The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (52 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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from her father's perspective: "You especially need to rest and relax now that you have two young children. Please learn from my mistakes, and don't work yourself into the ground to an early grave. I love you and want you to use what I gave you to better take care of yourself." Barbara then continued the fantasy, promising to do specific things to enable her to relax, including forgiving herself and her father for their destructive habits (like 'eating corned beef on rye'). Working together, they then ended the story with the proclamation "We relax and have a good time!"
In describing the experience, Barbara said, "I felt very supported by my husband in working on this dream fantasy, and it enabled us both to share some feelings that were affecting our current life in important ways. It was also useful when I shared it as a guided fantasy with some friends while on a retreat shortly thereafter. They said it was a fascinating experience for them and helped them get in touch with similar issues in their own lives. It was interesting to hear their reactions and fantasies, which deepened my own understanding of the dream, and to see how the exercise could bring us all closer together."
In choosing dreams to use as guided fantasies, pick those that are understandable, or adjust them to be vivid and easy to follow. For example, include cues to involve your listeners' senses, but keep these details of sounds and smells open enough to allow for individual associations. To keep the fantasy flowing, make transitions smoother and more logical between scenes than they might be in the original dream. Like a good novel or movie, edit out elements that might distract from the main theme or story line. If the ending of the dream is upsetting or conflicted, make it more neutral or give the listeners time to create their own ending. Whatever you do, trust the creative process. By reawakening your imagination and that of your
 
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partner, you are reopening a channel of communication with the unconscious that can be useful in both your waking and dreaming lives.
Make A Dream Shield
Making an object related to your dreams and visions can help you and your partner get in touch with the feelings and associations surrounding a particular dream symbol or remind you both of what you gained from an especially significant dream. One of the most powerful dream-inspired objects you can make is a dream shield. This activity can be even more meaningful if done with your partner or family. Similar to the collage made by the couple with the ''We are artists" proclamation (see chapter 5), a dream shield is a productive, creative way to involve your partner in the process of exploring and expanding your relationship. The process of choosing the symbols for your dream shield is a good exercise in values clarification and team building. In some ways, it is like you and your partner creating together your own personal "family crest" based on your most personal dreams.
To make a joint dream shield, start by drawing a large circle on a sheet of paper. Discuss some of the significant symbols or themes from your dreams or visioning dreams that you may want to include and that have significance for your couple. That is what we did shortly after Phyllis completed the dream shield based on her "Shooting Stars" dream (see chapter 5). We were so inspired by that dream, the shield, and our proclamations that came from it ("We are shooting stars" and ''We are the source of infinite support, power, and creativity") that we decided to make a "couple dream shield" together that would solidify it all for both of us. We did just that and shared it with the couple who had helped us create our proclamation. See Figure 11.1.
 
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Figure 11.1
Couple dream shield
There are many other ways you and your partner can expand your dreamwork as a couple, including creating a bulletin board to post your dream creations, and getting special bedding like a "dream blanket" with an inspiring design or "dream pillow" filled with herbs or spices to induce dreams. The list could go on and on, limited only by your imaginations. Do what you feel comfortable withor, even better, go beyond your comfort zones and try some new things to enhance your consciousness and your relationship.
 
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Expanding Dreamwork Beyond Your Couple and Family
Another way to expand your dream life is to include more people outside your own family in it. You can do this by paying attention to dreams about other significant people in your life, and looking for opportunities to share these dreams with them. We call the process of sharing your dreams with the various people in your life "social dreamwork." We have already seen how valuable telling dreams to those closest to you can be for increasing intimacy and communication in your family. And chapter 8 illustrated the importance of creating a community of support for your couple through sharing dreams and visions on an ongoing basis with a larger circle of couples. The same kind of value is available for other relationships in your life as you expand your dream community even further into your social network. Communicating your dreams and visions to others is a way to create a connection with anyone you share a dream with.
People from all walks of your life may appear in your dreams, sometimes representing an unfinished communication you have with those particular persons. A character may keep showing up in your dreams over and over again until the conflict is resolved in your waking life. Or, this person may bring up some aspect of yourself that you need to address, occurring in your dream in the form of a shy coworker, a messy roommate, or a demanding boss. Whatever the characters represent, noticing and sharing dreams about these relationships can help to bring the waking-life issues to the surface, where you can work with them directly.
You need not understand the meaning of your dream in order to share it, nor must you be able to explain the other person's dream to be of help. In fact, the process of simply swapping dream stories can lead to additional insights, new friendships,
 
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interesting areas of mutual exploration, and expanded areas of sharing and support in a variety of your current relationships. Like confiding a waking life experience to a friend, sharing your night's dreams can build closeness and understanding. The same is true for daydreams and visioning dreams. Social dreamwork can take place with any number of people, at any time or any place; it can be spontaneous or formally structured. The only requirements are your willingness to share and the other person's willingness to listen.
Dreamwork with and about Friends
As with partners and family members, communicating about dreams with friends is a quick and convenient way to bring closeness and intimacy to your shared experience. In these busy times, we often have to combine activities in order to fit everything in. Telling dreams to each other while hiking, sewing, jogging, or pushing strollers is an efficient way to get your work or exercise done and still have quality time with your friends. One woman describes sharing dreams almost daily with a friend while they swam laps in a pool: "We had a great time telling each other our dreams of the night before, laughing over the bizarre images and plots as we swam. Before we knew it, we had been swimming an hour and had also discovered new things about ourselves through our dream images."
Telling a friend about a dream has special significance when that person appears in it. As with our family members, dreams can reveal your true feelings about a friend more clearly and honestly than your waking life communication does. Sharing the dream can help you both better understand how you see the person, both positively and negatively. By translating into dream language, you can also take responsibility for how you project your own characteristics onto your friend. Working on
 
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the following dream saved one woman, Tanya, from damaging her relationship with her roommate by helping her recognize such a projection.
The Quarrel
I am having a huge argument with Sherry. We are screaming and shouting at each other at the tops of our lungs and hitting each other. I wake up feeling extremely upset.
Tanya's roommate, Sherry, ate a lot of snack-food. The two of them often shared snacks together, leading to Tanya's weight gain. Tanya was annoyed at this situation and suspected the dream related to it. She discussed the dream with Sherry and reported the following results: "I realized I was blaming her for 'tempting' me with food, and for my own lack of self-control. Our dream sharing led me to take full responsibility for my own overindulging and enabled me to enjoy Sherry's company much more than I had before."
In a dream like Tanya's, where there is the presence of conflict, it can be helpful to share the dream first with another friend and get some coaching. The following dream gave Marla valuable information for dealing with a difficult situation involving an old friend.
Enraged
I'm with Bettylooking down at her and yelling. I'm enraged. She just sits there looking at me with a blank expression. I feel like hitting her. It feels good to let it out but upsetting to get no response.
Marla had been having difficulty relating to her friend Betty ever since they had a disagreement several months before. Betty would not return her phone calls and ignored her whenever

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