Dreams always attempts to make us authentic

Dreams are always attempting to make sure that we manifest who we are unconditionally.

This means that there are two levels of dream work:

• Dreams relating to our everyday ego

• Dreams relating to the higher self

This is the case regardless if the dreamer wants development or not, but if someone does not want development they will not cooperate (at will) with the guidance of their dreams, and thus this material will have little relevance to them.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

The process of individuation,
the path to become who we are

The process of individuation can be described in many ways.

A common way seems to be to divide it in two steps or aspects:

1. The completion of the individual, the development of the common consciousness to its maximum level of quality.

2. To work towards quantitative shifts of consciousness, move towards higher states of consciousness

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Individuation is a moral decision

The development of the personality is at once a blessing and a curse.
We must pay dearly for it, and the price is isolation and loneliness:
It’s first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd.

Jung

But to stand alone is not enough, above all one must be faithful to ones own law: Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality. -And only a personality can find a proper place in the collectivity; only personalities have the power to create a community, that is, to become integral parts of a human group and not merely a number in the mass. For the mass is only a sum of individuals, and can never, like a community, become a living organism that receives and bestows life.

[…] Thus self-realisation, both in the individual and in the extrapersonal, collective sense, becomes a moral decision, and it is this moral decision which lends force to the process of self-fulfilment that Jung calls individuation.

Jolande Jacoby

Refining our everyday consciousness

In order to complete or refine our everyday consciousness,
it is necessary to work with certain main areas:

• The Body

• Emotional dreams The shadow

• Sexuality Animus and Anima

These three areas consume by far the largest amount of available energy, and the unresolved conflicts or wrong living force the dreams to work with compensating this, rather than to accumulate energy for higher states of consciousness.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Our life’s journey is stored in the aura and in the body

Normally we know very little about what is going on in our bodies, it takes strong feelings of desire or of pain to make us focus on the body.
Higher development requires a lot of energy, and we have to make more energy available than there is if we live normal sleeping lives.

Our available energy lies in our bodies, in our thoughts and words and in our habits.

The available energy in our bodies is stored in what body psychotherapists call our blockages, areas in our body where we use energy to store some memories or pictures in a way so it is kept away from our consciousness.
So to free the body from these blockages will free energy for higher states of consciousness.
This is mostly done in body psychotherapy, for example Bioenergetics, rebirthing etc. but working with dreams as taught here is also a very good way.

Technique to find out from what body-area a dream symbol is dreamt

Some times the appropriate body part is obvious in the dream,
but if that is not the case, the following technique is useful:

1. Choose the dream symbol or dream image.

2. Sit in a relaxed and comfortable position.

3. With your eyes closed, see the dream symbol in front of you (in a reading distance).

4. Move with your awareness from the symbol to your body and back again, slowly and many times, and at the same time FEEL your body and keep it relaxed.

5. Imagine that the symbol has grown out of the body just as a flower has grown up of the soil.

6. You try to FEEL your way back, from the dream symbol and back to the "roots" in the body.

7. Place the dream symbol directly upon the body area (if possible). This might help to a further understanding of the dream.

8. Dreams have a compensatory function. This can be important for the body as well; certain body-parts might be too neglected.

Place a hand on the neglected body-part with awareness, warmth and healing.

Emotional dreams and the shadow

Jung defined the shadow as those aspects of oneself that is not recognized as belonging to one self, and that is of the same sex as one self.

By far the most common dreams are shadow dreams or emotional dreams

Thus, for a man the shadow is unknown aspects of his masculinity, for a woman the shadow is unknown aspects of her femininity.

The unknown aspects of the personality is outside the ego-consciousness, since they are unconscious.
These unknown personality aspects are partly stored in the body armor, and partly projected unto other people, institutions, political parties etc.
Unknown aspects makes man unfree and dependent regardless whether they are called shadow or hidden emotions.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

When the ego has accepted its night-side

We force the dream to constantly compensate and balance emotional instabilities and correct projections from unknown personality aspects, as long as we have not recognized and integrated the shadow.

When the ego has accepted its night-side, and the emotional life is conscious, lived out and under control, only then can the dream turn towards higher aspects of the psyche, as for example wisdom dreams and higher guidance.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

The emotional dreams has a balancing, regulating function

Compensation

An emotional dream is a dream that is dominated by one or more emotions, as for example fear, aggression, sorrow, greed or lust, sadness, emptiness, merriment, drive.

The purpose of these dreams is to bring those emotions to the conscious that either has not been expressed enough, recognized enough, or that has been expressed too exaggerated.
The emotional dreams has a balancing, regulating function.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

The shadow

The shadow is the thing a person has no wish to be.
It is of the same sex, and can surface as a person (or an animal) which you feel negatively against.

The shadow can be known as well as unknown. It can gradually transform into a guide. The shadow are in a compensatory relationship with the relative light of the conscious ego.

The shadow can be a person of the same sex who exhibits positive qualities, wise, intuitive, authoritative, outspoken, blissful etc.- If the individual do not want to acknowledge these qualities in himself.

The shadow embodies a lack of flexibility in the emotional level, and accordingly a lack of emotional clarity in connection to oneself and others, as the shadow normally is projected.

Negatively loaded animals in dreams move the consciousness downwards, to deeper levels, to aggression and fear and depression, and thus they should be handled with care in dream work.

The transformation of the shadow

A shadow is a unknown aspect of ones own sex, this can be an unknown positive or unknown negative aspect.

If the transformation of the shadow is studied in a series of dreams from the same dreamer, a generalized example could look like this: First the shadow-theme is emerging from the unconscious, in a dream, a distant, unknown person appears. In later dreams this person comes nearer, either as a positive, helping or negative, hostile person
Gradually, over several dreams, the two - the dreamer and the shadow - will be brought closer to each other, they will travel together or they will fight, etc. The purpose is to transfer the psychology of the shadow to the dream ego.

For example: If I am a pacifist, and meet a soldier, I am still a pacifist, but if I fight with the soldier, I can no longer claim to be a pacifist in the dream. When first the dream has been colored by my shadow, the path is ready for an integration in the awake conscious self understanding and behavior.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

There is enough latent energy in one gram of your flesh to supply the city of Chicago with electricity for a week. Yet you imagine yourself powerless in the face of a few difficulties.

Paramahansa Yogananda (Here from Kriyananda: The Path p. 454)

In a conscious way, humans utilize only approximately 10% of the total biophysical energy that is available. This 10% is usually spend very narrowly, for example in career, in pursue of power, in sexuality, in security, in role play.

In a development context, the task is to distribute the 10 % available energy in harmony with the different psycho-physical areas, in harmony with what is sought expressed by that person. This gives a well integrated, balanced person, with a feeling for the Self and a feeling for who he is.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Sexual dreams

There are three types of sex-dreams

• Shortcomings in the relationship

• Extra-sexual affairs

• Higher union

The meaning of most sexual dreams is simply to bring aspects of ones sexuality that is not completely accepted or conscious, up to the conscious mind.

If circumstances, ideals or moral prefer to keep a situation as for example a meeting, free of sexuality, even if in reality sexual energies or fantasies were stirred, dreams will reveal this by creating images of sexuality directly or symbolized.

Sexuality is an aspect or a interpretation of the basically unspecified life force, thus sexuality is in constant change.
Rejection or constriction of sexuality thus forces the dreams to express and channel the sexual impulses.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

An important footnote about Tantra and Yoga

There are two approaches to development

One approach is to strive to steer the energies of life only into the avenues that is conductive to higher development, that is the Yogic way.

Another approach is to say yes to life, to be open to what life offers, but with full consciousness, with the witness, this is the tantric way.

An example of the consequences:

If a person dreams about sexual projections on the neighbour’s husband a tantric approach would be to go along with it and have sex, if the neighbor himself freely wanted it.
A yogic approach would be to accept the neighbour’s relationship or marriage as sacred and thus not to live out the impulse, but instead work with transforming it in meditation

This difference is important to keep in mind when we discuss animus or anima dreams. These dreams tell about a impulse that is alive in the psyche, and within the psyche it invites a fulfilling of the impulse, a going through with the neighbour, in other words, these dreams are tantric in nature.

This does not mean that one has to live it out, to act tantric in the world, in order not to create a blockage, it just means that suppressing impulses don’t work, either live them - the tantric way, or transform them in meditation, the yogic way.

Sexuality is deceptive in its promise of unity

One reason why sexuality often is difficult to work with, is that many believe sexuality is the closest we can come to the other sex, so transforming it may mean that we will miss out on this closeness.
This is not true, sexuality in its normal form, the attempt to reach orgasm, does create fun and closeness, but it also forces the partners to surrender to the laws of biology, a build up a peak, a release, so in other words, one is forced away from the peak moment by the relaxation afterwards, the spiritual glimpse in the peak, where two became one was only a taste, and then it is gone.

Most people have hang ups

Most people have hang ups and unfulfilled longings in the sexual area, resulting in lots of energy that are not moving, neither outward in living out these dreams, nor transformed into free energy to be utilized elsewhere.

If deeper development is to happen, the sexual energy must be accepted as complete as possible.

Firstly by facing the extend and the variety of sexual impulses, facing it without judgement.

Next the task is to set the body free, to the extend it is possible, from its depots of blocked sexual energy, sitting in the muscles etc.

The last requirement is to understand the deeper meaning and function of sexuality.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Sexual dreams

Sexual dreams helps to make the dreamer aware of the sexual energy in its suppressed or overlooked aspects, help to move the sexual energy back into the conscious mind.
Sexuality and sexual energy is a tendency to integrate, an attempt to unite separated aspects of the personality.
Sexuality seeks to catch the awareness of the dreamer, in order to make him aware of unconscious, therefore projected opposite-sex aspects of himself.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

The direction sexuality takes

If sex is inhibited, is projected, confined, the sexual aspect will be separated, encased in moral conventions, but the essence of sexuality is synthesis and the synthesizing tendency balance the separating tendency.

The fight against sexuality will thus only have one clear and certain result, sexuality is increased, in the end everything is sexualized.

If on the other hand sexuality is accepted and left in peace - or lived in peace - it will reveal its secret:

Sexuality itself will reveal that it has two directions, it can be turned outwards and give fun and lust, and it can be turned inward and give higher consciousness.

Only someone who has never experienced a glimpse of higher consciousness can prefer the outward bound sexuality.
Someone who has experienced a glimpse of higher consciousness will flow with the sexuality in both its directions, outward and inward.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Animus and Anima
Dreams about the opposite sex

[Jung] frequently found the male images appearing in the dreams of his woman patients, and the female images in the dreams of his male patients, in both cases with emotional overtones, suggesting something much more profound than mere sexual wish-fulfillment. He called them respectively the Animus and the Anima complexes, and suggested that they represented another kind of compensating principle essential to personal wholeness - the need to come to terms with the fact that we all possess inside ourselves many characteristics of the opposite sex which our culture teaches us to ignore

Ann Faraday: Dream Power p. 124

Dreams about the opposite sex

Jung described dreams about the opposite sex as animus or anima dreams.
Anima is the inner female in men; Animus is the inner male in woman

In principle any dream about the opposite sex is an animus/anima dream, but in reality it only pays to work meditatively with a more rare type of dream.
When a man dreams about anima, he meets a woman whose atmosphere and radiation is without its equal in the outer reality.

There are off course different degrees of intensity in these dreams, the fullest intensity is when the dream reflects our total inner opposite sex. The fascination in such a dream is obviously very strong. In a very real sense, one here meets ones own other half.
A woman’s dream about animus will happen in a similar way. This inner man is the blueprint behind all outer infatuations Animus is the source of romantic love in woman, Anima is the source in men.
If intercourse happens in such dreams, it will usually start a
9 month sequence, resulting in a birth or a rebirth dream.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Normally our energy flows in all sorts of directions

Animus/anima dreams reflects where our energy are going…
Normally our energy flows in all sorts of directions, one aspect of us wants one thing, another wants something else. This scatteredness is a basic aspect of us.
In spite of the scatteredness this pushing and pulling in different directions will result in that we move, even though the direction of the movement usually is hidden for the ego.
In a animus/anima dream the direction of the flow of one’s life becomes visible for a moment.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

The essence in any projection is emptiness and illusion

Animus or anima is the source of erotic or sexual projections, and the essence in any projection is emptiness and illusion, thus the essence in animus and anima will be a clouding of emptiness.
This inner emptiness is not just a negative phenomenon, emptiness is a readiness, a receptivity, an invitation for higher consciousness.

What a person long for from someone of the other sex, can not be found there, since what is longed for is projected unto this person from the person longing, what is longed for can only be found in the source of the projected longing, somewhere deep in the person projecting it.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation

Animus / Anima

The animus /anima is an archetypal inner image of a person of the opposite sex, normally a unknown individual.
A woman has an inner animus, a man an inner anima
These inner images have an extreme power, and if the anima / animus is showing up in a dream, it will leave the dreamer deeply touched and fascinated. The fascination can be stronger than if the person had been physical.

The animus / anima is a projection of 50% of yourself!

The animus / anima represents a potential for expansion and growth, it is not just a projection from our personal unconscious, it is collective, there is much more energy that can be utilised in growth.

An animus / anima dream will therefore often have a message that can reach several years into the future.

Our etheric body is the opposite sex to our physical, so meeting our inner animus or anima means an opening into our own etheric structure, and thus a substantial growth and expansion.

The animus anima offers self-knowledge (the other is ME).
The meeting reveals the main direction for the total libido or life-energy.

The animus or anima invites you on a inner journey, revealing what you essentially are looking for in sex and love.

From romantic love to love

Animus and Anima

In most relationships there is a development from romantic love, to waking up either to a crisis and a broken relationship, or to a period of discovery - see the other as the other actually is.

Many people were not enough awake when they chose their partner, the love, support, stability etc that the romantic feelings dreamed into the relationship were not true, so in the waking up phase, many realises that there just isn’t the love they need.
This phase is a painful and vulnerable one.

Regardless if there is love or not, what is missing is the fulfilment’s we have expected, dreamt, that the partner was the one to fulfil.
The task is to grow up and fulfil those needs ourselves.

Or is there something more seriously wrong in the relationship, there is neither infatuation nor respect let alone love, leading to serious considerations of a separation.
Only the individual can decide.

Obviously these stages in a relationship will use a lot of the energy that is necessary if we are to achieve real higher consciousness and inner peace.
Thus, if higher development is to happen supported by, and not in spite of a relationship, it has to approach the third stage, the stage where truth about one self and about the other is consciously faced, and what is seen is reacted upon with love.

From romantic love to love

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

The Dalai Lama, here from Instructions for life

A Shadow Meditation
Edited from Jes Bertelsen notes

The purpose of this meditation is to penetrate the emotional connection with the shadow, by the use of higher consciousness.
When a release happens, it will benefit both you and the person behind the shadow.

1. Sit down and imagine in front of you, the actual person or dream you have chosen as shadow .

2. Re-experience the emotions which shows the projection of the shadow (hate, disgust, insecurity).

3. Try to identify the character traits in yourself, that exactly activates the uncontrollable emotions.

4. Imagine white light above or around or through the shadow-person from the meditation.

The purpose of this is to penetrate the real, emotional connection with the other with the use of higher consciousness.
When it succeeds to release the bound energy both you and the real person behind the shadow will benefit

An animus/anima meditation

• Find a powerful animus/anima dream.

• Identify a clear image of the animus/anima figure.

1. Sit in a meditative posture, and imagine the animus/anima figure in front of you. Feel the atmosphere from the dream, the attraction, glorification or whatever it is.

2. Then become this figure, gradually, meditatively, identify with and become the other person.

3. Then imagine that this figure of the other sex that is yourself, is hollow, like a pipe, a flute, that the divine can play with.

This technique can also be used on real people on whom we have a romantic projection we do not want to live.
Obviously, do not use this technique on people with whom you do want to live your feelings out.

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og meditation