Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:00]:

In this episode, I sit down with Lisa Marchiano, an award winning author, podcaster and certified Jungian analyst. Her highly acclaimed books draw upon the healing wisdom of fairy tales to help women connect more deeply with themselves. Lisa is also a host of the popular depth psychology podcast, this Jungian Life. Today we're discussing her new book, Dreamwise and how dreams can be your guide on the path to individuation that's becoming whole. Dreams are like your personal spiritual guide. Lisa shares some fantastic tips on getting started with dreams, how to remember them, interpret them, and so much more. I know you're going to love this episode. Let's dive in.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:44]:

Hello beautiful listeners and welcome back to the Goddess School podcast. Today I get to speak with Lisa Marciano, Jungian analyst and one of the host of this Jungian Life, which I am sure you are all very familiar with, or at least most of you. And if you're not, you definitely have to check out the podcast. It's fantastic. And today we are going to be talking about her new book, Dreamwise, which she co wrote with her podcast hosties, hosters Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee. Welcome Lisa.

Lisa Marciano [00:01:16]:

Thanks. So glad to be here again.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:18]:

Yeah, thank you so much for being here. And I think this topic my listeners are going to be very interested in. And I will admit I do not know much about dreamwork, but I've been really loving diving into this book because within my community we do work a lot with like Jungian concepts and some active imagination, but really not dreams. So starting really high level, can you just give me like the big picture? Why are dreams a valuable tool when people are doing the inner work?

Lisa Marciano [00:01:47]:

Well, you know, it's interesting because most kind of pre modern civilizations believed that dreams were the way that God spoke to us. And I think that's still, you know, relevant, at least in the metaphorical sense that dreams are the way that our unconscious wisdom often gets communicated to us. I mean, it gets communicated to us in other ways too, right? We might have an intuition, for example, but dreams are one of the main channels that we have for receiving unconscious wisdom. And dreams will always bring in a different perspective. You know, it was really clear that it's not like consciousness is always wrong, it's just that consciousness is always incomplete. So the dream will bring in what's missing, that part of the dilemma that you didn't recognize, the thing you didn't let yourself know. Maybe, maybe something that you didn't want to know, maybe something that you just didn't realize yet. So whenever you're looking at Making life decisions or just wanting to grow and become more whole.

Lisa Marciano [00:02:55]:

Dreams can be a really important part of that.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:58]:

Well, that's fantastic. I love thinking of dreams as the way that God speaks to us. That's really. That's really beautiful. And I know in your book you mentioned that dreams are symbolic. So even if we have, like, everyday people or items, we might want to think of them a little bit more symbolically. So, for example, would that mean if I dream, dreamt about my husband, I'm really dreaming about maybe my inner masculine or my animus or. How do we start to interpret that?

Lisa Marciano [00:03:30]:

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess. I guess there's sort of two kind of main principles there that you're touching on. One is that dreams can either be about the inner world or the outer world, but usually they're about the inner world. So if you dream of, you know, that boyfriend that you broke up with five years ago, it's not really about him. Most likely it's about some aspect of you that your dream maker picked him to be an image of, let's say. Now, sometimes dreams do comment on the outer world. So if you have someone in your daily life who is very close to you and that person shows up in your dream and looks fairly realistic, you know, is the age they are, for example, and is kind of behaving the way they might, then you might think that the dream is commenting on something about that relationship. But the dream is probably still symbolic.

Lisa Marciano [00:04:28]:

So if you have a dream with your husband where your husband, let's say, is driving while wearing a blindfold, it doesn't mean that your husband is going to drive wearing a blindfold. And it's a metaphor for maybe, maybe something about how your husband is proceeding through life that maybe you haven't let yourself know. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:04:52]:

Oh, how interesting. And you just used the word dream maker, which I actually had in my list of questions to ask you about. Tell me, what do you mean when you say dream maker? It almost sounds like there's like another party involved.

Lisa Marciano [00:05:04]:

Well, I think there is another party involved. You know, I want to. I want to read my favorite Jung quote about dreams, because I think it leans right into that. And this idea of the dream maker is something that kind of evolved as we were working on this book. And I kind of love it because it is like there is another part of us who is making the dream and, you know, sort of like what that part is and how we understand that, kind of open to interpretation. But there's no question, you know, I think what's implied in that term is that there is a part of us that is creating the dream with intention. So we can kind of impute a certain kind of intentionality to whatever part of us it is that makes the dream. But here's the quote.

Lisa Marciano [00:05:57]:

In each of us, there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude, the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. So I love that in each of us there is another whom we do not know. Well, that's the dream maker. And it's, you know, if you want to, you know, feel that it's the unconscious or it's some part of the unconscious, and we wind up in the end, the books are sort of saying the dream maker is actually some manifestation, let's say, of Jung's transpersonal self, the center and circumference of the personality.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:06:48]:

Yeah, I really like thinking of it that way as well, too. And for me, when I was starting to think about, like, oh, this seems like a little bit like, yeah, separate. Like, there's a third party. It almost gives you an opportunity to dialogue with it. And I know I've had some dreams. Like, that was really weird. Why did I dream that? And it's a different perspective to be like, oh, why did the dream maker offer me that? It kind of lets you off the hook for the weirdness of the dream. Or it just gives you.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:12]:

It opens something up.

Lisa Marciano [00:07:14]:

That's great. I like to hear that. I mean, I do think that that's a good question to ask. Why did the dream maker send me that dream? It's like, okay, there's a dream maker. And. And like, the dream maker is like crafting dreams for a reason. Right? That's. You know, Jung says at some point, I have no theory about dreams, but I do assume that dreams are meaningful.

Lisa Marciano [00:07:32]:

Right. Like, that's where he starts. Like, we have to assume they're meaningful. So I'll start there, too. If we assume they're meaningful, then that that dream maker sent us a dream for has a specific meaning and it's arriving at a specific time. And so if you're trying to understand your dreams, it could be helpful to say, why. Why did that. Why did the dream maker send me this dream now?

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:58]:

And I like. I like what you just said, too, about kind of going into it with the Assumption that the dreams are meaningful. Because if you don't go into it with that assumption, you know, you might just let things kind of like, oh, that. That wasn't that meaningful, even if it was like a mundane dream. But perhaps it was because the dream maker offered it to you and it took energy to do that. Can dreams help us with complex challenges? So, like, I know a lot of women in my community, you know, might be going through relationship challenges or empty nest or trying to start business. Do you find that dreams can help us maybe give us clues or insights into some of our everyday. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:08:36]:

Challenges.

Lisa Marciano [00:08:38]:

Yeah. I mean, and what I would say is that what the dream is going to be really good about is helping you understand and perhaps alter your attitude. So it's not, you know, like, hey, dream, should I invest in this stock? Or that, you know, I mean, sometimes the unconscious has wisdom about some practical matter like that. But for me, most of the time, what I'm wanting help with is, like, my attitude. Like, what am I not seeing? You know, what am I. What am I missing? And dreams can be incredibly helpful that. That, like, with relationships, like, you might. You might have a certain stance in a relationship, and the dream helps you see again what you're not seeing.

Lisa Marciano [00:09:17]:

I'll give you an example. So we don't talk about dream incubation and dreamwise, but I love dream incubation, and I practice it pretty regularly. And there's a really great book about dream incubation by Makiel Clerk called Dream Guidance that I highly recommend. And so sometimes with the dream incubation, which is basically where you. You ask your dream maker to help with something specific, you know, I'll get a dream. Sometimes I'll just wake up knowing something I didn't know I knew before. And so I'll give you an example of the latter. So my son had just gone away to college.

Lisa Marciano [00:09:54]:

I was worried about him for a particular reason. Okay. I don't want to, you know, share his story, but. But there. There was something that, you know, I became aware of that I was, like, really anxious about, you know, and it's like my. My mom and pulse, like, I wanted to jump on a plane and go there and, like, straighten him out. And I was like, I'm not gonna do that. So I did a dream incubation, and here's the thought I woke up with.

Lisa Marciano [00:10:20]:

So it was one of those times I just w the thought. But, like, this is the thought I assumed that my unconscious brought forward. I woke up and I thought, lisa, you have no idea what he's doing to fix the problem. So I'd been in a spin about all the bad things that could happen and all the things he wasn't doing that he needed to do or whatever it was I was in a spin about. But of course, I mean, he's an adult. You know, I raised him as well as I could. So he's got a few things on the ball. So he knew he was facing a problem.

Lisa Marciano [00:10:57]:

And, like, why didn't it occur to me? Like, of course he's probably got his own strategy for dealing with this. I had that thought. I calmed down a lot. And as it turns out, he was very active in trying to solve this problem. And it bore fruit like a week later. I keep getting really good news. So that's what I mean, right? It was like what I needed help with was my attitude. I was all in my anxiety, and I had sort of forgotten this important piece of information that I knew.

Lisa Marciano [00:11:38]:

Like, at some level I knew that, but I wasn't. I let my anxiety, my chatter sort of carry me away and being reminded of this other thing. Oh, yes, that's right. He's a sovereign adult who's, you know, knows a thing or two and probably has his own actions that he's taking to address this issue. So maybe I could just chill out.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:03]:

I love that example, and I love it. I know many women will be able to relate as I can, too. My daughter just went to college this summer. But where we get ourselves worked up about a particular situation, and then there's just like a little bit of a switch that goes off, and it just completely changes our perspective and our approach to it. And I always think that is just so interesting when that happens.

Lisa Marciano [00:12:29]:

And dreams can be one of those things that flips the switch. So there's an example in dreamwise. I think there's an example of this dream. This woman was in a fight with a friend, and she was like, ah, you know, this friend's done me wrong, and I've got to confront her. And she was getting ready to have this confrontation, but then she had this dream. The dream was very simple. It was just a dream of a man with a very bad toothache, you know, and she kind of had an intimation that this might have something to do with this conflict. And what she could see was, oh, my friend's in a really vulnerable, hurt place, and I am too.

Lisa Marciano [00:13:12]:

So we're coming at each other from a place of real being in pain. You know, like, if you've ever had A bad toothache, you can't really think about anything else. You're. You're in agony. And it kind of colors everything. And she sort of got like the dream helped her see that that's. That's where she and her friend were. And it just immediately opened out a very different way of looking at the conflict.

Lisa Marciano [00:13:35]:

Right. She no longer felt, like, full of righteous indignation. And I've got to give her a piece of my mind and stand up for my. And she's walking on me or whatever it was like, oh, we're both in a really hurt place. And that just. That just shifted everything. So, yeah, that. That little, like, perspectival shift that can happen.

Lisa Marciano [00:13:55]:

Obviously, like you're saying, sometimes it just happens spontaneously. Sometimes we kind of self reflect and we find that new stance. Dreams are another way that we can find that perspectival shift.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:14:06]:

Yeah. It's so interesting when you just said that. It actually reminded me of just a long time ago when I was much younger and my best friend was in a relationship with this not very nice man. And I remember she kept wondering, why wouldn't she? You know, And I was getting kind of frustrated with her. And then I had a dream that I was in a relationship, and, like, it was really hard to get out, and I had all of these different feelings. And it, like, opened up this, like, so much, like, empathy and my ability to talk to her. And it's interesting, I hadn't thought about that. It was literally about 30, 30 years ago, but it was just like this dream really shifted it, and I was actually better able to help her through it after that.

Lisa Marciano [00:14:44]:

That's great. That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, dreams, like I said, dreams bring the thing that isn't in consciousness. So then we have, like, a wider, bigger perspective on our life. That's what dreams can give you.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:14:59]:

So would you say that working with your dreams, like, is shadow work, is a way to work with the unconscious? Like, would. Would you call it shadow work?

Lisa Marciano [00:15:08]:

I would definitely say that shadow is a major component of many dreams. I don't think all dreams deal with shadow, but certainly dreams deal with what's in the unconscious. And I suppose we could quibble about whether, you know, sometimes Jung would sort of intimate that the shadow is the unconscious, you know, that they're the same thing. But, you know, really, structurally, I'm not sure that that totally holds in terms of shadow work, the way it's often used kind of in the popular culture. I think that dreams can Bring in shadow elements and invite you to get to know them and accept them and engage with them. But it's also much more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:49]:

One question too, that I've been thinking about. So, you know, when I listen to your podcast and I'm reading the book and just thinking about dreams and the symbolism and there's dragons and snakes. I know enough about myths and archetypes and I have to admit my dreams are like, terribly mundane. It's like they're almost many of them, not all of them are almost like indistinguishable from my everyday life. And I'm like, why aren't I dreaming about gods and goddesses and dragons? I want to dream, like, do that.

Lisa Marciano [00:16:18]:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:19]:

What are the really mundane dreams?

Lisa Marciano [00:16:21]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. Well, and we, we talk about that a little bit in the book because, you know, we, we have like, I think we have like 150 dream examples in the book.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:30]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marciano [00:16:31]:

And as we were picking them, we were really careful. There are some like, blockbuster super archetypal dreams in there that are like, really stunning with like magical creatures and everything. There are definitely a couple of those at least in there. But we also kind of made a point of picking these really ordinary dreams too that people have. I think there's one in there about I'm buying Halloween candy and I buy candy corn instead of chocolate, you know, and it's like there are probably more dreams like that in the book than like these big blockbuster kind of mythopoetic dreams. And you know, we, we wanted to make sure we do that because most of the time most of us have pretty ordinary dreams. I mean, I think, first of all, I know some people that just have big archetypal dreams all the time. I, I don't know that.

Lisa Marciano [00:17:19]:

I mean, it's, it's like amazing to hear their dreams, but I don't know that I would really wish that on anyone because first of all, it's a lot. But also I think it's, I think it probably tracks with a certain sort of like, psychological composition that in maybe somebody who is maybe not as well grounded as someone else, and that can have incredible benefits in life, but it also comes with some dangers. But I also find like in my own life and in the life of my patients, at times of real crisis and transformation, like crossroads, forks in the road, I will have more like bigger archetypal dreams. Whereas most of the time, although I've had a few like sort of show stopping dreams even kind of recently. But, but most of the Time, you know, they. They are more. They are more. More mundane.

Lisa Marciano [00:18:09]:

I think the important thing is not to dismiss the ordinary dreams. Don't dismiss the fragments. I mean, don't dismiss the dreams that seem obvious, you know, because, remember, it's symbolic. And the other thing I want to say about that is that a lot of times the archetypal stuff is sort of really knitted in. So with that. With that Halloween dream, you know, it was just like this. The dreamer was a mom. She did have to buy Halloween candy.

Lisa Marciano [00:18:39]:

So there she is in the dream buying candy corn, which is cheaper than the chocolate. It seems so ordinary. It seems like, you know, hey, this is just a dream about my life. But we. We lift up, like, the archetypal dimension of Halloween. It's a time when the veil between the worlds grows thin. It's a time when you might have more access to the other side, so to speak. And that might be, like, the realm of the unconscious, for example.

Lisa Marciano [00:19:04]:

And then we talk about the archetypal dimension of chocolate, which in, you know, in. In Mexico and in Mayan and Aztec cultures, chocolate was sacred. It was. It was a drink of the gods. And so even in just this tiny little dream that doesn't look archetypal, there are these archetypal threads that go through it. So sometimes you have a dream about this, like, mythical creature, we start. We start the book off with one of those, and it's clearly archetypal. But sometimes you have a dream about buying Halloween candy, but that's archetypal, too.

Lisa Marciano [00:19:40]:

You just have to look for it a little bit more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:42]:

Yeah, thank you for that. And I do appreciate that the book, it does have, like, a lot of the mundane dreams, because for the most part, that's pretty much my experience. But I love the idea of not dismissing them. And maybe you have to look a little harder for the symbolism. But that brings me to another question, like you just mentioned, like, the archetypal power of chocolate or the. The symbolism of that. What if someone doesn't even know that? Does it still work? Is that just part of the collective unconscious, that these archetypal symbols, even people who are, wouldn't know that at first?

Lisa Marciano [00:20:15]:

Well, what Jung said is that dreams will do their work even if we don't remember them. They'll still do their work if we remember them and don't write them down. The purpose of doing dream work, of writing your dreams down and then going back and exploring the imagery, is that it speeds up the process of self development. And it actually makes more. It makes it More conscious, which first of all is just incredibly interesting when you want to make your life more interesting. Pay attention to your dreams. Dreams. If life seems a little dull and boring, I gotta tell you, just start paying attention to your dreams and you'll discover how that's not true at all.

Lisa Marciano [00:20:52]:

But also, once more of this is in consciousness, you have more of a kind of conscious repertoire of behavioral responses, attitude. You just can kind of be more of a emotional ninja because you've got access. More is at your fingertips that you can consciously discern. You can make choices between things. But I would say if you're working with your dreams and you have a dream about Halloween chocolate, one of the things you can do is you can just Google chocolate and see what comes up. I mean, you know, you have to be open to sort of thinking, well, okay, what. What's in here? Maybe you don't know anything about the history of chocolate, but if you googled chocolate, I'm pretty sure you would come pretty quickly upon its history and what we know about it and why. Why it's quite a remarkable substance.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:21:47]:

I know you go through in the book, and something that I have personally struggled with is remembering my dreams. Like, but you have some ways. Can you just share with listeners, like, a few ways to start remembering them?

Lisa Marciano [00:21:59]:

Yeah, we do have an appendix at the back of the book that has sort of all of our best ideas remembering dreams. But I'll. I'll give you just a few quickly. So first of all, if you're not already doing it, get yourself a dream journal and put it at the side of your bed with a pen. And in the morning, the first thing you do is you wake up, you roll over, you grab your dream journal, and you just write no dream. If you didn't remember anything, just write no dream. Or, I don't remember my dream, but I woke up feeling kind of melancholy. Or the only thing I remember is, like, there was something about the color yellow.

Lisa Marciano [00:22:32]:

Whatever it is, just write it down. Because as you do that, you'll sort of prime the pump and you're more likely to remember more later. Some people like to write either, like, dictate their dreams into their phone or write down their dreams in, like, the Notes app or something, which is fine. But I find that as soon as you pick up your phone, you know, you get hit with a barrage of notifications. Or like, you. You suddenly see, oh, God, that's right, I have a meeting today. It kind of can pull you out of the dream space. So I personally like to use Pen and paper to write my dreams down.

Lisa Marciano [00:23:04]:

You can even buy a pen with a little kind of red light in it so that you don't have to turn on the lights or anything. You just tap the pen and the light comes on. And then you can write in your journal. So writing them down regularly usually starts the flow. If that doesn't work, there are some supplements like vitamin B6 and galantamine that have some efficacy, that have been shown to have some efficacy in helping people recall their dreams. You know, you can. You can do a visualization of yourself waking up in the morning, remembering a dream. Actually, if you sign up for a mailing list on our website, we have a dream recall kind of meditation that you can download and listen to before you go to sleep.

Lisa Marciano [00:23:46]:

I record it so you hear my voice. You could try using affirmations that you remember your dream. So visualizations, affirmations, the meditation. You should try making sure that you're getting good sleep. You should try waking up without an alarm clock when possible. And then there's also that somatic thing where when you wake up, just lie still for a minute, see if you remember anything. If you don't, just try shifting position. If you're lying on one side, just try shifting to the other side.

Lisa Marciano [00:24:15]:

Because sometimes just returning to the last position that you in when you were dreaming will spark something. So, yeah, it can be. It can be an effort, but if you commit to it, usually something comes.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:24:30]:

Yeah, I have not committed to it yet, but I am going to start committing to it.

Lisa Marciano [00:24:35]:

That's good.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:24:35]:

I always want it to kind of naturally just, you know, come. But I'm gonna start making a little bit more effort to that. One thing I've noticed, too, is I'll wake up sometimes and I won't remember my dream. But then, I don't know, I'll just see something, like in the yard. Like, I'll be like, wait a minute, I dreamt about, like, a flower last night, and it will start to come back. Is that normal?

Lisa Marciano [00:24:55]:

Yeah, that happens to me all the time. And it's, you know. So, like, sometimes I wake up and I'm like, no, no dream. And maybe I write down no dream recalled or whatever. And then I let myself do what most of us do in the morning, right? Like, I pick up my phone, right? I keep my phone in another room. I have the dream process first, once I'm done with that. And a lot of times, like, I don't. I don't have a dream, right? So then I.

Lisa Marciano [00:25:17]:

Okay, let me get My phone. Let me just. I'm going to check my email. I'm going to check my WhatsApp notification. Let's just see. And then, you know, I go over to Instagram and like, suddenly there's a picture. I'm like, oh, that's it. I dreamt about a lion last night.

Lisa Marciano [00:25:29]:

You know, so, yeah, sometimes. Sometimes that's how it goes. And what I. What I try to do then is if I can't capture it in my dream journal at that point, because let's say I'm sitting in a meeting later and I suddenly something pops up and reminds me of something, then I try to just write a couple of notes down at that point, maybe in my notes app, just to remind me. And then I write about it before I go to sleep.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:25:55]:

And then once we write about it, and I know you go more in this book, is it just thinking about it and looking at the symbols like you said, researching chocolate or maybe researching lions and then trying to really understand what. What the dream maker could be trying to tell you.

Lisa Marciano [00:26:09]:

So one of the things I'm really proud about in Dreamwise is that working with your own dreams is much, much, much harder than working with anyone else's dreams. I work with dreams every day. And I'm not saying that I always feel, you know, completely competent and confident, but in general, like, you bring me a dream, I'm gonna have some idea of where to start my own dreams. I wake up and I go, wow, what. What the heck does that mean? And there's a reason for that. It's because dreams bring the thing that is not in consciousness. And we're trying to understand our dreams with consciousness. It makes sense that it's very, very difficult because we're trying to use the thing that's being kind of corrected, if you will, to understand the correction.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:26:59]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marciano [00:27:00]:

So we came up with this sort of novel tool in Dreamwise, and those are the keys. So there's 69 keys, and they're. They're short prompts that will help you try to snap you out of your ego perspective and help you maybe see what the dream is about. So the kind of method that we're proposing is use the book. Usually it's good to start with personal associations, and there is a prompt for personal associations, and you can just go through it. That's always a good one to start with because that's going to become relevant for most dreams. But then just pick another key. Just, you know, there's a list of them all at the back.

Lisa Marciano [00:27:44]:

You know, Just, just pick one and, and see if it applies. See if it applies. So you know, are you angry in your dream? Well, there's a prompt about anger. It asks you some questions. Who is your dream ego angry at? What is your dream ego angry about? Does the dream ego's anger help bring about a positive resolution to the conflict in the dream or does it just result in stalemate? Because depending on what happens with the anger, it might point to what the dream maker thinks about your anger. Is it just a defense against something or is it actually what's required to solve a problem? So like I said, There's 69 keys and so probably a couple of them are going to be relevant to your dream and help you understand it. So the way that I work with my dreams is I have the keys that I printed out on note cards and I will just pick a key and see does this one apply? Because again, I have to do that because even though I, I feel comfortable working with other people's dreams, I have to go back to being a beginner with my own dreams and I have to try to, to come at it in such a sort of open minded way that I can leave behind my, my ego attitude to try to get at what the dream maker's trying to tell me. And as a matter of fact, I'm in the process of producing a card deck that will contain the keys so that you can have them printed out too.

Lisa Marciano [00:29:20]:

You don't just have to refer to the book and those will be on the market in about a year. So you have to wait.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:29:25]:

Fantastic. And yes, I know my community, we love decks and Oracle decks, so that will be terrific.

Lisa Marciano [00:29:31]:

This is going to be a dream work deck. Oh.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:29:34]:

Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's interesting because it can be hard to interpret your own dreams and I thank you. So thank you for accepting, explaining why. And I really do love how your book is so practical and it really provides like all of these great tools and steps to help you remember and then interpret the dreams as well. One thing that just came to mind and I'm curious, like I feel like for remembering dreams I always remember the disturbing ones or almost the ones that I'd like to forget more so than the everyday or even the good ones. Have a lot of like, great. I mean, I think I have a pretty good life and all, but I never have dreams that like I'm in this beautiful castle and everyone's being really nice to me or anything, but I'll remember like the disturbing ones.

Lisa Marciano [00:30:18]:

Well, if you think about it. I mean, first of all, there is a research finding. I think the most common feeling in dreams is anxiety. So it's definitely true that most dreams have a kind of negative tendency. And if you think about it, it makes sense because remember I said that the, the dream maker is sending us the dream because there's something we need to know. So the dream maker is almost kind of constantly. It's like giving you feedback. It's like you have a boss who is gonna go, yeah, you did this, right? But maybe, maybe you didn't do that.

Lisa Marciano [00:30:52]:

So great. I wanna share a really great quote from Marie Louise von Franz, who was one of Jung's collaborators. She said, dreams are the letters which the self writes to us each night telling us to do a bit more of this or to do a bit less of that. So it really is like your spiritual supervisor giving you feedback. And so, yeah, if you're giving someone feedback, oftentimes you're telling them what they did wrong. So occasionally we get these amazing, beautiful, comforting dreams. I find that those mostly tend to happen at times of crisis when we really need support and encouragement. Sometimes they just occur because the dream maker is like, girl, you are on the right track, you know, but that's unusual.

Lisa Marciano [00:31:40]:

Most of the time dreams kind of correct the conscious attitude or at least compliment it. But I want to say too, when you say that, you're more likely to remember the disturbing dreams. I mean, so. So in some sense, the more intense the feeling is in the dream, the more urgent the issue is. And I think like nightmares, for example, it's like that great fear that you have in a nightmare. It's like emotional highlighter. The dream maker's going, excuse me, you really need to pay attention to this. So I think when you have a disturbing dream, especially if it has strong feeling, definitely write that one down, pull out the book, check out the, you know, work with it and see what you can figure out.

Lisa Marciano [00:32:24]:

Because your dream maker is, you know, sometimes dreams are a warning. And again, they may not be a warning so much of something that's going to happen in outer life as a warning about where your attitude may be off base.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:32:39]:

It's so exciting to think of it in these terms that you're presenting of the dream maker, your spiritual guide, that's like, hey, you need to look over here. I think your conscious mind might be missing something that you need need to know. I mean, how amazing if we have this guide that we can get access to in the evening, that can open up her our perspectives or warn us about something. It really is quite amazing.

Lisa Marciano [00:33:01]:

It is amazing. And it's yours and it's free and it's just there for you. It's an incredible resource.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:33:10]:

It really is. I know we've kind of touched about on this like just throughout the conversation, but in my community, everybody's very much very young lovers. Like, how would dream work help on the path of individuation?

Lisa Marciano [00:33:24]:

Yeah, well, in some sense that's the whole kit and caboodle. Because that quote that I just read from Marie Louise von Franz, the self is writing you letters because it wants to nudge you in the direction of individuation. In Jungian thought, we understand that the self is the one that kind of oversees the unfolding of the individuation process. And so dreams are very much like your nightly feedback on how you're doing.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:33:54]:

What a great way of looking at it like that. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much. I would just love to hear. I know that you have a dream school. Can you tell folks a little bit about that? I mean, I think it's great that we should be investigating dreams, but I imagine doing it with a group of people who make it come to life even a little bit more. So I would love to hear about, about that. Your dream school?

Lisa Marciano [00:34:17]:

Yeah. Dream school is our 12 month online self paced program that teaches you how to work with your dreams. We have all kinds of resources in there like suggested readings and readings from Jung and essays that the three of us have written as well as every month there's an either audio or audio and video kind of discussion of a key concept. So basically we've, we've broken it down into these key concepts. We walk you through it. There are live events. Every month I do a live kind of masterclass. Deb has one on one sessions where you get to meet with her individually and Joseph does a kind of lecture.

Lisa Marciano [00:34:56]:

So there's lots of opportunity to interact with us. And then like you said, there's this really vibrant community. We've been doing something wonderful the past few weeks where we have a special program called Dream Studio where we're investigating our dreams by drawing them. That's been totally new for me and I've really been getting a lot out of it. And finally one of the other offerings is you can join a virtual dream group of other Dream School students. So that's, that's really enriching too. So there's lots of different ways to participate and we'd love to have you so you can check that out.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:31]:

Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that folks should know as they start? I'm sure this conversation is really going to inspire them. And people are going to be like, I have my own spiritual guide or I have ways myself is providing me with feedback. So I'm pretty sure that people are going to be really interested to start working with their dreams. Anything else that you want to share?

Lisa Marciano [00:35:51]:

Sure. If you're just getting started, one of the things you might try doing is writing a letter to your dream maker. Let your dream maker know that you want to hear everything, that you're going to listen, that you're going to pay attention, that you'll do your best and really sort of make that commitment. You know, you can go out and buy a dream journal if you don't already have one, and just, just write that letter and let your dream maker know you're listening.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:36:15]:

Oh, what a great practice. I love that. As you were talking, I have one more question. Just so if I think of Jung's map of the psyche and you know, where we have the self as the center in the circumference, where would you say this dream maker lives? Or is the dream maker part of the self?

Lisa Marciano [00:36:32]:

Well, I, I think of the dream maker as an aspect of the self.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:36:35]:

Okay.

Lisa Marciano [00:36:36]:

But, you know, others might disagree with me on that. And, and Jung left this all a little bit vague, I think, for a reason, because he didn't want us to be too pat about it. He didn't want it to get too neat. I mean, one of the things that we say in the book is that we're, we're trying with, with Dreamwise, we're trying to systematize something that really isn't systematizable. But of course, when you're learning a new system skill, it helps to have something be sort of organized, even if the organization's a little bit artificial. So I, I, you know, I think we've tried to kind of organize it and systematize it in the effort of making it digestible, but we don't, we certainly don't want to pretend like anything in the psyche can be that well categorized.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:25]:

Yes. Oh, thank you for that. I know. I think it's like part of that our minds, like, I want to organize everything in these perfect little frameworks.

Lisa Marciano [00:37:33]:

Right.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:34]:

Where it's like, well, that's not really the way that it works. We also want to leave a little mystery to it as well. That's right. We don't even want it to know exactly where it lives.

Lisa Marciano [00:37:43]:

Right. Right. Because dreams are mysterious and they're. They're humbling. They humble me every day.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:50]:

They are, for sure. I'm thinking of.

Lisa Marciano [00:37:52]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:52]:

One that I had recently. I have to dive into that one a little bit more.

Lisa Marciano [00:37:57]:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:57]:

All right, well, thank you so much, Lisa. I always love speaking with you. We have another podcast with Lisa if you want to go back. I think it's episode eight, but another great one where we talk about one of her favorite books, the Vital Spark, so you can definitely check that one out as well, too. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Goddess School podcast. I hope it sparked your imagination and expanded your vision for what's possible. If you're ready to explore these concepts more deeply, reclaim your personal myth, and live with greater creativity and enchantment, I invite you to join me. Inside Enlivened my Divine Feminine Mystery School and sacred community, where we bring these teachings to life through ritual, story coaching, and, of course, real world action.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:38:45]:

You can find the link to learn more in the show notes. And remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of yourself. She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the goddess until.