John Woodcock has posted (on Facebook) a significant response to my dream poem, "Stepping Into A Forest of Dreams." (See below) I have responded here and on Facebook (see below).

 Russ, I am not sure if I said this last year: there is, as you know, enormous desperate efforts going on across disciplines to find the unifying symbol, the Sophia, the one-ness, interconnectedness, etc. But overwhelmingly this work is theoretical, ie researchers are looking for the desperately needed connectedness conceptually. Your dream is something else entirely. You PERCEIVE the Rhizome, what abstract theory calls, "the Field". The ground is transparent "solid but crystal clear". It doesn't feel the same as Hillman's "seeing through" at all. A clue is that it is "revealed to you". Not a "looking at in order to find". Revelatory! You are granted a vision of something alive, there all the time, underground. What kind of consciousness is this? Is this the secret to an actual experience of what we crave? Much food for thought. Thanks, Russ, j

Hi John. Thank you for your reflections. Yes, “revelatory: is the precise characterization. And, I agree, it is not the same as Hillamn’s “seeing through.” You ask “what kind of consciousness is this?” As you know, it is reflexive to consider the dreamer in the dream as “equal” to the dreamer’s ego or to the dreamer all together. I have never been happy with this equation. I consider the figure in the dream that is “me” (whether imaged or just awareness) to be as “constructed” by the dream maker (for want of a better term) as anything else in the dream. So the “me” in the dream is a “semblance” of me (in the more archaic sense of this word) and I can generally identify with this “me” without a second thought. But second thoughts are in order here. The revelation of the dream and its numinous effect occurs to the dream “me” which I then remember upon waking. But my ego consciousness has no direct experience of these things as the “me” did in the dream. All this now flows from memory. When we see ourselves in a photograph, some part of our waking ego reaction disavows this “semblance’ in the picture. And certainly, we do not say, “Oh! There’s my ego.” My point is that to answer your question about what kind of consciousness this is, I want to break down the automatic assumption that the dream “me” is my ego consciousness. It is not. So, in this sense, it is a way to open up the “secret” to an actual experience we crave. It is the dream “me” we need more connection with both for the experience of the futurity of dreams as well as the fictive purpose of dreams. Our waking consciousness is not nearly enough aware of this.