Announcing the Release of:

APPOINTMENT WITH THE WISE OLD DOG:
A Bridge to the Transformative Power of Dreams

David Blum’s long-awaited book, “Appointment with the Wise Old Dog: A Bridge to the Transformative Power of Dreams,” provides the necessary, comprehensive complement to his highly regarded 1998 documentary. In contrast to the DVD, this book contains the foundational work comprised of forty-three dream paintings and commentaries derived from a lifetime of numinous archetypal dreams—his thirty-five-year inner journey.
The primary sources of David Blum’s commentaries, his diaries and dream journals, date from his seventeenth to his sixty-fourth year. This crucible into which he poured his most intimate confessions contains the living spontaneity of his original experiences remarkably intact. By re-entering the dream state and allowing the images to speak to him, Blum gently leads the reader into his world of color, form, music, and the mapping of his soul.
The language, unhampered by jargon or weighty terminology, always remains accessible to the lay reader drawn to inner transformation. This work resonates with the musician, the artist, the theologian, the psychologist, and the patient — whether facing a terminal illness or not. It offers the rare potential to communicate our shared capacity to explore multiple levels of meaning, acting as a springboard into one’s own inner experience. Anyone interested in the power of dreams, the transformative effect of symbols and archetypes, or faced with an existential crisis will find this book inspirational.

Foreword by Murray Stein

Available at Amazon: https://linkzip.me/F2mXW

The unique paintings David Blum created throughout his life, and increasingly during his battle with cancer, are a window into his spiritual journey. The Wise Old Dog who came to David in dreams, was his guide and comfort. Through these images and David’s insightful commentary, we are reminded of the resilience of the human spirit, the power of art to help us understand life, and the role creativity can play in healing and transcendence.
—Yo-Yo Ma

I have studied and meditated on David Blum's extraordinary documentation of his dreams and inner work— the immense gifts that were given to him from his unconscious and poured into images and music. We are intrigued on all levels— emotional, imaginal, intellectual. Our hearts are split open as we watch the process of the inner marriage.
—Marion Woodman, Jungian Analyst and Author

If it were ever discovered that we all have an ancient source within, a wise fount, invested in our well-being, and speaking directly to us through the language of symbol, we would experience our centers relocate, our priorities shift, and our sense of place and purpose in this great mystery deepen. By risking such dialogue with this unknown center, David Blum found it spoke to him, and gave him and us renewed guidance in a time of fragmentation, distraction, and dis-ease. His example is a summons, a model and an invitation for the rest of us to risk such a dialogue in depth.
—James Hollis, Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington

David is so real, so totally honest, definitely a person who has seen into the depths of the soul and what that means. I love his paintings. They enable us to see so much of what he experienced. Marie-Louise von Franz said that artists almost never are able to duplicate on a canvas what they see in their inner world, yet I can tell that David captured the essence of what he saw. We would all die a good death with such understanding as he had of the psyche.
—Gilda Frantz, Director Emerita of the Philemon Foundation

This body of work is an amazing achievement of the human imagination and spirit which requires multiple visits to take in its many wonders. Each viewer will find his or her own favorites from this extraordinary human document. The brilliant colors and composition of Blum's intensely personal yet highly sophisticated images constitute a treasure of which ARAS Online has been chosen to be guardian.
—Tom Singer, MD, Co-Chair of ARAS Online for National ARAS

I have used patients' dreams and paintings for decades to help them get in touch with their inner wisdom. David Blum, during his struggle with cancer, captured his dreams in an illuminating series of paintings taking him through a journey of self-exploration and transformation. David's inspiring story is a powerful invitation, for each of us, to go within and realize our creative potential so that we may find our way through the difficulties of life and discover the unique rewards in taking the journey.
—Bernie Siegel, MD, Author and Founder of Exceptional Cancer Patients

Of the many historic and impactful features of the ceremonies for inaugurating President Biden, for me, the most impactful event was the stunning poem and astonishing reading of The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate.

I simply want to mark this by posting the link to her reading and include the text of her poem.

The link: https://youtu.be/Jp9pyMqnBzk

The Poem:

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves,

where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry,

a sea we must wade

We’ve braved the belly of the beast

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace

And the norms and notions

of what just is

Isn’t always just-ice

And yet the dawn is ours

before we knew it

Somehow we do it

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn’t broken

but simply unfinished

We the successors of a country and a time

Where a skinny Black girl

descended from slaves and raised by a single mother

can dream of becoming president

only to find herself reciting for one

And yes we are far from polished

far from pristine

but that doesn’t mean we are

striving to form a union that is perfect

We are striving to forge a union with purpose

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and

conditions of man

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

but what stands before us

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,

we must first put our differences aside

We lay down our arms

so we can reach out our arms

to one another

We seek harm to none and harmony for all

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious

Not because we will never again know defeat

but because we will never again sow division

Scripture tells us to envision

that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

And no one shall make them afraid

If we’re to live up to our own time

Then victory won’t lie in the blade

But in all the bridges we’ve made

That is the promise to glade

The hill we climb

If only we dare

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it’s the past we step into

and how we repair it

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation

rather than share it

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy

And this effort very nearly succeeded

But while democracy can be periodically delayed

it can never be permanently defeated

In this truth

in this faith we trust

For while we have our eyes on the future

history has its eyes on us

This is the era of just redemption

We feared at its inception

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

of such a terrifying hour

but within it we found the power

to author a new chapter

To offer hope and laughter to ourselves

So while once we asked,

how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

Now we assert

How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was

but move to what shall be

A country that is bruised but whole,

benevolent but bold,

fierce and free

We will not be turned around

or interrupted by intimidation

because we know our inaction and inertia

will be the inheritance of the next generation

Our blunders become their burdens

But one thing is certain:

If we merge mercy with might,

and might with right,

then love becomes our legacy

and change our children’s birthright

So let us leave behind a country

better than the one we were left with

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,

we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,

we will rise from the windswept northeast

where our forefathers first realized revolution

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,

we will rise from the sunbaked south

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

and every known nook of our nation and

every corner called our country,

our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,

battered and beautiful

When day comes we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it

If only we’re brave enough to be it

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

--Leonard Cohen "Democracy"

https://wp.me/p9NjgY-jb

20 Lessons from the 20th Century About How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism: A Timely List from Yale Historian Timothy Snyder

Don Delillo's seventeenth novel, THE SILENCE (Scribner, 2020), is set in 2022. Five friends gather in a New York apartment to watch the Super Bowl between the Tennesee Titans and the Seattle Seahawks. Two friends, a couple, are late. The others are waiting for the game to begin. The power goes out. This is the future that Delillo forces us to see. In only 117 pages, he tells the story of what happens when nothing works anymore. The novel itself is formatted as if written on a manual typewriter (that is how DeLillo writes). Double spaced. You are in times past. This small sample of how people engage with each other is bleak. Meant to be. One might say it is a true story of where we are going.

Haiku in English is the most accessible, democratic, and intimate of poetic forms. Accessible because on first impression, one “gets it.” Democratic because anyone and everyone can write haiku. After all, how difficult can 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables be? Intimate because…well here one encounters the difficulty with haiku. Fine haiku always hides a mystery and only the very adept writer of haiku can implant intimations of this mystery in and among the words. There are rules and codes and traditions and myths, but true haiku is ever escaping these confines. And here we encounter Susan Scott’s Haiku Joy: Poems, Prayers, Photographs. Susan has been writing long enough and well enough and now free enough to be host to the true spirit of haiku, the spirit that yearns to express itself in metaphor, in simile, even allegory, with the symbolism always evoking the depth of nature to excite a resonance in the human heart. At a time when nature has been abandoned, degraded, and depreciated, there can be nothing more important than singing out a call to nature, to give voice to the impressions of nature, for the purpose of reanimating the presence of nature in the human soul. Poetry can do that. Haiku can do that. Susan Scott’s Haiku Joy can do that. Long ago, a dream told me that “a poem wants a poem.” Susan’s book will stimulate you to write haiku as a response to her haiku, to her prayers, and to her photographs. Enjoy!

—Russell Arthur Lockhart

Author of Words as Eggs and Psyche Speaks

Available at Amazon: https://cutt.ly/FhSAIuC

The Dark Gets In

The crack is wide
Yes, and widening
But there is no light
Did someone forget
To flick the switch
To light the candle
To rub some sticks?
There's still no light
"You misunderstand,"
A rough voice declares
The darkness is, yes,
The darkness is the
New light