The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (31 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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times exaggerate or distort reality, and they always require some examination and thought in your waking life before acting on them. Yet, as you use your dreams to gain a new perspective on your couple and your life, you will create openings for better understanding yourself and for improving communication with your partner.
 
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Chapter Eight
Community: Sharing Your Couple
At a professional conference, Heather attended a dream workshop in which participants were asked to incubate a dream about the people at the conference. The group agreed to tell themselves to dream about that before they went to sleep. Heather reported this dream the next morning.
The Fire Circle
I am sitting in a circle with about ten other people. They are my friends. In the middle there is a round, glowing object. It looks like a campfire or a hot ember. There is smoke or steam rising from it. The dim light from the object makes everyone's face look soft and warm. The feelings that I have are warm, too. We are talking quietly to each other about those we love. It is almost like we are singing.
When Heather described her dream to the group the next morning, she was moved to tears. "I felt so close to everyone
 
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in the dream. I feel that way about the people here at this meeting. It is like we are all in this together," she told the other participants. Heather's dream indicates the natural tendency of people to enjoy each other's company, to want to be together, to have a sense of belonging and feel emotionally connected.
One of the most informative human experiences you can have is to look beyond yourself. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes requires a new perspective; it requires you to see new things and to see familiar things in a new light. In some cases, being with others makes you feel better about yourself and causes you to understand your own behavior more clearly. It places you in the context of a peer group, a family, a culture, or a society. Human beings are social creatures. They have always lived in communities, villages, families, or neighborhoods. It is human nature. Dreams like Heather's reflect a joy in togetherness or, sometimes, the fear of being alone, left out, or shunned.
Ever since the era of Sigmund Freud, dreams have been considered vehicles for accessing the unconscious, universal characteristics of our existence. Carl Jung talked extensively about these symbols in dreams. The regular appearance of such characters, or archetypes, in everyone's sleeping dreams and daytime visions is one of the most exciting reasons to remember dreams.
Archetypes also express common themes experienced by people in all cultures. Images of Mother Earth, the hero, the wise old man, and the trickster are examples of these universals. Another frequent theme is that of community, which often appears as a feeling of "groupness" or belonging to a group larger than yourself. Belonging to a community has always made people feel more secure, more loved, and more accepted.
Many of our relationships seem designed to foster this feel-
 
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ing of community. Sharing dreams is a way to express these feelings. You may dream about being in a community, as Heather did, and then enhance that experience by telling your dreams and visions to others. Visioning dreams are often proclamations for creating community.
Cindy and Rod had just moved to a new city. After finishing school and getting married, they both took jobs a thousand miles from where they had met. At first they were happy just setting up their new apartment, spending time with each other, and getting established at their workplaces. After a month, however, they began to miss their friends and families back home. They felt isolated and sad. They talked with friends frequently on the phone or by E-mail, but they still longed for what they had left behind and felt apprehensive about what lay ahead.
Cindy and Rod shared their feelings with their best friends from back home, Austin and Deb, themselves married only a year, who offered to coach them. With their help, Cindy and Rod created a vision for their couple that included the community around them. They proclaimed, "We are at home here." They were coached to create in their new home the community they left behind. Rather than wait for people to come to them, they began to look around for couples they liked at work and in their apartment complex. To their surprise, within a week they had found three couples. They invited one over for dinner, went to a movie with another, and had the third over to play cards. They began to create a new community for themselves based on their proclamation. Austin and Deb called them every week to make sure they were reaching out to others. Within a month, Cindy and Rod felt more comfortable in their new surroundings. They felt supported by their new friends and had a sense of belonging. They began to plan a vacation at the beach for the summer with two of the couples they had met. When
 
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Austin and Deb came to visit a few months later, Cindy and Rod threw a party to introduce them to their new friends.
How Does Community Help Couples?
Cindy and Rod learned that community was not just something they had to find; rather, they could create it themselves. They also discovered that the feeling of acceptance and caring they got from their new friends was not only important to them individually, but it was also useful to their couple.
Most of us tend not to want to air our ''dirty laundry." Yet research has shown that people who feel strong emotions, positive or negative, like to share them with others. Couples appear to benefit frequently from this experience. Those who have been together for a long time are usually friendly with other couples. These communities of couples provide models of how to problem-solve together, give support to one another, and provide some sense that you are not alone in your problems.
Grace and Alan read a book about remembering their dreams. Actually, Grace read it first and then gave it to Alan. They soon began sharing their dreams when they got up in the morning. Alan had this dream:
Where's the Bus?
I dream that I wake up in a sweat. I look at the clock. It is 8:40 A.M. and I have to be at work by 9 o'clock. I jump out of bed, grabbing my clothes, screaming at Grace to help me. She is still sleeping. I remember thinking that she is not going to be much help right now. I am angry at her but am more panicked that I will be late to work. I run out of the house buttoning my shirt and slipping into my loafers. I have a tie

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