Today was indeed a day that we had no agenda, and somehow, we manage to fill the time allotted. Talking with Bill from week to week is like mining a treasure trove. He brings forth good stuff. I mentioned last Sunday that we prepare for teaching in part by talking for an hour a day. (We also both read for at least an hour a day and write/create slideshows for about 2-4 hours a week. Preparing a single talk can take about 12-15 hours!) A lot of what we talked about in preparation was our dreams, and today, we reflect on that. Neither one of us spoke directly about our dreams in class, but they informed much of what we did.

Dreams are numinous, a doorway into the unconscious. And in waking life, we have liminal moments in which the unconscious is “talking to” the conscious mind. Things in “the real world” directly relate to something trying to make itself known in the inner world. Bill gives the example of throwing away his keys just after a profound dream altered the course of his life. The keys represented a kind of nudge: Are you paying attention? Are you ready to let go of control of what you know? Our lived realities, then, are constructed by the dialogue between our conscious and unconscious minds.

Movie recommendations, both on Amazon Prime:

“A Million Miles Away”
“Puncture”