Through a Jungian Lens

The Swimmer - March 23, 1998

This painting was my recording of a dream.  Sometimes I record dreams with words, sometimes with paintings, sometimes, I record them in my dreams and realise later that the dream never took an outer world form.  In the dream world, nothing is really all that straight forward for me.  Everything is metaphoric.  Like many people, my dreams end up having no recognizable message for me.  That isn’t something that concerns me as I know that the “Work” of the dream is to process life, both inner and outer, so that there is some internal integration.

Sometimes, I get to glimpse, obliquely, at what is going on and why it is going on.  The awareness doesn’t change too much of what I do, but it does allow me to feel a bit more comfortable with the processing and the direction.  I have to admit that I don’t “religiously” record all of my dreams.  I don’t have the patience or the need or the desire to do so.  Perhaps that is just an excuse to give in to my lack of attention to these things.  Perhaps it is simply that I trust in my own instincts to recognise when I need to do dream work.  In the end, all that matters is that I am okay with myself.