Integral Relational Practice of Dreaming the Caesura

ABSTRACT

This two-part article, “Integral Relational Practice of Dreaming the Caesura,” describes an integral relational practice of “dreaming the caesura,” with an illustration of this specific practice through the author’s dreaming of her great, great, great, great grandmother, Charlotte Small Thompson, a Métis Cree woman who traveled across Canada with her husband from 1799–1812. The contemplative practice, a method of nonduality, is anchored in compassion and will expand the practitioner’s capacity to be with suffering. The 1^st person, 2^nd person, and 3^rd person perspectives of integral experience are viewed through their separate and also their linked and embedded relationships to one another, thus constituting the caesuras of contemplation.

KEY WORDS:

• caesura
• Charlotte Small Thompson
• contemplation
• David Thompson
• dreaming
• integral
• relational
• practice
• psyche
• spiritual

Notes

1. See Pearson 2006, 2007, 2013, 2015a; Munn 2020; Pascal 2021; and Wilber 2000, 2007.

^2. Michael Eigen’s (2015, 2018) teaching of distinction-union, specifically designated by him as “the one in two” and “the two in one,” is a direct catalyst for this formulation of dreaming practice. See also Eigen 1998, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2021; and Pearson 2019, 2021b.

^3. See Grotstein 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2009; and Grotstein and Pearson 2016.

^4. Jessica Benjamin’s (2018) teaching of the “one in the third” and the “third in the one” is a direct catalyst for this formulation of dreaming practice; Benjamin is teaching on the analytic third of intersubjectivity. My use of the 1 in the 2 and the 2 in the 1 reflects this sense of the 1 in the We and the We in the I of intersubectivity, as languaged through the vantage of integral psychology. My use of 1 in the 3 and 3 in the 1, unlike Benjamin’s, is anchored in the It and I perspectives of integral psychology. See also Pearson 2015b.

^5. See Pearson 2014, 2021a; and Pearson and Marlo 2021.

^6. See Grotstein 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2009.

^7. See Eigen 1993, 1998, and 2011.

^8. Appearance-emptiness is realized as the deity Yum Chenmo, or I could say that the diety Yum Chenmo is realized as the dream field of appearance-emptiness.

^9. For a helpful practice on developing compassion, see Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy by Lama Palden (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2019).

^10. “Like a dream when you know you are dreaming” is a phrase that my principal meditation teacher, Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, often invoked as he pointed out what, on one level, Buddhist practitioners refer to as “appearance emptiness”—the inseparable union of form and emptiness. (See https://www.ktgrinpoche.org/marpa-network/marpa-foundation for a portal to his teaching activity and see https://www.lionessroars.org/music/theheartofdefinitivemeaning for access to some of his teachings of songs of realization.) I only consciously discovered how deeply I have internalized this mantra and its transmission of layers of meaning and experience, only some of which I can address, when the Jung Journal editor, Jeffrey Moulton Benevedes, asked me why I ended each caesura contemplation with this expression “regard this caesura as a dream.” Only then did I realize that I was unconsciously passing on my relationship to my teacher’s pointing out instruction (itself a contemplation that encompasses all six contemplations of the caesura as set forth in this article), which has been so instrumental to me, with the hope that it may be of ultimate benefit to others.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Willow Pearson Trimbach

WILLOW PEARSON TRIMBACH is director of clinical training and associate professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. A psychologist, psychotherapist, and music therapist, she has a private practice in Oakland, California (drwillowpearson.com). Dr. Pearson Trimbach is also a singer and songwriter, with six albums of original music and a seventh album of Tibetan Buddhist songs of realization (lionessroars.org). Dr. Pearson is co-editor and contributing author of The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge in 2021. Correspondence: [email protected].