Icons of a Dreaming Heart: The Art and Practice of Dream-Centered Living

It is now part of our culture to imagine dreams as messages from the “unconscious.” The prevailing notion is that dreams must be interpreted— that is, put into our present ways of understanding. What is rarely noticed is that this move toward interpretation takes dreams out of their own way of presenting themselves. In Icons of a Dreaming Heart, Renee Coleman explodes the very notion of dream interpretation. Dreaming, she convincingly shows, presents the action of imaginally real companions. The manner in which Dr. Coleman lets the worlds of dreaming reveal themselves constitutes the essence of this writing. There is no theory here. We are taken into a new kind of attentiveness, available to everyone. We come to experience the dream presences as quite autonomous from us—visitors, not from “elsewhere,” but ever-present visitors asking to be noticed. The great secret, now revealed in this remarkable book, is that in saying “yes” to the beckoning of dream presences, we are changed, down to the very core of our being.