Dream Work

Dream work holds an important place in Progoff's Intensive Journal. Since the Journal is non-analytical, however, even the dream exercises do not seek to analyze. One might ask how a participant learns the meanings of his/her dreams, given that the dream exercises do not analyze. The answer is that meanings are not actively sought. 

They emerge, they pop, but not by any direct, identifiable route. You write the exercises in the Dream Enlargements section. Dream Enlargement exercises simply take a dreamer back into a dream, not while sleeping, but by writing after having induced a meditative state. You write out your experience. You correlate the material with other entries in the Journal. The symbolic then yields to the concrete; the irrational reveals the rational. Two plus two equals more than four. That is what is meant by "non-analytical." The beauty of bringing directed consicousness to bear upon one's inner life is that growth can proceed more deeply and perhaps more quickly.


When I was young, years before I'd heard of the Intensive Journal, I used to wake up fretfully from intense dreams, feeling unsatisfied, interrupted. I used to consciously decide to go back into the dream and finish it off to my satisfaction before either resuming sleep or getting up. What I didn't know was that my deliberate return to a dream was a form of non-analytical dream work. I always felt better after "completing" a dream, but I never examined the process, and I certainly never asked other people whether or not they did the same thing. I've done lots of Dream Enlargement exercises. Recently, however, I've actually by-passed the need to do the exercises, at least with certain dreams. Recently, I have woken from dreams and known immediately what my unconscious wanted me to know.

Next time, I'll write a particularly vivid dream, and then show how to work with it in the context of the Intensive Journal.

My Father's Shadow

I've been thinking about the Shadow since Ellen first explained it to me-- years ago. I never understood it until recently, when I read this article on Ashok Bedi's blog, Path to the Soul:  http://www.pathtothesoul.com/articles/.

The article, Personal Shadow and World Peace, in the Articles section of the blog, says (just like Ellen explained it):

"Each one of us has an unconscious, neglected, split

off part of our personality, which we repress and

then project onto the other: onto our adversary, the

minority, the illegal immigrant, the foreigner, the

one that provokes our fear, anger, mistrust,

discomfort." 

The meaning is clear enough, but applying it to one's own life is a task that seems impossible, at first. I can hardly accept that the qualities I detest in other people are actually present in me!
Bedi continues:

"Now if we put our reflective lens on ourselves and explore what irks us about this other, in this mirror, we almost always will see a refection of our unconscious shadow self. When we hate a controlling coworker, when we blame the illegal immigrant for stealing our job, we may be coming out of our own trickster, manipulative core, when we see a certain person  as criminally inclined without evidence, we may be coming out of our own unlived criminal shadow."

Well! I must confess that I did not understand this easily with respect to my own life, my own shadow, so I applied the concept to one of my father's attitudes, and now I understand what I did not understand for years regarding his extreme prejudice.

My father spent his adult life despising people who didn't or couldn't work as much as he did, or as hard as he did, people who "blamed everyone else" for their failures or their poverty. He inveighed against "government hand-outs." He expounded disdain for people who hadn't crafted circumstances as fortunate as his own, whose talents had been lacking, whose family had eroded rather than supported efforts to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps."  My father nursed prejudices against all classes people not originating from the same white, middle-class group in which he raised me and my siblings.

One would assume that my father did not understand poverty, could not identify with people whose socio-economic background gave rise to psychological difficulties translating into social problems or deviance, in addition to mere poverty.

In fact, my father grew up in poverty. His parents-- immigrants from Italy-- accepted welfare in order to provide for their eleven children. As a child, my father did not have ten cents to attend a movie on Saturdays with the neighborhood children.  In winter, four siblings shared a bed, keeping each other warm while ice grew along the bedroom walls. Bread and tomatoes  composed many of his childhood meals. The family ate sausage only on holidays.

My father vowed that when he grew up, he would eat sausage every Sunday. Gifted with the blessed combination of ambition, talent and energy, my father distinguished himself in the business of automobile sales, taking a small dealership and growing it into a well-respected regional enterprise, winning honors for quantity and quality all along the way.

Even as a child,  I realized that my father's driving ambition originated from his terror of falling back into biting poverty.  My father realized it, too, and even said so, yet never connected his own experience of poverty with his adult rejection of people who'd never escaped the same.

The Shadow is easy enough to identity in other people, but the task at hand is to shed light upon my own as it dogs me, pulls me down, keeps me in a feedback loop that perpetuates aspects of my life that hinder me from growth as opposed to opening doors.

I've got some ideas. I actually do see it, at times, and I can admit of a portion of it to myself, but only to myself. I can't write about it, at least not here on a public blog. Occasionally, in courageous moods of optimism, I can address the issue in my private journal, but I haven't been able to keep the momentum long enough to effect an improvement. Maybe that will never happen.  Maybe the nature of the Shadow, being unconscious, can never be neutralized completely. I don't know. I'll have to research the issue.

No, I'll have to stop intellectualizing. I'll have to get back to that personal journal and make deliberate efforts to dig into my personal Shadow. Can I do this without an analyst? Can I do it using the concepts and exercises of Progoff's Intensive Journal? I think so, at least a little bit, and maybe a little bit will go a long way.

The Frustration of Potentiality

“The frustration of potentiality is the root of neurosis.  The implications of this view are large.  Individuals are not a bundle of repressions but…of possibilities, and the key to therapy lies in reactivating the process of growth.”

Source:  “The Psychology of Personal Growth,” by Ira Progoff, Ph.D., Atlantic Monthly, July 1961, p. 103.

Early in adulthood, I discovered that I hated working for a living. Friends and counselors have suggested that I never found the right jobs, work that would stimulate my talents rather than suppress them. Chronic job misplacement has kept me on the treadmill of mediocrity, if not outright neurosis (which is now called "dysfunction".)

Ironically, I've never had difficulty getting hired, and I've worked in more "career fields" than most people would care to try. I've never made a major mistake, but I've never excelled, either. I've quit nearly all of my jobs, been fired only twice-- once for attitude and once for slacking. Most of my bosses did not want to lose me. I have never regretted leaving a job, and have never gone back to say hello or discover what had happened after my departure.

Currently I am working at what I hope is my last job of necessity. I've been at it for eight long years. I have four more to endure before retirement. I don't dislike the job; it's not a bad job, and the pay is adequate. I offer no complaints about it-- I simply don't want to do it.

What I want to do is what I've always done in my "spare time" -- read, write, and create art. Those are the activities that bring out my talents, nourish my soul, and energize my spirit. Those are the activities in which I have always excelled, even on an objective level. Other people have recognized my accomplishments in art, music and writing, since childhood. I look forward to retirement, in which I plan to be free of the suffocating need to earn money for my support.

In spite that I have been able to organize and lead workshops for Progoff's Intensive Journal, I have not done so. I don't have the energy or the focus. Other workshop leaders can maintain their "day jobs" and do Progoff workshops periodically. I cannot, because I am working at a job that enervates me rather than energizes me.

The process of growth, for me, begins at quitting time, expands on days off, explodes exponentially during periods of unemployment, and will resume its trajectory the day I retire at the age of sixty-six or sooner if I can make that happen. I haven't given up on leading workshops, but I won't do it until I can devote myself to it with the attention it deserves.