Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

For some years now, I have been a student of Jewish mysticism; Kabbalah with a “K” (compared to Qabalah or Cabala or other spellings that typically reference other streams of mysticism, such as Hermetic or Christian.) I’ve written a few articles here on the web site that weave in some Kabbalistic concepts, and I’ve spoken a little more about those on my Patreon, but in general I haven’t yet written much publicly on the topic. ...

I don’t ever publish unfinished writing. First drafts, maybe — because I can be impulsive that way — but not anything unfinished. However, the opportunity to contribute work to the 2026 Jewish Writers’ Circle Anthology published by Ritualwell this month — titled My Heart Is Astir with Gracious Words — was an opportunity I didn’t want to say No to. It was a gift to be a co-facilitator along with Darcy Grabenstein of the South ...

One morning this week, I woke up with a realization connected to a project I am working on. As a result, I sought out a recording I have of my child self that I discovered in 2020 when my father found a cassette tape in a box and passed it to me. This cassette tape was filled with many treasures all in the form of voice: my child voice, my sibling’s, each of my parents’, ...

Whenever I am invited to tell my origin story as it relates to dreams and dreamwork, I always start with the psychic stuff because that is how I ended up being someone who studies dreams and works with dreamers professionally. The story I tell starts around 2012 when I confronted a precognitive dream I couldn’t ignore or deny. However, the full story starts way earlier; when I was a child, interested and curious at a ...

A few years ago, during a dreamwork session, my Natural Dreamwork practitioner asked me a question, “What does your heart desire?” At the time, I probably winced. The phrasing sounded a little cheesy, the question a little lofty. But I respected him and trusted him, and even though I couldn’t really answer his question at the time, the question itself has stayed with me since. In fact, the question has become a kind of compass ...

Recently, I wrote an article with a tip for remembering more dreams: consume less external content. The basic reason for this is that the more you’re engaged in perceiving external content, especially content that requires a lot of sensory processing and attention, the more exhausted your brain gets. You experience cognitive overload and have a hard time remembering anything, let alone your nightly dreams. High stimulating content with fast-moving images and sounds (ie. TikTok, Reels, ...

The two most common questions I get from people when they find out I am a dreamwork practitioner are: “what does X dream mean” and “how can I remember more of my dreams?” You can find many tips in the articles archive, under Remembering Dreams. Today, I want to bring to your attention how the content that you’re watching and listening to every day directly impacts the frequency of your dreams, the content of your ...

Natural Dreamwork is a unique approach to working with dreams. It’s not a one-off “dream interpretation” session, or a loose, general conversation about dream symbols. A Natural Dreamwork session is about you, specifically, and your dreams.  The one-on-one work provides a container and framework for ongoing reflection, healing and spiritual growth. I would call it soul work, and therefore, is unique to you.  As a modality, Natural Dreamwork is deep, relational work. I am there ...

I have a pretty high tolerance for weird. In fact, for most of my life, I’ve been someone who welcomes, and even seeks out, weirdness. I’ve been interested in the paranormal, the supernatural, and altered states since I was a very little girl. (In recent years, as I’ve become more familiar with astrology, I’ve come to believe this may have to do, at least a little, with a stellium in my 8th house.)  Like many ...

One of the things I love most about being a journalistic writer is I get to show up ignorant and leave (hopefully) a little more informed. When I interview people, of course I research them before our meeting, but the whole point of interviewing them is to learn more about them and sort through what they share to compose a hopefully entertaining or engrossing narrative. Journalism is possibly one of very few jobs in which ...

Every once in a while I will come across an old high school notebook or an email sent to a friend, and inside, there will be a dream. I love these discoveries! I didn’t formally keep a dream journal until I was in my early twenties, and even then I only kept one for a short time until my late thirties, when I began recording my dreams regularly. To find a dream tucked randomly into ...

I woke up recently with a dream starring Erica Kane, the fictional diva-like character from the long-running, American soap opera All My Children. I searched up my dream notes from the last several years, certain I must have dreamed of Erica Kane before, and indeed I had mentioned her a few times in the last couple of years of dream reports. This most recent dream, however, was the richest in imagery of all of them, ...

There are many benefits to working with dreams, and there isn’t just one method or one path. Working with dreams can support healing, emotional well-being, creativity, and psychic development. As a result, I find that people who tend to be interested in dreams and dreamwork are often creatives, artists, healers, or simply sensitive individuals seeking to explore their own inner landscape or experiment with altered states of consciousness. However, in these unsettling, strange, and destabilizing ...

On your journey to remember or understand your dreams, you may have realized that there are more than just two states — awake or asleep — and that along the spectrum of alertness there are states in which you are not quite asleep and yet not quite awake in which unsolicited images or perceptions arise. If you are moving from awake to asleep, this state is referred to as hypnagogia. If you are transitioning from ...

Sometimes, in dreams, we are offered an opportunity to sink into some really juicy experiences. Naturally, those of us who are actively engaged in remembering our dreams get to spend more “time” in such experiences. I’ve found that dream journaling allows me to stretch out the positive experiences of good dreams. Sometimes, it’s only in the telling of the dream that I even realize how good the dream actually made me feel. Essentially, in dream journaling ...

The more you pay attention to anything the more you start to notice its subtle characteristics or distinctions. Intentionally paying more attention to something — like a scientist, detective, artist, or young child might — is a spiritual practice in and of itself. Over these last many years as I have been paying more attention to my experience of dreams, memory, and time, I have begun to notice for myself a subtle difference in the ...

Have you ever noticed how dreams that arouse our deepest fears in the night can seem silly or insignificant later in the day? Have you ever had a dream in which you felt deep love or desire for an individual only to wake up surprised or repulsed by those feelings? Have you ever behaved in a dream so contrary to how you would behave in waking life that you’re ashamed of who you were or ...

In my study of Kabbalah, consciousness, and dreams over the last many years, I’ve discovered that there is a concept that is a feature of all three: a hidden reality we are unaware of with ordinary perception. Accompanying this concept is the suggestion that we humans are capable of perceiving “the hidden” in both waking life and in dreams if only we learn how to interrupt our habitual way of interacting with our environment. If ...