We are ALL “inspirational dreamers”! When I launched my blog on Facebook, I asked prominent dreamers and authors to share the story of their journey with dreams with my followers. It was so well received that I wanted to expand it into a regular series for my blog so more people would see it. The truth is, when we share our dreams and our experiences with dreaming, we inspire others. To see how you can inspire others scroll down to the first post from June 17, 2015 on the topic. In the meantime, meet Jean …..
This week’s Inspirational Dreamer is Jean Campbell. Jean is a pioneer in Consciousness Studies, CEO of The iMAGE Project, founder of The World Dreams Peace Bridge, and 2006-2007 President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Her latest book, Group Dreaming: Dreams to the Tenth Power was published in 2006. Jean was gracious enough to appear on my radio show Dream Investigator and is a source of energy, light, laughter and wisdom at every IASD conference! (Plus we share a love of Jane Roberts’ The Nature of Personal Reality!)
Do you remember any childhood dreams? If so, what’s the earliest?
I recalled my first dream at age four, a lucid dream of flying down the stairs in my childhood home. It was so much fun that I did it all night long. Unfortunately, when I told my family that I’d spent the night flying down the stairs “and I didn’t even hurt myself,” they laughed and told me it was “just a dream. I did not recall another dream until I was in my twenties.
When did you first get interested in understanding your dreams? How did that unfold for you?
Before the dreams mentioned above, I had begun to read Carl Jung and Edgar Cayce, sparking my interest in altered states of consciousness. In quick succession, one night, I had three dreams involving archetypes so irresistible to me that I simply had to discover what they meant.
How did dreams play a role in your life, whether in decision making or in healing?
By the time I became Director of the Poseidia Institute in Virginia Beach in my early thirties, I had learned a fair amount about dream work; however, faced with the question of how to get people interested in a nonprofit organization dealing with consciousness studies I quickly caught on to the idea that dreams are the one “altered state of consciousness” all people share. and most people are comfortable to explore. That led to my first book Dreams Beyond Dreaming, published in 1981. Even though this was just at the very beginning of the current popular interest in dreams and dreaming, it was clear to me from the public response to that book that people were eager to understand more about dreams.
If you could give one piece of advice to those who are just starting to listen to their dreams, what would it be?
The dream work technique I teach and facilitate is called DreamWork/BodyWork because it involves working with the dream with the entire body, not just the logical mind. Something indicated by recent research in psychotherapy is that “talk therapy” does not work as well with survivors of trauma (and the statistics on trauma are devastating) as nonverbal and creative techniques tend to work. Also true is that studies on learning demonstrate that movement assists assimilation of information. My advice then, in working with dreams of any type, is to feel the dream by moving through it in some way (walking, dancing, drawing, gestalt…) And find some friends to do it with.
Anything else you’d like to share about dreams?
You might be interested in the activities of the World Dreams Peace Bridge, an international group I founded in 2001 (www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org) On July 2nd, 2015 the Peace Bridge invited all dreamers to join us for Drum Dance and Dream for Peace both at the 5th World Children’s Festival on the National Ellipse in Washington, DC, but also globally. See our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Drum-Dance-and-Dream-for-Peace/189189004426632 for more information.
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