Arnold Mindell: Life Is But a Dream
Through the sinew of dreams, I still feel connected to Arnie, and I’m sure that the scores of lives he inspired would share the same sentiment.
“When you talk about the unconscious manufacturing itself through dreams, I think to myself that the unconscious itself is a dreaming process; it's a flow or a river. Dreams are only snapshots of the river. What really began to fascinate me was the dreaming process behind those dreams.” —Arnold Mindell
YESTERDAY, I LEARNED THAT DREAM MAVEN, Arnold Mindell died on June 11th.
He was 84 years old.
If you don’t know about Arnie’s lifelong work, I will tell you a little bit about him, not that we ever met in person, but that didn’t matter because his molten mind and enormous heart moved freely through the ether that comprise the dream world we all partake of. Just thinking about him, for me, could conjure his wild spirit.
84 is often a liftoff year for individuals earmarked at birth by the Promethean planet, Uranus. It takes Uranus 84 years to circle the Sun, and once that cycle is completed and the fire-bringing odyssey has been accomplished, it’s fitting that the chapter is closed. At least, that’s the dream narrative I tell myself about ‘the return home.’
If you’ve been a client of mine, you have also been touched by Arnie’s life work and vision. His radical insights and methodology—what I call: “Saying yes to everything” contain and inform my work ethic and approach.
Specifically, Arnold viewed ‘problems’ and pathologies as doorways to be walked through instead of boarded up and avoided. He was wildly curious about disharmony and saw it as the dream’s way of communicating something critical to the narrative’s next step. Something was always in process, and we could either assist it or avoid it.
I remember about fifteen years ago (maybe more) when, for whatever reason (I think I was researching archetypal astrology at the time), I bumped into an interview online with Mindell. Good goddess!
Excuse the overstatement, but honestly, by the time I’d finished reading the interview, a big clump of brain cells had rearranged in my head. I think brisk, shocking moments like that are catalytic because something in our lives that was primed for release—blooms within that moment—and goes free. With joy!
When I was a junior in high school, I tagged along one summer with a local Christian youth group that was making a weeklong excursion to the High Sierra mountains in California. This was the first time in my life I’d ever experienced natural beauty of that magnitude. The entire panorama of the mountains and where we camped at the foot of them (and the gazillions of stars at night above us) cracked me open like an egg.
When I returned home from that trip, I went straight into my bedroom, packed a suitcase, and moved out of my family home—an extremely dysfunctional environment. My encounter with the natural world had galvanized my courage. In my teen brain, there was nothing to equivocate—I’d equated beauty with freedom—and that was huge. A high school friend of mine’s family was generous enough to take me in so I could finish my senior year with my peers, and my gratitude towards them still exists. They saved my life.
Encountering Arnold’s Taoist mindset combined with his Capricornian pragmatism was like rediscovering the High Sierras. And it moved me to recognize something I’d long intuited but hadn’t forged a connection with: namely, that there is no difference between nocturnal and diurnal dreaming. We all live within, share, and partake of the same dream field. This sounds simplistic, almost idiotic—but when you start to feel it and then experiment and notice the actuality, you can’t view quotidian reality again in the same thick, impervious way.
Rather than spin ‘round and ‘round on this notion, I’ll share the link to that interview with Arnie so you can explore his mentation for yourself. I’d also recommend any of the scores of books he’s written; they are each equally remarkable. Dreaming While Awake is one of my favorites.
Thank you, Arnold. I’m not sure how I feel about ‘life after death.’ But I do have a strong sense, as you told your wife before liftoff, that the dream keeps going. Announcing his passing the other day on Facebook, Amy wrote:
Some time ago, he told me that when he was no longer here in his bodily form, we could connect and talk with him by looking at and communicating with the sea, his beloved sea. And he said that when anyone dies, they are not just dead. We are not just bodies, we are a spirit and dreaming behind them, so he and all of us are always there.
Godspeed brother! I’m feeling you in the harbor this morning:
Love,
I had the deep honor of studying with Arnie thirty years ago. His body of work, “Process-Oriented Psychology,” changed my life too, and continues to inform me to this day. Two of my favorites tools are: instead of asking “what is wrong with something,” turn it around and ask “what is right about it”? The other is: when faced with “i don’t know” as a response to a deep question, ask, “if you did know what would it be?” I haven’t seen Arnie’s natal chart, but that sounds like a dignified trickster Mercury to me. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. RIP Arnie Mindell. - Neva
I loved your tribute article. When I heard he died, I went looking for the tributes, and found only yours (and Amy's of course)! I read Sitting in the Fire many years ago, and it changed my life. I also did a few process work seminars, all impactful for being a more aware person in this life. Those events seriously changed the course of my life. Thank you so much! May love flow to you and may flowers fall in your path all day today.