On the other hand, I lost hope and a dream saved me, and I feel called to tell that story.

So that's my caveat, I guess. I'm writing a memoir that isn't really about me. I'm writing a memoir about a dream and what I believe is possible.

This is the intro:

In 2008, at the lowest point in my life, I had a dream I could not explain.

Unlike the murky, sepia colored dreams I was used to, this dream was sharp and bright and saturated with color. A spectrum of blue, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Vivid reds. Shining white light. A beautiful woman with deep-water blue eyes, radiating love.

Filled with sparkling gemstones and mysterious beings, the dream told the story of a journey to and from an amazing location, and it told that story coherently.

As the woman in blue guided me from one dream experience to another, separate themes played out, like story-lines in a movie. When the dream finally ended, each loose end came together in a memorable and emotional conclusion.

I woke up convinced that my mysterious dream guide was someone special. I knew that the things that she showed me meant something. And even though I had no idea who she was or what she was trying to tell me, I was determined to find out.

This was the beginning of a spiritual journey that carried me through the New Age, in and out of Spiritualism and Wicca, halfway across the world, on pilgrimage to Israel, back to Christianity, through parapsychology, and onto the doorstep of Carl Gustav Jung.

I learned a lot in the process and I’ve tried to share the best of it in the pages that follow. In the end, however, it was the dream that was the key and, for me, that’s the takeaway.

I haven’t written this book because I think I’m wise or interesting or special. I’ve written because of the dream and what it did for me. It didn’t fix everything, but it did save me and I want to tell anyone who needs to hear it just how that can happen.

In the rest of this chapter, I share the life events that set the stage for the dream. In chapter two, I share the dream itself.

About the Video

Chatting about books, dream series, how dreams may explain each other and what's new on the Mystic Review. Also, a bit about Jungian Dream School and my plans for the channel in 2025. Happy New Year everyone! 

• My Newsletter: barbaragraver.substack.com/
• My YouTube: youtube.com/@MysticReview.com/ 
• Dream School: thisjungianlife.com/join-dream-school

Reflections on Winter (repost)

For a while I switched from tarot

to playing cards.

Just regular old cards.

No pretty pictures.

No Colman-Smith.

No abstract art.

No rainbow colors.

Just numbers and suit,

black and red,

blood and ash,

energy and associations.

And the associations are easy

with ordinary cards.

Spades are winter,

spades are dark.

The Queen, the twelfth card

of her suit,

a winter queen,

a waning year.

This is how you time a reading.

And I timed every reading out

to December,

to myself,

to that sharp and solitary queen.

Today is a turning point in time.

The air is cold and the wind is strong.

And air is winter.

Air is spirit

and, if you're lucky, inspiration,

new ideas and looking inward.

And I have been luckier in this regard

than in others.

Today is a new month and a new year.

The yard is a monochrome of snow

and dormant garden.

There are crows calling from the trees

loud and free and wild.

And the sky beyond the branches

isn't gray or silver

but really surprisingly blue.

Blue enough to get my attention.

Blue enough to anchor me

to this scene, this spot, this lonely season.

So I stand outside until my feet are cold

and I think that this is probably

where all the symbols point.

Not where you've been,

not where you're going

but the absolute magnitude

of where you are.

Today I know exactly

where that is.

Today is Sunday,

early January.

Today is number one of seven.

Today is number one of twelve.

And one is creation and renewal.

One is power under pressure.

One is stepping out and starting over,

and the single, shaking breath we take

before we leap.

I wrote this poem on January 1st, 2017. I was still reading cards professionally then and spent a lot of time making guesses about the future. I stopped reading later that year, and when I picked it up again I saw it differently. In keeping with the spirit of this poem. I no longer read professionally or make predictions.

The Project

I like online media because my neurodivergent brain can handle short articles and even shorter podcasts without a problem. Long-form writing is a challenge, but I was able to finish a short vampire novel this year, anyway, and have a sequel in the works. 

I feel good about those projects and there is no shortage of ideas for other books. 

The book idea I want to talk about in this post is a memoir about the dream I call the Spirit Dream and how it affected me. I don't really like the idea of writing a memoir, but I feel called to tell the story of the dream because of the difference it made in my life.

The Affect the Dream Had

I spent the entire decade before the Spirit Dream suffering one loss after another. The vision of a perfect family. My lovely home. The profession I had trained for. My extended family. My entire inheritance. My ability to write.

I wasn't diagnosed with autism then and didn't know that I was in deep autistic burnout, but I knew I'd given up. And then the dream came and changed it all. Not all at once, of course, but gradually.

My family regrouped. Finances improved. We moved into a new house that is much better than the in-between one. Those things probably would have happened, anyway. What wouldn't have happened was the life I now lead.

The Spirit Dream kicked off the spiritual journey that became the Mystic Review. It taught me things that mattered. It brought me back full-circle to the place I needed to be. Not the picture-perfect life I projected. My real life. The one that I was meant for.

It took over fifteen years to make that circuit and during that time, a lot of things happened. I went on some amazing spiritual adventures. I made and lost friends. I had other dreams that helped correct my course. I learned important things. I rediscovered my creative spark. And in the end, just this year, an unexpected synchronicity put it all into perspective. 

There are still more questions. Just like there will always be more to learn. But I'm ready to share what I have so far. 

Not my wisdom. Dream wisdom.

But that doesn't make the writing any easier.

How I Struggle with Writing

I have poor executive functioning and a lot of self doubt and when I hit the 10,000 word mark on any project, I start ripping thins apart. 

Which is part of the reason I started and restarted the Spirit Dream story at least five different times. Each version had a slightly different focus. One version was about faith, another was about autism, others were about me. And not a single one of those versions worked.

The issues were thematic AND structural, as my writing issues always are.

And then I started working with my dreams again and waking up in the middle of the night with words running through my head. The words came in phrases and paragraphs and pages—and one of the phrases was, "structure the book on the dream."

So I went back to the Spirit Dream and saw that I had divided it into five parts. This was something I'd done a long time ago to make it readable. Now it occurred to me that five parts might be a thing. And it was.

Sister Regina Kelly is probably shaking her head in heaven right now, but somehow I had forgotten Shakespeare and the five act structure.

The Spirit Dream, as I wrote it down that morning in 2008, had that structure. Baked in.

So what does all this mean?

The difference between a symbol and a sign according to the Jungians is that a sign communicates a single thing, while a symbol has many different meanings. Dreams are full of symbols. So it makes sense that I would get multiple insights from this most recent encounter with the Spirit Dream.

One insight has to do with theme and another has to do with structure. But the most important insight in my opinion is that is this is something I need to do.

As always, I will keep you posted <3

Of New Dreams and Old

Some symbols are universal. Others are personal. For me, circles are both.

When I have a dream that has a sphere, or a disk, or a looping path that brings me back to where I started, it always seems to mean something. So when a recent dream had a circular element, I paid attention.

And the more attention I paid, the more the structure of the dream reminded me of another, older dream—one whose full meaning has always eluded me. 

I had that dream in 2008 or maybe 2007. My life was at a low point and the future seemed bleak. And then there was the dream. A big magical dream. Brimming with color. Filled with mysterious symbols. Making me think that maybe God had remembered me.

I called it the Spirit Dream and, for the next ten years, I went from one metaphysical stopping point to the next, trying to make what I found fit. But it never did or, at least, never did for long. 

Then, a couple of months ago, I heard Murray Stein interviewed on This Jungian Life, and something he said absolutely fit. It fit so well in fact that it cast the Spirit Dream in an entirely new light. And in that light I saw that the dream wasn't really about a particular spiritual practice or deity or decision. It was about my inner life.

I didn't really know what to do with that, but I felt like I was supposed to do something. So I joined the This Jungian Life Dream School, applied to a Dream School dream group and got accepted. 

Then, I had another dream. The new dream wasn't as big or as beautiful as the old one, but it was still a dream about a journey, and I was still encountering things along the way. I felt that this new dream helped explain the Spirit Dream, or that maybe it picked up where the old dream left off.

The Journey by Bus Dream

In the first part of the dream, I have a boyfriend who is remodeling a house for me. I’m happy about this because I like him. He has a second house that he is also remodeling. My memory of the dream boyfriend is that he is a tall man and may have blond curls.

Someone has given me a metal disk. It is gold or brass. The back is gold colored. The front is red with a gold center. It seems important to me but I don’t know what it is or how I got it.

I am in the town I live in. I am going to my house to meet the boyfriend and some other people. I am driving north on North Main Street and miss the right turn up the hill. I’m stressed about being late and looking for a turn. 

Most of the side streets are one-way (the wrong way) and the only one that isn’t is very steep. I remember hearing a story about a city bus—which is what I’m driving—that went up the steep street and how all the passengers bounced right out of their seats when they hit the crest, so I keep on driving. This part of town is kind of run down.

I pass a roadside parking area on the right. The parking area is a small dirt lot that’s part of an old, abandoned motel. I remember that there used to be motorhomes for psychics there and that you could go there for a reading. I think there is still a sign advertising the psychics (in the dream). But now the psychic motorhomes are gone and all that’s parked there are various work trucks.

I reach the larger intersection (with a hard right) I’ve been looking for and see there is roadwork and traffic barricades in place. A man is directing traffic and I realize that the road I want to take (the hard right) is temporarily closed, so I turn left into a small thrift shop. I go into the thrift shop and see there is a big pile of journals for sale. 

I sit down on the floor and start to look through the journals and realize they are all mine and I have donated them to the shop. One has my writing in it and I think I should probably buy it so other people don’t read it but I buy another bigger (unwritten in) journal instead. I hear water running like a shower.

I go back out and see the roadwork is done. The man directing traffic is gone. I have to make a U turn which is a big wide swing and difficult to negotiate with the bus but I manage it. I am waiting for the light to change so I can go left up the sloping hill to my house. 

I start thinking about the boyfriend and realize that the second house he is remodeling is for him to live in. I feel okay about that, but I know we'll have to discuss it. I decide to tell him I’m autistic and that it’s good that we won’t live together because I don’t do well with live-in relationships, anyway. I’m relieved to realize that I have a way to explain myself.

From Point A to Point B

The Spirit Dream described a full round-trip journey to a mysterious location, while the new dream was nothing more than an ordinary drive from point A to point B. But, even though the drive was short, I passed things that seemed to have meaning.

The steep hill road. The abandoned psychic parking lot. The thrift store, full of old journals.

Three events. Just like there were three events in leg one (and leg two and three) of the Spirit Dream journey.

So I decided to submit the new dream to the dream group and see what they had to say, and I got some fascinating insights.

One member pointed out that the journal choice might represent a fresh start. Another said that the boyfriend who planned to maintain his own home might be an animus figure. Everyone was curious about the red and gold disk. The group connected the disk to amulets and to alchemy—and it seemed to me that this was the real key to both the new dream and the old one. 

I'd always thought that the color red in the Spirit Dream symbolized my own unevolved spiritual nature. Now I wondered if I'd got that wrong. Maybe red wasn't about failing or being at spiritual ground level. Maybe it was about transformation and the possibility of change.

But I wasn't sure if change was still possible. It had been a long time since the first dream—and there were parts of the second one that seemed to reflect some of the mistakes I had made. 

The lot where the psychics once parked reminded me of the various spiritual practices I'd tried and abandoned. 

The old journals made me think about the hundreds of thousands of words I have written here and elsewhere. Words which sometimes seem to have served no purpose whatsoever. 

The steep street seemed to reflect all the opportunities I had missed and all the things I'd thought I'd accomplish, but didn't.

But that wasn't where the A to B journey ended.

Instead, it ended when a road block was removed and I was able to correct my course. 

One really interesting things about the Journey by Bus dream was that it followed the actual layout of the town where I now live. So I know that the turn I was getting ready to make when the dream ended led to the same place as the steep hill road. 

Home.

Which makes me wonder if the Spirit Dream was ever about a mostly external spiritual journey. Or about writing my opus or discovering the truth with a capital T or doing any of other things I’ve imagined and then left undone.

Maybe the dream was really just about getting on with my life after I'd been laid low. Maybe it was about taking a chance when it felt like there wasn't one good thing left in universe. 

Or maybe not. 

Because, unlike signs, symbols point to a multitude of things.

Generously, my dream group has agreed to look at the Spirit Dream in our next session, and I'm curious to hear what they have to say. It is a very old dream but if I'm still dreaming about it I think it makes sense to look at it one more time.

____________

About the Video

The Podcast

The hosts are articulate and knowledgeable and so unexpectedly funny I found myself laughing out loud as I listened. More importantly, I feel I've already learned things from them. 

I have heard several episodes (including two on the shadow which were excellent) already but the episode I want to talk about in this post is called Unlock the Power of Symbols (video follows). The guest in this episode was Murray Stein, author of Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction (affiliate link) and I was so impressed with him that I bought his book the second the show was over.

When I was in my New Age phase I talked about synchronicities a lot even though I didn't really understand them and to be honest I'm not sure I understand them now. But when Stein quoted Jung as saying that a synchronicity is an act of creation in time I felt like I was being shown another, more theoretical perspective.

And an example followed.

The Spirit Dream

So there I was, doing the dishes and listening to the podcast and wishing I could ask Murray Stein to help me make sense of the Spirit Dream. I was thinking that I wouldn't even have to get him to take on the whole dream. I would just ask him to help me figure who the lady in blue was and why she seemed so important—and what was up with the whole color thing (read The Spirit Dream in full if you'd like more context). 

I have often thought that the spectrums of blues I was shown in the dream  exceeded anything I've ever seen witg ordinary waking vision. Sometimes I have wondered if there isn't something reminiscent of an NDE in that, but I've never been sure about any of it.

The interplay of red and blue in the Spirit Dream seemed significant to me from the start and I have always supposed that color was the key to the dream. 

Murray Stein

I was still thinking about these things and how nice it would be if Murray Stein could tell me about my dream, when he answered a question about the difference (or relationship) between a symbol and an archetype and said the following:

So there are archetypes and there are archetypal images... [and] Jung makes a very important distinction (you can read about this in a paper he wrote called the Nature of the Psyche in Volume 8 and I use that a lot in my book Jung's Map of the Soul).

He [Jung] lays out a spectrum [and] says the psyche is like a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared.

On the infrared side it disappears through a psychoid membrane into the body, into physiological processes and there's an interplay between body and psyche—the psychosomatic interplay. The psyche can affect the body. The body can affect the psyche through that psychoid membrane.

He says on the other end of the spectrum there's the ultraviolet end of the spectrum that's blue—the psyche disappears again through a psychoid barrier or membrane into he says "what I can only call Spirit,.." and that's where the archetype exists.

And the archetype emits... [and] influences the psyche. The archetype influences the psyche by giving it images so when you have powerful images coming into your dreams, for instance, we call them archetypal images [or] Big Dreams that are related to mythology and fairy tales and all that.

The archetype... beyond the psyche in the... spiritual world is emitting some energy and it's coming into the psyche and then it takes the form of a couple of things: It can be an image or it can be a big idea [that] can be an inspiration, you know, suddenly [the] aha light goes on [and] you understand something.

So... the psyche disappearing into the spirit world on the one hand... [and] the psyche disappear[ing]     into the material world on the other hand... Now there's where Jung tried to tie that together—the material world and the spirit world—in his theory of synchronicity: Something happens in the material world and in the psychic world at the same time. It has meaning. 

It delivers meaning.

The Video

My Takeaway