Example – Working a Dream

Yesterday I experimented by working with a couple of my dreams using the questions in Dream Processing, and using the voice recognition so I could relax and explore the dream. Here are the results.

First of all there is the dream about the teeth that is a fairly simple one – as follows – The night before last I dreamt that several of my capped/crowned teeth had broken or fallen out.

What is the main action or theme in the dream?

The main action is that I become aware of my crowned teeth being loose and falling out.

What did you feel in this dream – or what emotions or feelings were experienced?

I felt concerned that my teeth were falling out, but there was another major feeling of having to do something about the situation. In other words I would now need to go to the dentist to have something done to my teeth.

What is the main action or theme in the dream?

Apart from the fact of my teeth falling out it is a confrontation with something that needs doing or given attention to.

What is your role in the dream?

I am in the central role of the one experiencing what is happening. I suppose you could say I am the one meeting or confronting the experience.

Are you active or passive in the dream?

Well, I am passive in the sense that something is happening to me and I am the recipient, but I am active in the sense that I feel something needs to be done about the situation.

Are you meeting the things you fear in your dream?

I don’t think this question particularly relates to this dream, but I am certainly not in avoiding or running away from anything.

What is the background to the dream?

This is an interesting question because a few days before the dream I had visited the dentist to have a tooth filled as the filling had come out. Something memorable happened there in that there was only one another person in the waiting room. She was a young woman in her middle thirties, I guess, and quite attractive. I felt a real urge to talk with her, but struggled with my shyness, and so sat for a long time in silence. Then I managed to ask her if she had been waiting long, and if she were the next one to go in. I could see that she appeared to be in a lot of pain and was very restless. As soon as I asked her the question she was very friendly, easy to talk with, and with a bright lively mind.

I couldn’t help thinking that I would love to have a partner such as her, and wondered how I could meet somebody like her, and whether, if I did, they would be attracted to me.

Can you amplify the dream?

I think, from what has been written above, that I do not need to amplify the dream to get at its meaning. So I will leave this question.

Summarise

It seems very clear that the visit to the dentist was the foundation upon which this dream was built. The feeling in the dream of having to visit the dentist again, or having to do something about the situation therefore seems very relevant. For instance, the fact of my teeth falling out means that there is something missing from me, from my life, which needs attention. Linking this with the fact of meeting the attractive woman in the dentist’s waiting room, suggests that I had have a deeper need and recognise the need to give some attention to finding a partner such as the woman met in the dental waiting room.

Certainly I do not feel “right” when teeth are missing from my mouth, or being without a warm and loving partner.

If I am to put keywords to this dream, they will be – relationship; loss; confrontation; needs.

Now I will try to work on a more complex dream.

It is as follows:

Lately I haven’t been sleeping very restlessly, and I experienced a dream that must have started very early in the morning and seemed to continue for hours.

In a sense, the dream was very simple, and the continuation was simply a variety of ways that I approached the central experience.

In the dream I was with a woman who was on my right. I have no clear picture of her face and no sense of who she was. But I did feel close to her emotionally, and we were holding hands. Together we walked into a large building. I have the impression of it being a square tall block, like an old-fashioned office building, but quite nice looking and well preserved. I believe my woman companion had been in the place before. I say this because I was feeling slightly uncertain and she was feeling confident and supportive.

Inside the front door of the building was a wide passageway probably about 15 or 20 feet wide. Not far along this passage something completely filled the space ahead. It looked like frogs spawn, but much more ethereal, perhaps like patterns of energy with just a little material substance.

With no real hesitation the woman and I walked into this wall of energy. I believe we knew more or less what would happen – that we would be absorbed and become wholly a part of this life form. As we walked into it I was trying to analyse what was happening and what it felt like. I lost all sense of my body as a dense form, but I could still feel my partner’s hand in mine in a very delicate way – again like energy playing upon energy. Also, I felt that we could decide upon our own movement, and it seemed as if we were still walking within this life form. So I knew we could walk out again and return to our solid body form.

From here on all sorts of speculations and perhaps what might amount to experiments on my part developed. I understood that when one entered this living moving energy it totally penetrated ones being, and ones body was transformed and healed of any weakness or irregularities. I also felt that it transformed ones personality also. I was experiencing being in and out of the energy, and while out of it I felt great peace and well-being.

Later I realised that in contact with an individual one could merge with that individual and experience the same feeling, and the loss of the dense body form. I shared this with some people, and gradually came to realise that it was only when you had enough people in the group that a permanent energy flux, such as we had first walked into, could exist. So I was going about trying to create another house with a permanent energy flux going on in it. If there were a lot of people involved, there would always be sufficient numbers within the flux to keep it active. But I realised one needed at least six people to give a large enough energy flux for others to see and enter. I also realised that people who had not entered the flux would feel threatened by it and would try to destroy it and the building it was in. So I realised there had to be some level of secrecy.

What did you feel in this dream – or what emotions or feelings were experienced?

There were lots of feelings in this dream, but perhaps the major ones were slight anxiety in approaching what I call the flux. Also there was a sense of excitement, wonder in being completely absorbed by the flux, and yet still maintaining a sense of identity. There was the feeling that I wanted to do something about this wonderful discovery. I wanted to tell other people, so I felt motivated to get other people interested or involved.

What is the main action or theme in the dream?

The theme is that of experiencing something new. It has secondary themes, of wanting to share the experience, of exploring this new experience.

What is your role in the dream?

My role is that of participating in something that the woman is taking me into or showing me. Then my role switches to that of organiser or perhaps teacher.

Are you active or passive in the dream?

I have several variations in the dream. First of all I am passively going along with what is being shown me – or could I say actively going along with what a shown me? But then I am active in organising other people to participate in the flux.

Are you meeting the things you fear in your dream?

Yes, because I felt anxious at the beginning of the dream, I can definitely say I am meeting that anxiety in going forward into the flux. So I guess the thing that I feared was the unknown, the new, and I faced these things.

What is the background to the dream?

I can’t identify any particular background to this dream, except for the fact that I and constantly thinking about possibilities of the mind, of human existence. Of late I tend to have an image of this in that might be described as follows –as a human being I am a miraculous end product of life. My image is of a complex and wonderful vehicle with endless possibilities. Like any complex piece of equipment aspects of my possibilities can be stimulated or what about by initiating the correct command or stimulus. During my life some extraordinary things have happened. However, many of these are difficult to define in the sense of what triggered them. What is it I did, or was done to me, that pressed the right button to stimulate the result?

So I have come to believe that in if only we knew how to approach and our own being we could produce the most astounding responses. For instance, my experience of my consciousness existing at a great distance from my body is one such example. The ability that happened several times to “reading” the personality structure or inner life of other people, is another. So I wonder if this is a background to the dream. A sort of exploring of possibilities.

Can you amplify the dream?

This question suggests the standing in the role of the different parts of the dream. For instance the woman who led me, in the dream, appears as a person independent of myself. But of course she is an aspect of my dream, and therefore of myself. What part of my own feelings, my own perceptions of and thoughts did I clothe with her image?

So, if I stand in her image, if I imagine myself as her, how will I describe myself?

I am a feeling of pleasure. I feel alive and confident– alive with feelings, with hope. I know, from past experience, of this wonderful possibility that I am leading Tony toward. I want him to experience it for himself, to be able to move in and out of it easily. I am his hope and his positive feelings.

Now, if I imagine myself as the flux this is how I describe myself –

I do not have any one form. As energy and I can flow into or create almost any form, any situation. If I have a name, it is Possibility. If I have a direction, it is simply to Be. I am Tony’s experience of moving beyond the limitations of bodily form, of personality. He consistently explores in recent times the meaningless of thinking that his personality has any lasting reality. He sees it as something constantly shifting and changing, and the only reality the process of life that underlies existence. So I am his experience, and his intuition, of the possibilities beyond the identification with the body and a personality.

Summarise

I guess I have already summarised in amplifying the dream. But to really state it in a few words, this is my exploration of what the possibilities might be as we relinquish our sense of identity with our body and personality. The dream affords me a realm of experience in which the holds of physical sensations and preconceptions are weakened. This allowed me the wonder of touching this beautiful experience. I have met this experience many times in waking, but my question is always, “How can I maintain this experience more fully while awake?” I am not sure if this dream is a reply to that question. I mean I don’t see that it is giving any concrete answers to the question. But it does suggest that I am “walking toward,” or moving towards this experience.