Melinda Powell approaches dreams and lucid dreaming as a means to soul-awakening, a path she calls ‘Lucid Surrender’™. Her writings on dreams derive from Powell’s first-hand experience as a lucid dreamer, her professional work as a psychotherapist and her researches into dreams and dream lucidity. Her application of Carl Jung’s alchemical model to Lucid Surrender brings new dimensions to our understanding of alchemy, therapeutic practice and dream lucidity. She describes how stages similar to the alchemical process can also be consciously initiated in a lucid dream, with powerful therapeutic effect. Powell further develops Jung’s teachings on light, revisioning the reader’s understanding of darkness by illuminating the phenomenon of Black Light. She shows how lucid dreams can open us to the realm of the transpersonal.

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This book initiates readers into both the science and art of dreaming, offering a response to the question, ‘Why write a book about dreams, when the world faces so many crises?’ The many dreams and the therapeutic reflections on them show that the more we develop our dreamlife, the more we take root in life and come into being. When we take time to pay attention to our dreams, our compassion towards ourselves, others and the earth grows. This title is also available in Spanish. See La Vida Secreta de los Sueños.

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Most Western approaches to dreams are limited to a psychological paradigm. Building on Jung's work, which was heavily influenced by the transformative model of alchemy, a new multidimensional approach to the process of human transformation through dreams has been developed which recognises the interrelationship of the psychological and the spiritual, and works with the mirroring body in service of both. In the approach presented here, dreams are seen as a mixture of worldly impressions and expressions of our individual spirit, which is trying to speak to us through the metaphors and narrative of our dreams. In this way, the spiritual comes through the psychological dimension. Though it may seem to be a contradiction, our dreams hold the key to our 'awakening' and, by actively engaging with them we can unlock their potential for initiating and facilitating our own unfoldment. This book is about recognising this process when it occurs in dreams, and how to work with them in the service of our growth and self-realisation.

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Whether good or bad and whether we remember them or not, each night every one of us dreams. But what biological or psychological function do dreams serve? What do these vivid images and strange storylines mean? How have psychologists, religions, and society at large interpreted dreams, and how can a closer examination of our dreams provide useful insights?

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For this pioneering two-volume anthology on lucid dreaming, Melinda Powell has contributed a chapter on a Jungian Approach to dream lucidity.

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