2017 Nautilus Award Gold Winner
Feel like you don't belong? You're not alone.
The world has never been more connected, yet people are lonelier than ever. Whether we feel unworthy, alienated, or anxious about our place in the world -- the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times.
Most people think of belonging as a mythical place, and they spend a lifetime searching for it in vain. But what if belonging isn't a place at all? What if it's a skill that has been lost or forgotten?
With her signature depth and eloquence, Toko-pa maps a path to Belonging from the inside out. Drawing on myth, stories and dreams, she takes us into the origins of our estrangement, reframing exile as a necessary initiation into authenticity. Then she shares the competencies of belonging: a set of ancestral practices to heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world.
A revelatory new book about dreams and dreaming from Toko-pa Turner, award-winning author of Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
You don't need an expert to tell you what your dreams mean. Understanding their language is as natural as grasping the moral of a story or finding beauty in art. In The Dreaming Way, Toko-pa revives an ancient yet revolutionary idea to bring dreaming back to the people. To retrieve, from the psychology rooted in rationalism, our dreaming authority. Through a unique blend of animism, Sufism and Jungian Psychology, Toko-pa introduces us to the friend who lives within and around us: Wisdom.
With eloquence and insight, she guides us in her dreamwork method for Courting the Dream, which reverses the idea that we should try to acquire something from our dreams and attempt instead to discover what the dream longs for. Using vivid dream examples and real-life stories, Toko-pa reminds us that we already possess the tools we need to remember, understand, and embody the wisdom of our dreams.
Drawing on ancient mysticism, she shows how nature's animating intelligence is also patterning our dreams. When we learn to follow that wisdom, we discover that it's calling us toward a unique purpose. A purpose that, Toko-pa says, is nested within the larger intent of nature. As practical as it is enchanting, this book contains guidance on how to:
- Improve your dream recall
- Understand the language of metaphor
- Work with archetypes and other patterns
- Engage in shadow work
- Discover dream incubation
- Practice active imagination
- Cultivate synchronicity
- Facilitate a dream group