Dream Interpretation Station
Dream Interpretation Station
Dream Wisdom Oracle Cards for Inner Guidance
In this episode Leah's joined by the creators of a beautiful new tool for dream exploration: the Dream Wisdom Oracle Deck.
Dr. Greg Mahr is a psychiatrist specializing in trauma and nightmares, and Dr. Heather Taylor-Zimmerman is a depth psychologist and visionary artist. Together, they’ve woven Jungian psychology, symbolism, art, intuition, and deep respect for the dream world into a 46-card oracle deck and guidebook designed to support dreamers in understanding the wisdom that dreams carry.
They talk about:
• the lifelong dream journeys that led them both to this work
• how imagery, art, and symbolism deepen dream exploration
• ways oracle cards can help illuminate dream themes
• dream incubation and synchronicity
• the collective meaning of dreams
• why listening to dreams changes our relationship with ourselves
This conversation is meaningful, soulful, and deeply validating for anyone who feels their dreams carry wisdom.
You’ll also learn how to work with the Dream Wisdom Oracle Deck as a companion to your dream journal or intuitive practice.
May this inspire you to listen a little closer to the night.
To purchase your dream oracle deck and access bonus materials, visit: Heather Taylor Zimmerman | Soul of Creativity | United States
Learn more about Greg Mahr's work at: The Wisdom of Dreams | Dr. Greg Mahr MD | Dream Analysis
To submit your comments, questions, or topic requests, email Leah at: LeahAnnBolen@comcast.net
Wishing you had an expert along for the ride?
Book a DreamDiscovery session with Leah -- Click Here to learn more.
Visit Leah online at: www.leahannbolen.com
Leah Bolen helps people improve their sleep and connect with the power of dreams, to enhance their waking lives. Within her private practice and as the Sleep & Dream Specialist for Miraval Resort & Spa, Leah provides workshops, lectures, and private consultations. She's a certified dreamwork practitioner, and an active member of The International Association for the Study of Dreams. Leah's work has been seen in Forbes.com, Women's World Magazine, The Suitest Magazine, and WellSpa360.com.
It's like you have an inner navigation system, surveying the landscape of your life and charting your best potential. And all you have to do is sleep. Ready to make the most of it? Let's get dreaming. Welcome to the Dream Interpretation Station. I'm Sleep and Dream specialist Leah Bolin, here to help you tune in to the power and meaning of your nighttime dreams. And today I'm joined on the show by two wonderful guests, the recent creators of a newly launched Dream Wisdom Oracle Deck. It's a collection of 46 Oracle cards along with a guidebook. I'm really looking forward to having a discussion with them about dreams and the way we can use tools like Oracle decks as we process and work through our nighttime dreams. Greg Maher is an analytically oriented psychiatrist who's actively involved in teaching and research on acute trauma and nightmares. He runs a nightmare clinic in Detroit, is on the faculty of the medical schools at both Michigan State University and Wayne State University, and he is a published author of multiple books and more than 30 academic research articles. Heather Taylor Zimmerman is a PhD psychologist trained at Pacifica, a Jungian program in California, and she runs a successful experiential teaching program and personal transformation through visionary art. She has published in books and calendars. Her art is focused on healing, and her works appear in clinics and hospitals as well as in public and private collections. So wonderful to have you both with me today.
Greg:Thank you very much.
Leah:I would love to dive in first of all to just find out from each of you what really drew you into the world of dream work. How about for you, Greg?
Greg:Um, I've been kind of a dream junkie all my life. I started recording dreams when I was a kid, like eight or nine, and I've kind of been recording dreams ever ever since then. I think I thought when I started studying psychiatry that psychiatry would be really interested in dreams, and I'd learn a lot about dreams. But of course, psychiatry doesn't really have any interest in that kind of thing at all, those those times have passed. So it was always kind of a side interest of mine. I was affiliated with the sleep research program and sleep clinic at the hospital where I was at. We shared the same floor. And I remember early in my career chatting with the guy who ran that program, who's who's a really nice guy, but I I kind of talked to him about my interests and dreams and asked asked him if there was any way to sort of incorporate that in my work. And he kind of looked at me in a in a wise fatherly way and said, Greg, there's no future in that. And I think what what he meant is there's no like grants or there's no way to um harness that in my work. So I kind of just kept doing what I was doing. And I had a serious heart attack about 15 years ago, and I sort of decided after that that I was just gonna do what I wanted to do and what mattered to me. And then so I decided to become more like official and public with uh my interest in in dreams. I I wrote uh my first book about dreams about four years ago, with which kind of has its own origin story. I I was the sleep medicine program asked me to give a lecture for them for their department, and they had some boring topic for me about screening for depression and sleep patients. And so I I called her up and I said, Well, I I can do that if you want me to, but but how about if I talk about something that that's less of a snoozer? How about if I talk about dreams? And and to my surprise, she said, Okay. And uh the psychologist who ran the research program was an intern of mine years ago, so he saw my name and and came to my talk, and we chatted afterwards, and it turns out he's although he'd been doing research about things like sleep apnea and insomnia his whole career, he actually had kind of a closet interest in dreams also. So we started having lunch and talking through, and that's how the first book was was born. That's kind of how my interest in dreams kind of began from day one and then kind of evolved to be part of my clinical work.
Leah:The layperson does think that psychiatrists, psychologists have a lot of training in dreams, and these days they really have to seek that out as their own personal interest. And then, of course, from the sleep health perspective, dreams are all just kind of lumped into the idea of REM sleep and not really at all looked at from this experiential side of the equation. You brought up the idea of being in the dream closet. I've used that term myself at times. But as I was in my professional, you know, advertising marketing career, my true passion being dreams, but I wouldn't talk to anyone about that professionally, even though we're all doing it. And as I now work with so many people who are professionals or were professionals, and they think something's wrong with them, things that are so basic and widely experienced in the dream realm are not talked about. Heather, how about for you? What would you say drew you into the world of dream work as an artist? Obviously, there are so many examples of artists getting ideas and uh how dreams can become this amazing muse. What would you say really opened you up to the idea of working with dreams or focusing on dreams as a muse?
Heather:Thank you. So I've been a lifelong lucid dreamer, and and so that's opened up a different realm of experience with dreams. And then my doctoral dissertation and work was on Carl Jung, who is of course uh dismissed, as you guys discussed, by mainstream psychology, but he's references the father of the new age. So he is working with dreams and visions, and that's the realm in which I work. Um, so I've been a lifelong visionary artist. Um, Jung too said he couldn't paint what was external to him, only what stirred his imagination. And what I've found is that not only are art and nature, which I both work with, therapeutic with dreams, but um that it's a way to alchemize or process the dream material. And I know we'll get into it, but this this deck and book, Greg and I were really committed to creating something as a tool to help people evolve and navigate and integrate dreams into their lives, because I think so often there's that quote about a dream as an unanswered or unopened letter. And I imagine desks with just piles of letters falling to the floor and cascading. And so I feel like we have this wealth of communication from to me, what I think of as the intelligence of the soul, maybe nature, however you want to language it, but that it really is this primary tool for guidance or wisdom. And so I've tried to tune into that and art as a way to almost begin and extend the dialogue with that intelligence. And so are the cards and the deck that we've evolved.
Leah:Yeah, it's such an amazing thing when someone who might normally be very left brain oriented wants to rationalize, think about dreams in this very like linear sense. That sometimes if you could just throw a pencil or pen in their hand and have them draft something that showed up in their dream, they start to shift into a new way of connecting with, ooh, I kind of get where this is coming from. Art can be such a beautiful bridge between what's happening in a dream and how I can come to better connect with it. Uh, how did you two find each other in as a peers, as as friends, or as collaborators? What what's the background that you uh came together and and how did you decide to work together on creating something like this?
Heather:Um I'll just say that Greg is delightful. So we're friends and colleagues, and that we are both on a Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies International Board. It's actually a very beautiful community in which dreams are held as sacred. And so I'll just do that foundation and Greg, you can take over from there.
Greg:Okay. Um I think what happened with me is the the first book I wrote on dreams was was very academic with an academic publisher. And um it it's a good book, and we worked really hard on it. There's a lot of really good stuff in there. But as an academic book, it was priced really high. And although it was really designed for everybody, I think because of the high price, n nobody actually bought it. And I I wanted people, you know, people at large to uh have a deeper relationship with their dreams. So I I was l seeing card decks at the bookstore, and I was kind of thinking, well, wouldn't wouldn't that be fun to do like a guidebook and cards with it, but kind of in an academically sound way. And uh so I approached a publisher who was interested in in working with us, and uh so then I wanted to find an artist, so I knew Heather, so I approached her, uh kind of assuming since she's such a wonderful artist, that she would be too busy and she'd send me off to one one of her grad students or something like that. But to my surprise, she said, Oh, actually, I I'd be interested in doing that. So we started working together. It was like a good year and a half of Zoom calls and emails and sending images back and forth and our uh uh little sections of the book back and forth, and um, and it kind of gelled for us. I think uh um part of me is still under the scientific medical world spell, and I initially envisioned it to be kind of more science-y, like having the twelve the most common kinds of dream images from research and things like that. But that quickly broke down, and the cards kind of have a mind of their own, and some cards just just kind of needed to be made, and some images needed to be out there, so uh it kind of evolved to what it is now.
Leah:It's 46 cards, and they do kind of each have a title as a primary, maybe theme. I imagine coming to some determination of which are the essential and how do we narrow it down, or how do we bucket many things into one theme must have been quite a process. How did you land on the 46 categories or themes? What was the process?
Heather:How did you decide? Greg, you can dive in, but Greg, you know, has a wealth of documentation and study. So he knew what the typical kind of primary dream images were. And then we started with that. Greg, you could take over.
Greg:Yeah, we kind of started with those most common dream images, some of which are less interesting. Like I think both both Heather and I have kind of a version to Keith dreams, although they're they're really common, but it's not a great thing to paint, and I never found those kind of dreams really interesting. But we thought we should include some of those really common dreams. Um but then this sort of got expanded because we include some um Jungian and archetypal images like Anima and Anima, and decided to include some informational cards that would give people tips on how to remember dreams and tips on those dreams and sleep hygiene. So we've included like five or six of those cards. And some of the images just kind of evolved. And in initially, we were gonna uh try to include uh some images from other artists, especially for things that kind of like weren't Heather's Heather's thing, like teeth, you know, but but the publisher didn't want it. And that's just they've got to all be Heather, so Heather.
Leah:Well, you know, I love that it is up to the dreamer, the one using the cards, to really choose for themselves how they want to take a particular dream, if that's how they're gonna use the cards to find those that align. I would think if I woke from a dream where I was losing my teeth, I might pull to a card that you labeled lost. I might also pull to a card that you labeled self, as that would maybe be a part of my self-esteem. So I think regardless, even though there are so many themes, if the user of the card is able to really help themselves, you do have the teeth card, but even if it wasn't in there, there probably would have been an opportunity. And with many dreams, we might, for a very practical linear person, might be like, well, my dream's not in here. But there are so many themes that could overlap.
Greg:You you described one way of using the cards, which is how we initially thought of it, as you'd you'd have a dream, find a card, kind of contemplate the card, and then read this section from the book. Like I said, the cards have a mind of their own, and that sort of expanded since then when the pre-publication cards came out, people started using them in ways we hadn't really been expecting. I'll I'll let Heather finish that up because I thought uh that was kind of cool to watch that process.
Heather:Yeah, anything oracular has this capacity to mirror and communicate with us. I call it communing and communication in a way that defies our separative intelligence, you know. So we Greg and I have had a couple of different times where we did workshops and we've presented on this. And it was fascinating how someone would draw a card, for example, and it would be it would speak to something that the person wasn't overtly communicating, but we both knew was true about the person. Or um, you know, the cards would also hold our shadow or amplify collective elements. Um, but what we ended up coming up with as well, and I have this on the Soul of Creativity website, is a little kit to help people extend how to engage with the cards using dream incubation. I also really like the idea of processing past dreams again to all those unopened letters, you know, or even Greg has an ongoing effort he's doing perhaps with AI to categorize and look at his dreams. But, you know, how do we make sense of the dreams almost longitudinally through our life? And so what I love is you can do an oracular spread where it's like what is present today and from the past and the future, and you can do amplifying cards. Um, I put in there even like how to work with astrology or, you know, some of the other references or tools that people might have. But essentially, it's how do we begin to work with our dreams, not only individually, but collectively as a whole, to see messages that might show up when we take a broader look at them, not just like this day or this week, but reflecting back as well.
Leah:So, in a sense, what I'm hearing is uh the cards have so many potential ways someone may choose to use them. Certainly, if I did have a dream last night, I'm finding myself feeling boggled. Why would I have such a dream? I might go through the deck and find a card or cards that are seemingly aligned with the ideas, and that would help me do further reflection. I could look in the guidebook and see what questions you're offering. But then I also may find myself looking at a collective over the last 10 years. I'm always seemingly dreaming about this theme or this thing and looking deeper at that. Why does that keep showing up? But alternatively, it may be that I just like a normal way someone might use an Oracle or Tarot deck, I may create a spread. I may allow the cards to find themselves to me versus me seek out specific cards and help like that process of a spread reading, maybe align me to things that are dreamlike contents that I probably need to look at.
Heather:Yeah, and I would add, you know, Greg referenced that we have some process cards, like active imagination. Definitely there's some guidance around creating a dream journal, and which is an archetypal form, Carl Jung, Frida Kahlo, people throughout time have done this, obviously. Um, so there's some basic tools, and then when you do a spread, sometimes it will look like active imagination will be one of the cards. And that can be like how you engage with it. Um, and then one of the things that I found was that if you turn over again like an amplifying or a clarifying card to be like, okay, what is this? And you can hold it in your head, obviously, like this is the past, or can you tell me about a theme that I should look at in my dream, something like that. You can turn over another card to help amplify, like sometimes it'll be how do I engage with this? Or what is an angle of approach that another card can illuminate? And they do have, I think anything can be oracular, like tea leaves, you know. But the images just help us refine the communication and be receptive so that we're looking not only to our dreams, but to our waking life to understand what's trying to be communicated to us.
Leah:Yes, and in that way, if I use them in a reading, per se, I'm maybe doing a type of waking dream work using these imageries and ideas that stem through the dream realm into this reading, aligning me to things just like my. Dream life might be trying to align me to certain ideas or aspects of consideration. That's a wonderful, wide-ranging way someone can use a deck like this. I many years ago started, because I was gifted my first tarot deck, starter tarot deck, by my mom when I was probably around 12 years old. So it took all that stigma of the tarot away from me and really opened me to the idea of divination, of using an intuitive tool like this that is so rich in imagery language. And uh at one point I had I had found myself having had collected many different types of decks and started to work with dreams in my 20s. And I think it was about a decade after I'd been working with dreams, I found myself doing some oracle reading or tarot reading. I was like, wow, this reminds me of dream work. And I started to personally just integrate the use of cards sometimes, especially when I see in a card an imagery that was so reminiscent of something I keep dreaming about. It had me uh assisting me in looking at other ways to consider the imagery that I might not have otherwise without that tool. So I think I love that you've really not given a specific orientation for this is exactly how you should use these cards. You've given ideas, you've given, I love the idea of dream incubation, I I love sharing that idea with people. Talk to me a little bit more uh where you each feel with the idea of dream incubating.
Greg:Well, that that's that's a process that has a long history, as you know. And in ancient times, Jewish scholars, for instance, would lie on the graves of patriarchs to try to incubate dreams. And even before that, healing was always dream-oriented in the ancient Greek world. And what he used for healing was dreams. So you'd go to an Aslepian temple. There there was a connection between Aslepius and snakes, so this must have been kind of an unusual place because there'd be all these snakes around, and you'd sleep there and and hope to have a dream, and then you'd share the dream with one of the priests in the morning, and and that's actually where Hippocrates was trained in an Asclepian temple. So that's you know, our healing tradition comes actually from that tradition. So the that idea of incubating dreams or healing or wisdom is an ancient. It's interesting for me, coming from a really pure science-y background. It's it's like I had a hard time that people were seeing other things in the cards that like I felt, well, I didn't put that there. But because I'm just I don't, you know, I'm not a visionary, I don't pretend to be a mystic or visionary or something like that. But I I think the you it kind of like focuses the energy of the universe in into an image, and that helps call things forth. It's I mean, the couple of the experiences we've had with the short time we've had the deck have been really amazing. One person at the workshop shared a question that she wanted an answer to, and uh because I knew her personally, when she drew the cart she drew, I I thought I didn't say anything, but I thought to myself, oh geez, that that I because I know her, I bet that's something really important to her. So I was chatting with her privately later, and I was kind of telling her, that was weird that she drew that card, and she was like, Yeah, that was I know my official question was this and that, but what I was really thinking about was this other thing, and the card was a perfect answer to that, which I guessed because I knew her personally. So I I think they sort of um have a way of like focusing the energies of the universe. I I know that's not very scientific sounding, but it's what what's what I'm coming to accept is more and more real.
Leah:Yeah, anyone who has used Oracle or Tarot cards regularly is, I think, quickly amazed at just how the just the right card. I knew I needed to see that one, seems to show up. It's like there's this synchronistic energy that we're connecting into that when we allow ourselves to trust that I'm going to ask a question and just see what card comes to me. It is a form of allowing ourselves to connect with an intuitive part of ourselves that does move us into a right-brained awareness and understanding, which is where the dream realm comes from.
Greg:Yeah, and I think just one last really quick comment. I think the basic message of the cards is relationship, like to try to facilitate the relationship with your own inner self. And when you connect with your own true inner self, you connect with the universe in a different way.
Leah:How beautiful. Heather, how about for you when you think of specifically dream incubation? Uh, anything you would add or share about the process, what do you how you kind of think of it?
Heather:Yeah, so I'll go. I love Greg and I have heard our tales a couple of times. So the Asclepian temple is always one of my favorite, and I always wonder how they sleep with the snakes. But um Yeah, so with kings and queens, particularly, people who had a degree of money, sometimes they would, as they were sleeping but also preparing to die, they would put art around their walls, like portals. And so I think dreams and art are both kind of portals or doorways, thresholds to other dimensions and realms, intelligences. And so I think that the dream incubation for me, sometimes I I have a process of almost being in a protected space as I go to sleep and focusing on my crown. You can ask a question. But the biggest thing I would focus on and highlight, which is just the submission and surrender of working with your soul or however you perceive it, but an intelligence greater than your own, is that we don't control it. And that would in fact be very unwise of us. And so sometimes dream incubation and affirmations and different methodologies have almost this sense of imposition where you want to go into the dream and you want to change things or make them a certain way. And so for me, and I really have been a lifelong lucid dreamer, it's never even occurred to me to interfere with the dream. And I think that would be much to our detriment. So that would be the thing I would highlight. I think it's an ethic of our field, you know, that there's this idea that you are a disciple to the image, you follow the image, you follow the wisdom, you're not directing, but you're following. And so for me, that's one of the primary differences with some ways of doing it where we're like, I want to get an X, a car, or I wanted this, or I wanted that. This is like, no, you tell me what I should know. And then often, as a last comment, of course, it's not always what we want to hear. So I remember one time it was really funny. I had this friend, and it was the lover card, and it was a question where I was part of me was really um resistant to the lover card's message at that moment. And so I drew the lover card three times, and but I was still resistant in my head and heart. And so the lover card literally fell out as she was like putting the cards away. And it was like with that last time, I'm like, okay, I will surrender to this message. But the the intelligence is obviously working with what we might call shadow. So we may not want to perceive it, but it's gonna be honest with us, even if it's not like the person Greg was asked referencing. They might not be talking about or willing to talk about shadow. It still may come up. And then my opinion is we need to honor that and work with that.
Leah:Yes, I am often working, and I know that Greg, you've done a lot with trauma and nightmares. I'm often working as a sleep coach with individuals that resist the night, resist the bed. And as we work, we'll often learn that they are afraid of the night because of nightmares. They're uncomfortable with the process of sleep. They feel they're being tortured by their dreams. And for me personally, my entry into dream work stemmed from a lot of my own very negative seeming, I would have called them at the time, even if they weren't formally nightmares, always waking me in a start. I felt they were nightmarish. I didn't get them. And those became my absolutely greatest gifts of learning and lessons and working with belief patterns and thought patterns that I clearly was starting to embody early in my life that my dreams were reflecting. And as I started to work with those dreams, well, my waking life was getting better, my dream life was getting better because I didn't need those dreams anymore. So I love the idea of embracing what's being brought and trying not to fight it. People who become lucid and just want to wake up or fight what's there or just flee from what's there. I would say if we're going to be co-creative in that space, why not embrace the monstrous creature or ask it a question? If we're going to engage in a way that actually says, oh, this is my shadow. Uh, how do I learn from it? Would be a much more healthy approach that is actually transformative.
Greg:That's a wonderful way of working with lucid dreams because people sometimes use them recreationally, like, oh, I'm gonna fly. I remember in the dream group I run, someone was telling a story about a lucid dream, and something really interesting was happening. They were talking to this wise old figure, but then they decided, well, I'm gonna bicycle to India or something. And I think why did you do that? Why didn't you? So if you if you have that gift of lucid dreaming, you have to use it sort of humbly and wisely to kind of talk to the dream figures, ask them why they're there, and sort of honor them.
Leah:Yes, as someone who went through my own lucid dream immersion period, of course I did too fall very quickly into I'm I want to fly, I want to learn how to fly better, I'm gonna go to the chocolate shop, I'm gonna like eat all the chocolate that's no calorie I won. I I was I was exploring. I will say that if anything, it did at least open me to the co-creative process. But then I quickly learned that I got a lot more through the process when I went more in a spiritual approach to it, recognizing this is a sacred domain. I want to treat it with reverence, I want to understand better why I'm dreaming this versus trying to bring my control in, which we never really control it, but we can co-create, we can learn from within there, and it is an amazing way to be in a dream. I'm curious, Heather, on the artwork itself, you have such a wide range of themes as I look at them of different mediums that you pulled in. Some are horizontal, some are more in the portrait. And one card can have so many different ideas within it. Uh, that must have been quite a process for creating the artwork itself. Um, what's your favorite mediums that you did use in the cards and and how did you find yourself going through that process?
Heather:Yeah, so I most of the work I had, and a lot of it's like an excerpt from a larger image to get more specifically to what Greg and I were dialoguing about regarding the themes. I love acrylics and I often use them like watercolors and then and then layer details. Um so I'm I'm a big layer, obviously, my images are really dense. And then what I think might be the most interesting thing to say is that when we think about a dream and a journey, we're we're moving through time and space, right? But two-dimensional art, you collapse that into an image. So you end up kind of for me layering the different elements of the dream, creating a composition that holds the different elements together. A little bit like um, I have an art history background, but they used to have journey images often of saints where they would go from one place to another. But instead of that kind of composition, I tend to layer them on top of each other. And then I'm hoping that people will engage. And again, Greg's communication, what he writes is so beautiful, but that it'll allow people to see multifaceted lens so that they can see and have reflected back to them what they need in the moment. And then also to hold those images as a portal or a window to see into the world, to dream the dream on and kind of apply it as a theme to their waking life as well.
Leah:I would imagine uh the dream the cards would also be a wonderful tool for dream incubation if there's an area of my life I'm focusing in, um, and a and a card or series of cards really speaks to that, to use that as part of maybe what I set beside my bedside before I go to sleep, meditating on the ideas that I'm trying to better connect with and see how that can even help the intentionality of wanting to connect with dreams as a source of further idea or inspiration.
Heather:Greg did such a beautiful job that I think is similar but different with the words, where he included these different ways to hold the images that aren't, they're not prescriptive and they're and they're really inclusive and multidimensional. And often what Greg and I were trying to do with both the words and the image was get people to look at things from a different angle. So you were like referencing befriending the nightmare, like finding the silver lining, like you think it's negative, but it really is actually positive. How can that be seen?
Leah:Yes, there's some wonderful questions with each, with each imagery. There's uh a nice amount of information in the book on how to consider, like, where did the artwork kind of stem from, but also how do we consider these ideas? And then some very specific questions. Because I think too many people think there's a specific answer. Why did I have this dream that they don't necessarily themselves understand? When as someone who uh may work with someone else with dreams, as we all all do, we don't hold their answer. We can guide them towards exploration and ways to connect with their own understanding, but it's when they start asking the questions of themselves that they'll collapse better into, I think I get why I am having this imagery or this dream showing up for me.
Greg:That's a nice way of framing it. I think the dreams can kind of invite you to ask questions of yourself and kind of open yourself up to a different kind of self-awareness.
Leah:I am wondering for you, Greg, you uh stayed very much in your lane of being a professional until you had your own personal experience that said, I'm gonna be me. I am gonna stop holding back what I really believe and is true for me and the importance of this topic. And you mentioned at least one example where you were surprised by the openness of including dreams in a topic of a professional presentation. Do you have that showing up more and more? Do you think that there is more of an opening coming of people being willing, even in the professional arena, to be more considering of these experiences we call dreams?
Greg:I I think so. I think the scientific world is is kind of caught in a bit of a dead end of the term for scientism. Of course, we all believe in science, but scientism is the philosophical belief that the only knowledge that we can get comes from science. And I think that really poisons the well because that closes the scientific world off from like experiential knowledge or visionary knowledge or just other kinds of knowledge that's that's not purely data-driven. And it even makes psychotherapy more because if you have to document everything and prove everything, psychotherapy becomes real superficial, symptom-oriented. Um it's funny, although I think they include me reluctantly sometimes in the schedule for like these sleep conferences, because they know me and they know I've done some important work, but um, but then when I actually talk, I'm I I'm my talk is often like the most popular one among the trainees and stuff like that, because they're I think they sense that I'm talking about something real. I'm not talking about like knowledge that doesn't actually mean anything and refer to anything. Uh when I spoke at a conference once, one of the psychologists approached me afterwards and said, Oh, yeah, I I did enjoy your talk, but dreams. I just I just sometimes patients like come to me with dreams and I I tell them, you know, five minutes. I'll listen to your dream for five minutes. That was a terrible thing to say.
Leah:Yeah, we're uh very collectively as a society dismissive of this part of our lives. And yet I think for each individual, there's been at least one, if not many, dream experiences that a part of them knew was very deep and meaningful, but just didn't know how to work with it.
Greg:It's so amazing how people just miss it sometimes. Like uh my father, when he was near the end of his life, when I when the first dream book came out that I wrote, I I I showed it to him, and he was like a hundred, and but he was still pretty lucid and stuff, so he said, Oh, congratulations, thanks. That's wonderful. But and and then he said, kind of reflecting this cultural bias, he said, Oh, but art dreams just basically nonsense. Then he said, For instance, last night, I had this dream, and he starts telling me this little dream that he was mowing the lawn, and my mother was uh on the porch watching him mow and criticizing. him that the lines were crooked where he was mowing. And and he was like, isn't that nonsense? But I'm because I know my mother and I knew my mother and how critical she was, I'm like, dude, that's the a beautiful image summarizing your life. You just don't see it. You won't look at it. You know, so I think dreams are I I think that's one thing that Heather and I are kind of both captured by how beautiful dreams are because they're really beautiful. Like you just using that as an example is such a compressed image with all this stuff in it that you because even the idea of mowing when you're a hundred it kind of says something about death and end of life. There's just a lot in that single little image.
Leah:Yes an image is worth a thousand words and with dreams we learn that we learn that once you really allow yourself to dive into the image language and imagery really is our innate language and story is our innate way we learn and dreams just weave together story and imagery in this brilliantly creative way that sometimes there's just no better way it could have been put together to describe and explain what I really feel I'm going through or what's really happening here. So being open to that is an amazing thing. And I love that there are people like you in the world encouraging other ways for us to engage because there are so many different ways to engage and I love that you've put this out into the world for people. I would wonder for each of you what do you feel dreams are trying to support in our waking lives? What is the like if you were to just try to help someone know why would I pay attention to dreams? What would be the first thing that would come to your mind that you would hope someone might hear about that? How about for you Heather?
Heather:Yeah so the first thing my mind goes to Greg and I were at a conference where they had dream social dream matrix work in the morning. And I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's the collective aspect of dreaming and so this I'm saying this because it's not always what people think of but a man who was there last time we were in Santa Fe had a dream of before 9-11 the twin towers being hit by planes. And then he actually talked about that in his dream group and two other people had had the same dream.
Leah:So part of me beyond the personal and the individual wonders about the collective ability if we paid more attention and integrated the wisdom of dreams into our lives how could we navigate better individually and collectively cultures in ancient times were very open to sharing the dream and seeing the dream as not only always being for the dreamer but for the collective for the for the whole society for the culture to learn from and although we think of it in this very personal way we do get indications especially as I do dream circles and and people get very excited when they find out I've had that similar dream you know and they might say I've had that dream but it always seems ours is a very personal version. But I love this uh additional idea of that there there could be more of a social story weaving about the collective and what's happening across our dreams. I know there are some experiments where people try to gather from multiple people and see what kind of themes are showing up. I I hope there will be more of that what a wonderful example Heather how about for you Greg if you were to say what you mostly have come personally to think that dreams are trying to support in our waking lives if anything what would you say concur with that cultural and social aspect but I think uh on an individual level they kind of help balance us and give us like send us a message not in a mechanical way but in this artistic representational way they kind of say something that we need to hear.
Greg:Like my dad's dream um he it was a message that he didn't really want to hear but just to keep using him as an example of about a year later he he never these are like the only two dreams he's ever shared with us. But about a year later he he told me Oh by the way I had this dream last night and he in the dream he was trying to build a bridge and and people were like criticizing him because the bridge is it's going to be too expensive and there's no point in building this bridge and stuff like that. And he was again like isn't that weird with his first stream I didn't really say anything because I didn't know what to say. But with with this dream I told him you should build that bridge because I I thought the bridge was something about coming to the next world or the bridge bridges with people he's close to and things like that. So I think I think the dream was reminding him of that message and how important that bridge building is and how he has these critical voices in him that that get in the way of that and and and that he should be careful. So there's these kind of messages that that are in a visual language so they seem like veil but they're only veiled because we're not used to the visual language yes we're not good at sometimes separating ourselves from being in the dream.
Leah:And sometimes it is the other person in our life that can quickly see the story.
Greg:Yes yes and I always one thing that helps people with nightmares a lot is when I remind them that you in the dream is not you that's like a depiction like an actor then maybe it's some part of you and maybe the fact that you fell off the mountain and drowned or maybe that's good. Maybe that part of you needs to drown.
Leah:Yeah opening to that it's trying to do something that brings us closer to wholeness to balance and to help us to be better versions of ourselves in whatever way it can prompt us. And then when we allow ourselves to create a relationship with this part of us it may at times perplex us, but we open to it we're willing to consider it to give it some space and time it absolutely can prompt us into amazing growth. How can people best learn more about the dream wisdom oracle uh deck and cards and other ways that you might have out there to connect with your work you mentioned a website. What is that website?
Heather:Yeah so it's the www dot soul of creativity s ofcreativity.com and it has a number of different ways that we've created to work with the deck and it has some video I'll put up shortly but it's a free free kind of bonus I guess you could say or additional information to extend what we introduce in the deck and the images.
Leah:If people can purchase right off of that website.
Heather:They can yeah so if they go there the first page you know has the click on for purchasing the book and then also right next to it the click on for signing up for this free kit.
Greg:Yeah Heather has a lot of good information there about doing spreads and some of that wasn't part of the book because it was genuinely kind of an afterthought as we saw how people were using the cards. So so that's the the cards are sort of evolving. I've got a website also gregmarr.com and there's a lot of information on there too.
Leah:Great and that's uh M-A-H-R is the last name. I'll put both of those website addresses in the show notes for anyone who wants to find out more about getting themselves a collection of wonderful dream wisdom oracle cards along with the guidebook. It's beautifully packaged they're lovely cards and I have enjoyed having them for myself now. So thank you so much for spending time with me today so that you could share your ideas, your wisdom with my listeners and anything else you would want to say before we sign off Heather Yeah just that our dreams are initiating us I think they're compensatory.
Heather:So the things that we ignore and shadow work is very present sometimes we refer to this time as the dark night of the soul so these these images are initiating us into dream journeys and so that's why I think these the DAC and book can help is that it's not a one-off it's not an answer it's an exploration.
Leah:Beautiful and how about for you Greg anything else you would want to say to the listeners yeah just to amplify what Heather said is that the the goal is to foster a relationship with that inner self which expresses itself through dreams.
Greg:And I think the words and the art are different paths to doing that that use different parts of the brain. It's been fascinating when the workshops we've done together to watch people as they go through the art exercises that Heather does in those group settings just it's such a different experience working with the dream kind of with your hands and and with the with with your body and connecting the dream in that way. So I think the balance between the words and the art is important.
Leah:Yes we're so often in our heads trying to figure everything out both in our waking life and then when it comes to our dreams when really it's an experiential process sometimes to collapse into let me just feel the feeling let me just ingrain myself in that color that was in the dream or let me try to draft this thing I saw that I can't make sense of and amazing new insights come that way. It's been such a wonderful experience to meet you both and I am hoping that our listeners will go ahead and check out more and bring this into their lives. And for everyone listening thank you for joining me on this episode and I am wishing you all the sweetest of dreams
