Fall 2019/Winter 2020
Vol. 32 No. 4/Vol. 33 No. 1
Earth Dreaming
Karen Jaenke, Editor
The earth-human relationship is the most pressing and encompassing issue of our time. Dreams, expressions of pure nature, offer inspiration during this dark, chaotic phase of decay in Western civilization.
ABSTRACTS
Fall 2019/Winter 2020
Vol. 32 No. 4/Vol. 33 No. 1
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Almeida, L. (2020). Myth of the Earth. ReVision, 32(4), 25-30. doi:10.4298/REVN. 32(4)/33(1) 25-30
“Myth of the Earth” succinctly tells the story – in paintings and words – of our planet’s inception, evolution and possible future return to the source through involution and depicts the different stages of our planet’s evolution as seen from outer space. The cyclical reality of life is highlighted through the series of images of the changing planet. The paintings were completed parallel to the artist’s giving birth to a child who would also grow to capacity and someday die, just as she would. Like Earth, we are part of Nature’s cycles. Acceptance of death and the return of matter to energy is viewed as another stage in the cycle of life’s maturation.
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Chalquist, C.. (2020). Ecological Complexes: Wounded Places, Wounded People. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 31-41. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.31-41
Although Jung brought discussion of the anima mundi (World Soul) back into depth psychology, we still tend to see the lands we live on as inanimate. Nor has depth psychology focused much on the psychic impact of environmental destruction of the type now ravaging so much of Earth’s surface. Introduced is the concept of ecological complexes: points of deep environmental wounding that resonate into the human psyche. Methods for tracing human sufferings back to the pain of place are now being assembled and used in the field. Sensitivity to ecological complexes offers a new understanding of how intimately we interact with land and place and suggests an ecology of the heart that moves beyond considerations of sustainability.
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Davenport, K. M. (2020). TerraPlaces: Enlivening Relationship with Place. ReVision 32(4)/33(1), 42-48. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.42-48
Regular, sustained, and intimate contact with natural places, combined with increased awareness of and attention to place, leads to shifts in consciousness. These shifts can be subtle or pronounced depending on the level of contact and depth of awareness. The TerraPlaces project invited participants to spend regular time in a self-selected place in nature and to keep a journal and share in an online forum about their experiences. During the first five months of the TerraPlaces project, participants demonstrated rapid shifts (both inner and outer), increased intimacy, a change in their levels of attention, and increased community.
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Irwin, L. (2020). Earth Dreaming, World Awakening. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 1-5. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.1-5
An overview of the core idea of Earth Dreaming and Earth Awakening as seen from a transpersonal perspective. I address the issues of future dreaming as both an individual and collective phenomenon whose consequences depend on a capacity to mobilize action based on dream reflection and participant knowing. I also address the moral aspects of dreaming and issues of diversity on a global scale. I see Earth Dreaming as an expression of a global, evolutionary process which requires every dreamer to be a conscious agent of transformation.
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Jaenke, K. (2020). Dreaming with the Earth. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 14-24. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.14-24
Dreams carry the wisdom of the natural mind, capable of restoring humanity’s psychic kinship with the earth. Considering the earth-human relationship through the lens of dreams provides an approach to the global ecological crisis rooted in human subjectivity and evolutionary psychology. A series of the author’s significant earth dreams are explored and grouped into three categories: earth communing, earth destruction, and earth healing. The dreams point first to the necessity of recovering a numinous feeling connection with the earth; second, to the importance of engaging images of elemental destruction; and third, to healing the human-earth relationship through balancing opposites. Altogether these earth dreams illustrate the process of restoring humans to a participatory relationship with the earth.
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Jaenke, K. (2020). Spiritual Intelligence and the Body. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 71-82. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.71-82
Spiritual intelligence has been conceptualized with different degrees of neglect or attention given to the role of the body in spiritual intelligence. Definitions of spiritual intelligence are compared, along with their accompanying skillsets. Strikingly, most authors do not address the mind-body connection as an aspect of spiritual intelligence. Literature on spiritual intelligence reflects the longstanding bias in Western culture for mind over body, a distortion writ large in our global ecological crisis, which is a manifestation of mind-matter and human-nature splits. Calling for an expansion of the theory of spiritual intelligence to explicitly include the body, this article offers four bodily-based abilities that contribute to holistic spiritual intelligence: body awareness; tracking expansion and contraction in the body; accessing, clearing and balancing body energies through the chakras; and accessing external and internal flow states.
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Johnson, K. (2020). Giving Voice to the Earth Dreaming. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 69-70. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.69-70
The Earth speaks to us in dreams. By listening to the voice of the Earth, we open to a knowing that encompasses past, present and future, a knowing that offers wisdom and depth. In “Giving Voice to the Earth,” the experience of listening to this knowing is presented through two dreams that extend far beyond one human life. The dreamer’s life journey is embedded in, and an expression of these dreams. Releasing power, mystery and grief, these dreams enfold the dreamer’s personal destiny into larger cycles of the earth’s memory and future.
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Osman, L.. (2020). From Pet to Planet: Our Attachment to Companion Animals as a Portal into Grief and Loss. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 49-53. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.49-53
Prompted by the loss of a beloved pet, this essay provides a mirror into our relationship and connection to the non-human world and the tenuous attachment we have to our own wild natures. Civilized out of wildness with the imperative that all that is not human is of lesser intrinsic value, the essay touches on the human-animal relationship, attachment theory and the ecological self, the grief and loss cycle, and our growing awareness of a greater planetary loss. The essay takes a very personal experience and attempts to weave larger understandings concerning the interconnected web of life using eco-psychological theory.
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Rice, J. S. (2020). Sustaining Wellness: Drawing from the Roots of Horticultural Therapy. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 55-61. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.55-61
Horticultural therapy is a treatment modality used with physically, psychologically, socially and economically challenged populations. The applicability of horticultural therapy for preventative wellness engenders an examination of human well-being amidst growing ecological peril, cultivating a larger understanding of our experience within the cycles of nature. Utilizing fear as a teacher and venturing into the experience of isolation and loss, we discover how plants bestow the evolutionary wisdom of interdependence and co-creation. Mythology, Jung’s archetypal theory, nature based wisdom traditions, Jewish mystical teachings, and contemporary ecology illuminate horticultural therapy’s unique contribution to sustaining wellness, both individually and collectively, as we move through an “end of days” phase in our human evolutionary cycle.
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Sabini, M. (2014). Dreams Are Pure Nature. ReVision, 32(4)/33(1), 52-68. doi:10.4298/REVN.32.4.62-68
Dreams are a natural phenomenon with a long evolutionary history and serve survival functions for the individual as well as the species. At times when the stability of life systems is threatened, helpful dreams about the earth may occur. An example given is the prophetic dream of eighteenth-century philosopher/scientist Georg Lichtenberg, who was advised to view the earth as a book to be read rather than an object to be dissected; another were the visionary dreams of Harriet Tubman, which showed specific routes to take escaping slaves. Contemporary dreams seem to emphasize the vitality of life processes to renew themselves autonomously.
