How to Grow Sovereignty of Thought

Dreaming better lives requires inner reflection and trusting a walk through the shadows will bring us to illumination of not only our SELVES, but the ways in which we operate. Why pursue this knowledge? Because in figuring out what is programmed in, what are old protective patterns and true values, is a practice which opens not only the world around you, but within you, freeing you up for wider movement within both. This new space greatly increases sovereignty of thought and a greater ability to view new information from a macro level.

Not only do I closely record, interact with and follow my dreams of night, I also pursue and interpret waking dreams in this effort of self-reflection.

For example, recently I was fishing with my son. He likes to stay a really long time, so I often bring a book along. This week, I brought Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols.

I’ve read the book before, but tend to find new revelation in books of worth, when I reread and find different meanings to match my own state of growth. Besides, it’s a paperback that fit nicely into my fanny pack 

My written ramblings from the shore are DAYdreams born of the words I’m reading.

We underline and highlight what is ours—the passages we have lived. What resonates with us in a particular moment and I wonder if when we’re very old if most of our favorite books will be almost entirely underlined?
And marvel that in re-picking up a book, we see where we’ve learned and memorized a next line and use different colors of ink—red, blue, green, over the course of many years.

In all emotions, anger, depression, acceptance and love I see myself in the pages—in interacting with the words on the page and a careful evaluation of my loose associations (the thoughts stirred by the reading).

We have for ourselves [aging women] because we have grown too brown a forest. A forest most men wouldn’t want to have to work—thickets and drop-offs, spiders, flies and slugs, but the spawning salmon live here! “Bush soul,” Jung writes and I think, yes, souls born of the bush! The power in both giving birth and waterfalls of soothing love.

According to Jung, medicine man Achumani says without such experience, man is an ordinary Indian nobody. Instead his phallus ought “to penetrate from the known into the unknown, seeking a spiritual message of deliverance and healing.

Anger in the next lines of freewrite and in response to this photo, I write my next thoughts:

If I were ever to get a tattoo, and I am not so inclined, I’d get an erect penis on my upper right forearm—high enough to cover for job interviews and low enough everyone will see if I’m wearing a short sleeve shirt, or sporting my cellulite at the Seaside Sunset Empire Pool.

Think of all the women who have to look at bare-breasted women tatted onto their husbands sagging arms.
Just think how it would be if men had to grow old and flaccid, fingering the outlines of an always bigger and more functional cock on a wife’s arm, wondering, can I ever please her?

Here, I see, in my later interpretation of waking dream that I am projecting the loss of connection with the man that I was in love with and felt angry at his recent departure from what I thought was our spiritual union. So too, my resentment towards men being in power is highlighted in the turning the tables on who needs to be sexually desirable, how, and in tune with which social laws.

In working dreams, both waking and sleep, with another partner, friend, whomever, my dream teacher, Robert Moss, has instructed that we ought to preface interpreting the others vision by stating, in my dream of your dream I see such and such happening. This is because only the dreamer really knows his/her own story and we all project our own experiences onto each other. At the same time, others' interpretations give us valuable feedback about our blind-spots.

So, in order to increase your own sovereignty of thought, practice paying special attention to both the sleeping and waking dialogue you are having with yourself on a continual basis. I find writing helps, as it forces me to get the messages out and allows me to come back later to interpret from a different frame of mind. Space allows us to see!