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The Heart of Dreaming

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There’s a sense of knowing you’re dreaming when you’re dreaming, and then there’s the bliss of simply dreaming. The two aren’t necessarily at odds, but they can be if we try to inject techniques to control the process. Workshops, seminars, classes, and teachings abound on how to dream, control your dreams, and be awake while you’re dreaming. When these dream attitudes and practices are mentioned, a gritty anxiety crawls up my spine and goes into my torso.

Dreams are among nature’s most wondrous forces. As a teenager, I first encountered the deep realms of the unconscious mind. It was through a dream that I was prompted to become a depth psychologist. Exploring the profound depths of the mind, both in therapy and writing, has since felt as natural as breathing. In fact, the thought of not practicing therapy and stopping my writing causes my breath to catch. Therapy and writing originate from the realm of images and symbols at work in both waking and dreaming states, and theirs is a life-giving force.

Yes, we dream while awake as well as when we sleep. Waking dreams are what mystics and sages have referred to as visions. With our eyes open, images drift through our consciousness. As you pay attention to them, you’ll notice that they occur more frequently. The unconscious, when given time and devotion, offers a steady stream of insights and visions. Whether our eyes are open during the day or closed while sleeping, images flow, and their significance addresses daily realities and ongoing potentials. What we need to see and what would benefit us to see is revealed through images and symbols from the unconscious surfacing to the conscious mind.

The unconscious evades control as it dwells in the deep realms of the soul and lofty planes of spirit. The prophet from Nazareth taught that the spirit moves as it wishes. We dream far more than we consciously remember, and it is enough sustenance for the day to know the dreams we can easily recall. There is no need for force, contrivance, or control. Dream images and symbols emerge in their own time and manner, bringing their own wisdom.

We dwell in the heart of dreaming when openness guides our way, and trust illuminates our path. There is no need for prescribed steps to achieve “effective dreaming” or methods for becoming lucid while dreaming and controlling outcomes. Techniques do not represent the spirit that flows freely, as it wills and how it wills. The heart of dreaming resides naturally within a dreamer who nurtures an attitude of openness and devotion to the unconscious mind. It is a realm of creative spirits and meaningful encounters with guiding energies and transformative powers from personal and transpersonal dimensions.

When I write, practice therapy, and live life, images flow. I can be in the midst of a conversation with colleagues, friends, family, or patients, and spontaneous images flow along the white screen of my mind. I write about it in my metaphysical novels. You’ll discover that the images relate to the person you’re with, the nature of the interaction, and the situation at that moment. Meaningful insights are birthed from sleeping dreams and waking visions. They’re nature’s way of guiding us along the path of life.

You know you’ve hit on the meaning of a dream or waking vision when things “click.” There’s an emotional resonance. American psychologist William James’ work has always resonated with me regarding the nature of genuine mystic experiences as helpful and practical. This holds true for understanding dreams and waking visions as well. It is both helpful and practical. There’s no room for demeaning others or oneself; instead, there’s life-giving insight and practical assistance. As spontaneous understanding occurs, things come together, and we feel lighter and set free. It reflects the generative nature of the unconscious mind and its symbols and images, which are always beneficial and practical.

Paying attention in waking life to the images that float through your mind’s eye, reading novels filled with the metaphysical dimensions of images and symbols, and conversing, whether in therapy or daily exchanges, with like-minded individuals stimulates the heart of dreaming. The wondrous reality of this experience is that it is within this realm, as the Western mystic text suggests, that we live, move, and have our being. Becoming attuned to the inner world of images and symbols enlivens that which resides within you and hungers for psychic nutrients and attunement to what I refer to, vis a vis William James, as the Great Unseen, that within which we live, move, and have our being—the heart of dreaming.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily!

Start Now and What You Need Will Come

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“As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. And, as in writing, so in life. Get started, and the juice will come. In Goddess of Everything, I wrote from the image. It presented itself to my mind then the fire spread to my belly! Readers have noted surprise, shock, triggering, and ultimately satisfaction from the read. Although there may be twists and turns, we lean into vital instincts, it typically leads to a satisfying ending point. So, when the impulse is there, I go with it, and the energy builds from there. From experience, it’s a fine thing to start things up and trust that the juice will come, making for a good follow-through and a good ending.

As a psychologist and writer, I’m always in the learning mode with the conscious and unconscious mind. It’s an attitude I nourish. It’s there first thing in the morning, a sense of wanting to see and follow through with what I see. It comes in intuitive images and instincts that rise to consciousness and give me the beginning of a scene or words to say to a patient. At the start of Goddess of Everything, we’re into a funeral, the pull into the realm of death and mystery unmistakable. It was rough for me to begin a novel with this eerie scene. But, the image from my unconscious that rose at the beginning of the book guided me to go there. So I did. Turns out, readers were immediately drawn in, and the story flew onward from there. So, as you can see, whether it’s a dream that comes to mind the night before writing, or an image in the morning, or a strong feeling as I open my laptop to write, it’s a starting point for me to jump into the page and take off. We begin with what comes to us, usually just a little bit, and then off we go into helpful insights that lead to living out our story.

As you’re coming to see, while writing, doing therapy, and living, I do my best to flow with feelings, images, and dreams. They are the starting points, a little something to trust and go with. Try an experiment today. Trust your strong feelings, the ones that stay with you about a person or situation. Trust the image that comes to mind or what you dreamt about what’s going on. You’ll find that your intuition gives you enough go with, and once you start, the rest will come.

Let’s do our best to nourish trusting strong feelings, spontaneous mental images, and dreams. We can start now to listen a little more sensitively to feelings, intuitions, and your initial impression of what your dream from the night before is telling you. Go with it, and you’ll find that the rest will come. It’s a big step to trust, so lean into it. And, as Hemingway said, the juice will come.

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Creative Pulsations of Special Moments

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Challenging Pulsations in the Moment

This morning I came across William Blake’s words about the creative pulsations of special moments. When I write, there’s a pulse, an energy that moves from my core to fingertips to the page. Words happen, scenes roll out, and characters guide my heart and hands to tell their journey. In my recently released, Goddess of Everything, the supernaturally charged thriller charged out of my unconscious mind. Dreams and nightmares inspired the creation of characters and scenes.

On Amazon this morning, I read this: 5.0 out of 5 stars Goddess of Everything review: “Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read. Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2021, ~ “What an unexpected surprise this book was. Dr. DeBlassie has one of the most interesting ways of telling a story that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s almost like sitting around a campfire listening to urban legends. This dark thriller with some supernatural aspects was yet again an excellent example of this man’s talents. He took the normal good vs. evil to a whole new level with exceptional world-building and character development. Definitely not for the faint-hearted but an AMAZING read.”
Amazement grabbed me throughout the creative pulsations of moment after moment driving this story forward to publication. The book’s subtitle reads A Blood-Curdling Tale of One Mother’s Affection for Her Son and Her Son’s Struggle for Truth, Freedom, and Love. Shock, the creative pulse of challenging mother love, runs through this novel like adrenaline infusions. You don’t go up against what everyone wants to believe, says convention. People want to believe what people want to believe.
Risk It!
Goddess of Everything gets to the heart of love. When mother love is challenged, everything is turned topsy turvy. Creative pulsations are birthed from challenging norms. What mainstream accepts and says must be, then has to be accepted, or we risk disapproval and rejection. Risk it, I say! Risk living the creative pulsations of special moments when out-of-the-ordinary ways of seeing things and being come knocking at the door of your mind. Answer the door, listen, follow, and grow.
To risk growth is to be alive. There’s no living without risking. In Goddess of Everything, Gabriél is torn between love for mother and wife, Consuela. Devotion to a widowed mother turned religious Mother Superior clouds his mind. Consuela ushers in reality. She helps Gabriél discover nighttime blood sacrifices of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. He’s run from risking truth facing throughout his adulthood. Risk it, see what you need to see. Risk the read and grow!
Special Moment
The moment of reckoning comes in the story. Spirits, light and dark, teem through the nighttime desert as Gabriél faces off with wickedness hidden behind what was supposed to be good. At the very least, this is a special moment. They come. Maybe, like for Gabriél, they’re hard. We don’t want them. We want to go on not being challenged to see, to stretch, to grow. It’s easier that way. But it’s not. Special moments are risky and come for special reasons—risk and grow reasons.
Risk reading one of the most thrilling novels of your life. Open Goddess of Everything, plunge into a supernatural world of mother love turned upside down and inside out. It’ll cause you to rethink what love’s all about. It’ll cause you to rethink your life, relationships, where you’re at, where you’re going. Getting on with the creative pulsations of special moments, no matter the cost, equals risk equals growth.
Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

Destruction, Chaos, Surprises!

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2020 birthed a new metaphysical thriller—Goddess of Everything!

Synopsis:

In the mystic land of Aztlan del Norte, a realm of supernatural happenings and unexpected turns of fate, psychiatric healer Gabriél de LaTierra encounters appalling evil within the Orphanage of the Holy Innocents. Children disappear for reasons kept secret by Mother Juana de la Cruz, Superior of the Nunnery and the Orphanage.

Love for Mother Juana, Gabriél’s widowed mother turned religious superior, clouds her devoted son’s mind. Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, confronts his wall of denial. Torn between love for mother and wife, Gabriél turns inward.

It is Consuela who propels Gabriél’s discovery of the nighttime blood sacrifice of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. Gabriél is further enraged by Mother Juana’s vengeful attack on Consuela and her kidnapping of their four-year-old son, Cuauhtémoc. But his actions will determine whether Consuela and Cuauhtémoc live or die, and the fate of Mother Juana de la Cruz.

Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son’s struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Metaphysical Fiction Births Everyday Surprises

Reading stories about the unseen world sharpens our psychic senses. Goddess of Everything . We’re transported into realities behind day-to-day life. Spiritual dynamics operate behind the scene, whisper in our ear, tug at our heart, affect us for better or worse. If we pay heed, take care, and proceed carefully then inevitable surprises turn bad stuff into the stuff that refines us like iron shaped by the blacksmith.

Motherlove can be good or goes south when it’s devouring. Take a literary whirl into the dark side of one mother’s love and a son’s surprise at discovering the true identity of the Goddess of Everything. The story will forever change the way you see mothers, love, and decisions.

Be safe, be well during this time of worldwide crisis and remember . . .

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily

 

 

 

 

Soulful Living – Peaceful Holiday

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A Soulful Holiday

Yuletide calls us to a sensitive, deliberate turning within to soul. It has been associated with divinities of the hunt, psychologically referring to the search for inner nourishment. In depth psychotherapy and visionary writing, natural shifts of energy are heeded. They align us with life, the nature of things for us that can be quite different than for others. In fact, as we age and grow we become increasingly defined. Our uniqueness is, hopefully, appreciated by us and those we love.

Troubles during the holiday come when folks are pressured to get together. It’s good for us to share time with those we enjoy, those of kindred soul. And, if it is not so with others, then let that be. We do not have to get along with everyone or everyone with us – be they kith or kin. Differences can be respected. A holiday can be enjoyed.

 

Live More Quietly and Deeply

Dreams of patients and protagonists in my novels urge balance. When the season grows dark and cold, dreams address the need to listen more deeply and live more quietly. As friends and family do the same, harmony prevails. If not, there is discord. Family fights, friends falling out, anxiety and dysfunction set in when personal and relational limits have been violated.

In The Unholy, the church demands everybody believe and live according to rigid dogmas. In Goddess of the Wild Thing, discord and bona fide evil hit the scene when people demand loyalty. In the end, each story unfolds as people make decisions that seem small but have big consequences. Little decisions during the holidays make the difference between soulful living and high-pressured craziness. Winter bids us relinquish a year worth of rigid buildups, dysfunctional ways of living and relating. The dark and cold draws us within, to the warmth of a quieter and deeper life.

 

Quietude Births Consciousness

The visionary story that is our life is an evolution of decisions made and lives affected. We stand the chance of making soulful choices that bring peace of mind as we take time for quietude and turning within. Let this Yuletide be one of quietly enjoying yourself and those of kindred soul. Let the holidays usher us into realms of the imagination and intimacy through reflective living, relating, and reading. Let the dark womb of a soulful interiority be our realm this season so that soon a new light of consciousness may be born.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

Madness, Reading, and the Soul

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Dreams last night popped with shocking images, some horrifying. They set me right and got me back on track. There’s nothing like a bit of shock and horror to shake up the soul. Oddly enough (or maybe not), I feel better. The week of doing depth therapy with traumatized patients, clearing the way through dark forests and troubling times, is settling ~ mind clearing. I think I’ll write, do hot yoga, great meals, and lots of love all weekend.

Soulful times generate soulful living. Reading is integral to my daily life, takes me into soul. There’s a place inside that can be nourished, satisfied, only through reading. I have to enter in visionary worlds that sometimes are horrifying, land me in a realm of madness as the protagonist encounters light and dark energies in daily life. It’s a time of conflict and pain, no resolution except by going through what needs to be gone through.

Reading visionary fiction is a lot like dreaming. In dreams, we can’t help, force or cajole, what’s going on or about to happen. I know there are people who try and control their dreams. The psyche does not take well to being controlled. There’s always kickback when we attempt to manipulate, conjure, what we want to happen. Old religions did this via prayer, thinking they knew what was best and wanted to force the hand of their god to comply. Healthily, sanely, we live in accord with life, letting events and dreams play themselves out as we consciously decide to find our way through tight spots.

Life is tough. Reading helps. Settling into an old chair, taking up a book we’re into and letting our mind go with the flow of the words and paragraphs and scenes – the story of a life and the mysteries and magic that take them by surprise – does something to us. It nurtures and strengthens our imagination. Stories make a difference in the quality of our life.

Madness is a private thing. It’s a matter of quality living. When we’re in touch with our private madness, we discover an imaginal world similar to the stories we’ve read. Feeling out of control, wanting to slow it up and shut it down, wishing things away only to make things worse is part and parcel of private madness. It’s our way of learning if we listen and give it a chance to speak.

So, give yourself some soul time. See if there might be a visionary novel that’s whispering your name. You’ll find that your unconscious mind guides you to just the right literary medicine. Trust your instincts, browse through your favorite online or brick-and-mortar book retailer, and pick up a copy of a story that just might touch your private madness and forever touch your soul.

Live Deeply…Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

There’s a Plan Going On In Our Life

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There is a plan

There’s a plan going on in our life. We can’t see it day to day, but it’s there. We’re busy living out our stories. Meaning happens once time passes and we look back, we see it all had a purpose.

We get into trouble due to anxiety that pops us out of soul. When I treat patients in depth psychotherapy or write visionary fiction, I’m caught by the power of anxiety. With patients, it lures them out of self. It takes them down dark alleys of despair. Characters in visionary stories lapse into waves of overwhelming stress, a toxic situation that clouds their mind and at least temporarily cripples positive behavior.

Reading visionary fiction taps us into a realm deeper than our anxieties. We step into another imaginative space and time that offers us a way out of a mental rut. The imagination, as psychologists have explored, opens us up to psychic energies that pop the top of our rule-bound heads off—they get what’s old and worn out and present an invigorating challenge and life-changing revolution.

The soul knows

The imagination is the home of the soul. It knows how to take us back inside so we find ourselves again. Dead-end troubles in life, as visionary fiction highlights, often tear us out of what’s true and real. They shake up the good and make us believe there’s only bad. The soul, the source of age-old inner wisdom, knows better. It knows the way back inside. It gets what’s terrible and awful and says voila I  have something new for you. It has a plan to get us into the new, the better, the revolutionary.

Some say it’s a leap to believe in soul. Actually, there’s no leap. There is no stretch of mind or faith. Soul simply is, whether we believe in it or not. Mind-numbing pain jettisons us into a wall that forces a decision to either believe in self or not. That’s soul or soullessness. It’s a plain as a New Mexico sunshine-day reality and depth psychological psychic truth.

If you’re up against an emotional/spiritual wall, stop and take a deep breath. Maybe it’s time to get real quiet, do a little online or favorite bookstore search, and read. Go to an imaginative place that speaks to you with a read that offers a tug. There’s a gentle or strong pull to reach out to that bookshelf or click the online button and download. As you start with the first word, sentence and paragraph you’ll feel like you’re settling into a well-worn chair in a warm and comfy home. A soul place. Read and take to heart the visionary story.  It will speak to you and show you the way. There’s a plan going on in our life, and the soul knows what it is.

“Live Deeply . . . Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

 

Thoughts Are Real

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Thoughts are real. They exert a force on everyday reality. What we see and dwell on mentally can become manifest. Best to sensitively tend the mind to be in accord with the wisdom of nature and the way of all things.

 

The unconscious mind

After a week of intensive psychotherapy, I’m reflective. Pondering what I’ve experienced with patients brings to light hidden jewels. The suffering of real people living real lives highlights the workings of the unconscious mind. Where there are conflict and pain, thoughts have been transformed into habitual attitudes. They are largely unconscious. Deep psychotherapy explores vital feeling states, memories and dreams. The lived stories of real people inevitably generates emotional and spiritual drama and, hopefully, transformation.

The unconscious mind slowly reveals to ardent seekers that long-held thoughts and feelings in adulthood cause life situations. In visionary stories, the protagonist must face off with the ghosts they’ve been running from. There’s no outrunning the ghosts of the past. Once they’re faced, revelations begin. We learn their message. They always have a message. And, we see, that our thoughts and feelings have long birthed reality.

 

Reading and the power of mind

On the weekend, I sink into reading. During the week I take in research in depth psychology, readings that nurture professional growth as a seasoned psychotherapist. Then, once I’ve finished seeing weekly patients, I turn to stories. I read, I write, I explore the unconscious mind with all of its numinous symbols and images. The new novel I’m writing takes unexpected twists and turns as light energies meet dark, natural magic and evil come to a reckoning. Stories illuminate the mind, help us to understand the power of the mind.

We birth our realities as adults. As children, things happened to us. We were vulnerable. Hopefully, as adults we grow into self-empowerment, reading deeply and regularly assisting the development of sensitivity to the conscious and unconscious worlds. We learn that thoughts are real. They exert a force on everyday reality. What we see and dwell on mentally can become manifest. Best to sensitively tend the mind to be in accord with the wisdom of nature and the way of all things.

 

“Live Deeply . . . Read Daily”

pauldeblassieiii.com

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D.

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D., is a psychologist and award-winning writer living in his native New Mexico, crafting visionary thrillers energized with trickster mischief and natural magic.

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