The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (58 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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A happy couple looks to create visions. Once you begin to have experience as a couple sharing your dreams, creating visions, and making proclamations, they become a part of your everyday life together. Where do these daydreams and visions come from? You make them up, or you literally dream them up. At the end of Phyllis's "The Shooting Stars" dream in chapter 5, dolphins were jumping in the distance. She found this image to be beautiful and exciting. As she was reviewing the dream in her journal a few weeks later, she noticed a glass sculpture that Peter had gotten for our anniversary. It was two dolphins swimming side by side. He had said that the gift reminded him of their relationship, swimming together, beautifully, through the sea of life. Phyllis had probably included that vision in her dream without consciously knowing it. That view of their relationship had influenced her dream.
Ideas for dreams and visions come from many sources. They may come from what you see others do. In a community of people, ideas for visioning dreams are plentiful. They may be ideas for vacations, projects, or just ways of being together. In our couples coaching group, we are always listening to proclamations that might work for us about having fun, being successful, or being "couple."
Ideas may also come from dream group meetings, counseling sessions, or participation in self-help societies. Anything you hear can be made into a vision. Any dream can be shared and create a possibility for your couple. It is important to see that visions can be invented all the time, everyday, not just on special occasions. You don't need "the vision" or the biggest possibility, just one that might be fun and empowering for that day. Play with inventing them together in the morning at breakfast, on the telephone, or by E-mail.
Brian and Jan woke up one morning feeling particularly
 
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oppressed about going to work. They remembered how much fun they had had on their vacation only a month before. At breakfast, they sipped coffee and daydreamed about their time at the beach. They created the proclamation "We are on vacation." Throughout the day they planned when they could do something that reminded them of their vacation. They met for lunch and took a short walk in the park. They arranged to meet after work to go skating and then to a movie. By the end of the day, they were in great spirits. They had invented a happy day for themselves from a vision they created. Brian suggested that they do something like this every day.
A happy couple shares dreams and visions with others. Learning to share dreams and visions with others is another way for your couple to influence not only your own lives, but the dreams and visions of those around you. To be seen by your friends as a dreamer or a visionary is a great compliment. You can have parties or get-togethers in which sharing dreams is the theme. Don't be bashful! You will become known as a dream couple. You may even begin to notice that those around you seem happier as they follow your lead in sharing dreams and creating visions.
Some old friends of ours told us one evening that they were thinking of separating. We were surprised, because we always had fun together, and they seemed like such a happy couple. When we shared our astonishment they replied, "We were always the happiest around you. It was easy to feel like a great couple when we were all together, because you are such a great couple to be with." Even though we were disappointed that our friends were splitting up, we began to notice that when we were with others, they talked frequently about their relationships and seemed truly interested in being happy and enjoying themselves. It was easier for them to create positive visions about themselves
 
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by watching how we were able to do it. If you live like the couple of your dreams, it will have an impact on others around you.
A happy couple shares themselves with the larger community. Be an example in your church, neighborhood, or service club. Present yourselves not only as happy, fulfilled, and enriched individuals, but as a couple that is supportive and helpful to others. Most communities still do not expect people to function as "couple." They see a good couple as two individuals who get along or function well together or complement each other; they do not see the couple as an entity.
You can model how to truly "be couple" by showing how your relationship takes on tasks or assignments together. You can be leaders, participants, even spectators as a couple. Even if only one of you is present, you can be there "as couple," working and creating visions together. Set the tone in your community. You might even decide to teach communities about being a "dream couple.'' If every couple you know were more of a dream couple, our world would be very different. There would be a new cultural vision of what a couple and a relationship is. It would be hopeful and productive, not stressful and arduous. A relationship would make life easier, not more difficult, and the divorce rate might be significantly lower.
Creating a New Language
The principles and techniques you have learned in working with your dreams represents a new language for most people. Remember that in speaking about a dream, you take responsibility for the images, characters, and actions that occur. You talk about the dream in the present tense. A similar language is used to speak about your couple. Your visions and proclamations are not descriptions of the past or even a hope for the
 
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future. They are spoken in the present tense because your couple is happening now. "We are a dream couple" is a very different statement than "We will be a dream couple." You are responsible for your own visioning dreams and the proclamations you make. They can be whatever you want them to be.
Naomi and Will have been married a number of years, both working hard at jobs they like. They want to start a family, but they don't have enough money yet. They often daydream together about buying a house and having children. They decide to create a proclamation for their couple from their daydream. Naomi and Will say, "We are a prosperous couple." From the moment they use this language to describe themselves, the world begins to look different. As a prosperous couple, they consult a realtor (at no cost to them) to get specific advice about how much they need to save to buy a house. They speak with friends and discover that having a child requires more of a commitment of time and energy than money in the beginning. They spend a long weekend at the beach, taking advantage of the off-season rates. They begin to feel prosperous not in the future, but in the present. They have spoken their vision out loud and acted as though it were already true. Will and Naomi are now living as a prosperous couple, working on the issue of how to make the money they need to keep that feeling. They are no longer waiting for a dream to come true. They are speaking and living their dream.
Creating a New Relationship
For many people, the relationship of their dreams has not yet begun in their waking life. You may think that working with dreams only applies to relationships if you are actually in one. This is not the case. You are in relationships all the time,
 
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whether they be with friends or family. The dreams and visions described in this book can also help you find and begin new relationships. Ruth had not thought much about getting into a relationship until she had this dream.
Good Enough
I am invited by a third party (unknown to me) to visit the home of a famous political figure, because he has an interest in me. I am in his home and cannot believe I am there alone with him. He has a sparkle in his eyes that is unmistakably prompted by my presence. I feel turned on and sexually excited. It is as though he lights me up like a lightbulb. I immediately feel as though I do not deserve his attentionI am not good enough for him. As I leave his house, I am pounding my chest to my friends that I am going to have a relationship with this famous man.
After her dream, Ruth noted, "My ego needs stroking to make up for the feeling that I am not good enough for a relationship." Her dream, however, opened the possibility that an attractive man could be interested in her. Since then, she has been actively looking for one, and enjoying the process!
Dreams about finding or starting relationships are quite common. Usually they are considered to be what Sigmund Freud called "wish fulfillments." These are hopes of things that might happen to you. Creating a vision from your dream about a new relationship is more than just hope. It actually creates a sensitivity to new possibilities and opportunities. The dream is a vision that can be expressed in a plan. It is an active process that allowed Ruth to see herself with more confidence and create a vision such as, "I am the kind of person that a famous man is attracted to."
Your dreams can also help you anticipate new feelings and
 
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allow you to prepare yourself for them. Nadine reported this dream about a relationship that was just starting with Stan.
Excited But Safe
Stan is holding me in his arms. I can sense that he is excited. I also feel very excited but safe at the same time. I am having sexual feelings (I woke up thinking I don't usually have or remember sexual feelings in my dreams).
The next day, Nadine made a date to go hiking with Stan. She felt excited yet comfortable and safe with him, just like in her dream. Her vision of love and safety carried over from her dream life to her waking experience. Her dreamwork prepared her for her real-life encounter. She said, "The Stan part of me created a safe place for me in the dream, and then on the hike. Rather than worrying if he would like me, I got a pretty powerful message that I really do have control over what happens in my life." Since then, Nadine has gone back to this image several times as she confronts her fear about getting further into creating the relationship of her dreams.
The Dream Couple
The dream couple is not discouraged or overwhelmed by fears about falling apart or not getting along. By now you can see that being a couple is something you create or decide to be, not something that happens to you. In that sense, your couple takes on the world together as a unit, fueled by dreams and visions. Happiness is not a destination; it is a point of origin. Your couple is proclaimed from your dreams and visions, and then it encounters the world. You are not concerned that difficulties or stresses might break up the couple. Your couple will survive because you say that it will. Life is not a test; rather, it is a cir-

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