunning or anything like that to want to be interested or to want to go there.
00;40;37;16 - 00;40;37;29
Carrie Fields
Right.
00;40;37;29 - 00;40;46;09
Thomas Whitmire
And again, I guess that's part of why I wanted to talk with you too, is just to try to normalize, you know, put our little piece in a normalized in this a little bit.
00;40;46;09 - 00;41;12;16
Music
So that's what the California Dreamin I told you when a dream, dream, dream dreamed a dream came to you. Would you dream on a dream, a dream, a dream midsummer.
00;41;12;18 - 00;41;35;00
Music
Sweet dreams I made up this little. It means the world to me. All the dream made you,
00;41;35;03 - 00;41;58;26
Carrie Fields
I have such like curiosity about, like the nature of reality and other dimensions. And so I just kind of dive right into that stuff. But that's not for everybody, you know? And you can work with your dreams and just work with symbolic imagery and learn so much about yourself and your daily life experience and how to grow and really becoming more authentic, you know, versions of ourselves.
00;41;58;28 - 00;42;23;25
Carrie Fields
I just love it because I feel like there's so many different choices of how to engage and really finding the pathway that works for us. You know, each each person. And like for some people, it might be a lot more like taking a small bite, you know, and yes. And then, you know, I like to take kind of big bites, but that's me.
00;42;23;27 - 00;42;34;00
Carrie Fields
Like, it's true. But I don't expect everybody else to want to do that, you know. But this is my lifetime fascination. So like, I feel like it's what I'm here to do, but.
00;42;34;03 - 00;43;08;03
Thomas Whitmire
I'd like to hear you say that when. So. Yeah, I like bringing it in from my fairly recent coaching training. If we're at a certain place and we want to move it toward, you know, dream work or any kind of developmental movement, you know, what does it mean to move just a little bit in that direction? You know, so for me, I'm, I'm basically coming out of probably where most people would be, which is I have a dream and sometimes I wake up and maybe remember it, but then by morning, maybe I've mostly forgotten it.
00;43;08;06 - 00;43;24;23
Thomas Whitmire
Or maybe, you know, I'll wake up and go, oh, that was interesting. And then kind of just, that's it. And I get on with my day. But having have, you know, there's there's the occasional ones that are very powerful and eject me out. So that's one aspect coming out of that in the coaching is like, what would a little bit more look like?
00;43;24;26 - 00;43;29;08
Thomas Whitmire
I don't really do this very much. So like what would be kind of some some doors to open.
00;43;29;09 - 00;44;00;22
Carrie Fields
Oh yeah. It might be a question. We can bring it down to more like simple or practical stuff. I would say the first thing to do is keep a dream journal if you're not doing that already. And, what I recommend there is to like, have the dream journal beside your bed, and write something down as soon as you wake up, even if you don't remember the whole dream often, if you just start writing, more will come, like it'll jog your memory.
00;44;00;22 - 00;44;30;15
Carrie Fields
And it also it's training that relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind to be like, I'm paying attention, I'm listening, I want to hear. And so you're going to kind of build the consistency around the dream recall. And then once you have and also I suggest and most people say like write your dreams in present tense, like I'm walking out in a field and describe all the details of that that you remember.
00;44;30;17 - 00;44;54;04
Carrie Fields
You can jot down associations or feelings, just anything that comes to you, or even if it's just one image, it's incredible what you can get out of just a single image. You could do a whole dream like centered on that. So don't worry if you don't remember at all, you know, just write down whatever you remember doing that will build the muscle of the dream recall, and then you can take any of those dreams and do like a little more work on them.
00;44;54;07 - 00;45;06;23
Carrie Fields
Like what? The Robert Johnson book. I think he suggests simple techniques that you could even do in your journal, like free association on images, is really good. You know, just free associating. Unlike what's a car.
00;45;06;24 - 00;45;24;07
Thomas Whitmire
I'll give you one. I'll give you an I had a dream just a couple nights ago. I was just driving in a dream. It was a very short dream. It was very powerful and all I knew I couldn't see where I was going. It was like fog. But it was night. And it was really, really dark. Like, just on the verge of totally not being able to see.
00;45;24;10 - 00;45;44;09
Thomas Whitmire
But I knew there was like a giant, like tractor trailer out there somewhere that I needed to, like, not run into the almost like a whale, you know, in the in the darkness I saw this, like, tractor trailer kind of drive by and its headlights were kind of vaguely lighting up the fog in front of it. And that was like the extent of the dream.
00;45;44;11 - 00;46;10;27
Thomas Whitmire
Starting to associate it, though, I'm like, okay, something's powerful, right? Something's in the in the darkness. It's like it wasn't exactly threatening, but it was kind of like awesome in the sense of, oh, no, it was oh, there's something like, oh, wow, there's this big awesome thing out there, you know? And so there's it felt to me, like almost connected with the, with the maybe this medicine journey, like there's some new powerful force that's waking up maybe within me or that I have connected with yet fully.
00;46;10;27 - 00;46;15;14
Thomas Whitmire
But it's sort of scares me, but it's sort of attractive at the same time.
00;46;15;14 - 00;46;17;25
Carrie Fields
So I saw that.
00;46;17;25 - 00;46;28;07
Thomas Whitmire
But I haven't done all the associations with that truck yet. But I mean, you could take it in any number of directions. You know, it's carrying something. There you go. It's carrying something important.
00;46;28;11 - 00;46;54;09
Carrie Fields
Carrying something. Exactly. Yeah. What's a like? It's not just a truck, it's a tractor trailer. It has that. So like, you know, getting specific about those images, like you said. Yeah, it's carrying something. So it just in that little stream snippet, you know, there's all these symbols like there's driving, there's fog, there's night, there's tractor trailer, there's darkness, there's headlights.
00;46;54;12 - 00;46;55;12
00;46;55;27 - 00;47;15;22
Carrie Fields
So just taking a moment with each of those elements and associating what is it made me about. Does it bring up can get you like you've already been doing. Like you've already gotten so much out of that. Is it like we just looking at the tractor trailer?
00;47;15;25 - 00;47;24;15
Thomas Whitmire
Well it's interesting the value of just telling you this made me recognize that it's carrying something. And I feel like it was a tanker truck, so it was like fuel. You know, there's something.
00;47;24;15 - 00;47;44;07
Carrie Fields
Yeah. Is carrying exactly a tanker truck carrying fuel and like, see, that's also happens when you write something down. You might not have realized it was a tanker truck until you started to jog your memory and think. It feels like it's a tanker truck. And sometimes you don't even remember that. But there's a part of you that kind of senses it.
00;47;44;09 - 00;47;45;13
Carrie Fields
Yeah.
00;47;45;16 - 00;48;02;07
Thomas Whitmire
And so like, we're illustrating the difference between, you know, two weeks ago, before I was really getting into this, I probably would have like, oh, that was an interesting dream. And then like, not then not doing anything else with it. You know, it's a great dream. Well, you know, it was so short and it wasn't too emotionally charged, you know.
00;48;02;10 - 00;48;10;13
Thomas Whitmire
So I probably would have just let it slide. But you start to work with it. And actually Johnson's like any dream, has value. None of them are going to go to waste if you want to work.
00;48;10;13 - 00;48;11;21
Carrie Fields
100%.
00;48;11;24 - 00;48;16;28
Thomas Whitmire
So like just doing that is like, oh, I see. Yeah, it's I love that.
00;48;17;00 - 00;48;44;15
Carrie Fields
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I feel like there's so much potential in that dream. And like you said yeah, every dream has value. Sometimes dreams that we might think are trivial when we actually go in there and do the work on them are profound. That's what I found. But, I mean, if it's helpful, I don't I don't want to kind of try to analyze too much into that.
00;48;44;17 - 00;49;13;13
Carrie Fields
In this context, but I could give you some suggestions for and things you might try, when you're working with that dream, just to maybe illustrate an example of how you might work with the dream on your own. So we've already talked about that dream sensation, and you've already gotten a whole lot out of that. And like you said, taking each of those symbols and really flashing that out like it's a check or a kind of check, what size of check what what's the function of that track?
00;49;13;13 - 00;49;14;08
Carrie Fields
You know, asking.
00;49;14;08 - 00;49;16;20
Thomas Whitmire
I got one for you. I just had another detail.
00;49;16;22 - 00;49;16;28
Thomas Whitmire
It was.
00;49;16;28 - 00;49;20;14
Thomas Whitmire
Turning. I remember it was like coming and then turning. Yeah, yeah.
00;49;20;14 - 00;49;27;22
Carrie Fields
Yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. What, what what might it mean to you that it's turning.
00;49;27;25 - 00;49;43;20
Thomas Whitmire
That's such a small detail. It would seem right. But it could have just been going straight the whole time. It could have been. Stop there and not maybe, you know, but it was moving and it was turning, which means, like, despite the fog, it was finding its way. It knew where it was going. Oh, man.
00;49;43;27 - 00;49;44;21
Carrie Fields
You know.
00;49;44;24 - 00;49;52;19
Thomas Whitmire
Wow. Even though I didn't as the subject in the dream, I was like, where I kind of know where I'm. But the truck knew, you know, it needed to turn here. You know.
00;49;52;21 - 00;49;54;14
Carrie Fields
Were you driving the truck?
00;49;54;16 - 00;49;59;07
Thomas Whitmire
No, no, I was trying to navigate my, I guess, car or something just on.
00;49;59;07 - 00;49;59;21
Carrie Fields
The.
00;49;59;23 - 00;50;03;13
Thomas Whitmire
Back roads or something. Yeah, but I came across that truck.
00;50;03;16 - 00;50;16;13
Carrie Fields
By itself, despite the fog. It knows where it's going. And it's turning instead of going straight to like. Yeah. Thinking what, what's the difference between turning and going straight.
00;50;16;16 - 00;50;19;24
Thomas Whitmire
It's finding a new path, new car.
00;50;19;27 - 00;50;24;18
Carrie Fields
Yes. Yeah.
00;50;24;20 - 00;50;27;02
Wow.
00;50;27;04 - 00;50;28;24
Carrie Fields
Isn't that amazing.
00;50;28;26 - 00;50;31;15
Thomas Whitmire
That is amazing.
00;50;31;17 - 00;50;33;24
Carrie Fields
I love it I'm getting chills.
00;50;33;26 - 00;50;50;03
Thomas Whitmire
It's like a fun surge of energy. When you make the connection, you can feel it in your body. Your body's like. Yeah, it's like a water spring suddenly turns on or something. It's like, oh, like something just open, you know? So that's a way to recognize what's the legit kind of hit, right?
00;50;50;03 - 00;51;21;06
Carrie Fields
Like water springs suddenly turn on and, oh, Jeremy Taylor for one and other dream markers talk about that is like the moment. And the moment is going to tell you when you hit something like, because I could say something about that truck and I for me, a truck might mean this and you might not have that moment, but when you said it's carrying something and it's turning and it's finding a new path, there's the somatic sensation, a felt sense of.
00;51;21;08 - 00;51;24;02
Carrie Fields
And that's what tells you you're on the right track.
00;51;24;04 - 00;51;41;20
Thomas Whitmire
Interesting. Because the logic is like it's a foggy day and I can't see where I'm going, you know what I mean? But absolutely. No, it's. Yeah. And you get a sense. I had a sense. This is like a significant symbolic dream, you know. But then when you make that click, it's like, oh yeah, that's cool.
00;51;41;22 - 00;51;57;05
Carrie Fields
Well, I would even say that your choice to share the dream and this moment in this conversation is part of the dream now. And it's part of that, you know, now, now this is part of the dream.
00;51;57;07 - 00;52;12;12
Carrie Fields
Oh, my God, the dream is connected to this moment in time. And it's very interesting how dreams will come up in or I would choose, like if you go to a dream group and you Rand, quote unquote, randomly choose a specific dream, it's always that. Right.
00;52;12;14 - 00;52;14;16
Thomas Whitmire
That's a really good point.
00;52;14;19 - 00;52;26;26
Carrie Fields
Yeah. Because our unconscious doesn't say that's free. And so there's so much going on under the surface that our rational minds miss.
00;52;26;28 - 00;52;34;05
Thomas Whitmire
Holy smokes. I'm after pause. No. That's good. Thank you.
00;52;34;08 - 00;52;45;17
Carrie Fields
It's just amazing.
00;52;45;19 - 00;53;06;12
Carrie Fields
I don't want to rush through through it. And I feel like there's so much more here. But I also want to honor your process with the dream. It might be interesting to experiment with. Like, what if I change? Might shift my perspective into that. From the driver's seat of the car to the driver's seat of the truck has been my experience of that dream.
00;53;06;14 - 00;53;09;29
Thomas Whitmire
I will do that. I will do that exercise. Yeah. That's good.
00;53;10;01 - 00;53;20;18
Carrie Fields
And, you can actually shift your perspective into any element of the dream. You can become the fog. You can become the knight. You can become the headlights. The.
00;53;20;19 - 00;53;30;07
Thomas Whitmire
That's huge. That's huge. Because yeah, that that tracks with the book. It's like each of these pieces is already representing a part of our own energetic fields.
00;53;30;09 - 00;53;30;15
Carrie Fields
00;53;30;20 - 00;53;35;26
Thomas Whitmire
Yes. So, you could of course, invoke those and kind of go into them, you know, and.
00;53;36;03 - 00;53;58;22
Carrie Fields
Yes, and flesh them out. Amazing how things look different when you step into a different element of perspective. And part of that against the ego and in our lives is like, we're it's almost like we're locked into one perspective. What we're seeing always seem to the glasses of our own ego. And so and I use that word lightly, you know, like we can talk about like, what is the ego?
00;53;58;22 - 00;54;21;17
Carrie Fields
But just our kind of functional person that we're walking about in the world with. But we would see the world so differently from the perspective of another person's experience. And so in our dreams, you can do the same thing. There's like a dream ego. There's there's the perspective and the dream. We might be seeing the dreams from the like, the perspective of the driver of the car.
00;54;21;17 - 00;54;47;05
Carrie Fields
In this case, we might be seeing the dream from outside and just watching it as an observer. So noticing where your perspective is coming from in the dream and then playing around with switching it because we can, because it's our dream and we get to work with it in whatever way we want. It's absolutely incredible how different and how how much it unlocks new perspectives when we shift our point of view.
00;54;47;07 - 00;54;58;22
Carrie Fields
And so do you want to give us the opportunity to play with that in really cool ways? And I think, yeah, I think I would dance and kind of think that some of that stuff in the block, if I remember right.
00;54;58;24 - 00;55;14;10
Thomas Whitmire
Any of these symbols already contain their meaning because like, they're, they're, they've already been generated. So it's like once you touch them then the meaning can, you know, you can go right into that meaning, you know, they wouldn't be in the dream if it hadn't already generated, you know.
00;55;14;15 - 00;55;34;04
Carrie Fields
And like you're already discovering the meaning unfold. There's one layer and then you start with it and there's another layer, and then, oh my goodness, the check is turning. And now, now there's another layer. But it doesn't really happen until we like actually step into that image and really start engaging with it.
00;55;34;06 - 00;55;53;04
Thomas Whitmire
This this is energy work. It is dream work. It's related to energy work as well. Because like I feel even what when I made that connection with the truck, I feel there's somatic or energetic things I could do to sort of move energies around that would sort of maybe drive the truck forward, let's say, or something like that.
00;55;53;04 - 00;56;08;04
Thomas Whitmire
You know, that just feels like, yeah, it is. Something is already shifting. That's what the dreams representing. Right. And so when you start to recognize that, then they, they become conscious. And then because they're conscious, you can kind of work with them a little bit more in, in other modalities. You know, that's pretty cool.
00;56;08;08 - 00;56;36;25
Carrie Fields
Yeah. It is energy work through 100%. And yeah, that's a really powerful insight. Something I, I do, I want to share along those lines is and I really I want to be like also aware of giving credit to the different sources. I've I've I've learned from many sources. And one of them, doctor Leslie Ellis, who I did, do my training with.
00;56;36;25 - 00;57;09;07
Carrie Fields
Her approach, called embodied experience or dream work, involves going into the dream semantically and imagining and working with our somatic sensations to kind of reenter the dream. And there's other approaches that do something similar. But, she has a really, I feel like, well developed kind of way to, guide that. And to teach that she uses a tool called focusing, which is a somatic inquiry tool.
00;57;09;10 - 00;57;32;02
Carrie Fields
But I can also talk more about. But anyway, it just really reminds me of what you just described, of actually tuning in to the body sensations that come when we enter that dream and even entered imaginal, and then we can actually kind of play with and reimagine. And the dream following the energy and seeing where that wants to shift and wants to go.
00;57;32;04 - 00;58;03;16
Carrie Fields
And a lot of times through entering into the dream, which you could call it, maybe a metaphor is one way of thinking about a dream. You shift the metaphor and you shift the energy of everything that's contained in that metaphor. Wow. And so you're allowing yourself a pathway to some change, you know, to some evolution where an energy might be kind of concentrated in a certain way, and then it can that we start to move.
00;58;03;18 - 00;58;25;02
Carrie Fields
And, it's a beautiful thing to work through the metaphorical language, because sometimes we don't even have to talk about the waking life thing that that might correlate to it. We don't even have to name that to feel that shift. And sometimes it's easier to, to work with, to on that level. It's like it's more accessible.
00;58;25;05 - 00;58;33;29
Thomas Whitmire
That makes sense to me. The waking life will could, will follow, you know, as it needs to from from energy shifting.
00;58;34;02 - 00;59;03;10
Carrie Fields
I don't no longer really see my dreams as individualized units like this dream and that dream. I see that they're all nodes in that landscape of three dimensional realm, or. And so I could just imagine and go into one dream and then jump into another one, and then suddenly they're connected. And then it's sort of like an and it is the playground in a realm of infinite possibility and pathways and interconnectedness.
00;59;03;10 - 00;59;21;05
Carrie Fields
Then we might be actually like shifting things around in our neural networks as we work through this imaginal landscape.
00;59;21;07 - 00;59;38;08
Carrie Fields
A playground is a really good word. The element of play is to me, like really important in this work. Because it can feel heavy at times, but it can also be fun and light and expansive.
00;59;38;10 - 00;59;46;10
Thomas Whitmire
And so that's one of my missions right now. Lighten up a little bit. I like to go serious and intense. Let's get into it. You know.
00;59;46;12 - 01;00;04;06
Carrie Fields
Absolutely. And yeah, absolutely. James one of the great sense of humor to, they use puns a lot or, there's a lot of puns and dreams. And I can tell you about one example that I think is very funny. Okay, if you'd like. Yeah.
01;00;04;08 - 01;00;06;13
Thomas Whitmire
I'd love to hear it. Very punny.
01;00;06;16 - 01;00;35;12
Carrie Fields
And I could just like you talking. So feel free to interrupt me at any time. But as you know, Alex and I, my husband inherited his mother's house and all of her belongings, and she had a lot of belongings and a lot of old and special furniture and textures and just lots and lots and stuff that feels like it has a lot of energy and attached to it, and not easy stuff to necessarily get rid of.
01;00;35;14 - 01;01;00;23
Carrie Fields
Willy nilly. And I, I went through a long period of time feeling very burdened and overwhelmed and kind of victimized by this, all this stuff that I was trying to process through, which is kind of metaphorical, you know. But, I had this dream that at first seemed very kind of. And this again, this is an example of how sometimes dreams can be very visceral and dark and intense.
01;01;00;23 - 01;01;28;09
Carrie Fields
But then when we unpack that unlovable, the metaphor I like, they're no longer as threatening. So anyway, I'm, I'm kind of going into this kind of like dark black muck and I'm like, walking in and I feel fine. It's like, it's okay. Like, I could do this. But as I get deeper and deeper and it gets all the way up to my neck, and then I start to feel like I'm going to drown in this muck, you know?
01;01;28;09 - 01;01;53;22
Carrie Fields
And it's it's really gross. And then I look around and there's all these skeletons of albatrosses in the muck, and I'm like, that's weird. And, you know, my unconscious mind somehow knows these are albatrosses, and I'm. So I wake up feeling very suffocated and, like, overwhelmed by this. And there's bones of dead things and all good, you know, very visceral.
01;01;53;25 - 01;02;09;06
Carrie Fields
But when I did the work on the dream, I was able sort of to, like, pull myself out of the muck and dry myself off and sit in the sand. And then. And then I told the dream to Alex, and he said, oh, it's an albatross around your neck, which is like. And I was like, what's wrong?
01;02;09;09 - 01;02;33;21
Carrie Fields
I was like, yeah, it's it's it's an annoying bird, you know? It's not going to kill you. It's not you're not going to drown. It's an annoying bird. And but it's kind of funny and you'll get through it. And I swear, ever since I had that dream and that a much lighter relationship with all the stuff I have, my dramatic, you know, things about the stuff really shifted to being like, I can handle this.
01;02;33;23 - 01;02;48;02
Carrie Fields
Wow. It's like, well, I don't it's like my dreams. I was making fun of me a little bit for being so serious and dramatic about the situation. That, you know, maybe I don't need to relate to it in such a heavy way.
01;02;48;05 - 01;02;54;09
Thomas Whitmire
Interesting. It's like the pun was was part of the energy shift. That's incredible.
01;02;54;11 - 01;03;11;28
Carrie Fields
Yeah, because I didn't see the pun. You had to pointed out to me, and I didn't even recognize it. So there's like that intelligence that's there's like storytelling humor, playfulness or no.
01;03;12;01 - 01;03;23;07
Thomas Whitmire
Given that in your conscious, logical mind, you didn't recognize the albatross around your neck, but somehow your dream self knew that. Or maybe it knew that Alex would know that, you know, and like.
01;03;23;10 - 01;03;46;10
Carrie Fields
Yeah, that's true. Funny. Yeah. And sometimes your dreams will present illusions to things or names and you're like, what is are places? And it'll be things I don't know about consciously, but I'll go look it up and it'll be incredibly symbolic. Yeah. So there is some other greater intelligence that works that I can speak to through the dream.
01;03;46;13 - 01;04;13;17
Carrie Fields
Yeah. So I really I like that too. Like of stuff, specific images, research that, like a certain animal shows up. What is that animal like, exploring more about that animal and what it means and different cultures or what are some of its qualities, you know, and you might learn something that really clicks. So there's just yeah, so many different ways to to go go in.
01;04;13;19 - 01;04;14;03
Carrie Fields
But yeah.
01;04;14;04 - 01;04;37;21
Thomas Whitmire
And that's, that's another takeaway of mine. Is it with the collective unconscious, I thought that all these symbols could be, you know, are they universal or are they personal? And I realize you can kind of look at both both directions, you know, like, definitely you want to know the personal associations, like what's the meaning of a big 18 Wheeler truck, you know, but, so I'm pulling that out of myself, you know?
01;04;37;23 - 01;04;47;06
Thomas Whitmire
But then, you know, maybe not the truck, but, you know, things like driving or there could be more universal kind of understandings. It could also give us some insight.
01;04;47;08 - 01;05;12;15
Carrie Fields
Yes. Yeah. I think that right on there and universal elements and personal elements and it's valuable. Look at both. But when you only look at the universal element, sometimes you're missing the personal meaning, you know. So yeah, not just like yeah, a car for example, a car is such a classic, archetypal symbol, like movement, forward driving. Where am I going, control?
01;05;12;16 - 01;05;29;19
Carrie Fields
You know, like, who's at the driver's seat? Like, there's all these things about a car, but then there's also which car and what color and what size. And what does that card mean to you and your life? And I recently dreamed about the car, and I had my first car that I had when I was in high school.
01;05;29;19 - 01;05;42;14
Carrie Fields
And like that car is only means what it means to me. So. And it's a car. So it also means. Right. So it's it's both I think is always the.
01;05;42;16 - 01;06;01;20
Thomas Whitmire
You know, having gone so much into the kind of unconscious inner work side of things. But I started to realize for myself, I feel like I've had, you know, his emphasis is like rule of thumb. Most of the characters and situations in your dream are reflections of parts of yourself, right?
01;06;01;22 - 01;06;02;17
Carrie Fields
Right.
01;06;02;19 - 01;06;25;00
Thomas Whitmire
But I'm like, you know, I've had like, other kinds of dreams, you know, there's like recurring dreams which would be unconscious. There's the ones you mentioned with, like, ancestral visitation. There's visionary message dreams that throw me out of the dream. And I wake up immediately and like, Holy crap, what was that? You know? And so I was curious, your experience with, like, these different forms of of dreams.
01;06;25;00 - 01;06;56;02
Carrie Fields
And it's really cool that you're like, noticing that. I mean, that's something that I, I, I think about a lot. And I started to notice that more and more as I work with things like they're not all the same type, you know. Right. And so I think when you're working like a quote unquote psychological dream, your dreams will sort of cast characters from your life who maybe represent different parts of yourself, different aspects of your, you know, my high school or my you know, you on one level, you can say that everything is a part of me and it's a useful framing.
01;06;56;05 - 01;07;20;21
Carrie Fields
And then kind of like a consistent way that we can kind of interact with these different parts. And I do think often characters in our dreams can play parts of ourselves. And there's also elements that are kind of external to ourselves in a way that show up in dreams and metaphysically speaking, you could say, well, if we're all part of one consciousness, then yes, those are all mirrors of myself.
01;07;20;21 - 01;07;43;04
Carrie Fields
And so, so on that level, I would say, yeah, any kind of dream you could look at that way. But I do believe, like you're saying, there are very archetypal energies that show up in my dreams, which in a way, yeah, that's a part of myself, but in a way that's also something greater. It's transpersonal. You know, and then, like you said, visitations from ancestors, from.
01;07;43;07 - 01;07;44;24
Thomas Whitmire
Past life, as you say.
01;07;44;26 - 01;08;13;13
Carrie Fields
I 100% believe that it I can't tell you what the ultimate reality of that is, so that we can have communication with people who have passed on. And I think it happens routinely for a lot of us. And I really want to normalize that. And I know I can feel it, like if I've had an encounter in a dream with somebody, you start to feel like, was that in an encounter with another soul, or was that a person playing a part in a play?
01;08;13;15 - 01;08;14;13
Thomas Whitmire
Right.
01;08;14;15 - 01;08;35;00
Carrie Fields
Right. I've had encounters where I've, you know, had a really meaningful conversation with a friend. I haven't talked to in a long time, and it really feels like we've met on a soul level in the dream world. And that's how I take it. You know, I take it literally in that way. And the past lives, you know, or I might be like remote viewing a situation from another time and place.
01;08;35;00 - 01;08;55;22
Carrie Fields
And so, like, I don't think that every dream is meant to be read psychologically necessarily or, I don't know, meant to. But like, that's not the only way to view a dream. And I think it is good to start to sort of categorize in your own dream life, like what the flavors of different kinds of dreams are, and you might work with different games in different ways.
01;08;55;24 - 01;09;19;23
Carrie Fields
So like this dream of the octopus. This felt like sort of an archetypal soul level dream. And there's, you know, obviously psychological elements too. But like, I would work with that dream in a different way than I might work with a dream of. I'm anxious because I can get to class on time, like classic. Oh, no, I mean, I could actually, as I say that, like, I could actually see how that could actually be pretty really good.
01;09;19;26 - 01;09;42;26
Carrie Fields
But true. Actually. Yeah, true. I think just playing around with different approaches really helps you to sort of build your own varying language. I but I yeah, I think that there are dreams I would approach is very much like sacred experiences.
01;09;42;28 - 01;09;55;15
Thomas Whitmire
That's very.
01;09;55;17 - 01;09;58;24
Thomas Whitmire
That was a phenomenal conversation and.
01;09;58;26 - 01;10;00;13
Carrie Fields
I thank you.
01;10;00;15 - 01;10;12;03
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah. No thank you. It's a gift to me to for you to share this big part of you, you know, can people contact you? Do you have a way of that? Or they can run through me, if you prefer that.
01;10;12;06 - 01;10;36;22
Carrie Fields
Yeah. I offer dreamlike sessions and kind of integrative coaching, which is just multiple modalities like hypnotherapy, dream work and somatic work. Various kind of energy work. I just, I incorporate tools from different, modalities. I have a website called Inner Landscapes healing.com.
01;10;36;25 - 01;10;39;22
Thomas Whitmire
Inner landscape, healing.com.
01;10;39;29 - 01;11;03;07
Carrie Fields
Inner landscapes, plural scapes. Okay. Yeah. And that has on my services and way to contact me okay. Yeah. And would I'd love to talk to you more about dreams or your dreams or you know after recording sessions searcher. Understandable if you'd like.
01;11;03;10 - 01;11;10;29
Thomas Whitmire
Yeah, absolutely. We'll we'll set up a time. Yeah. Invaluable. Thank you. Carrie.
01;11;11;02 - 01;11;20;17
Carrie Fields
You're so welcome. Thank you so much for listening and for inviting me. You know, and. Yeah, allowing you to share.
01;11;20;19 - 01;11;22;22
Thomas Whitmire
All right. Till next time, Carrie.
01;11;22;24 - 01;11;31;22
Carrie Fields
Bye bye. Well.
01;11;31;25 - 01;11;47;10
Thomas Whitmire
Thank you all for listening. And I encourage you, as Carrie said, to keep a dream journal by your bed. And if you want to get a little more into it, you can check out some of the resource or books listed down in the show notes. Until next time, pleasant dreams.
