Mindful Dreaming - A Practical Guide for Emotional Healing Through Transformative Mythic Journeys

Ancient and modern sages alike have shown us that mindfulness is the direct path to emotional healing and spiritual awakening. So many of us long for a teacher or guru to guide us in our efforts. Now Mindful Dreaming helps you to find that guru in your nightly dreams. In this highly practical and easy to understand guidebook, psychologist David Gordon, Ph.D. shows how every dream corresponds to one of the four universal stages of healing and growth that Joseph Campbell called the Mythic Journey—our “search for bliss.” Throughout the Journey our dreams urge us to learn ten perennial lessons in mindfulness taught by spiritual traditions in every era and culture.

A breakthrough in the field of mindfulness practice and dreamwork, Mindful Dreaming teaches you the simple language of dreams and how they promote mindfulness in our everyday lives. Dreams prompt us to release distraction and honor solitude, release control and accept guidance, release attachment and learn to grieve, release judgment and embrace compassion, and to release impatience so that we may live more consciously and fully awake in the present moment. You’ll also discover how dreams provide a non-judgmental and compassionate mirror that reflects your ongoing progress on the Journey to mindfulness.

Relying on thought-provoking exercises and abundant examples from the life-changing dreams of the author, his clients and friends, Mindful Dreaming demonstrates how dreams lead us to overcome the emotional blocks that keep us feeling stuck and conflicted in love relationships, frustrated in work or stagnating in our creative goals.

Above all Mindful Dreaming provides the knowledge of a profound spiritual map—the Mythic Journey—ten sacred principles in mindfulness by which to live and the gift of dreamwork to guide you in daily life and relationships, embrace each phase of the Journey, and awaken to the energy of the Divine in your everyday life.

 

About David

David Gordon, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in Norfolk, VA. and founder of The Dreamwork Institute through which he conducts dreamsharing groups, as well as retreats and workshops on the topic of dreams, myth and spirituality throughout the U.S. and Canada. The author is also founder and director of Studio for the Healing Arts where he hosts workshops and seminars on indigenous and mainstream spiritual traditions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, Kabbalah, Sufism, Christian Gnosticism, shamanism, ecstatic dance as well as Gaian philosophy and Jungian studies.

Past Membership Chair for the board of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), and a frequent guest on TV and radio, the author has co-hosted the public radio program DreamWorks in Norfolk, VA and written numerous columns on the topic of dreaming. In private practice for the past 30 years, he provides ongoing supervision and training in the area of individual and group dreamwork.

He can be reached at studioforthehealingarts@cox.net  or visit www.studioforthehealingarts.org.

 

Praise for Mindful Dreaming

"The level of artistry demonstrated in David Gordon, Ph.D.'s Mindful Dreaming is unique. To merge a deep understanding of dream work with the mindfulness techniques of Buddhist practice brings a new light to bear on each of these subjects.  Exercises and examples make Gordon's writing accessible even to the novice in one subject or the other, while providing a blend that augments each.  Bravo!"  

-- Jean Campbell, president, The International Association for the Study of Dreams.

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"Mindful Dreaming gives us both depth and practical advice about how to use our own inner wisdom to traverse the landscape and arrive home.  A must-read for all those who are going about the pursuit of awakened consciousness."

-- Kathleen Brehony, Ph.D., author of Awakening at Midlife, Ordinary Grace, and Living a Connected Life

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"Dr. Gordon provides a framework in which dreamers can become 'mindful' of changes in their outer and inner lives, while discovering and nurturing those values that are necessary for survival in a world that has become seriously out of balance."

-- Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., co-author of Extraordinary Dreams and How to Use Them

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"David Gordon illustrates how dreams speak directly to our unique daily experiences in the broader context of life's mythical journey.  A truly unique guidebook to your waking and dreaming life's journey -- highly recommended."

--Robert Hoss, M.S., author of Dream Language, president of the DreamScience Foundation

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