Customer Reviews

The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life

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Jeremy Taylor is a master dream weaver and teacher. I read the original "Where People Fly"... and this book was long overdue to be renewed and energized. I have worked with Jeremy in a dream group and this is a truly joyful and enlightening experience. I hear his voice and wisdom imparted in this wonderful book. He offers a specific blueprint to build your dream work upon. Dr. Taylor is a wizard and his extensive love of dreams shines through this narrative. The book is practical in its scope of how dreams connect us to ourselves, others and the universe. This book is highly recommended no matter what stage of dream work a person finds themselves.

Like many people, I was drawn to group dreamwork through reading Jeremy's original book, "Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill." 17 years later, my dream group is still meeting almost every week, and 4 of us are original members of the group we started back then. I have recommended this book to many, many people over the years, and it was with great pleasure that I picked up "The Wisdom of Your Dreams" recently and re-read the material that got me curious about dreams in the first place.

Jeremy's book still stands, and his insights are as fresh and valid today in this revised edition than they were when the book first came out. I particularly loved the last section, "Dreams and the Evolution of Human Consciousness," new material that has given me much to think about in terms of the role that dreams play not just for individuals but for cultural growth and change. I highly recommend this book, and will continue to do so for years to come!

The Wisdom of Your Dreams is far more than just another dream book: it is a unique and exciting journey into our unconscious, where symbols, soul urges, and the creative muse romp, untethered by earthly anchors. Understanding the language of your unconscious and its dream messages can transform your life deeply and profoundly. If you're looking for cookie-cutter interpretations of dream images and a quick dream-meaning fix, this is NOT the book for you.

Author Jeremy Taylor is an erudite and eloquent dream master who draws from four decades of teaching and facilitating thousands of people to work with their dreams individually as well as in dream groups. His classic guidelines for working with dream imagery and sharing dreams in group dreamwork are unparalleled in their non-dogmatic approach and scope of application. A new introduction and chapter in this updated version of "Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill" elaborates on how the evolution of consciousness, something that is highly relevant in this modern era, is yet another layer of meaning that we can glean from working with our dreams. And, as is one of Jeremy Taylor's trademark signatures, we are reminded that even (or especially) in an evolutionary context, and regardless of the content, "dreams always come in the service of health and wholeness."

With Taylor as our guide, in The Wisdom of Your Dreams we find ourselves popping down rabbit holes of psyche and psychology, culture and mythology, symbols and spirit, creativity and potential. He brings to this field astounding and original theories about the universal and personal meanings of dreams and dreamwork and offers many real life stories and dream examples, which convey the astuteness of his perceptions. A veteran teacher and dream group leader, Taylor's understanding of how archetypes, mythology, psyche, and culture weave together a vibrant dreamscape that is indeed the "workshop of conscious evolution" is nothing less than brilliant.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring their dreams, particularly through a dream group. Taylor's life-long experience of working with dreams all over the world makes him a wise and trustworthy guide to this fascinating subject. His approach and advise about how a group can best function are very appealing, and the dreams he offers as examples throughout the book are convincing proof that our dreams come as gifts from the unconscious in service of our overall health and evolving consciousness.

As a several-time reader of "Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill" and having experienced Jeremy's classes and workshops live dozens of times, I need to stress that "expanded and updated" does not do this fine work justice. While it retains the pleasingly polyphonic quality of the work that preceded it by 15 years, much painstaking editing throughout results in clearer imagery and easier reading.
And much new material is distributed through the book, not just in the added chapter.
So this book both updates Jeremy's global view of dreamwork from the standpoint of 15 years more experience -- over 40 years formally of group dreamwork by now -- while still portraying very accurately the flavor and presence of live group dreamwork.
It could fairly be said to be an experiential encyclopedia in one volume, from sheer inclusiveness.
It is worth noting that Jeremy is a co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Dreams over 25 years ago -- but neither old enough nor inactive enough to be called an elder statesman.
His approach is distinctive by an effort always to recognize consciously effects of psychological projection: "We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are." Thus THE dream does not exist, like a laboratory specimen spread on a table to be dissected by experts. Rather a dream has as many versions as there are hearers of it, and anyone may have a valuable contribution about its meaning.
And he strives to be a dreamwork universalist, as well as a UU minister: his emphasis is about how many theories about dreams are true simultaneously, rather than one approach triumphing over or excluding another.

A great handbook on how to understand your dreams individually and especially in the context of a group in order to fully understand, appreciate and act genuinely in life. Jeremy fully and eloquently with humor, seriousness and story telling elucidates what dreams are about (the magic mirror metaphorical telling the truth of our lives), why we have them (healing and wholeness) and how we can understand them for the benefit of ourselves and the world. While the lack of annotation may annoy some scholarly types (including me) the book is non the less erudite while the story telling style interspersed throughout the book lends accessibility.

I found this book incredibly helpful and enlightening. I was very inspired by so many ideas and concepts about dreaming. In this book, Jeremy Taylor, a Jungian-based dream worker for over forty years and Unitarian Universalist minister, explains various ways of working with dreams to tap into your unconscious to transform yourself and your life. He explains ten basic assumptions of dreams, different layers of dreams and techniques for improving dream recall. In a particularly interesting chapter, he discusses his views of how dreams relate to the evolution of consciousness, nonviolence and social change. Taylor explains techniques for doing dream work in groups and individually which he says (and I agree!) require courage, good humor, emotional honesty, trust, creative openness and risk. Taylor compassionately discusses working with recurring dreams and the common issue of recovering repressed memories of childhood trauma in dreams of adults that grew up in "normal" households. Taylor also introduces lucid dreaming, shamanism and the evolution of archetypes. Taylor explains that dream work can lead to greater compassion as compassion is born out of doing challenging inner work that acknowledges and regularly communicates with "the other" within. I found his extensive reading list with detailed descriptions very helpful for further reading. I personally was very inspired with insights regarding shadow work, family conflicts, creativity, general dreaming and group dream work. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning about dreams in the framework of Jungian psychology.

Ms. Jamieson Haverkampf
Author of the award winning resource guide Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent and current Dream group Leader Training student at the Haden Institute
Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent

This book covers much of what Jeremy has talked about before but still it seems fresh and up to date and always so informative. Jeremy's mind is sharp and he retains and assimilates material from such varied sources that one cannot fail to learn new pearls of wisdom and insight.