Welcome to this week’s Tending Tuesdays offering! Tending Tuesdays was inspired by a pull to sustain the value of what happens when we come together as a community. Each Tuesday, an email will come to you with a link to a new video on a Dream Tending or depth psychological topic in the form of current writing and research, interviews, discussions with colleagues, and clips of tending dreams.
Dear Dream Tending Community,
What sustains love most deeply? There is no one answer. Yet, the love that opens when you experience the wellsprings of deep belonging feeds the soul.
To feel part of an empathetic external community nourishes your love for self and others. Participating in and contributing to an inner community of soul companions offers a love of another making.
In a community of deep belonging, love’s yearning is realized. The call of your life purpose revitalizes. It is possible to visit this inner community each day. With intent and practice, you have the capacity to meet and greet the soul companions who ask for your company. In turn, their desire is to engage with you. When part of their gathering, your body feels a sense of inclusion and you relax. Here there are conversations to participate in and relationships to develop. With time, you discover a communion of kindred spirits. You find a home place. Here around the hearth, you experience deep belonging and the beauty of soul’s desire—love.
I want to share with you one way to join the inner community. I have made this process a daily practice. Please, take my personal offering and make it your own unique praxis.
Until next Tuesday . . .
In the dreamtime,
Steve
Love’s Yearning, Deep Belonging
Exercise:
1) Take a few minutes to separate from the understandable pressures of outside demands. Finding a quiet place, closing eyes, and breathing into your stomach then legs, facilitate moving into an inner presence.
2) Next, imagine a gathering place. This could be an image of an outside area, a community center, or a room for hosting a group.
3) While imagining this inner gathering place, notice which figures from dream or memory come forward. Bring awareness to those that seem most present.
4) Bring your awareness to supportive and nurturing images. Don’t work to eliminate those that are difficult or hurtful. However, here in the beginning, put a boundary around those that are particularly disruptive.
5) Give each of the images, supportive and difficult, a name that describes their role, stature, or attribute.
6) Through simple sketches or narrative, let the images place themselves on the page in a community gathering.
7) Be present here for a while. Watch, listen, and experience their presence and interactions.
8) Without feeling the need to interpret or make meaning, experience the eros of relationships moving through the community.
Pause. Notice Love’s Yearning for Deep Belonging.
Inside The Curious Mind
Learn the Power, Purpose and Intelligence of Dreams
Unleash your creativity and innate genius
Stephen Aizenstat
Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Dream Tending, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences. He is a world-renowned professor of depth psychology, an imagination specialist, and an innovator. He has served as an organizational consultant to major companies and institutions, and as a depth psychological content advisor to Hollywood film makers. He has lectured extensively in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. He is affiliated with the Earth Charter International project through the United Nations, where he has spoken. Professor Aizenstat is the Chancellor Emeritus and Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has collaborated with many notable masters in the field including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, and Robert Johnson.
