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Film Review: Time of the Gypsies
February 23rd, 2010
Reviewed by Jeff Brown
From Emir Kusturica, director of "When Father Was Away on Business" and "Arizona Dream, " comes the epic drama of Perhan,an orphaned Gypsy boy with telekinetic powers who leaves his small town and joins a strange caravan ofmisfits on a journey to Italy — a trek which includes many magical stops and fascinating surrealistic moments.
The movie could, perhaps, appropriately be divided into two parts. During the first half of the film, we see Perhan living in a small village with his grandmother, crippled sister, and compulsive uncle. Midway through the movie, however, the focus dramatically shifts and does not4′eturn to the light-heartedness with which it began. This shift is marked by the advent of Ahmed, king of the Gypsies, who rides into town in a convertible to collect a host ofcrippled children and dwarfs to take back to his encampment. Perhan’s grandmother uses her Gypsy powers to save Ahmed’s dying son. The next morning, Ahmed arrives to offer payment for the saved life of his child. When his money is refused, he then offers to take Perhan’s sister to a hospital in Rome so that her leg can be cured. Perhan goes to watch over her, but instead he travels back to Ahmed’s Gypsy shanty. When. he learns of Ahmed’s corrupt system of gain, Perhan at first clings to his integrity, but eventually, he falls into thievery. He returns home to visit his grandmother and there his corruption gives way to disillusionment, and, the movie takes its fast turn downward into its tragic end.
Dream Masks
February 16th, 2010
Dream Masks
This website features a collection of masks created throughout 2009 following a dream invitation to develop tangible representations of the spiritual wealth of the dream world. It was a challenge to create the central dream figures as ceramic masks, but the most demanding aspect of the project was to allow the mask to convey the visual and visceral drama of the dream world. Visit Dream Masks today at http://www.dream-masks.com/
Art & The Unconscious — at AVA
February 16th, 2010
Art and the Unconscious W10A27
February 23 – March 23 Margaret Dwyer
Tuesdays, 9:00am-1:00pm
Five 4-hour classes
Tuition: $290 /members; $310 /non-members
Our thoughts are not turned off when we sleep; instead, they take a different form through dreams. This course will take students of all artistic disciplines on a journey through the mysterious world of dreams in order to tap into the rich source of ideas offered through the unconscious mind. Participants will gain a better understanding of this phenomenon through visual presentations, reading materials, methods to improve dream recall, and dream journaling. The larger component of the class focuses on how to pull ideas from one’s visual inner life and use them conceptually, critically, and creatively in a variety of studio projects.
at AVA (Alliance for the Visual Arts)
(603) 448-3117
e-mail info@avagallery.org
11 Bank Street
Lebanon, NH 03766
Dreams & Spirituality
February 16th, 2010
For me, spirituality is a sense of connectedness to all other humans, to all living things, to all of everything, and especially to my Higher Power. When my spirituality is "off," I feel separate, alone, in conflict, contracted, and defensive. When it’s "on," I feel connected, related, in harmony, expansive, and protected. I believe we have all had dream experiences which have led us to that transpersonal place of connection. I have seen it when two people in the same dream group have the same symbols in their dreams. I have felt it when one person in a group tells a dream which has such a sacred feeling to it that it touches all of us who hear it and makes it our dream too.
Here are two examples of what I think of as spiritual or transpersonal dreams. The first is from Rita Dwyer, a former president ofthe Association for the Study of Dreams. As you read it, imagine that you are the "I" in this dream and notice how you feel. This is an example of a "numinous," richly-textured, spiritual dream.
I am supported and surrounded by angelic beings. Held up by their wings. I can see the outlines softly merging one with another~ but not separate isolated beings, and am aware oftheir overlapping wings and the presence of light.
The second is from a client of mine who named it "The Third Step Dream." This one is metaphorical in nature and refers to the 3rd step in a 12-Step program, ”Made a conscious decision to turn my Will and my Life over to the care of a Higher Power."
It’s night, and I am a passenger in a car, driving veryfast down a unknown highway. I look to the left and see there is no driver, but I know there is a Presence driving the car. From time to time, the driver’s door opens and wind rushes into the car and swirls everything around before the door closes again. I feel perfectly safe and at peace.
The history of dreams with a religious or spiritual nature goes back almost as far as the written word. Some of the earliest records on dream interpretation were tablets as early as the 7th century B.C. In ancient times, dreams, especially the dreams of rulers, were often considered direct communication from the gods. Special temples and sacred precincts existed expressly for dream incubation where people would go to receive dreams to answer questions or reveal the future. Dreams were important in early Hebrew times as well. The Old Testament records dreams such as Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from the earth to heaven itself with angels climbing and descending it. It was this dream which told Jacob that his children would spread throughout the world.
Alfred Adler & Dream Styles
February 11th, 2010
If we can characterize desire in Freud as erotically oriented, and desire in Jung as wholeness oriented, then we can say in Adler that desire is oriented to overcoming early feelings of inferiority. These feelings stem from the beginning of life, dependent and small, and evolve as we find ways ofovercoming these feelings of inferiority and becoming productive. This strivings follow us rightinto the night; ”Now just as our waking life, we have seen, is determined by the goal of superiority, so wemay see that dreams are determined by the individual goal ofsuperiority." (Adler, 1929, p.155)
For Adler, the dream tries to help us overcome the same feelings of inferiority we feel in our life, but without the restraint of concrete reality. Thus the dream is not only a experimental laboratory to safely try out new possibilities, but also a window on the style we use in general.
To interpret the dream is to interpret the style of the dreamer.
Carl Gustav Jung: Using Dreams to Find Our Myths
February 2nd, 2010
Carl Jung was both a colleague and student of Freud, yet their views and ideas differed. Freud thought dreaming as a means to cleverly allow the sleeping mind to disharge repressed and disturbing desires by disguising them. Jung acknowledged this level of dreaming, but felt that the unconscious was much more vast andthat dreams were an unconscious attempt to bring about our most wonderful potentials as human beings. We could actively participate in this process by seeing what the dream was revealing rather than disguising. What was the dream revealing? Our path to wholeness as unique individuals – something Jung called Individuation, which simply means that because each individual becomes who they most essentially are,themselves, the path is unique and different for each person. Each dream presents a unique set of circumstances, so that the application of any theory we have acquired in the past violates its uniqueness in the same way thattreating new people we meet (or old ones for that matter) like they should be someone else or something else we have previously decided upon would violate the essence of who they really are.
New lucid dream research
February 1st, 2010
New lucid dream research supports brainwave entertainment theory: http://is.gd/5Ntwv
Dreams and their waking life application
January 29th, 2010
Dreams and their waking life application: http://bit.ly/7zwhFv
Dreamwork in Depth
by Kathleen Sullivan
It’s a natural human tendency to settle for easy solutions, but dreamwork is a deeper practice,with many dimensions, and it is important that we not settle for simplistic dreamwork. This can easily happen if we stop the examination of a symbol at the level of personal or subjective association. David Fontana says it this way in his book, Teach Yourself to Dream. “The first and most obvious associations suggested by a dream image may not be the correct ones. It usually takes time and effort to uncover the deeper levels of meaning.” The following dream exemplifies this problem beautifully:
Tags: Kathleen Sullivan, spirituality
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