Journaling and

Dream Work.

Keeping a Journal and doing Dream Work is one of the most helpful parts of the spiritual life - and most popular. Fr. Price presents these as a whole, since journaling is a part of dream analysis and greatly enhanced when used together.

Fr. Price teaches 30 different dreamwork techniques beginning with ways to honor your dreams so you can remember them in the first place. See his episode on Dr. John Lienhard's National Public Radio series, The Engines of our Ingenuity, www.uh.edu/engines/epi1868.htm and if you have a soundboard, you can listen to the segment

Everyone dreams, but not everyone remembers them since many do not respect dreams as an important part of the spiritual life and think dreams don't mean anything. Dreams are among the most important ways God and our unconscious attempts to contact our waking self to alert us to issues, problems, anxieties, and the meaning of certain successes in our life. All dreams work in the service of wholeness.

REPEATING DREAMS are ones which present issues with which we have not yet dealt.

NIGHTMARES are merely dreams exploring major issues in our lives from which we awoke before we resolved the issue in the dream.

VEHICLES are expressions of our ego in the dream (Detroit figured that out long ago). Fr. Price teaches analysis of the dream including many different processes often involving journaling on the issue(s) in the dream and can include what is called "dialogue journaling," taught in the presentation on journaling.

In his presentation on Journaling, Fr. Price includes several different methods and recommends in a spiritual context a version which approaches the journal entry as a prayer to the Lord. Different techniques involve dialogue journaling, writing with the non-dominant hand, and writing letters to person or persons who have died and with whom you have unresolved issues.

Journaling and dream analysis can be taught in a 1-, 3- or 6-hour presentation, and is best taught in a weekend-long conference. See "Presentations Scheduled" for a note on when this will be presented next, Thursday, April 22, 2004, at the Cenacle Retreat Center, 420 N. Kirkwood, 9am - Noon ($30)

Updated December 20, 2003