Cheryl Towers (2023) Dreaming the Way Home. Jungian Meditations on the Authority of Soul.
This book is about the inner journey of homecoming to our deepest sense of self and the recognition that, on this journey, our dreams are the guiding voice of our soul. C.G. Jung’s concept of individuation is introduced along with a description of a “native self” to provide an image of the core in all of us, our essence, that springs from nature itself.
I then offer an original Irish Voyage Tale (or immrama) to describe the lived and felt experience of a journey of individuation in which the protagonist draws on his dreams as a guiding rudder to find his direction and to understand the meaning of his personal journey. Interwoven within the text of this tale is a day-to-day description of the movements in and along a real river in Ireland over a period of a year. This attention to nature’s movements mirrors the natural, internal, spiritual movements of the protagonist.
In part two of the book, I take the reader through a series of meditations on the meaning of the Voyage Tale and on the universal nature of the inner, spiritual journey that it represents in all of us. Along with my own personal resonances to the tale, this contemplative piece draws upon Jungian ideas, poetry and myth.
I have written this book for anyone who struggles with the question of meaning in their life.
Extract
22nd April It is night. Silence has fallen over the river. It is a clear, moonlit night that lights up the water to create a moving reflection of the few clouds in the sky. The water is glassy white, then dark, then sparkling at the bend where the current strengthens beneath. There is a perfect, full moon, creating a night where no man would need a torch to find his way through the landscape. The heavens are shining with planets in full view – constellations like the Plough, bending and arching over the great arc of the sky. This is a wondrous night . . . where the dark meets the light.
The human story is the voyage we make through the light and the dark of our lived encounters. No state lasts forever . . . we are in a constant state of flow and change. We are emotionally on the move, every moment of the day, just as a river does not cease to flow, and just as weather and seasons are in constant motion. This is nature – and we are of nature, part of the great, shifting, changing, unending movement of life.
And the river flows on . . .
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