Do you look for hidden messages in dreams, oracle cards, or even tea leaves? If so, you’re not crazy and you’re surely not alone. It’s natural–and often very comforting–to gain “mystical” insights and assurances that help us navigate this wild journey of life. In fact, the art of studying dreams and other forms of psychological and spiritual analysis has been practiced by humans for thousands of years. When we mindfully slow down to listen to our dreams–to really pay attention to them–we can discover their messages. From helping you get unstuck to showing you a path forward, dreams have the power to help you learn, grow, and lead your best life.

Join Dr. Carla Manly and dream expert Dan Lawrence—psychoanalyst and consultant—for an eye-opening exploration of the fascinating realm of dreams, imagination, and the creative world. Topics discussed include dream analysis, relationships, the body-mind-spirit connection, numinosity, imagination, psychotherapy, synchronicity, depth psychology, Carl Jung, dream architecture, technology, patterns, dream technology, creativity, play, intergenerational patterns, the intergenerational transmission of violence, tarot cards, oracle cards, Zen, mat surfing, and dreams.

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Additional links are in the show notes.

NAMI HelpLine: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline

 

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy from Fear: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Fear-Carla-Marie-Manly/dp/1641701218

Date Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Date-Smart-Transform-Relationships-Fearlessly/dp/1641704675

Aging Joyfully: https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Joyfully-Optimal-Relationships-Fulfillment/dp/1641701412

The Joy of Imperfect Love: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Imperfect-Love-Creating-Relationships/dp/1641709057

 

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1757477615/imperfect-love-reflection-oracle-cards

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Love-Reflection-Oracle-Cards/dp/B0D1Z5M4YK

 

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

 

Connect with Dan Lawrence:

Website: https://www.theunthoughtknown.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/_theunthoughtknown

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dan-lawrence-1537271b

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Use the Wisdom of Your Dreams to Get Unstuck with London-Based Psychoanalyst Dan Lawrence

Embrace Your Dreams to Foster Creativity, Self-Awareness, and Joy!

Do you look for hidden messages in dreams, oracle cards or even tea leaves? If so, you’re not crazy and you’re surely not alone. The art of studying dreams and other forms of psychological and spiritual analysis have been practiced by humans for thousands of years because it’s natural and often very comforting to gain insights and assurances that help us navigate this wild journey of life.

I’m joined by psychoanalyst and dream expert, Dan Lawrence who will help us explore this fascinating topic. We’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “I’ve had a series of failed relationships and I don’t know if it’s something with me or with the men I choose. After my last boyfriend moved out, I keep having strange dreams about wolves coming into my house and chewing everything to pieces. Do if there’s a message for me in these dreams?” With that question is the focus of this episode. I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly and this is Imperfect Love. Please note as this episode may contain sensitive information. Reader discretion is advised. If you need support, please see the special links.

 

 

Fascination with Understanding the Human Mind

I am joined by a very wonderful guest, Dan Lawrence. Dan, welcome to the show. You are a psychoanalyst, a consultant, and a dream expert. You’re such a wonderful yummy human being. Could you tell our readers a little bit about what makes you you?

Thank you for inviting me. What makes me me I think is a deep curiosity. In your introduction, there’s hints about the underlying patterns. From a little boy, I was fascinated by those cracks between words and what was hidden behind what is manifest in a sense. As a little boy, I didn’t speak to anyone until I was five years old. I was almost completely electively mute.

People were very worried about me, but I was very happy in a sense because I was fascinated. I was fascinated by where thoughts come from and where dreams come from and just trying to work out what is to be human and to have a mind. For instance, when my mother called out to me. She used to call me Danny. “Danny, I would be struck by this question.” What is this Danny in her mind and how does it match this moment to moment experience? I’ve never lost that curiosity. I’ve tried to find ways of expressing it and approaching that question of what it is to be human. I’m still trying. I’m not there yet.

I am with you in that journey. It is it is an ongoing question. That’s so fascinating, though, your background and being mute, so to speak, electively for the first five years of your life. It sounds as if what was going on side of you was so all absorbing that you didn’t have the need to speak to other people. There was too much going on inside.

As a young adult, I explored a monastic vocation as a way of responding and deliberately entering into that silence again. I almost became a priest in the Church of England, too. A very wise old Bishop advised me that to undertake a union training was a similar room and that you’re both listening to what people are saying but you’re listening to the unknown at the same time and to the mystery of life. Carefully nad attentively doing your best to put together the pattern behind someone’s life. It’s been a rich path for me.

I’m union trained as well. Readers, what we’re talking about are people who are trained in the works and ways of Carl Jung. I don’t want that to be a mystery to you. It’s called Depth of Psychology for reason because you go deep into the psyche. As you were saying so beautifully, Dan, you’re looking at the patterns. You’re trying to put those puzzle pieces together. The puzzle piece of life aren’t always quite cleanly put together as much as we might want them to. Any other pieces about what makes you you before we launch into our topic?

It’s funny when you ask that question because different things come into your mind. Two things just popped into my mind. One is that I’m a surfer. I love surfing. I’ve surfed all of my adult life. There’s something about surfing, In particular, I surfed floppy mats. Not stand up surfing or proper surfing, as you’d say in England. Bizarre zen light surfing involves you lying on a thin layer of air in a mat without a leash. It’s just you and the mat. You’ve got to sit alongside your terror of being out back in big waves and you’ve got to relax. Every movement that you make shift the shape of the mat to be able to move around. The idea is that you’re align with the energy and the waves. It’s another way of expressing for what life is about.

When you surf well, you don’t master anything. You align to what is already there in nature. The other thing that’s maybe important to say that’s popped into my mind. To go back to CG Jung’s work, I think his work quite also to the role of the dead in our lives, especially his Red Book, which was the publication of his private diaries, his drawings and his mandalas and the cornerstone of his work. I think that work is a lament of the dead in that sense. It’s pointing us back towards this layer of depth psyche that is also about having a relationship with that which has gone before us and staying connected to that, too. They’re the two things that come to my mind.

When you surf well, you don't master anything. You align with what is already there in nature. Share on X

That’s beautiful. I have a big copy of the Red Book about five feet away from me and it is a beautiful work. On all levels. It’s a beautiful work of his. Thank you for that lovely background on just a little bit of who you are. I do have to say that piece about you being on the mat, and I made a note. I’m going to paraphrase it because it’s so beautiful. You don’t master anything. You align with whatever is already there. That’s just so beautiful because in many ways, that’s the journey of life.

We want to master it. We want it to align to us. I had to highlight that beautiful piece that you offered us because that is a lot of that journey of life. I remember this past summer, I was learning to do paddle boarding. Different from what you were doing, but in a sense the same. It’s being very attuned to what the waves are asking you to do, what the waves want you to do, and how they want you to move. You have to let go of ego and let go of thought and just feel into it.

How Dreams Can Be Used to Understand Patterns

Many times, that’s what life is asking us to do. It’s just to let go of trying to force things and instead align with what is there. What a rich beginning. I’m so excited. When we look at the reader’s question and that idea because there are pieces to it. It seems like such a simple question but it’s rather deep because there’s the series of failed relationships. It was a female writing in. Her not being sure necessarily of what’s happening, is it her? Is it something else? Are the dreams she’s having about wolves coming in and chewing on everything or knowing on everything. What’s the significance? Take that in any order you like, please.

We have this technology, which is dreams. I’m so pleased that you brought that up to date because all that you and I both said about different, it’s a rations of surfing that relates to dreams that we have this technology, this nighttime technology that if we orient ourselves to those dreams in a way that is open and aligned to somebody’s inherent within the dream. We might just live our life forward a little bit. I think in psychology and in our field of psychotherapy in that sense, had a tendency to chop dreams up into different pieces, which is very emblematic of our society in our social lives and all of that.

There’s a way of approaching dreams that is very humble and very empty-handed that opens up to the field of the dream itself and gently connects the threads of our life. I didn’t write down the dream, but I got somewhere floating around my mind. Before the dream, you’re reader had mentioned this pattern, so we’re back to patterns again, this pattern of relationships. I happen to think that we are born into different fields. Do you know the saying the ghosts in the nursery? It’s an old saying.

If you think about how careful the parents prepare the nursery for the baby to come home from hospital, everything’s in his place. It’s all set up. The teddies are there. You got this a lot of care and a lot of thought goes into receiving a baby into a home. At some point that night, the baby is left on his/her own in a sense. That’s when the ghosts of the nursery appeared. These undigested chunks of emotion. These things that can’t be thought about in the family. This ancestral lineage of ways of relating to each other. The history in all kinds of things.

That forms a field around us. We’re born into fields and there’s astrological fields. There’s familial fields, and cultural fields and then there’s something deeply personal for that particular person or particular baby. One of the tops of life is to understand and separate out these separate fields and our lives. They’re like psychological atmosphere that permeate and surround us. One way to understand them is to look at patterns in relationships in that sense. There’s many ways of doing that. One is to have a narrative like you’re reader.

I’d like to know more about a particular shape and total quality of those relationships. How do they begin? How do they end? What is the process of that? We can connect that with the dream because you’re reader brought both the pattern and the dream together. It’s likely that some resonance between them. As you know there’s many different ways of approaching dreams. There’s this Freudian, Carlian, Jungian, dream work, process work and all kinds of things that were exposed to. They all rely upon a an open spirit and a stance of not knowing.

 

 

I practice that for many years from my early twenties to now. Zen is a practice of simply what’s not even not knowing. It’s not knowing. You practice non knowing, this empty-handed negative capability. That’s very useful. Before you try and make something of the dream, you allow the dream to come alive in you. It’s useful to picture the images in the dream. Approach the dream almost to actively Imagine it forward to see how we unfold in that sense.

We have symbols in the dream. We have images. Images are important. Images represent something to us. Most of all, we have an image of a wolf in the dream. We might have all kinds of personal reactions to that image. We may have an experience of coming across a wall on Dartmoor. I’m in Southwest of England, on the edge of Dartmoor, which is a wild place. We might be afraid of wolves. We might have a particular favorite fairy tale that we have a connection to like riding hood or something like that.

Before we start to clean the dream or start to tether it to our particular life, it’s worth staying with the objective quality of the dream. What is a wolf in nature? Let’s go back to nature. It’s aligned with what is. With the dreamer, I would have a think about what is a wolf to me and what is her dream and a wolf to her.

I would appeal to encyclopedias and look around nature about what is the life of a wolf. Where is this wolf in the dream? Is that aligned to where a wolf would usually be? How does a wolf eat? Does it chew its food or does it tend to tear its food? The dream architect has the wolf chewing. You look for all these objective qualities to the dream and then start to tie it to the qualities in the relationship. It’s difficult to say much more about that without knowing about that dream.

You have said so much because I also work with dreams in my practice. It doesn’t surprise me that we’re aligned because we have similar training. As you were explaining it, readers, I want to pause for a second. If some of what Dan is saying seems unfamiliar like the ghosts in the nursery and these patterns that are passed down. I don’t want to spend too much time in the cognitive rational realm. We do know through research about the intergenerational transmission of patterns

For example, looking at the negative side, unhealthy side, if the father is an alcoholic and yells at the kids and the wife, those patterns get passed down. The kids absorb that trauma and maybe absorb those behaviors and pass those behaviors down to their own kids. We can see if we get away from that specific realm or look that it could happen, it happens in so many positive ways. We can see that loving energy can be passed down from a grandmother to a grandchild and loving traditions.

We’re always passing energy. Dan is just explaining it to us in another way about that love and that image of the ghosts in the babies room. Going back to your introduction, Dan. There might have been so many ghosts around you from birth through five that you were so busy being entertained by them and absorb. What do you think of that? Is that a possibility?

It’s funny you say that because I’ve come full circle with that. It’s an objective or a subjective fact. I did see lots of ghosts in my childhood. I experienced many things that I might describe as PSI phenomena in terms of parapsychology and stuff like that but I don’t think it’s particularly paranormal. I think we’re very quick to develop this more left brain way of being in the world. Our society is speaking of it in that sense. When that babies brain triples in weight the first thirteen months of life, a lot of that is the cognitive side of things and the reflective capacity. This capacity to categorize experience and put language to our experience.

We're very quick to develop a more left-brained way of being in the world. Our society is speeding up in that sense. Share on X

There was something intuitive in my resistance to language. I just chose not to. It help me stay in arena or perception that is a little more limited in that sense. It’s been very helpful for me in terms of my work as it’s turned out. My first career was on the stock market. In many ways, I was a pattern reader on the stock market. I would seek. I would make use of dreams. I would see information in different places.

So I have this very uncanny ability to predict things and yet, there was something about the world of the stock trading that was deeply injurious to my spirit in the way that I see life. I was working at odds with myself. I was both this potentially a good trader and effective trader. They’re very well initially, but the point that which it came to my attention. It was odds with this little boy and he’s way of being in the world is, “I lost all my money in three months. I just wiped the whole account.” It was liberating because it enabled me. I studied theology and then stepped into the world of union psychology and training.

We have something else in common. Before, I was a psychologist. I was in a field that was also injurious to my spirit. Readers, if you’re in a part of your life where there’s something that feels like you’re injuring. Whether it’s a work situation, a romantic situation, or a family situation. That’s such an important piece for us to think about just to put out there. Pay attention to whether or not you’re in situations that are allowing your spirit, you’re being to grow, or if they’re injuring your spirit.

That’s why I wrote my first book. Joy from Fear was based on my doctoral dissertation into how we get held back by life, by ourselves by engaging in things that we think we’re doing the right thing but we’re doing it out of fear. We are injuring ourselves and so much of our journey and life. There were parts of dream work in that book, where it’s so important to be able to pay attention to the messages from within in order to break off the shackles that we’ve either put on to ourselves or other people have somehow tried to put onto us.

The Personal Nature of Dream Interpretation

I’m very aligned with you on that that we do want to pay attention. That sounds as if the person who wrote is looking at that. There’s something about her relationships that are injuring her. They’re not satisfactory. She is not happy with them. How can she find messages possibly in this dream? I love the path you took us down, which is to look at those symbols within the dream. I have a question for you.

Many clients when they come to me and they’ll say something like, “Can I talk to you about a dream I keep having?” “Sure, you can.” They’ll say, “I looked it up in a dream dictionary and I’m not getting an answer. It doesn’t resonate with me from the dream dictionary.” I said, “That’s because dream dictionaries do their best to give us a brush stroke, but dreams are deeply personal.”

We have to keep working with that dream to make space for that dream. For that dream that appeared to your unique psyche to make it very much find the meaning within it. That dream that we’re talking about, the dream of the wolves coming into the house and knowing, I think it was knowing at everything. It might mean something very different to hunter who’s having that dream. As you were saying, what do wolves mean to the dreamer?

Also, to you as the analyst, so that there can be some massaging of the energy to help the dreamer find the answer that resonates with her. I think that’s the power of dreams when we give them space. Sometimes, it’s also not just space but time. They come to us and they unfurl themselves because dreams are messengers. What do you think of that?

I align what you’re saying and the messages of a field in which the dreamer is embedded. Dreams often have a compensatory quality, so they might offer a opposite view to the conscious attitude that the dreamer holds about relationships. This is also in the dream, the water’s coming to the house. It’s something about the home of that person in a sense, which can be their body. It can be their sense of self and many different things.

You have to have this to improve around dreams in a sense. That’s why it’s not just a case of chopping it up. Although, it’s very interesting and important to think about the objective quality of the wolf and the other wolves and the chewing and the personal meaning for the dreamer. Also, the therapist potentially they’re there telling the dream. There’s the myth and the symbol of a wolf.

 

 

For instance, in the Christian tradition. You have often the lamb. The lamb is innocence, but the wolf isn’t just the destruction of the wolf. It carries some wisdom and some intelligence. The wolf is, in many cultures, a diabolical creature but also one of the spiritual insight, too. It’s a mixed. What kind of wolves are they? Are they a gray wolf? Are they indigenous to that person’s country? Are they wolves, that when we look into the symbol or maybe you might ask the dreamer to paint the wolf or to bring the wolf to life and then the image of the wolf is a surprise.

It’s a black wolf and they didn’t understand that about the wolf until they’ve embodied it in that way. We might took a piece of work together. Where do these come from? What kind of life that they live? If they break into someone’s home, what are they doing? There’s so many ways of taking that up. I’ve also been very much influenced by the work of Arnold Mandell, the protests work. I’m very interested in bringing the wolf to life in many different ways.

In the dream, the wolves are breaking in to the home. What would it be like to embody the image of the wolf and to move around the room? It’s filled with the power to intuit the wolf’s intention in the dream. There’s so many ways you could stay with that dreams for weeks and months and bring the dream to life. You don’t arrive at one solution or one translation or interpretation, but the dream lives. It’s like in depth psychology, you have this idea of living out the this particular diamond. That is not deep. This spirit of your life that is seeking expression in you. It might be there’s a wolf-like quality that needs to break in to that dream as life. They need to be more like in their relationships potentially. Who knows?

 

 

I like that piece. I remember Clarissa Pinkola Estés, her book Women Who Run with the Wolves. I’m such a fan of her work, but it gave me a new respect because I probably grew up being afraid of wolves because of Little Red Riding Hood. When you see that wolves are so wise, they have so much power and so much wisdom within their daily lives. I love the energy that you’re giving this because it sounds that many people think a dream is one and done. You have it whatever you wake up and you move on with your day.

When we’re looking at dreams as messengers and as you’re describing it, we then form a relationship with the dream. A give and take where it keeps informing us. Sometimes it eventually subsides and sometimes it will come back later. I’m thinking of a client I worked with. We did some quite a lot of dream work, but she had come to me, originally because she had been a long-term relationship. The individual betrayed her and a dream came then had already found somebody else and then went on to that other life.

She had this dream of being in a school bus. It went on to the beach and then this person appeared and sat her on the sand. We worked with that dream in almost every session. We were working on the things but it was a nice foundation. As it turned out, what she came to see as that dream was almost not for telling the future, but as she worked it. She realized she got onto the sand. It was unfamiliar. She got in there and in an unexpected way but she didn’t fall on the sand.

She didn’t get taken up by the ways but she stood. As we worked with a dream, we realized she had this power to stand, to move on with her life and she surely has and surely did. When we see that dreams when they’re given respect. When they’re giving respect as I say as messengers and I do believe we have what I call Detritus dreams.

Using Dreams to Live Life Forward

They are dreams that are just trying to get rid of something that was bothering us in the day that need to do a lot of introspection. I do believe there are many dreams that come to us to offer us comfort and reassurance. You had said early that we can use our dreams to live life forward. What do you mean by that?

 

 

I expect the dreams come from, as I mentioned, the minds. It’s outside of time. This unkind things happen in a sense. We’re all familiar with what many people called cognitive dream. We might have a dream that predicts something and days later, it’s unfolding. Where it’s like, “I’ve dreamt this.” I think dreams, or whatever the dream architect is that puts these dreams together.

It comes from a layer of mine that is quite possibly past, present, and future that collapsed into one in that sense. You just spoke about this and it’s a lovely example of your client and the dream of the sand and the release of energy. Especially what Jung called luminous dreams. This luminous charge to dreams. There’s certain dreams that carry a quanta of energy. That very Jungnian, that very Carl Jung movement of circling around the dream until you have that heart moment in a sense. That conserve energy is released. It can be felt.

Dreams come from a layer of mind that is quite possibly past, present, and future, all collapsed into one. Share on X

Life is a blockage removed or suddenly, you get something about where your life is going and you can step more boldly into it in that sense. I’ll give a personal example. I lived in Malaysia for four years. Malaysia is a wonderful place. They have wonderful food and wonderful people. It’s a lovely part of the world. It was during COVID and I feel ill. I had a catastrophic reaction to the COVID vaccine and I was rushed into a Malaysian hospital at the height of COVID. It’s very fortunate.

I was in a hospital situation in the ICU unit where nobody spoke English. My wife and children weren’t able to visit and I had no way of contacting them. It was painful and a lot of fear and panic in me at the time. At the same time, there was a dream-like aspect to it. I laid there in that bed and spontaneously, the first thought I had once I was aware of where I was and the situation the gravity on it. The first thought was, “This is a dream in my body.”

I was having blood clots throughout my body around in my lungs and around my heart. If a client brought a dream and said, “I had this dream that I was taken into hospital with all these clots in my body.” I would think, what is clotting about? How does the body clot? What causes a clot? What is clotting in this person’s life? I had lots of time in my head. I just lay there and thought, “Let’s go. Let’s go looking at this dream.” Where are the barriers in my life? Where are my clots? Where does my energy start?

It took me a good six weeks to work it and then I was okay. I have to say very straightforwardly, I have my frustration still at that time. I came home from Malaysia. I had to return to the UK to be under a hospital team. Physically, I was depleted. Energetically, I was completely unclotted, full of light and joy. Since I’ve been back in the UK, it’s like my life has taken on a new hue of just feeling unblocked. It was a dream. It was a dream that I had to sit with. I’m stubborn, so I had to. Somehow, my dream architect had to convey that I had to be stuck somewhere to stay with it in a sense. I truly believe it.

I’m sorry for everything you endured. Yet, I can see that the beauty and it is that you ultimately became unclotted and that persists in the most joyful way. That’s a beautiful outcome and I believe that as well. Not all of our physical ailment, but a lot of those that we feel as physical ailments are related. I take a very holistic body, mind and spirit approach. Many times, a part where we are stuck in the body is akin to something that is stuck in the psyche.

I think the body dreams.

Yes, it does. Are you aware of Marion Woodman’s work?

I am.

Methods for Seeking Guidance and Reassurance

The body dreams because it is part of who we are. It has its own way of experiencing. I could talk to you forever and when you’re talking about quoting Carl Jung, I love it. You can quote him all you want, but we so back to our readers who might prefer something that they can put their hands on if they are dreaming or if they are wanting to dream more or find answers. In other forms, many people look at oracle cards or tea leaves or tarot cards or signs in their hand, the lines in their hands. Do you have any ideas or any thoughts on how people who want to find reassurance, both within the self but have a little nudge from the universe? What do you think of that?

It’s the oldest way of living that exists. We’ve moved a long way away from that. I deliberately used the word technology for dreams earlier because we don’t tend to associate technology with things that are immaterial in a sense. We tend to think of technology as this smartphone or this iPad and these things that are brilliant. It’s all here within us. Their all dream. Also, when I talk about dreams, I mean moment to moment dreamy. Its surrounding us.

As we’re talking, something catches the corner of my eye. It’s like a little fur dreaming that is there. It’s as much about trusting that, tuning in and leaning into this sense. Children are very good at this and animals. Watch an animal. In my life, in terms of my practice as a psycho therapist, I think much of it stands from, I don’t know if it’s true in the US but in the UK, you have to undertake a two-year infant observation.

There’s different aspects to that. Part of that is you’re going to a family from before the birth of the child on a week-to-week basis for two hours, wherever the child. Wherever this infant is, until they’re two. You follow and you observe. You observe very carefully and pay very close attention to the development, the interactions and the nation mind that’s developing in this baby. There’s two different real aspects there. One is you observe a mindful me and you can link that theory and stuff that’s important about training to be a therapist and stuff like that.

The other point is the quality of attention because this baby has a very different mind to yours. They’re very dependent, which is a much more interconnected and much more filled like experience of things. You don’t make any notes when you’re with the baby. When you go home, you make some notes of what you’ve observed. My experience of that for the first 6 to 10 months of a baby’s life, I would sketch images or I would write jazz-like poetry.

This fragments of thoughts emerging in a sense. In architecture, this is you and this is me. This is all of us. Right at the early building blocks of our mind is this capacity to make sense of the world in this very pictorial, very poetic, non-linear way and it’s available to all of us. We just need to find what way works for us. By the way, I loved it so much. I repeated it. I did four years of observation because I just found it so fascinating. Go and watch a baby for an hour. If it’s too strange, watch dogs and cats.

Right at the early building blocks of our mind is this capacity to make sense of the world in this very pictorial, poetic, non-linear kind of way. Share on X

They’re embedded in fields and they pick up so much information. There’s a technical term for that attention. The co-aesthetic attention that babies have. That’s that way of taking in the world but doesn’t sublimate everything into I’m seeing this or hearing this or smelling this. It’s everything at once. It’s this dream-like way of experience in things. It’s a bit like if you have a good tarot reader. There’s different ways of reading tarot. There’s ways.

I’m with you on that. My giant schnauzer is at my feet.

I have a mini schnauzer.

Do you? Freedom is my giant schnauzer and we walk every morning. He sees, feels, and smells so much more. You’re right, there is that childlike effervescence but also that ability to absorb so much, see so much, and feel so much and it’s not segregated. As you were talking earlier just a little bit ago, I was getting quite sad because we have put so much emphasis in this world on the left brain, which is “rationale” that I believe we have sacrificed so much in the way of gut instinct.

Those glimmers that you’re talking about and realizing that there are so much more to who we are as humans. I’m looking at the readers who’s doubting her dream in a sense. It sounds she felt enough to write in but when we see that we are so much more, there’s a part of me that’s a lead eye that wishes technology had not taken over our lives the way it has.

If we can become more integrated and give more credence to that which are gut is telling us and our senses are telling us, which is another reason it’s interesting. We were talking about wolves, because that’s the big piece it. wolves have that knowing. They are so intelligent. They are so wise. I think we have a lot to learn from our animal teachers in the wild because there’s a lot. For the individual who wrote in, there’s a lot in that wolf dream that is asking her to slow down as you said.

The wolves are cheering. They’re digesting something. I imagine wolves of the tier.

Yes, I think they do.

Take it in very quickly. These wolves imagery are chewing things. They’re bringing attention to the capacity to tune in that sense, something to digest. As you say slow down. I was reminded as you were talking of the philosopher and neuro psychologist who has written some incredible long books on the subject of the different brain hemispheres, the left and the right and the interaction between them. The way it should be is that the world presents itself to us to our right brain. It’s the right hemisphere of our brain, the right side that can take in the world in its holistic wholeness.

We’re supposed to represent it and categorizing, either that’s a dog or that’s a giant schnauzer and he’s doing this. all of that and then we’re supposed to hand it back to the right brain. We’re living in a world where we too quickly hand over and then we stay there. We’re very careful when we’re approaching our dreams.

To answer your question of how to open to this more, it’s got to be a true opening. It’s not going to, I go open it so that I can improve myself or forever new iterations and new mountains to climb in a sense. It is a return to our animal nature and to our instinct as you say to our God, to this childlike fascination with everything that we’re taking and imaginary friends. The imaginal as a noun, as a place that we visit and listen to.

 

 

It’s so wonderful that you use the word imaginal. I was just about to say that imaginal world. I love how you use childlike, which is so different from childish. Childlike is the curious, the openness, and the wonder. Readers, you can do this in your everyday life by remembering or making time to play. As you were saying, Dan, making time to sketch and draw. For me, I see the world.

My husband and I were having this conversation. I said, “Honey, when someone’s telling you a story, do you make pictures in your mind as they’re talking?” He looked at me and said, “No.” I said, “I never realized that about you. I do.” When somebody’s telling me a story, my brain is painting pictures. Give yourself permission to paint pictures in your mind and to move your body like a child and play the more we practice all of these things.

In the US, Dan, to answer your question, no. In the realm of our training in Psychology, you pick to do your training in a certain realm. Unfortunately, I did not have. Although, in my own life, I have observed my own kids and watch them move their life but not with that objective stance with which you were doing at that objective curious visiting. I wish we trained in that way. That would be phenomenal, but no, we don’t.

It’s just amazing to talk to you and hear these different perspectives and give our readers and the individual who wrote in and understanding that the dream world matters and we can make it a bigger part of our lives and use our dreams as you did to get unclogged, get uncluttered, and get unstuck because I believe like other forms the psyche and the gut are being inside us knows so many things.

Many times, that rationale left brain gets in the way of us doing. When you were a stockbroker, I would imagine there was a part of somebody in your life saying, “This is fantastic. You’re cut out for this field,” but somewhere in you, there was a deep knowing that all the money in the world doesn’t make this a good fit for me.

It was probably easier ways than losing all my money. That’s just me. I was reminded again. There’s a million-year-old man and woman. There was a million-year-old human being in us that has access to all of that knowledge and all of those lives, back to the lament of the dead. All of all of this, what it is to be human and in this world. Marie-Louise von Franz , one of the early young years and again, a brilliant woman. An incredible interpreter of fairy tales and of dreams. She would argue that if we pay attention to our dreams, the dream architect favors us and offer us bigger and more energetic dreams. It is worth our while.

The Importance of Stepping Back

Marie-Louise von Franz in my collection behind me along all of my other young people. She’s fabulous. Readers, I will put a few of those links because if you find this interesting, there is so much to look at. Memories, Dreams, and Reflections is one of Carl Young’s enduring books that’s very palatable. Dan, thank you so much for your time. I could talk to you for years. Not just days. Are there any other pieces you’d like to highlight for our readers?

I don’t think anything new. It’s just a real heartfelt invitation to take a step back. This notion, this corrected to psychology to this notion that somehow taking a step back is a regression. I can’t remember who said it, but it always struck me as this good wisdom. Regression is always in service of adaptation. Quite often, life is about and life confronts us with thorny issues or patterns get stuck over and over again.

We tend to have this sense and technology mirrors this, that we have to move forward. Often, what we’re being invited into is a step back in our life, back into an earlier time and back into this childhood, this childlike wonder of way of perceiving things. There is gold. There is in these images in this escrowed ordered way of receiving things in the poetic. There is life.

Often, what we're being invited into is a step back in our life, back into an earlier time, back into this childhood, this childlike wonder way of perceiving things. Share on X

It’s so much so much and taking that step back. For some reason, as you were talking, I was getting an image of sometimes, we get so close to that edge of the cavern or the pool or the pond or the lake or the ocean. When we take a step or two back, we see more. We notice more. There’s more to see. We get a different perspective, so I’m a big fan of stepping back. Readers, give yourself permission. Going backwards is not regression. It’s a different perspective. It’s giving yourself space. Certainly, if you’re stepping back into a more childlike place of wonder, awareness, delight and curiosity, what could be better than that? Dan, where can our readers find you?

I have a small website called TheUnthoughtKnown.com. It’s not always kept up to date. This talks here and there. They can search under my name. There’s a little piece of writing that I often come back to that I’m quite proud of. At the time, I wasn’t. It’s called the Art of Mat Surfing. That’s to be found in the Heretic Magazine. It nicely enough explicates my stance to the mind and to a way of living.

Dan, thank you so much for sharing your time, your gorgeous energy, and your wisdom with us. I’m so grateful.

Me, too. Thank you.

Readers, thank you for sharing your time and energy with us.

 

Important Links

• Dan Lawrence – LinkedIn
• Red Book
• Joy from Fear
• Women Who Run with the Wolves
• Memories, Dreams, and Reflections
• TheUnthoughtKnown.com
• Art of Mat Surfing
• “Accelerating Wisdom” Episode 7: Dreams and Synchronicity with Dan Lawrence
• Is It All A Dream? with Dan Lawrence | What is a Good Life? #19
• The Feminine in Fairy Tales
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Instagram – Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• X – Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• Facebook – Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• LinkedIn – Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• Youtube – Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• TikTok – Dr. Carla Marie Manly

 

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised. Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline).

https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline

 

About Dan Lawrence

I’m Dan Lawrence and I’m a highly qualified, consultant psychotherapist and depth psychological researcher living in London. I have trained in silence with as much rigour as with verbal methods, and have studied individual and collective approaches to dreaming across a breadth of depth psychological traditions. I hold full registrations / accreditations with the British Psychoanalytic Council, the UKCP Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis and the UK College of Psychoanalysts. I write from post-Jungian, depth psychological and contemplative perspectives.

“The Unthought Known” is a phrase borrowed from the British psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas. His idea originates from the psychoanalytic encounter between analyst and analysand. For me, like all ideas that hint at a fundamental truth about psyche, it has resonances in other spaces and contexts too. In short, the “Unthought Known” hints at a purposeful bringing-into-view of something known in the emotional, physical and perhaps imaginal life of the individual (or organization), that has eluded formulation. Once this something is brought forward from its primary undifferentiated or proto-thinking state, or out of shadow (in a Jungian sense), it makes a subtle difference to how things are subsequently understood or taken up in thought. It discloses new meaning, a turning over of the soil of thought so that new ideas, questions or realities might emerge.

Academic Qualifications:

• Postgraduate diploma Jungian theories of human development; Birkbeck, University of London
• Postgraduate diploma Freudian theories of human development; Birkbeck, University of London
• Bachelor of Arts: Theology; Kings College, University of London
• Postgraduate diploma Rogerian psychotherapy; University of East Anglia
• Postgraduate diploma Cognitive psychotherapy; Reading University

Registrations and Accreditations:

• British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC); Jungian Psychodynamic Psychotherapist
• The College of Psychoanalysts (Uk); Jungian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
• National Advisor (Depth Psychology); British Transpersonal Association
• Council of Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis; Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist (UKCP)
• Confederation for Analytical Psychology (CAP)
• Jungian Psychotherapist