The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination (11 page)

CHAPTER 3
EVERYDAY DREAM GAMES

Y
ou don't want anyone telling you what your dreams mean. Really, you don't. As we have seen, dreams bring many gifts of power, and you don't want to give that power away by letting someone else tell you what your dream (or your life) means.

What's that? You need help? Your dream is mysterious, and you can't figure it out. Maybe you asked for dream guidance on an issue, and you remembered a dream, but you can't see a connection between the dream content and the question you had in your mind when you put your head on the pillow.

It's okay to ask for help. Personally, I take all the help I can get when exploring my dreams. The kind of person who can help most with a dream is someone who will give you feedback and counsel on action without taking your power away. That person does not have to be an “expert” on dreams or anything else.

Now of course, dream interpreters have been in high demand in many societies. Think of the stories of Daniel and Joseph in the Old Testament. In ancient Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq, alas), the dream interpreter was a powerful figure, often standing very close to the king. In one Mesopotamian text, the dream guide is described as “one who lies at a person's head.” This is a very interesting clue that the best dream guides in this culture were doing something very different from verbal analysis. They made it their game to try to enter the dreamer's situation and psychic space — and to speak from that place.

Imagining yourself in someone else's place is part of the game we are about to learn. It need not involve “lying at a person's head” (unless you're already in bed together when you start playing).

After a lifetime of exploring and sharing dreams, I have invented a fun way to share dreams, to get some nonauthoritarian and nonintrusive feedback, and to move toward creative action. I call this the Lightning Dreamwork Game. It's like lightning in two senses — it's very quick (you can do it in five minutes), and it focuses and brings through terrific energy. It's a game you can play just about anywhere, with just about anyone — with the stranger in the line at the supermarket checkout, or with the intimate stranger who shares your bed. The rules are simple, and they open a safe space to share even the most sensitive material.

LIGHTNING DREAMWORK GAME

You can play this game with two or more people. We 'll call the principal players the Dreamer and the Partner.

There are four moves in the Lightning Dreamwork Game.

First Move
The Dreamer tells the dream as simply and clearly as possible, as a story. Just the facts of the dream, no background or autobiography. In telling a dream this way, the Dreamer claims the power of the story. The Partner should ask the Dreamer to give the dream report a title, like a story or a movie.

Second Move
The Partner asks the Three Big Questions. (1)How did you feel? (2) Reality check: What do you recognize from this dream in the rest of your life, and could any part of this dream be played out in the future? (3)What do you want to know about this now?

The Dreamer answers all three questions.

Third Move
The Partner now shares whatever thoughts and associations the dream has triggered for him or her. The Partner begins by saying, “If it were my dream, I would think about such-and-such.” The etiquette is very important. By saying “if it were my dream,” we make it clear that we are not setting out to tell the Dreamer what his or her dream — or life — means. We are not posing as experts of any kind. The Partner is just sharing whatever strikes him or her about the dream, which may include personal memories, other dreams, or things that just pop up. (Those seemingly random pop-ups are often the best.)

Fourth Move
Following the discussion, the Partner asks the Dreamer: What are you going to do now? What action will you take to honor this dream or work with its guidance? If the Dreamer is clueless about what action to take, the Partner will offer his or her own suggestions, which may range from calling the guy up or buying the pink shoes to doing historical or linguistic research to decode odd references. Or, the Dreamer may want to go back inside the dream (see below) to get more information or move beyond a fear. One thing we can do with any dream is to write a personal motto, like a bumper sticker or something that could go on a refrigerator magnet.

Lightning Dreamwork is suitable for almost any group environment. A company manager who had taken one of my trainings introduced her department to the Lightning Dreamwork Game. They found it so much fun — and so helpful in bringing through specific guidance — that the members of her office agreed to devote twenty minutes each morning to sharing dreams as a group. Instead of a diversion of time and energy, the game was highly energizing and became the source of creative business solutions as well as personal healing.

GOING BACK INSIDE YOUR DREAMS

The best way to get to the meaning of a dream is to go back inside the dream and reclaim more of the full experience. The dream experience should not be confused with the remembered dream, which is often blurry or fragmentary. Going back inside a dream will tell us whether the dream images should be regarded literally, symbolically, or as glimpses of a separate reality into which we have traveled during the night.

We may want to go back inside a dream to gather more information. For example, a friend who was a senior executive at a Fortune 500 corporation dreamed he was summoned to a beach house during a work crisis in which he was in danger of losing his job. He did not recognize the dream location, though he speculated that the beach house could be the second home of one of his bosses. I suggested that he might want to reenter the dream and get some more information. I assisted him by helping to clarify his intention —
I will revisit the beach house and find out about the work crisis
— and by giving him some fuel for the journey, in this case the steady beat of a frame drum.

In a relaxed posture, with his eyes covered, following the beat of the drum, my friend was able to revisit the dream house exactly as he might have gone back to a house he had visited in ordinary reality. He learned that it was indeed the second home of one of his bosses, and he acquired specific details about the crisis in the offing that could cost him his job. As a result of this dream reentry, my friend accomplished two things. First, he was able to use the early warning of a work crisis to take appropriate steps to safeguard his job. Second, when the crisis he had previewed did erupt, and he was summoned to an emergency meeting at the beach house he had visited in his dream, he was on the right side of the table — and did not need to ask directions to the restroom.

Another good reason to go back inside a dream is to move beyond a fear. Suppose you dream that there is an intruder in your house. Surely you would want to know whether this is a literal intruder — in which case you would need to ensure your physical security — or a symbolic intruder, perhaps a disease that could break into your body. Or, is the intruder actually an aspect of your bigger Self, before whom the little everyday self often cowers in fear? One way of knowing would be to step back inside the dream space and check out the intruder on the ground where he appeared.

Other reasons to go back inside a dream? To have a proper conversation with someone who showed up during the night, perhaps a departed loved one, a personal mentor, or a spiritual guide. Or, perhaps the dream was simply fun. You were having a wonderful time in Paris, or Hawaii, or another star system, and you were pulled out by the alarm clock or your kid jumping on the bed, and you would like more of the dream.

How do we get back into a dream?

In my workshops and private consultations, as in the case of the friend who was summoned to the beach house, I follow a simple dream reentry technique. As explained below, I like to use steady heartbeat drumming to help the dreamer relax and shift consciousness and flow back inside the dream. The effect of the drumming is to shepherd brainwaves into the rhythms associated with hypnagogic states and sometimes REM sleep. It minimizes the clutter of distracting thoughts. And it works like jet fuel in powering the journey. For private use at home, I recommend using a drumming CD.

The Dream Reentry Technique

Going back into a dream is like going back to any place you have visited. It is the same as imagining yourself returning to a friend's house or to a landscape you visited on vacation.

To prepare for a dream reentry, do the following:

1. Pick a Dream with Real Energy.
As long as it has juice, it doesn't matter whether the dream you want to reenter is from last night or twenty years ago. It can be a tiny fragment or a complex narrative. You can choose to work with a night dream, a vision, or a waking image. What's important is that the dream you choose to revisit has some charge — whether it is exciting, seductive, or challenging.

2. Relax.
Follow the flow of your breathing, and relax. If you are holding tension in any part of your body, tense and relax those muscle groups until you feel yourself becoming loose and comfy.

3. Focus on a Specific Scene from Your Dream.
Let a specific scene from your dream become vivid on your mental screen. Let all your senses become engaged, until you can touch it, smell it, hear it, and taste it.

4. Clarify Your Intention.
Before you begin, come up with clear and simple answers to these two questions: (1)What do you want to know? (2)What do you intend to do, once you are back inside the dream? Remember these intentions as you reenter the dream.

5. Call in Guidance and Protection.
As you begin, or at any time, you may choose to invoke a sacred guardian by a familiar name, or you can simply ask for help in the name of Love and Light.

6. Give Yourself Fuel for the Journey.
Heartbeat shamanic drumming works well for many people and most groups. If live drumming is not possible, you may want to use my shamanic drumming CD for dream travelers,
Wings for the Journey
.

HELPING CHILDREN WITH DREAMS

Adults are not the only ones who need help understanding their dreams. Kids do too. And they need the same kind of sympathetic, respectful feedback that is asked for in the Lightning Dreamwork Game above. One of the very worst things to say to a child is “It's only a dream.” To kids, dreams are real. Trying to convince them otherwise is experienced as a form of abandonment.

When it comes to their dreams, our kids need just three things from us.

Full Attention and Close Listening

Children need us to listen to them — really listen, which means no cell phones and no interruptions — for the few minutes required to tell a dream. Ask questions that help the child draw out and remember the dream, but resist the urge to interpret or analyze the dream for them. This is something children do
not
need. When we give children our undivided attention as they tell a dream, we are helping them to claim their voices and become story tellers and communicators. We offer them a safe way to surface issues that may need to be addressed within the family. We also allow them to teach us about the dream world, with which kids — especially young kids — are often far more familiar than most adults, who often are out of touch with the dreamer in their own psyches.

A Quick Way to Deal with Scary Stuff

When a child is disturbed by “bad dreams” or nightmares, it's important to try to discern whether the troubling experience was actually a dream or the effect of unsettled psychic energies, either in the home, at school, or elsewhere. Kids pick up disagreements and emotional trouble in the environment, and we need to give them a quick way to get rid of the residue. We can take them outside — or send them into the bathroom — to literally
spit it out
. Or get them to draw a picture of what disturbed them and tear it up. If the bad stuff was going on inside a dream, we want to give the child a guardian who can go with them into the dreamspace. I have often suggested to young children that a favorite stuffed animal, or a toy soldier, represents a dream guardian who will guard them in scary situations in their dreams. This tactic works amazingly well.

A Creative Way to Honor Dreams

Kids love to be invited to do something creative from a dream — turn it into a story, a performance, a drawing, or a painting.

CHAPTER 4
DREAMS ARE a SECRET ENGINE of HISTORY

D
reams play a vastly more important role in shaping world events than is acknowledged by most historians (or our media), who are as coy when it comes to reporting dreams as they once were — in times long past — about reporting sex.

A case in point: Sir Martin Gilbert devoted decades of his industrious and scholarly life to producing a magnificent narrative biography of Winston Churchill. Dip into it if you need any reminding that the big events of the first half of the twentieth century — and most notably the defeat of Hitler — are inconceivable without Churchill in a leading role. His prescience, his courage, his extraordinary ability to awaken and mobilize the energies of a whole people got Britain, and the democracies, through their darkest hour.

Now, suppose that Churchill had died before becoming prime minister, say in June 1914, on the eve of the First World War. If you read Gilbert's biography, you'll see that it was entirely possible — indeed probable — that the young Churchill, literally a highflier, could have gotten himself killed during one of his many flying lessons and joyrides around that time. He was a great proponent of early military aviation, when the generals could not see the point. When he became first lord of the admiralty — the ruler of the Royal Navy — he asked the dashing young naval pilots at East church on the Isle of Sheppey to teach him to fly. They were delighted to oblige. He loved the sense of freedom that came to him at the controls of a seaplane (a word he coined) swooping over the shore. But the risks were amazing. Early planes were flimsy and unstable and constantly cutting out or cracking up in midair. Those who kept count calculated that there was one death for every five thousand flights. Two of Churchill's favorite flight instructors died within days of going up with him, on the same planes they had flown with Winston. Churchill's friends and family, especially his wife, Clementine, begged him to give it up. He refused. He never lacked for courage, and he believed in his own luck.