Quotes from Jill Mellick

We do not always need to "understand" or interpret dreams to receive their gifts to heart and soul. Rather, we can circumambulate them, respect them, let their images feed our imaginations and lead us onward, just as a glimpse of ocean or lake renews and orients and refreshes us on a long drive.

Dreams give your soul wings. And images from dreams are the exquisite patterns on the wings. Hold your dream as you would hold a butterfly -- in your open, quiet palms. Make sure none of the delicate wing dust brushes off onto clumsy hands. Pinning the dream down with interpretation will tear the wings off the butterfly and kill it. .... Hold your dream images gently enough so that they still can fly.

In this kind of personal artwork, jettison any idea that you can help yourself or others by interpreting, praising, or criticizing. These kinds of creative pieces and experiences are only for being with. The only helpful response is to nourish the imagination and your piece by associating other images to it and noticing what feelings it evokes in you.

Metaphor is the literal language of the soul. Poets do not try "to think up metaphors." They are not interested in making up riddles for the rest of us to figure out. They think in metaphors.

We may lose the sense of totality almost at once, but the psyche and body have experienced what wholeness is. They can then reconnect to that still point as to a tuning fork.

Where consciousness and the unconscious intersect at the still point, that is where we are whole.

A dream tells you where you are, not what to do; or, by placing you where you are, it tells you what you are doing.