The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (33 page)

BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
9.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 169
important her relationship with Charles was. She suggested that they might want to work together on doing more exciting things as a couple. Charles realized that he had felt left out of her life and could see that it might be fun to join in. After that revelation, they participated fully together in the weekend. Were it not for Ruby's efforts to bring Charles to the retreat, they might not have been able to work together so well so soon.
Dream groups: Forming a group that meets regularly for the express purpose of sharing and interpreting dreams may also promote a feeling of community. There are many ways to become involved in a dream group. Look for listings in local newspapers or newsletters about ongoing groups. You may also call local mental health practitioners or the community mental health center to see if any dream groups are available. You can also start your own group with couples or with friends.
Advertise your organizational meeting in the local newspaper or through a neighborhood or workplace flyer. At your first meeting, there are several things to discuss.
What does each person want from the group?
What does each person think she or he can offer in terms of experience with dreams or groups?
How many members do you want to have? (Usually four to six regular members is enough. Some who attend only when they can might also be considered.)
How often do you want to meet? Usually once a week, every two weeks, or every month is the best choice.
Do you want to meet in the same place or at different houses or locations? With couples dream groups, it is nice to meet at a different couple's home each time. This
 
Page 170
provides a chance to see what the couple is like and promotes feelings of sharing and common experience.
Do you need rules about how long members can speak so as not to take up all the time? How do you want to deal with interruptions, child care, and confidentiality?
Once the group has started, there are a few logistical guidelines you might choose to follow:
Sit in a circle on the floor or in comfortable chairs.
Start the session by going around the room so that each person can share briefly how he or she is doing that day.
Have one or more persons share a dream in the first person, as if it is happening now.
Amplify the dream. Have the dreamer show any drawings made from the dream, share her or his feelings about it, give it a title, and give an interpretation.
Open the floor for members to take a few minutes to ask questions of the dreamer and share their own ideas about the theme, feelings, and symbols.
Set a time limit and try to stick to it. At least ten minutes per person may be needed depending on the length of the dream. Sometimes the whole session can be used if that is OK with everyone.
Conclude by talking about how people have felt about the meeting. Take suggestions and share new ideas about how to make it better.
Use the sessions to build trust. Allow members to share how they feel about others and their dreams.
 
Page 171
By following some of these guidelines, you can have a rewarding couples or friends dream group. Some of these may last for only a few months, while other can last for years. Remember that the object is to share and build trust and a sense of common experience and community.
Couples coaching couples: Another method of developing a group is to select some other couples to coach one another. Such groups can support the creation of visions. Coaching of this kind can promote each couple's commitment to visions and dreams while producing a feeling of community. Using this model, you may begin to feel comfortable enough to share your most intimate dreams not only with your partner, but with another couple. This is similar to a dream group, except that all the participants are sharing from the perspective of their couple.
There are several elements necessary to this method of developing community. First, find at least one other couple who is willing to work on creating a great relationship for themselves. You and your partner must agree to be committed to staying in your own relationship and to support the other couple in doing so as well. Follow the coaching you get from the other couple whether you like it or not, and they must also follow yours. Coaching should take place at a regular time, at least weekly and for a certain period (e.g., three or six months). Sessions need to be twoway: One couple coaches for twenty to thirty minutes, and then the other coaches for the same amount of time.
As a coach, you generally don't give advice. You merely get your coachees to say what vision they proclaim for themselves, and then make sure that whatever they have done that week is consistent with what they agreed to do. For instance, the coaching couple might say, "Last week you proclaimed, 'We have fun together.' Have you been a couple having fun this
 
Page 172
week? How do you know that?'' For the purposes of this activity, remember that the coaches and the coachees in this relationship are not individuals, but couples. It is essential that the coaches work together to listen as an entity, as couple.
The most difficult part of this form of community building is helping couples design their visions. A great deal of discussion and questioning may be necessary. Familiarity with working on dreams can be extremely helpful as training for inventing visions. Exploring dreams and visions together from the perspective of couple makes this form of community building very interesting for the participants.
When you and your partner spend time with a community of other couples, you can actually learn to be coached by others in relationships. In other words, your couple can be coached by another couple. This form of couples coaching has many advantages. It includes other people who can provide feedback to you from their own experience as a couple. This perspective can be essential in seeing what might be best for both of you together, not just one of you.
Couples coaching also provides an atmosphere to share your commitments and proclamations to your partner without feeling self-conscious or awkward. They can coach you to be clear and to say what you feel. Your couples coaches can also witness your promises and visions and hold you accountable to them. If you agree to spend more time together with your spouse this week, they will be able to ask if you indeed have or explore with you why you haven't. Since your coaches are a couple themselves, they can understand what you are going through better and give you more useful advice.
Finally, by communicating with other couples, you can learn to be good coaches yourselves. The most effective coaching takes place when you can be coached by your friends but also
 
Page 173
have the opportunity to coach them. Reciprocity decreases defensiveness and makes you feel closer. You are more likely, for instance, to share concerns about finances with another couple when they have already shared similar problems with you.
At a conference we attended of people using couples coaching to promote community, participants were asked to plan to have dreams about their relationships. Each morning at breakfast, dreams were shared, as well as the visions they produced for the partners. Later that day each couple spoke about the vision they wanted to "live" for their couple for the next three months. Once stated, their coaches worked to make sure that their coaches acted in accordance with the ideal couple they had created in their vision.
Hanging out with your dreams together: There are more informal ways of creating community through dream sharing. just getting together with friends and talking about dreams can be great fun for an evening. Bringing up dreams as a topic of conversation with others at a party or gathering almost always fosters lively discussion and sharing of personal and intimate information. The acknowledgment of dreams serves to break down the barriers between you as individuals and almost automatically creates a sense of community and closeness.
Enjoying Your Community
Community is the last of the four Cs. In many ways it is what allows you to keep your relationship going and your visions alive. Like any behavior that requires effort, it is easier if there are others around to support you and make you feel loved and welcomed. Couples communities provide an opportunity to learn and to just have fun. Collective actions produce gigantic results. Pooled resources can make incredible things possible.
 
Page 174
Do something in your couples community. Have a potluck dinner, rent a beach house together, go on a weekend trip. As you get closer and closer to one another, you can feel the power of being together. Sharing your dreams and creating, coaching, and supporting visions produces an excitement that fosters imagination and communication. Find or build your couples community, then enjoy it by using your dreams to pave the way for a great future.
 
Page 175
Chapter Nine
Family Dreamwork: Parents and Siblings
Too often we forget that a good couple relationship is the bedrock of a strong family. It is essential to make sure that you have established and are committed to maintaining that relationship. You and your partner will then have a solid foundation for dealing with family issues, whether they be with parents, brothers, sisters, or children. Once you and your partner have created your couple and have begun working on your dreams and visions together, you will be able to expand this way of relating to those closest to you.
The people we grew up with and live with are those that affect us most in our lives. We learn our most basic beliefs about who we are and how we see others from our families. Much of this childhood learning runs so deep that we are not even conscious of how it affects us. One of the tasks of adulthood is to sort through this family legacy. We keep what is useful, and grow beyond what is limiting. This is how we earn our separate
 
Page 176
identity. Everyone goes through this individuation process to some degree, playing out and resolving childhood experiences through relationships with mates and children. The process of
family dreamwork
, sharing dreams and visions with family members, can help you work through this process more effectively.
In family dreamwork, the family becomes a dream unit in itself, sharing dreams, discussing unresolved problems, and creating new visions for the future. You can work on dreams and visions directly with your parents, siblings, or children if they are willing to listen and join you in letting go of old patterns and beliefs in search of new ones. You can also work on your dreams on your own and then share the results or apply them to your family interactions in waking life. Exploring new possibilities and taking risks can pay off in personal growth and richer family relationships. This kind of mutual sharing of wishes, thoughts, and feelings from the deepest unconscious mind increases intimacy and trust between family members sensitively but quicklysomething we need in our busy lives.
Sharing dreams and visions regularly can create a thoroughly supportive family environment. As we noted earlier, the Senoi Indians of Malaysia reportedly shared their dreams each morning in their family circle, creating a cooperative lifestyle in which each person contributed to the common good of the family. Any negative feeling or interaction involving a family member that came up in a dream was shared and transformed into a positive image or gift to that person. By resolving conflicts and fears symbolically through the dreamworld and dream sharing, the Senoi supposedly lived in harmony for generations. Although we are not likely to follow such strict regimens in our lives today, we can use the story of the Senoi as a model of what a family committed to dreamwork can do to learn about and support one another.

Other books

Ex-Kop by Hammond, Warren
Nerd Haiku by Robb Pearlman
Gray, Ginna by The Witness
Infection Z (Book 2) by Casey, Ryan
Last Breath by Debra Dunbar
Summon Dorn (Archangels Creed) by Azure Boone, Kenra Daniels
Hemingway's Notebook by Bill Granger
Rescuing Mr. Gracey by Eileen K. Barnes