Dreams & Your Personal Journey

Join Jung Platform founder Machiel Klerk in this inspiring talk on dream guidance. Machiel founded the Jung Platform because of a guiding night-time dream he once had. He learned that you need not only wait for receiving guidance. You can, proactively ask the dream, for support. The practice of asking your dreams for guidance can be found in almost every spiritual tradition around the world.

Machiel Klerk has distilled an easy and effective five-step approach that he also describes in his new book Dream Guidance. The Compassionate Friend, who lives in all of us, wants to help, and offers help when we ask for it. Ask and you shall be given, ask better questions and you get better answers! The effectiveness of this method is figuring out what is alive in you and secondly, which questions want to be asked. Listening to and working with those dream responses can help you—quite literally—to live your dream life.

You’ll discover:

• How dreams can provide guidance on your personal journey
• How to nurture the relationship with the Compassionate Friend through dreams, and
• The importance of the question

About Machiel Klerk:

Machiel Klerk is a social entrepreneur, licensed mental health therapist, international speaker, dream worker, and published author.

He has been a mental health therapist since 2006, and currently has an online private practice. Machiel is fascinated by healing traditions. Next to obtaining a master’s degree on counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, he studied extensively Jungian Psychology. He has traveled all over the world and studied many cultures and their healing and dream traditions, and in specific the African traditions as South Africa is the country of his birth.

Machiel has published a book ‘Dream Guidance’ with the respected HayHouse publishing company. The book is currently available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Machiel has given lectures and workshops in Europe, South Africa and North America about dreams and psychology. He also provides inspirational talks and workshops for companies on creativity, innovation and leadership. He has written several articles on dreams and released a course on Jung Platform.

Machiel has vocationally been guided by dreams when he founded the Jung Society of Utah and the online organization Jung Platform as a result of a night time dream. In appreciation for these contributions, he has received several awards from the local community.

He moved in his early youth from South Africa to the Netherlands, and lived a year in France during his teenage years. He backpacked a year through Asia and then moved in 2004 to the USA where he still lives and dreams.

What do dreams reveal about death? In this beautiful conversation, Monika Wikman and Machiel Klerk journey into the great mystery of death. They explore what dreams might be revealing about death and what we might experience after we cross the great threshold of death.

For many people, the encounter in dreams with their ancestors are among the most impactful dreams of their lives. Monika and Machiel talk from their own experiences and that of their patients’ who have met their ancestors in their dreams.

Dreams also seem, sometimes, to announce when people are about to depart to the other world. The encounter with death and the revelations that come from the dream can give one the courage to live life fully.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• That deceased family members and friends might show up in our dreams
• That dreams can possibly reveal elements of life after death, and
• That life becomes more meaningful and valuable by learning about death through dreams

About Monika Wikman:

Monika Wikman Ph.D is a Jungian Analyst and astrologer. She has worked for decades with clients and their dream symbols. Monika’s analysis of dream material leads readers into a practical explanation of alchemical symbolism.

Monika Wikman has a Ph.D. in Psychology with the California School of Professional Psychology and completed the training program with the Research and Training Center for Depth Psychology according to Carl Jung and M. L. von Franz in Zurich. Her doctoral work involved the study of dreams of patients with cancer at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

She is the author of ‘Pregnant Darkness’. In her book she shows that alchemy is at work in everyday life. Alchemical symbolism can be applied to unraveling the meaning of visions in meditation, active imagination, and dream work.

A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming. In Tibetan Buddhism, lucid dreaming is considered as one of six paths to enlightenment. In lucid dreaming, you receive an opportunity to interact with dream figures and the larger awareness behind the dream landscape, asking for guidance and support.
Join Robert Waggoner in his extraordinary journey into the world of lucid dreaming. Robert shows how once you become aware of your lucidity in a dream, you can begin exploring the dream landscape. In his personal experience, Robert has traveled beyond the dream, reaching into the larger awareness that is behind it. In this fascinating conversation, you will learn how a dream reality is constructed and how these very principles of the dream world can be used in your daily life. As for Robert Waggoner, a larger, meaningful, and fulfilling life awaits you.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• How lucid dreaming can help you become more conscious in daily life
• How you can learn more about the nature of reality when lucid in the dream, and
• How to elicit support from the dream for personal development

About Robert Waggoner:

Robert Waggoner enjoys educating others about the science, beauty and potential of lucid dreaming. He is one of the most interesting lucid dream teachers in the Western world. He wrote the acclaimed book, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, and co-authored Lucid Dreaming Plain and Simple with Caroline McCready.  His books have been translated into French, German, Chinese, Korean, Czech, Finnish and other languages.

A past President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), Robert serves as co-editor of the online magazine, The Lucid Dreaming Experience – the only ongoing publication devoted specifically to lucid dreaming. A lucid dreamer since 1975, he has logged more than 1,000 lucid dreams. He frequently speaks on the science and practice of lucid dreaming at international dream conferences, workshops and college classrooms. He has been interviewed or consulted about the practice of lucid dreaming by CNN, CBS News, ABC News, WPNR, WBGU, and other radio stations.

Dreams are personal myths and myths are collective dreams. Join Michael Meade in this session on mythic dreaming where he shares some of his personal ways of relating and being with dreams and how personal dreams and collective myths reinforce each other.

Michael has had a long-standing and deep relationship with his dreams. He weaves, in his unique poetic way, the insights from this relationship about myths into the personal life of the dreamer. However, he also highlights the power and responsibility of the individual dreamer to help and contribute to the collective myth and dream. As you would see in this session, we are deeply interconnected with the tapestry of life; our personal dreams are one among the myriad traits that are woven into this tapestry.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• How dreams are personal myths
• How an individual life can help and heal the collective, and
• Personal ways of Michael Meade of being with dreams

About Michael Meade:

Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology and is one of the greatest depth psychological teachers of our time. He combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals.

He has an unusual ability to distill and synthesize these disciplines, tapping into ancestral sources of wisdom and connecting them to the stories we are living today. He is the author of The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the World Doesn’t End and The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul.

Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of artists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding between diverse peoples.

Join Leslie Ellis in this talk on somatic dreamwork with a method called focusing. Focusing looks for a felt-sense in the body, which is the body’s take on any aspect of our lives. This felt-sense is an ideal way to explore dreams as they unfold. It is a sensing that is turned inward to find what’s present and what new aspect wants to come forward.

Eugene Gendlin developed the focusing method and published a book on its application to dreamwork. Leslie Ellis has decades of clinical experience integrating focusing and dreamwork methods with the wor

k of other contemporary pioneers in the field of dreamwork.
Dreamwork and focusing are both doorways to the body’s immense and subtle implicit knowledge. This approach to dreams brings new possibilities into our full-bodied lives.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• Benefits of somatic dreamwork
• How dreamwork helps us to connect with something outside of our awareness
• A few simple guidelines to somatic working with dreams on your own

About Leslie Ellis:

Dr. Leslie Ellis, PhD, is an author, teacher, speaker and clinical dreamworker. Her book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2019) offers therapists a primer in modern, experiential dreamwork. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on experiential focusing and dreamwork. Her award-winning PhD research developed a nightmare treatment process for refugees. She developed her somatic, experiential focus through extensive study of focusing. She is currently president of The International Focusing Institute. She studied depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and her practice is a hybrid of Jungian and focusing-oriented approaches. She is also an expert in treatment of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress injury and developed and taught trauma work at Adler University in Vancouver.

Leslie is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Join Stephen Aizenstat in this talk on Dream Tending, a technique he pioneered. The central idea is that dreams come to us and have a life of their own. Stephen Aizenstat will show that dreamwork is not only about interpreting a dream or analyzing it, but also about allowing it in its alive actuality to come forward in the room, to be present, and listened to.

This approach to dreams is a dream image-centered approach; that is, we follow where the image is taking us and allow the world of imagination to come to us through our dreams. With this technique, we learn to connect and engage with the dream. And, we allow the soul to come in our experiences and to inspire our personal journeys.

During this session you’ll discover:

• What Dream Tending is
• How to apply Dream Tending technique to your own dream images, and
• How to engage with the soul expressing itself through dreams

About Stephen Aizenstat :

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., has devoted his life to understanding the profound wisdom and healing power that exists within each of us. He is Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology and his own research for more than 35 years. His Dream Tending methodologies extend traditional dream work to the vision of an animated world and his work opens creativity and the generative process. His book, Dream Tending, describes multiple new applications of dreamwork in relation to health and healing, nightmares, the World’s Dream, relationships, and the creative process.

He is affiliated with the Earth Charter International project through the United Nations, where he has spoken. Professor Aizenstat has been mentored by and collaborated with many notable masters in the field including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman and Robert Johnson. He has conducted sold-out Dream Tending seminars, workshops and “pop-up” events in the U.S., Asia and Europe.

Thomas Moore believes that dreaming is another kind of living—one, which might be closer to who we are than the waking life is. Dreams get to the essence, the real conflicts and desires that define us. For Moore, working with dreams is not an aid to successful living. It is about becoming acquainted with our essence as it unfolds during the process. This essence can be called the soul. In a dream, the soul is working out its materials, its purpose. Therefore, dream work is much similar to the process an alchemist uses in contemplating long and deeply on the materials of the world, held for this purpose in his or her vessel. We look deeply into our dreams to glimpse narratives and images that unveil for us, ourselves. In that way, dreams are unlike waking life—they are episodic, varying in their settings and narratives every night. Life, on the other hand, has a more obvious and surface continuity. And yet, our essence (soul) unfolds in both realms as we will see in this session.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• How dreams might be even more real than daily life
• How to tend to the soul in dreams and daily life, and
• Some guidelines for thinking about dreams that can enrich your life

About Thomas Moore:

Thomas Moore published his classic Care of the Soul in 1992 that sold several million copies. Since then he has written twenty books on spirituality, sexuality, myth, religion and depth psychology. His books have been translated into thirty languages. He has taught religious studies and psychology and has been a psychotherapist for over 30 years.

He often speaks at C. G. Jung societies and has done special work consulting at major medical centers with the idea of bringing soul to medicine. He was a close friend and collaborator with James Hillman and published an anthology of Hillman’s work with extensive introductions and commentaries. He writes fiction and music and has a special relationship with Ireland, the home of his ancestors. He lives in New England. His wife is Hari Kirin Khalsa, an accomplished painter and yoga trainer. His daughter Ajeet is a popular singer of spiritual music.

In this session, we will explore the practice of creative dream work with Kim Gillingham. Building upon the foundational work of Marion Woodman, creative dream work stands as the threshold where creative and inner work (personal development) meet. The practice allows you to be inspired by dreams to be more creative in any endeavor that you are engaged in.

In her extensive work with Hollywood actors, Kim Gillingham has used dream work to help her clients become better at their art. She will share some of these ways, including the methodology used by the great Stanislavski who sought a reliable and repeatable way to bring an artist into a creative state, to inspire creativity. We will work with some simple practices including breathwork, sounding, and subtle movements to enter a mindful state, from which to engage creatively with the dream.

The session will also include a brief experiential creative dream work practice. You can bring along a dream image that you would like to explore, a journal, and some basic art supplies (pastels, colored pencils, paint, etc), to this session.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• How to work with dreams in the creative process
• How to get in a creative state outside the dream, and
• Practical tools to work creatively with your own dream

About Kim Gillingham:

Kim Gillingham coaches professional artists of all disciplines towards the creation of more authentic work. Kim is grateful to have studied extensively with acting teacher Sandra Seacat who pioneered the work of bringing dreamwork and acting work together. Avid interest in working with dreams drew Kim into in depth study of Jung and eventually lead her to the work of preeminent Jungian analyst Marion Woodman. Kim was trained by Marion Woodman in her Body Soul Rhythms Training Program with final teacher training group of its original founders. This work has been foundational for Creative Dreamwork. Brining this work back to the creative fields, Kim continues to coach actors, directors, writers, musicians, activists – creators of all kinds.

In life, we often come across crossroads where we must make difficult choices and crucial decisions that can have a profound impact. As helpful as conscious deliberation can be, in these crucial moments, it may yield unsatisfactory results, and we find ourselves seeking additional guidance.

It is in these dark nights of the soul, where even experts and mentors can’t help us, that we must be willing to listen to the whispers of the soul. There, in the deep recesses of the Unconscious, lies our archetypal repository that holds profound insight and wisdom, which informs the soul. Join Ashok Bedi as he takes us on a journey to this world of the soul. Bedi takes inspiration from Indian philosophy to explain the nature of the soul and how it communicates to us from its depths, and the Vedic concept of Brahman awareness—the infinite, eternal truth that underlies all existence—which is believed to take many different forms, including the form of dreams.

What you will get out of this session:

• Dreams can help us during the dark nights of the soul
• Jungian and Indian perspective on dreams and the soul, and
• Recognition of dreams as a manifestation of the Brahman awareness

About Ashok Bedi:

Ashok Bedi is a Clinical Professor in Psychiatry and a Training Analyst at the Jung Institute of Chicago. Trained in India, the UK, and the US, he is interested in the frontiers of spirituality and healing and where the mind, body, soul and spirit meet.

He is the author of many books, and regularly presents lectures and seminars on the topic of the spiritual and analytic dimensions of treatment, healing and personal growth. Nowadays he is the International Association of Analytical Psychologists (IAAP) liaison person for developing Jungian training programs in India and travels annually to India to teach, train and consult with the Jungian developing groups at several centers in India including Ahmedabad &, Bangalore.

Join this session with Robert Bosnak to tune into the creative spirit that is living through us. We can do this by the process of Embodied Imagination, a technique that Robert pioneered, which can be applied to dreams.

Robert sees dream images as embodiments of their own intelligences. Using this approach, we are encouraged to explore multiple images in the dream. The embodiment of images connects us to the creative force that is living through us. Over time, new images or feeling states will emerge. They present a new perspective that is found outside the habitual consciousness.

Embodied Dreamwork helps us to find new ways of being in the world in a creative and truly original way. That is our personal journey.

You’ll discover:

• What embodied imagination is
• How to explore images and embody them
• How true creativity and originality are sparked by dreamwork

About Robert Bosnak:

Robert Bosnak, PsyA, is a Jungian psychoanalyst who graduated from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1977. He pioneered the Embodied Imagination method, and his current interest is focused on exploring Embodied Intelligence (MQ). Robert Bosnak is a Core Faculty Member at Jung Platform.

Robert has written several books translated into a wide variety of languages, amongst which the worldwide bestseller A Little Course In Dreams and Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel. He’s a Past President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and founder of the Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary. He divides his life between Santa Barbara, California and Sydney, Australia. He trains the Embodied Imagination method worldwide.

In this interview, Romanyshyn explores how historical events, such as the pandemic and the current climate crisis, show up and speak to people in their dreams. He will also ask us to consider historical events as collective dreams of humanity.

These two fascinating ideas, unraveled in this interview, will take you on an important inward and outward journey. A key theme of this class is to invert our usual relation to dreams; that is, from being the dreamer to being dreamed by the dream. It also elaborates how we can be agents in service to the dream world. Then we must move from knowing about the dream to becoming figures and landscapes of the dream world, which offers new possibilities in our approach to these crises.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• That outer nature and inner nature are connected
• How we can become agents of change by experiencing the dream consciousness, and
• How events in the world could be manifestations of the dream

About Robert Romanyshyn:

Robert D. Romanyshyn is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, an Affiliate Member of The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He is also a Core Faculty Member at Jung Platform.

Author of eight books including his newly published Victor Frankenstein, the Monster and the Shadows of Technology: The Frankenstein Prophecies, he has published articles in psychology, philosophy, education and literary journals, published a book of poems, written a one act play about Frankenstein, and created a multi-media DVD entitled Antarctica: Inner journeys in the Outer World, a psychological reflection on the melting polar ice. In addition to online seminars and interviews, he has given lectures and workshops at universities and professional societies in the U.S., Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand.

Dreams show us the secrets we keep from ourselves. They are a keyhole that allows us to peer into the recesses of our inner world. A dream provides a holographic view of the psychic situation, allowing us to see it from the point of view of the unconscious. Even a brief, seemingly unimportant dream can yield rich insights. Deb Stewart, Joseph Lee, and Lisa Marchiano from the popular podcast This Jungian Life will discuss essential principles of Jungian dream interpretation. They’ll demonstrate how to apply these principles by interpreting in-depth, three dreams submitted by Jung Platform users.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• Some Jungian dream work principles
• How to view a dream from the perspective of the unconscious, and
• That all dreams are relevant

About Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee:

Lisa Marchiano is a writer, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and certified Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her MSW from New York University and completed analytic training at the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Lisa is on the faculty of the Philadelphia Jung Institute. Her writings have appeared in Quillette, the journal Psychological Perspectives, and the Journal of Analytical Psychology. She has presented on Jungian topics across the US as well as in Europe. Lisa’s first book Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself explores motherhood as a catalyst for personal growth. It was published by Sounds True.

Deborah Stewart is a Jungian analyst and Licensed Clinical Social Worker on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She trained as a Gestalt therapist at the Cleveland and Cape Cod Institutes. She is a member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts. She is the Director of Admissions for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and serves on the organization’s Executive Committee.

Joseph R. Lee is a certified Jungian analyst and Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Virginia Beach, Virginia at www.DepthPsychotherapy.net. He works with adults and teens. He is the past president of The Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, www.cgjungphiladelphia.org, which provides a public seminar and trains Jungian analysts. He is accredited by the I.A.A.P., and received his Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He lectures nationally on the Hermetic Kabbalah with a focus on its reinterpretation through modern idioms.

In this session, you will have the opportunity to experience shamanic lucid dreaming as Robert Moss teaches it.

Robert discusses the “turning-point dreams” in our lives—dreams that enable us to reset our inner compass or may give us the courage and coordinates to follow an unexpected path. He recounts the BIG turning-point dream that unfolded for him when he re-entered an unsatisfactory dream lucidly. He found himself invited to undergo an indigenous ritual of “requickening” that confirmed his calling to follow the path of a dream teacher. He may invite you to enter a similar tent of vision, in a lucid dream journey fueled by shamanic drumming, to confirm and follow your own path with heart.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• A shamanic experience to follow your own path more deeply
• How to lucidly re-enter a dream—and how helpful that is, and
• How your dreams can help you discover and connect with your calling

About Robert Moss:

Robert Moss has been a dream traveler since doctors pronounced him clinically dead in a hospital in Hobart, Tasmania, when he was three years old. From his experiences in many worlds, he created his School of Active Dreaming, his original synthesis of modern dreamwork and ancient shamanic and mystical practices for journeying to realms beyond the physical and growing creative imagination. He has led popular workshops all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a New York Times bestselling novelist, poet, journalist, and independent scholar.

His many books on dreaming, shamanism, and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreaming the Soul Back Home, The Boy Who Died and Came Back, Sidewalk Oracles, and Mysterious Realities. His latest book, Growing Big Dreams: Manifesting Your Heart’s Desires through 12 Secrets of the Imagination is a passionate and practical call to step through the gates of dreams and imagination to survive hard times, travel without leaving home, and grow the vision of a more abundant life so rich and strong that it wants to take root in the world. He has lived in upstate New York since he received a message from a red-tailed hawk under an old white oak.