In this episode of Big Shakti’s podcast, I interview Jayne Stevenson, my life partner and co-creator of Big Shakti. We have been together in this life for 22 wonderful years.

We talk about Jayne’s counseling and psychotherapy practice and how she combines spirituality and creativity, the role of intuitive healing, and dreams. While Carl Jung described creativity as a primal instinct, Jayne has developed a way of spiritualizing creativity to bring it to a higher level of expression through the methods taught by Big Shakti.

She talks about how she supports people to connect to the depths of the unconscious mind, which contains vast powers, mythic forces, and all the archetypes, the building blocks of life. Accessing this part enables you to connect to hidden aspects of your deeper nature that support removing old archaic, distorted, and neurotic patterns that keep you stuck in negative and destructive patterns of thinking and behavior.

We also talk about Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist whose amazing body of work has had a major influence on modern psychology and enables you to access the deeper unconscious mind. And his work has also had an amazing influence on Jayne. She describes a series of initiatory dreams that involved the image of Carl Jung, who symbolizes a Christ-like figure, a sage with great wisdom. She had these dreams when she was a young woman following a serious car accident, and these dreams led to an experience of deep healing and set the course for her life’s work.

Learn more about Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice.

Get our FREE Introduction to Dreamwork

Big Shakti Podcast Links

Transcript

Welcome to Big Shakti's Light on Yoga and Meditation podcast. My name is Dr. Swami Shankardev. I'm a yoga acharya, medical doctor, psychotherapist, and Vedic astrologer, and I co-created Big Shakti with my partner Jayne Stevenson. This podcast provides authentic, accurate knowledge and access to various powerful techniques from different wisdom traditions to achieve health, enlightenment, and prosperity.

In this episode of Big Shakti's podcast, I'm interviewing Jayne Stevenson, my life partner and the co-creator of Big Shakti.

At the time of this recording, we've been together for 24 wonderful years. In this episode, we talk about Jayne's counseling and psychotherapy practice, how she combines spirituality and creativity, and the role of intuitive healing and dreams. While Carl Jung described creativity as a primal instinct, Jayne has developed a way of spiritualizing creativity to bring it to a higher level of expression through the methods taught by Big Shakti.

She talks about how she supports people in connecting to the depths of the unconscious mind, which contains vast powers, mythic forces, and all the archetypes, which are the building blocks of life. Accessing this part enables you to connect to hidden aspects of your more profound nature that support removing old, archaic, distorted, and neurotic patterns that keep you stuck in harmful and destructive patterns of thinking and behavior.

We also discuss Carl Jung, a great Swiss psychiatrist whose fantastic body of work has had a major influence on modern psychology. His work enables access to the deeper unconscious mind, so we combine that with the ancient Indian Yoga Tantra systems and other different wisdom traditions.

Jung's work has had a fantastic influence on Jayne. She describes a series of initiatory dreams that involve the image of Carl Jung, who symbolizes great wisdom, a sage. She had these dreams when she was a young woman following a serious car accident. These dreams led to an experience of deep healing and have set the course for the rest of her life's work.

And here's the episode.

Swami Shankardev

Hi, everyone. I'm here with my dearest beloved Jayne, and we will talk about dreaming today. Jayne is a prolific dreamer, and every morning when she wakes up, she has several dreams we talk about and discuss. Jayne has been my teacher in dreamwork. She's taught me everything I know about dreaming and helped me integrate dreamwork into my medical and psychotherapy practice.

Jayne has had many amazing experiences and dreams throughout her life. Welcome to the podcast, Jayne. Please tell us a little about who you are and what you do. 

Jayne Stevenson

Well, I've had a very long and varied life. I've had various occupations, and, in a nutshell, I have straddled the worlds of creativity and spirituality, two streams of interest almost equally as powerful, guiding my life and coinciding all through my life since I was very young. 

So, I was studying filmmaking and graphic design while also beginning my journey to healing through Daoist practices. And I was always trying to decide on one or the other. It was much later in life that I thought that spirituality overrides creative expression in one sense, but in another, they're similar. That spiritual life, expressing spirituality, is also a part of a creative life. 

Swami Shankardev

What do you mean when you say spirituality overrides creativity? How does that, what does that mean to you?

Jayne Stevenson

In terms of the form of spirituality. For example, rather than writing a story about something that might involve spirituality but not be directly about spirituality. I call that creativity. Whereas healing, counseling, and dream work, I call that more on the spiritual

Swami Shankardev

Okay. That's interesting. So, what is the difference in your mind between spirituality and creativity? 

Jayne Stevenson

Creativity, for me, is a form of invention. So, creating forms from ideas is how I’ve worked with creativity. And there are two parts to creativity. One is creativity, which comes from the essence of being and is connected to the world of deities and esoteric presences.  And then, there is the actual form of creativity: creating. I see spirituality more as a connection to one's essence, a connection to the deepest essence of our soul, but not necessarily the expression of it; it's simply a connection. On the other hand, I always associate creativity with creating something. So

So, creativity and spirituality are both essences.  And creating is a different thing. 

Swami Shankardev

Somehow, you linked spirituality and creativity at some point. So, what happened? Why did, when did that change for you? 

Jayne Stevenson

When we started Big Shakti, I saw that we created a form out of our beliefs and interests. We put it into a form, and therefore, it involved creating.  We had to create something out of it, whereas we could have just had our beliefs and been doing our own meditation and not really expressing it to the world. For me, that would have been still spirituality, our spirituality, but because we wanted to put it into a form and connect with other people, we had to have the creativity to do that.

All our programs involve a lot of creativity. We think a lot about the form, for example, how a course will connect with people and appeal to them, not only its content but also visually. A lot of creativity goes into that, which you know and are part of.

Swami Shankardev

And so, I guess, the way I've always thought about it, which is interesting, you know, is the ability to bring out the visible from the invisible part of us. The essence is invisible. The spirit is invisible, intangible, and potential. Then, there is the ability to bring it into a form in the world and express it in a form into the world that makes a positive change or enables other people to go into their essence via the form. Something that you and I have worked on a lot. And you've helped me in my life to have the same.

I know that in your work as a therapist, you do this. You help people see the invisible part of themselves, their spiritual essence. You help them to connect to that and then bring that into a form in their lives. And you do that through the relationship in your therapy.

So, can you talk about what you do in therapy?

Jayne Stevenson

Well, I do several things, and I am surprised whenever I work with somebody new. What I do with them is very intuitive, and no two clients have the same approach. It is very hard for me to talk about what I do because it is intuitive and happens at the time. I am trying to draw out the best of that person spontaneously by dealing with a lot of the stuff blocking what is great about them.

Because I think so many people do not see how amazing they are. There's a shadow over their perception of themselves, of who they are, what they're capable of, and how they can be creative in their lives and create the life they want. So, for that, I use Dreamwork, a significantly expanded version of Dreamwork. It's not only dealing with people's dreams at night while sleeping. It has to do with daydreams, fantasies, imagination, and a lot to do with how they imagine themselves, which often has a kind of distortion from anything from trauma to simply never having related to their wonderful bits and never having tried to express their wonderful side.

I work with people in creativity because I know that many people want to want to create; they want to create something.

Swami Shankardev

On that point. I'm hearing that people create a form unconsciously, based on the surrounding influences, and that form is a narrow, distorted version of what is possible. And they get locked into that pattern. 

You support them in seeing beyond that pattern, going deeper into themselves to their more spiritual essence, and finding ways to be creative from a spiritual or intuitive place. How can I change the old pattern and revise myself?

Jayne Stevenson

Yes. So, it is a lot about patterns.

There are many, of course, unconscious patterns.

They have gotten into a kind of funk, and it feels very natural to be in that funk. They are not totally self-accepting and do not realize how much know-how they already have.

Trying to get people to think is one of the big things that I work on because many people have issues with clear thinking or just have not discussed how they're feeling with anyone in a very deep way to know the flaws in their thinking.

So, unconsciously living. Just going along, bumping into problems, and then just shifting around them without seeing that they're recurring—that kind of phenomenon.

Swami Shankardev

That's the important part of it. I guess the other interesting thing that has helped me immensely in my own work has been the place of dreams, which is a place outside of the normal thinking mind, where the spirits often express themselves in images, archetypes, and intuitions.

It's sending us messages all the time. The thing I've noticed in you is that you're able to cognize that in yourself very quickly, and therefore, you can see it in others as well. And so even though dreams are a small part of what you do, it seems to me that they're an important part because, you know, it's amazing what we can find out about ourselves in dreams.

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, dreams. Every time I start talking about dreams, I go into this strange dream state.

Swami Shankardev

Well, that's what you do with people. That's what happens. I've noticed. You go into their dreams. That's the thing. That's the skill that you've developed, your ability to go into other people's dreams and be with them in that place. And that's remarkable.

Jayne Stevenson Yes.

I go into their dreams very quickly.

So, when I think about dreams, I enter the dream world. When I'm with people, they're talking about their dreams, fantasies, or something regarding how they perceive themselves and life. Which, in many ways, is a dream, Maya. I try to understand that, not necessarily from their history, like their family and developmental history, but from the phenomenon itself. So, this image arrives to show how they are in life, and I'm trying to get them to consciously understand that image of themselves, their self-image. Often, in the night dreams or even daydreams, other figures appear, representing other aspects of themselves.

When they can connect with that other part of themselves, their fundamental image of themselves, which is the driver of their life, becomes expanded. So, they can say, I'm this, but I'm also that.

Swami Shankardev

What do the dreams do, though? What does the dream give in that situation?

Jayne Stevenson

It expands one's sense of feeling and allows one to access cutoff feelings, which debilitate the psyche. It brings a greater emotional range because many people operate on a very limited one. For example, they are always angry, jumping into an aggressive role, or feeling weak. Or say, someone has an innocence about them that is not very good for them. They say, “Oh, I never know what to do.” They might find a wise part of themselves, a person with a lot of know-how.

Swami Shankardev

So, basically, what I'm hearing you say is that people get stuck in a kind of self-image based on an archetype. An archetype means a pattern in the deep mind, for example, around anger. There could be an angry part in them, but they're not able to access the happy part, the joyful part, or the other side.

For example, we'd say there's a bad mother or a bad father archetype, and there's a good mother and a good father archetype. Some people might be stuck in a relationship with their negative archetypes in the deep psyche, pushing them away because they don't want to be part of them. They might be at war with a part of themselves and unable to access the positive archetypes.

What you do and what dreams tend to do is tell us which archetypes are active. I've noticed in my work that there are often good and bad dreams. They'll usually come together. So, people frequently get a message from the unconscious saying, “Hey, this is the negative archetype within the dream.”

So it could be a nightmare. It could be something like that. And then they'll. Then, they might get another dream in which positive archetypes are more available.  And I've seen you point people towards their positive archetype and say, hey, this is also there in you. What happens when you experience that and you bring it into the fantasy, and you bring it into their emotional life?

So they get more access to deeper parts of themselves. Would you say that's right? 

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, the process I used before even understanding this other positive archetype is to feel that archetype, to embody that archetype, to feel what it feels like to be that other that usually appears in life all the time as a projection.

For instance, one woman I work with is a brilliant creator but wasn't when I met her. Well, she was always clever, but she was not creating. She always mingled with creators, creative people, artists, etc., but she was distant from them and in awe of them.

But when we got together and started working with her creative capabilities, which she already had but had not used in a while because of her family situation, she became active, and she was, of course, also dreaming about these things.

She's an excellent client in terms of being able to activate the discoveries we make. We note different figures of her dream, and then together, we work out a way for her to bring that into life. And she is now performing, which is something that she did decades ago.

She's connecting with other people and has a creative life while sustaining her other life as well, which is one of much more responsibility. So that’s about accessing the feeling first, the sensations, the body, and what it feels like to be like that other creative self, and then bringing that into reality in some small way in the beginning. It's only a small way that should never be overwhelming. Then, as you start to work on the phenomena of the dream, the characters, and the parts of the self, the dream starts to give back. It rewards you for developing in that direction.

Swami Shankardev

So, there's a relationship between your ego part and what we call the non-ego part, the deep mind. They start to talk to each other, and you begin to listen. And then the deep mind says, Hey, by the way, you're listening; here's more information you can handle. That's interesting.

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, here’s some more guidance! Then, in real life, it’s not just getting guidance from the dream. Opportunities open up in real life.

Swami Shankardev

Yes, but dreams are a part of real life. What we're saying is that there are night dreams and daydreams. That there are active dynamic forces at work in the unconscious, constantly all the time.

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, the real-life dream starts to meet the night dream.

Swami Shankardev

We help people stay grounded, centered, and self-aware so that they can marry the outer, what they call the outer world, with the inner world. So there's another component people must do, which is self-work, right?

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, they must do some self-work. Everyone usually gets homework with me, which usually starts with meditation homework. They need to report back!

Swami Shankardev

I've noticed that many people say, oh, I don't dream much. I have these little fragments, but those dreams aren't important. And what I've seen with the work that you (and I am now) doing is that every dream has some significance. It's just that the person can't access it. Jung and Freud needed another person to help them reflect on their dream.

Because even the masters need that. But you're saying that the dreams, once you start to make that connection, and there's a certain intuitive process unfolding, that the dreams change character, that you get more access to information, and that you start to feel connected to a deeper part of yourself.

I know dreams aren't the only thing you do in therapy, but it's interesting for people to know more about your dream life. You've had a couple of important dreams, and I wonder if you'd be willing to share your one with Jung.

Jayne Stevenson

When I was in my early twenties, I did quite a lot of work in meditation, Daoist meditation, and healing practices. I was in my early twenties.

And this veered my interest in dreams in a very specific direction: dream interpretation. I'd done a lot of self-healing after a terrible car accident through Daoist practices and meditation with a great teacher I'd met and had been studying with by that time for about three years. But there was still something missing in my healing. And one of the issues for me after the accident was that I had incredible rage. I had glass impacted in my right eye orbit, and it went into the nasal passage and lodged not far from my brain, apparently millimeters away. My personality changed quite a bit, and I became very aggressive. I would wake in the mornings in a rage. I would fly out of bed, bad-tempered.

A friend gave me Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols. As I read the book, I began to have dreams of Jung. At one point, I had a series five dreams over nine months. It's hard to remember the timing, but it was a long time, and it would always be the same dream. I would be standing at the base of a temple, where there were a thousand stairs. Jung was standing at the top. In each dream, I would ascend the stairs and come closer to him. And I so, so wanted to come to the top and meet him.

And somehow, in the dreams, I would remember the previous dreams, all the other times I'd been walking up these stairs. I would remember it was a long, long journey, and I would always wonder how long it was going to take me to get there. It felt like years or maybe lifetimes.

I finally reached the top, and I saw Jung holding a book. As I approached him, I looked into his face. I felt this incredible warmth. It was like meeting a Christ figure. I felt this radiance and warmth and everything, and he closed the book and gave it to me.

Then, I think it was the day after or something, or a few days later, I read a line from his book. It said something to the effect that someone who wakes in the morning angry is fettered by the animus. So, the male part is not happy.

You know, I didn't do any work on that. When I read it, I no longer felt angry in the morning.

And that's how I experienced Jung’s texts; I would read something, and I felt healing from the words. I would read it, and it wasn't about intellectual understanding. It was about getting the message. It was what you'd call a text that can transform you, which I believe in. I believe some texts are so embodied and so amazingly rich with embodied knowledge that when you read them, it changes you in the same way.

Swami Shankardev

Yeah. And, of course, that's part of the Eastern culture, something like the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, the Devi Bhagavatam. These are great classical texts that people will read and read. Of course, the Bhagavad Gita influenced Jung, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, and several great Western thinkers because of the power of its words.

So, you had an initiatory dream, didn't you?

Jayne Stevenson

Definitely, because after that, I wanted to talk about people's dreams. I didn't do official dream work for quite a few years, but I wanted to know about people's dreams. I would often tell my dreams, which met with varying levels of interest, of course, because hearing someone's dream is not always that entertaining.

Swam Shankardev

The thing you said before about entering a person's dream or being able to connect to that level is deeply satisfying to a person when they feel that someone's because it brings it to life. You lend your intuition to them in a way. Yes, feeling and intuition, traveling with them.

Jayne Stevenson

And often, I feel that perhaps there's still resistance to exploring their dreams. Sometimes, they want to go into a particular image and not into another. I can bring them back to the images or places they want to avoid because I can feel its importance.

Often, they want to bypass an area of the dream. And because of resistance, I may feel the dream more than they do until I can slow it down, bring it back to a certain point, and have questions about that part of the dream. Then, they begin to feel how profound that area of the dream is.

And they may say, oh yes, okay, it is dizzying, or it does this to me, and that's a way into the unconscious.

Swam Shankardev

Suppose I was to bring this back into a more yoga philosophy explanation. In that case, the way we describe all this is that once you start to turn your attention back inward through meditation, you can put your awareness back into the unconscious. So instead of the unconscious sending you all these signals saying, hey, wake up, wake up. You know, what are you doing? This is an old habit. You are going to have to live this out until you can see it. You say, okay, I'm going to look now. And that's what you're saying. People resist looking at some of their images because they don't know what to do with them.

And that's where you come in.

Jayne Stevenson

Or they don't believe they have images in their unconscious, but it’s just that they don't know how to access them.

Swami Shankardev

Our work in Big Shakti is to help people develop techniques they can use; instead of having the unconscious come into outer life, into the little mind, they take the little mind back into the unconscious. They can swim in that ocean for a while and bring that wealth of wisdom and knowledge back in a way that works through the Yoga Vidya, through the techniques and knowledge we teach on Big Shakti.

Jayne Stevenson

Yes, it's like going to the problem before it comes to you. Sometimes, when you've got an issue with somebody, it's better not to wait for them to come to you. It's better to go to them and say, listen, what about this? Should we discuss it?

Swami Shankardev

That is my definition of a good thing, too.

Aright. So, is there anything else you want to add before we finish up today?

Jayne Stevenson

No, I think that's all good just for people to find some way of connecting with their unconscious because the unconscious is this massive engine that's driving their lives.

Swami Shankardev

Okay, we’ll do more podcast episodes on this. If you want to know more about Jayne's work, please go to Big Shakti. You can contact her if you want to know more about what she does or if you want to have a session.

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Learn more about Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice.

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