Dreamwork with Toko-pa

Dreams, poetry, and learning to live well.

[toko-pa]

“When you consider the origin of the word shame, which means “to cover,” you begin to understand that, however misguided, we hold a secret and painful conviction that certain parts of ourselves are so ugly or unworthy, that unless we hide or cut them off, we will never belong or be accepted.

Dreams, on the other hand, go straight for those things and throw off the covers. They work tirelessly to retrieve our forgotten, neglected and rejected soul-parts. It can be threatening to the ego at first, whose whole existence depends on keeping those things hidden. And while it is certainly possible to survive in this way, underneath the daily armour is an unabating hunger to be seen.” (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Sachin Teng

[toko-pa]

In this 4-week online course, Jan 20th – Feb 18th, 2016, you will be learning the Cornerstones of Dreamwork.

Using an intimate blend of art, theory and practice, dreamers learn to understand the structure and language of dreams & develop the tools necessary to begin bridging their wisdom back to waking life.  This series is excellent for beginner and intermediate dreamers.

Click here for more info, and to take advantage of Earlybird tuition (until December 23rd).

[toko-pa]

“With dreamwork, we are endlessly tenderising ourselves to subtletly. When we begin to know its dimensions, pain can no longer envelop us in an indistinct mass. It’s not that we are ridding ourselves of suffering, but rather learning its name, which is the prelude to befriending it." (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Edel Rodriguez

[toko-pa]

“It may help to remember that sometimes we are plummeted into our darkest depths precisely because we have elevated our ceilings on Love. Our demons appear most ferociously when they feel threatened by a new attitude.

So please consider your contractions are actually validations of where you are bravely digging into your own substrate to unearth those limiting patterns and, in releasing them, revealing a greater capacity for belonging and joy.” (Click here to read more).  © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by The Art of Kelly Louise Judd

[toko-pa]

"Those who are willing to break a conspiracy of silence are guaranteed to meet with the disapproval of others. Having a dissenting voice naturally exiles you from the group, but this rejection is a validation of the bravery having such a standpoint requires. It's also a marvelous training in originality and acts as an agent of attrition. It teaches you who and what is in alignment with your integrity, strengthening those affinities within and without. It's important during such times of change to practice self-love, comforting the brave & terrified rebel within who doesn't want to be alone and grieves those losses none the less." (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Heather McClean

[toko-pa]

"Amazingly, some of us have retained passion. Some of us continue to be disciples of the things we love. We drag our addicted, programmed asses out of deeply-worn ruts. We walk against the grain and the odds, turn away from apathy and accumulation, and stand for something. It may not look like much while you’re doing it. You may feel crazy. You may experience terrifying loneliness. But it should help to remember that you are one of a gentle multitude living “out there” on the lunatic fringe, letting your life be galvanized by the irrational, doing your tiny giant part to restore meaning by giving your gifts to the world. And for that, I thank you." (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artist source (http://bit.ly/2czurd2)

[toko-pa]

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[toko-pa]

"James Hillman, archetypal psychologist and writer, says that we are born with a code written into our soul. Not unlike the acorn which contains the entirety of the oak tree programmed within it, every child has a fate to grow into. The images that are generated in our dreams are not regurgitated flotsam, but structured clues to that fate. They are what Hillman calls the personal daimon, the guiding force in each of us that tirelessly works to align us with our calling.

Not only does each of us have a vocation, but every individual’s daimon fits holographically into the body of the collective, which is unfolding the Great Dream.

This is why we need your dreaming. It isn’t only important at the level of the self, but at the level of tribe. The more actively you dream yourself awake, the sooner the collective will get lucid." (Click here to read more).  © 2007 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Joshua Mays 

[toko-pa]

“After public speaking, people’s greatest collective fear is death. Our culture is so obsessed with saving time, preserving our health and achieving eternal youth, that one might even say society is an elaborate campaign to avoid the inevitable. Dreams, however, are not constrained by this taboo. They show us death in a thousand gory forms, helping us get acquainted with our own fallibility and the cyclical nature of existence. Like night giving way to day and spring emerging from winter, the psyche experiences continual death and rebirth.” (Click here to read more).  © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Simon Prades

[toko-pa]

“Each of us has a kind of ceiling on havingness, which says ‘this is as much as I deserve’ and we may settle there, believing we can not do better. And if someone challenges us to raise that ceiling, we may find ourselves arguing for our limitations; “my parents struggled so should I; everyone settles, it’s the practical thing to do; I haven’t succeeded, met someone, been discovered yet, so why waste any more energy dreaming of the impossible?”

But when we dig a little deeper into our reasons for keeping our havingness ceiling low, we may find that there is a silent contract we’ve made with ourselves to settle in a limitation because, in some way, it’s actually working for us.

To raise your ceiling on havingness, you must take risks. These risks often involve shaking up the status quo, feeling more vulnerable and exposed than ever before, opening yourself to rejection, disapproval and even pain. If we aren’t willing to include these things in our experience, then a low ceiling is just what we need.” (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Photographer Unknown

[toko-pa]

“For the person who survived on scraps of affection, there may be a lifelong habit of contraction that is only obvious when you are showered in appreciation. Here the heart is challenged to receive at a greater capacity than it has ever known. Bearing the pleasure means beginning to notice those jumpy places which anticipate pain, which expect abandonment, which brace for danger when it’s no longer there. Only then can we begin to invite a gentle exploration of pleasure, allowing life into those areas which have been cordoned off in self-preservation. We must acclimate, often through grief, to the life-giving nature of love which is all around us waiting to be received. As the great Persian poet Rumi puts it, “Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love.” (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by David Galchutt 

[toko-pa]

To give you a sense of how a retreat day unfolds, the mornings are magic as we tend to our dream journals and sacred altar in shared silence, while the mottled sky bathes us in diffuse light. After a yummy organic breakfast, we dive right into dreamsharing. Throughout the day, we dance, grieve, laugh and play with our dreams! We feast under Stowel Lake Farm’s vaulted roofs and luxuriate in the land’s many other generosities. And in the evenings we gather for ceremony around the sacred fire, singing and drumming our longing into the smoke until we collapse again into the dreaming. Click here for more info!

[toko-pa]

“There’s a moving scene in “How to Cook Your Life” where Zen teacher & chef Edward Espe Brown speaks about sincerity. He says “Sincerity is the quality where you let your imperfections show.” Indeed, when we look at the origin of the word; ‘sin’ means without - and ‘cere’ means wax. So even though we may be banged up and blemished by life, we allow ourselves to be seen without polish." (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Nelly Tsenova

[toko-pa]

"Presence is the real feat of originality: it drops the veils and titles of human society, and wriggles down into the feeling place where one's true song can be heard. And like improvisation itself, it then chances its own awkwardness into the open for the gamble at unfathomable beauty.

It is a dropping of trying and letting of allowing. Like the lone bird singing the sun’s rise, breast full with the tender song of now, a melody of yes, it is a communion with the holy moment which, like a cadenza, is always playing through us, living to be heard." - (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Nelly Tsenova

[toko-pa]

“Sometimes our holding patterns need to be broken and, like a husk on the heart, this stage is enormously painful. That's why it's vital to nurture even the smallest glimmer of newness wanting to be born from our old strategies. Like sunshine on sprouts, let the warmth of your attention draw that newness out, so your glimmer can multiply into a full-on radiance.”- (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Photographer Unknown

[toko-pa]

“There is an old myth told by Lakota elder, Lame Deer, which speaks to the importance of injury. After you die, it is said you meet an old hag in the Otherworld who will eat your scars and then let you continue on. If you have none, she’ll eat your eyes instead and you’ll be blind in the next life. So the idea is that wisdom can only be retrieved by entering into the wound. Or as James Hillman puts it, ‘The wound and the eye are one in the same’." (Click here to read more). © 2016 Toko-pa Turner | Artwork by Hans Walør // Art + Design

[toko-pa]

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