The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (4 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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about communicating clearly to the driver. Jane begins to speak quite fluently to him, giving him directions. I'm impressed. We stop at a restaurant and meet several other attractive women, all Americans, who are conversing quite well in Germannot so much by their words as with their body language. Again I am struck by the competence and sensitivity of these women that helps them communicate so well.
This dream helped Stewart notice the "feminine" qualities of sensitivity and ability to communicate clearly with others, both verbally and nonverbally, at many levels. According to Stewart, it also served "as a gateway to recognizing these very abilities within myself, teaching me that these 'softer' qualities are admirable in men as well as women, and that using them makes me more of a whole person, not less of a man."
A "Quick Fix" for Couples
Working on dreams can help each partner be more effective in communicating and living together, and it doesn't have to take a lot of extra time. It takes no research or elaborate planning and can be easily integrated into the couple's everyday life. Our work on "The Wake-up Call" may sound unrealistic to some. Having the extra time in the morning to talk about a dream may seem impossible for the average couple. But in reality, most of our discussion occurred while we were getting dressed, eating breakfast, and rushing off to work. It took a few extra minutes to discuss the dream, but it added a great deal of intimate contact to that day and prevented a lot of heartache in the future. In this respect, dreamwork may be one of the best things available for providing instant intimacy or a "quick fix" in our busy lives.
Couples can incorporate dreams into their normal waking life using a variety of approaches. There is no one right way to
 
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do it. Each couple can develop a method that works for their particular lifestyle. For example, one retired couple shares their dreams on their morning walk together before breakfast. In their own words: ''Invariably, the discussion about a dream leads us into other subjects, because, of course, the dream relates to things going on in our lives. So, you might say that in our case, talking about our dreams provides a starting point for some good conversations that help us understand how we really feel about various issues and relationships. In turn, these talks help to keep us very close."
A Day in the Lives of Dreaming Couples
The following are examples of how couples can communicate their dreams and visions during a typical day. As you read through them, let yourself imagine how you might apply them in your own relationships.
Bob and Sally are a young married couple with a son in preschool. Both of them have full-time jobs and are active in their community. One morning when they awoke, they shared that each of them had remembered a dream. They stayed in bed for a few extra minutes while Bob told Sally his dream. Sally listened, then reported her own dream, which she also recorded in her dream journal. (See chapter 3 for more information on dream journals.) This was a particularly significant dream for her, and she wanted to keep it for future reference. During breakfast, they told their dreams to their son, Scott, who then remembered his own dream and said, "I had a dream, too. It was so scary!" In the car on the way to preschool and work, Sally talked some more to Scott about his dream and what it might mean to him.
 
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Another couple, John and Martha, have been married for thirty years and have been sharing their dreams for a long time. Their kids are grown, and they both work full time. At lunch, Martha described a dream to a coworker and got some insights into it that she planned to share with John that night. During a break at work, she took the time to draw a sketch related to her dream, which she would develop into a painting in her art class later in the week. On the way home from work, John noticed a rainbow, and he said to himself that it was ''like having a dream." (Noting the dreamlike quality of unusual events during waking life can enhance the quality of your nightly dreamlife.)
Joe and Susan, who have two teenage children, occasionally talk about dreams with each other. While jogging together in the morning, they share their "visions" and goals for the day. When they returned home from work one evening, they took a few minutes to discuss what occurred that day and how it related to the plans they had made earlier that morning. Susan shared a dream she had the night before, along with the insights she had gotten from discussing it with a friend while swimming laps together that afternoon and how those insights might apply to their relationship. After they got into bed, Joe shared an erotic fantasy from a dream he had had earlier in the week, which led to some interesting and creative lovemaking that night. Before going to sleep, they discussed a problem they were having with one of their children. They wrote down their specific questions in their dream journals and gave themselves a mental message to pay attention to whatever information their dreams might bring to help them deal with the problem. This prepared them to be open to their dreams during the night and to remember them in the morning.
Maria and Carlos are a young couple who have been dating
 
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for quite a while, but both have been reluctant to bring up the issue of commitment. At lunch one day, Maria told Carlos a dream she had the night before about him buying her an engagement ring and then losing it. This led to a more open discussion than they had ever had before regarding their feelings about commitment and marriage. They even shared their fantasies about buying a house and raising a family together. They still haven't made a decision about marriage, but they now frequently share their dreams and waking fantasies about their relationship.
Using Dreamwork Regularly
Of course, no couple does all the things described here every single day. It is interesting to note, however, that there was a tribe called the Senoi in Malaysia that, according to anthropologist Kilton Stewart, shared their dreams with each other on a daily basis. He reported that they lived in extraordinary harmony, with very little conflict or mental disorder. Stewart attributed this peaceful, cooperative existence to the intense dreamwork performed by the tribal members. It was required, for example, that the dreamer apologize to another tribe member for an argument or fight that took place with that person in a dream. This practice, among others, seemed to help them clear up conflicts with each other and be more honest, open, and responsible in their daily functioning. Some of Stewart's claims made in the 1930s have since been questioned, but it is still interesting to consider the positive effects regular dreamwork can have on relationships in an entire culture.
If you do even one thing with your dreams once in a while, it can still enhance the quality of your relationships. Simply sharing a dream, even without analyzing it, can be very useful. This book describes several ways in which working on dreams,
 
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both by yourself and with a significant other, can further what you want for your coupleeither the one you are now in or the one you want to establish. It shows how using dreamwork can keep creative imagination, intimacy, and possibilities alive in relationships and in the rest of your life. We discuss three different ways of dreaming that can enhance your relationships: night dreams, daydreams, and what we call visioning dreamsthe imagining of new possibilities, of a future yet unrealized for yourself and your couple. You will come to see that however they are used, all kinds of dreams tap into the creative energy of imagination in a powerful way.
Dream On!
Throughout this book, we will refer to partners who do dreamwork together as a "dream couple," that is, a couple who uses their night dreams and daydreams to enhance both their waking and dreaming lives. A dream couple helps each other interpret dreams and act on them together. This process is easy to learn and practice, but there's more to dreamwork than merely following the procedures: Dreamwork is a mind-set, a "way of being," that brings forth a dream couple. It doesn't add much at all to your schedule, just to your way of experiencing the world. This book describes how to create this way of thinking and behaving for yourself, your couple, and other significant relationships in your life.
In regard to the dream couple, we look at how the process of sharing dreams can be used to facilitate what we have identified as the four major components of a couple relationship: commitment, cooperation, communication, and community. We show how to create a visioning dream and how to use it to empower your commitment in a partnership. You will also see
 
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how, by revealing your unconscious fears and desires, dreams can help you make decisions regarding crucial issues of trust and commitment in a relationship.
Next, we explain how planning and interpreting dreams as a couple provides a vehicle for cooperation and mutual power rather than domination and submission. You will see how partners can work together as a team of experts, each contributing to the whole as opposed to compromising, controlling, or giving in.
By interpreting and creating your dreams as a couple, you and your partner have the opportunity to expand and develop your communication in a number of areas: establishing trust, making decisions, structuring tasks, dealing with conflict, sharing affection and sexual feelings, balancing autonomy and togetherness, dealing with separation and loss. Working together with other couples on these issues through dreamwork can create a community of support for the goals of the couple. No matter how diligent and committed a couple is, they still need outside support to keep them going. The book describes how to organize and run a couples dream group, and shows how couples can coach each other. You will also learn the advantages of including family members, friends, coworkers, and others in your couple's dreamwork.
All these dreamwork activities can be a wake-up call to create a designer life, that is, one that lets you take control of having the kinds of relationships you want rather than merely reacting to what you don't want. In this way, we can bridge the differences between people, overcome the barriers to couple satisfaction, enhance intimacy in relationships, and attain true couple power. This is the possibility of dreamwork through teamwork. Dream on, and have fun with it! Through dreaming, you may finally have a way to bring into reality the man or woman of your dreams!
 
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Chapter Two
There's More Than One Way to Dream
Jim sits at his desk, surveying the piles of papers that have accumulated since he arrived early this morning. They seem mountainous and overwhelming. He can't believe all this work has appeared in just the last few hours. Every time he starts to attack one of the stacks, the phone rings.
He leans back for a moment to catch his breath. The rustling leaves on a small tree outside his office window catch his eye. The motion seems so gentle, the leaves so green, the sunlight so warm. It looks like a moving pattern of light and color. Jim takes another deep breath, sinking deeper into his high-backed chair.
He sees himself walking in the woods near where he used to live, hearing the wind moving through the tops of the tall oaks. Jamie, his girlfriend, is walking next to him. She is wearing the flower-print summer dress he likes so much. They are laughing and holding hands. He leans over and gently gives her a peck

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