The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
have in a drawer and you can carry it with you for a few days. Let
the symbol speak to you, get a feel for its sense of gravity. Listen to
what the image has to say. What we are doing at these moments is
relating to an aspect of our own nature. We are learning to live as
though the unconscious aspect of life is real. The law here seems to
be that if good energy goes into the relationship with the unconscious,
it will be more inclined to offer back its own images and
sense of direction.
The dream can reveal a rarely experienced form of an event: its
depth. And this teaches us that what seems like the covert or hidden
view of something is actually the holistic point of view, the view that
includes the unconscious side of life. The unconscious is not about
ignorance, but about the unseen, the missing point of view, the
needed “otherness” that reveals the whole. The dream faithfully
reports this; it has been programmed to do this. Its uncanny sense
of truth probably evolved from our intense moments of admitting
complete helplessness. When our own known resources are unable
to solve a problem, our sense of helplessness forms into a single
appeal for help and activates something deep in the psyche itself. If
the function of the dream was not to inform us of anything new, we
would likely have stopped dreaming.
Even if you don’t want to relate to the products of the unconscious,
even if you believe this approach does not apply to your
way of working, you may still find yourself dreaming about being
lost in a part of the city you have never enjoyed or you may find
yourself dreaming about a part of the house you rarely visit. In a
dream you may witness the collapse of an entire city block or
conversely you may visit a part of the city and feel uneasy as it
reminds you of a scene from some old dream. The ego cannot be
expected to understand and solve everything. There will always be
a choice about whether to consciously work with dreams and their
images, but there is no choice about whether it happens. It does
happen. You may not remember your dreams, but others may
dream of being lost in your house or joyous in one of your
creations. Your design work exists in the psychic world whether
you are willing to accept this or not.
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