Valerie Harms

Dreams are like Fed-Ex Messages from Your Soul
Tips for Understanding Them
Dreams pop up from the stream of unconscious imagery constantly flowing beneath the surface of our egos. Because they may seem as confounding as riddles, don’t let these messages pass you by. To benefit from them, all you need to do is catch two-three a month and reflect on them.

Symbols appear to announce new attitudes and the next phase of life. If we reflect on them in our solitude, a minor or major rebirth in our daily lives can be set in motion.
An example is when a person dreams of a child, the dream can be seen to be about the beginning or creative attitude that comes at the end of conflicts. The new way or path is symbolized by the child. The child must be cared for and helped to grow. Your dreams will show you when your child is being neglected by containing a crying or hungry baby.
A different kind of symbol is going into water where the old is washed away and the new is born.  Read More 

The PDFs are on the topics described below. All are inexpensive but drawn from my (long) years of experience. If you want to order one or more, just pay via Paypal and notify me. (You can pay at Paypal without having an account).

1. Inner Wisdom of the Body, Tips for Befriending it. If today you are often judgmental toward your body, it’s time to ally with it as you experience intimacy, sickness, sensory pleasures (music, food, fabrics, etc.), and stages of life. You will be helped in healing. 2 pages, $5, PDF.

2. Dreams are like Fed-Ex Messages from Your Soul. Tips for Understanding Them. Dreams may seem like impossible riddles but if you only work with a few a month, you will benefit from the rich flow of imagery from the unconscious. They correct your passage in life. 5 pages, $5, PDF.

3. Animals as Power Figures. Wild and tamed animals live all around us but have you stopped to think about those who live inside you? I offer you 10 techniques for working with animals as wisdom figures in order to enable you to live your life more powerfully. 3 pages, $10, PDF.

4. Rebirth Symbols. Rebirth is about renewal, resurrection, and transcendence after life delivers a blow. I describe symbols and rituals drawn from the world’s myths and religions that have helped people heal since time immemorial.
7 pages, $10, PDF. Read More 

Come if you can...Oct. 1 reading at Country Bookshelf, 28 W. Main St., Bozeman.
I will discuss my new book, Your Soul at a Crossroads ~ with steps you can take not to lose it. This book is part memoir and part depth guide to finding the right path in relationships, work, health, and nature. Exercises enable you to find your inner wisdom and personal meaning. The book also contains chapters on dreams, rebirth symbols, & myths. This is Valerie's 10th book. The beautiful Country Bookshelf is Montana's largest independent bookstore, located at 28 W. Main in Bozeman.  Read More 

This is a kick and shows why Chabon is so skilled a writer...

I hate dreams. Dreams are the Sea Monkeys of consciousness: in the back pages of sleep they promise us teeming submarine palaces but leave us, on waking, with a hermetic residue of freeze-dried dust. The wisdom of dreams is a fortune on paper that you can’t cashout, an oasis of shimmering water that turns, when you wake up, to a mouthful of sand. I hate them for their absurdities and deferrals, their endlessly broken promise to amount to something, by and by. I hate them for the way they ransack memory, jumbling treasure and trash. I hate them for their tedium, how they drag on, peter out, wander off.

Pretty much the only thing I hate more than my own dreams are yours. “I was flying over Lake Michigan in a pink Cessna,” you begin, “only it wasn’t really Lake Michigan…,” and I sink, cobwebbed, beneath a drifting dust of boredom.  Read More 

Ordinary diary-keeping differs greatly from the Intensive Journal method. When people keep a diary, they write what they already know mostly. In the Intensive Journal you do exercises that bring up new material from your creative unconscious. You cover:

1. Persons of inner importance – angry, harmonious…
2. Work projects; short term goals; what started, what completed or blocked
3. Physical condition: health, sensual life, outdoor experiences
4. Social attitudes: beliefs, politics, historical roots
5. Striking events: fateful, mysterious, synchronistic
6. Dreams or images: symbols, insights
7. Inspiring persons from history or mythology, authors, political or spiritual leaders
8. Crossroads of decisions: choices & consequences
9. Experiences of connection or meaning; times of alienation or disconnection

Ira Progoff at Amazon books Read More 

5 Tips for Working With Dreams

1. Write down a dream.
2. On separate page, called “enlargements,” note the tone and movement and write a summary of how you see this dream correlating with any aspect of your life: relationship, work, body, politics, nature the divine. Note the story. A person in the past may be relevantfor today. Dreams of people are about you, not the other person.
3. Close your eyes and reimagine yourself in the dream. See if it unfolds in any way. Go with it as you would a meditation. Afterwards write about your experience.
4. Dialogue with any part. On paper ask each part, even a table or lake or animal, to speak to you and tell you what it would like you to do.
5. Take an action directly related to the dream, even if it is just to paint it.
 Read More 

I have long been involved with Montana Friends of Jung. Recently I gave a program on dreams. Below are some tips and recommended books as well as our Web site, which you can check for programs.

Web site: http://www.montanafriendsofjung.org

Really good books:
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, & Reflections
Jeremy Taylor, Dreamwork
Robert Johnson, Inner Work
Marie-Louise Von Franz with Fraser Boa, The Way of the Dream
E. Whitmont & S. Perera, Dreams: Portal to the Source
Robert Bosnak, A Little Course in Dreams Read More