Bucket Work

Hi there, Dreamer,

Let me tell you a story.

Long, long ago there was a kingdom and on the edge of this kingdom lay a deep forest. It came to pass that anyone who entered the forest disappeared and did not return. This was a problem. The King sent warriors into the forest to defeat this unknown danger, but the warriors, too, never returned. 

Soon the forest took on a bad omen. It was known as a place of danger and mystery and the people of the kingdom avoided it.

One day a nameless woodsman arrived in the kingdom. He asked around for anything interesting going on, and was told by the King about the strange forest. “That’s just the ticket,” he said. So he and his dog wandered off into the forest to explore. As they passed a small lake, a giant hand reached out of the water and pulled the dog in. 

The man, thrown by the loss of his dog, said to himself, “Well, I guess this is the spot.” He rounded up three other helpers from the castle and returned to the lake, determined to drain the water, one bucket at a time. Eventually, lying at the bottom of the lake, the man finds…well, without giving too much away, suffice to say he finds an unexpected and priceless treasure.

You’ll have to finish the story of Iron Hans to find out what happens next.

Iron Hans

The bit that sticks with me, and that I want to explore here, is what poet Robert Bly has termed “bucket work”.

This woodsman and his companions spent who knows how many days or months (or years?) bucketing out “the lake”—the lake, in this instance, representing the interior, watery depths of our psyche.

This was not sexy or quick work. It was tiring and messy and, I imagine, seemingly endless. All they knew about what was “down there” was something unknown and a little bit frightening. It would have been easy for the woodsman to mourn his dog and move on, avoiding the difficult task in front of him. 

And isn’t that how it goes?

We encounter the dark, uncertain places in us--maybe the same places our dreams rise from--and we have a decision to make: do we pass by the lake or do we go get a bucket? Do we dig into the muck or do we wander on, always curious about what we might have found if we’d dug in. 

It takes slow, dutiful effort to find what waits in the depths. We can’t know until we get there, but stories like Iron Hans—fairy tales, folk tales, myths and legends—give us hints to hang on to as we keep going, bucket by bucket: it may be a frog who’s really a prince, a genie in a magic lamp, an ancient wild man.

I (Graham) recently had a dream that echoed all sorts of universal images you might find in a fairy tale: leaving the safety of home; crossing a dark river; evading strange and dangerous guards; taking on a new identity; being touched by a fearful but magic helper.

I didn’t notice these themes at first; the dream felt strange and hard to parse. I had to do the bucket work of exploring the dream, writing it down and getting curious. I also, critically, had to enlist the help of a friend to help me shift the water by sharing the dream. As I did, I was rewarded.

The reward was a reminder that my personal dream images and symbols are tethered to the collective storehouse of dream images and symbols, that I am [and, by extension, each of us is] linked to the Unseen. This dream helped me see myself as on a kind of quest or journey towards transformation.

what lies beneath…

Fairy tales, folk stories, myths and legends can help us do our bucket work. They can act as “buckets”, giving context or hints about what our dreams might be whispering.

Stories like this have survived in all cultures across time because they remain vital and speak on a level that is beyond the flux of the current moment.

They have lessons to teach and help to give, just like our dreams do: strange occurrences that tangle up in myth and bear repeated tellings, promising that if we bend to the bucket work of careful consideration and curiosity, we will be rewarded. 

So, our invitation this week is to do some bucket work with a dream. Here’s what that could look like:

1. Select a dream you’ve transcribed—choosing one that feels more narrative or story-like may be helpful.

2. In front of the first line of the dream, insert the phrase “Once upon a time…”.

3. Read the dream from the mindset that this is a story you’ve found in a book, a story you’ve never heard before and isn’t yours. Try seeing it from a more universal perspective.

[3b. Or you could go further: you could read the dream out loud to someone else. You could allow someone else to read the dream back to you. This serves to help you see the dream as a wider story, not simply your own.]

4. Here are some prompts to reflect on—

How does it feel to tell your dream in this way?

What do you notice if this dream isn’t “yours”?

What fairy tales or stories are evoked?

What might be the treasure waiting in this dream?

We invite you to be playful with this practice, widening out your perspective and seeing what arises as you approach your dreams in a new way.

Happy bucketing — and see below for our exciting announcement!

Deep dreams,
Graham and Matthew