ABSTRACT

Dream Mentors: Spiritual Lessons We Learn and Teach in Dreams

David Gordon, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice and founder of The Dreamwork Institute in Norfolk, VA. He has co-hosted the public radio program DreamWorks and written a monthly column on dreams for Visions Magazine in the Norfolk, VA. Area. David has been conducting dreamsharing groups and workshops for the past 15 years with particular emphasis on the relationship between dreams and Mythic Journey. He is Membership Chair for the Board of ASD.

Summary of Presentation

This is a three-part workshop that will focus on mentoring and being mentored in our dreams. Each workshop highlights one of three archetypal spiritual lessons—essential to our emotional and spiritual growth—that dream mentors teach us or that we teach others: the need to release control, judgement and attachment.

Learning Objectives.

• Becoming familiar with the three archetypal dream motifs that dream mentors teach:

• Releasing Control: Honoring Surrender
• Releasing Judgement: Honoring Compassion
• Releasing Attachment: Honoring Grief

• Understanding why these three core lessons are essential for our emotional and spiritual growth.

• Learning to Identify the two main types of mentors that teach these lessons and when they occur in our learning process.

Evaluation questions:

1. Name the three archetypal dream lessons that dream mentors teach.
2. State why these lessons promote out emotional and spiritual growth
3. Describe the two types of mentors present in our dreams and when they occur in our learning process.

Abstract 

This is a three-part workshop that will focus on mentoring and being mentored in our dreams. Each workshop highlights one of three archetypal spiritual lessons—essential to our emotional and spiritual growth—that mentors teach us or that we teach others in our dreams: These lessons—consistently taught In both mainstream and indigenous spiritual traditions—emphasize the necessity of releasing ego strategies that stand in the way of our growth including the need to:

• Release Control: Honor Surrender
• Release Judgement: Honor Compassion
• Release Attachment: Honor Grief

One two-hour workshop will be devoted to each of these lessons. The workshops will also demonstrate how we perceive the mentors who teach these lessons as enemies just as often as we view them as allies. Threatening dream mentors—often referred to elsewhere as shadow figures—usually appear as we are still resisting the notion that our life must change. Thus, those who initially guide us are viewed as suspect and untrustworthy.

Through didactic examples provided by the presenter and experiential dreamwork, participants will find that when we practice mindfulness of the values our mentors teach us, we are transformed, become mentors ourselves and model the importance of these lessons for others in our dreams and waking life.

Experiential group work will utilize a modified Taylor type approach with the goal of teaching participants how to identify and work with different types of dream motifs.

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