Leadership and Mentoring
Mentoring: Everyone could use a little help now and then. Mentoring is a way to get "unstuck," to find your gifts and the sacred dance of which you were born to dance.
Keep in mind leadership development and mentoring are not one-time propositions. That is why I meet with people in a "package" that is designed to help you go deeper. A package is where we meet at least three times, and where I mirror back to you what I see and experience is your growing edge.
THE ART OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION, HEALING AND WHOLENESS PACKAGE $175
In this package Dan Dolquist, D.Min, will introduce you to the art of spiritual direction and deepening into your own healing and wholeness. Are you tired of the same old routine in life? Relationship worries? Searching for purpose and a sense of calling in your life? Then this package is for you.
We will start with an assessment of where you are and where you might want to go in your own spiritual journey. We will look at longings in your life, being attentive to the "edges" of your sense of authenticity and joy. You will be invited to nature-based soul work to look at your unique gifts and how the Divine Mystery may be calling you to bring those gifts more deeply into the world.
Nature-based soul work includes discovering "nature as mirror" as the more-than-human community can help reveal your unique place in the world. Based on the work of Dr. Bill Plotkin in his book "Wild Mind," we will explore the parts of ourselves that keep us safe by keeping us small such as our loyal soldiers, escapists, the wounded child, and shadow work.
Dreamwork is the practice of working with the mysterious journeys that come from the depths of your psyche called “dreams.” Think of it this way: your soul wants to speak to you, but during the day you are too preoccupied with making your way in the world to listen deeply. So the soul waits for a time when you are in a non-ordinary state of consciousness, a time when your waking ego is “defenseless” against the soul—dream time.
The package includes how to remember your dreams, an introduction to soulcentric dreamwork for self-healing, and two mentoring sessions where we will work a dream together.
The soul also speaks in dreams through symbol, image, and emotion. I also believe that when the soul brings dreams to the psyche, it is always for healing and the maturation of the ego. Nightmares even work in this way, we just have never been trained in the manner in which they work. In the soulcentric approach to dreamwork, we don’t move toward gaining an interpretation of the dream to our day to day world. We want to court the native landscape of the soul and seek out how the dream is working toward our healing and wholeness. We reenter the dreamscape to see what it has to say to us regarding our own integration, emotions, shedding too small a skin, numinous encounters, and maturation.
For example, one day I had a dream in which I am fly fishing for steelhead with my brother-in-law, Bill. Bill is catching these large, sea-run rainbow trout left and right. As he is playing the steelhead and brings them closer to shore, I net them with a large net. As I lift up the net screaming in delight at the catch, the fish slips through a hole in my net and escapes. I am furious at myself. Bill hooks another steelhead, and the same thing happens. The steelhead slips through a hole in my net. This happens again and again and again. I am furious.
In working the dream with one of my mentors I said, “I am trying to figure out what part of my core-competencies needs work—which one has a hole in it. My mentor responded, “Maybe. Or maybe your soul is telling you, “You need to have a hole in your net.” Maybe I did need a "hole in my net" instead of trying to catch everything all the time. Maybe I was trying to interpret the meaning of the dream according to my day world, my vocation, instead of opening a space in my life for my soul to speak. Perhaps my soul was speaking to something much deeper, a larger more expansive life than I currently was living. We worked the dream from a different perspective and the anger and frustration I was feeling immediately changed. I felt more vibrant and alive, and the key was not trying so quickly to figure out the interpretation of the dream to my daily life.
If you are from a Christian faith tradition, consider that in the Bible one of the ways God speaks to people is through their dreams:
Joseph agreed to marry Mary because an angel appeared to him in a dream. (Matthew 1:20)
The Apostle Peter received major instruction from God through a dream (Acts 10:1-48)
The Apostle Paul began his first journey into Europe because a man appeared to him in a dream. (Acts 16:9)
One of the characters a book of the Bible is named after, Daniel, had a gift for the interpretation of dreams.
In the Reformed (Presbyterian) tradition, the order of worship on Sunday is taken directly out of Isaiah 6 and Isaiah’s vision (or dream?) in the Temple.
A prophecy of the coming Holy Spirit is “Your old men will dream dreams.” (see Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17)
Interested in plumbing the depths of your amazing dream life? Want to do some dreamwork together?