Posts Tagged ‘drama’
Relationship and dreams
Most dreams depict relationship in one form or another. Some dreams however, specifically show you in a particular relationship. Such dreams are usually highly significant in that they reveal aspects of what you are doing in the relationship that you may not admit or realise consciously. It can therefore be transformative to gain insight into any dreams that show you in relationship with present partners or lovers. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Example: I was with Lorna, a woman I was having a relationship with but not committed to. She told me she was pregnant. I said to her this was impossible and it couldn’t be my child. She looked at me and shrugged saying ‘Okay, I’m not pregnant’. Neal C.
On exploring the dream Neal realised the enormous feelings involved. He had not realised consciously that Lorna had completely offered herself to him in their relationship. The dream shows him rejecting this complete offering of her sexuality and womanhood, and her turning away when he rejected her. This had actually happened, but Neal had not been conscious of what was occurring between them. The dream enabled him to realise how he pulled away from a woman’s full flow of self expression, and begin to change this. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream. So any dream shoiwng a relationship needs to be looked at as if the drama and people, even the objects in the dreams, as if they are words in a sentence.
Example: I was in a very loving relationship in which I had developed powerful emotional links with D. We communicated many times each day while apart at work, etc. But one day there was no communication. I felt tremendous anxiety and emotional pain and shock, really frightened that she had dropped me. In fact she hadn’t, but my fears were very real and difficult to deal with. A real shock.
The feelings of being left or dropped, even if not real, are difficult ot deal with. Looking at ones dreams can give a real insight. Looking iwth the eys of truth.
Relationship is a vital part of life
Relationships in their various aspects, are one of the most vital and fulfilling parts of your life. Every dream you have has as its key theme, or as an underlying fact, an experience of a relationship. The quality of your relationships is vitally important, and determine how another person, or society, rewards or rejects you, what your dreams reveal about the hidden side of how you deal with other people can transform your life.
Relationship can be joyful of painful – but dreams can smooth the path of love
Also, love, whether for children, for a marriage partner, or a lover, can be a source of great joy. Or it might be experienced as conflict, or pain. The insights dreams can bring concerning the way your love flows or is blocked, can change conflict or pain to a feeling of wholeness and satisfaction. Relationships are made or broken by passions, pains and responses, many of which lie hidden, and arise from the very foundations of what we experienced of love, or its absence, in infancy and childhood. The present grows out of the past. The past pain of broken trust can still disrupt the trust we feel in our present love. The insights dreams give you can enable you to understand such influences, pinpoint their source, and move beyond them. Dreams do this by using mime and drama. While in a loving relationship that was sometimes painful to him, and thereby provoked doubts, Vincent had the following dream.
“I was visiting a children’s hospital for two days, and in my dream I woke in the hospital and saw a book placed carefully by me on the bed. I knew that Diane, my partner, had quietly come while I slept, and left the book as a gift. I picked up the book and the title was, ´Flaming Heart´. I felt very happy, and knew the book was about the power and fire of love”
Vincent’s pain arose from the fear of being abandoned by the person he loved. This was from childhood wounds, at times making Vincent wonder if he was really loved by Diane. In his childhood, Vincent had twice being placed ín a hospital. Each time he experienced a terror of being abandoned. So dreaming that he was in a hospital shows him revisiting those feelings. And they are feelings that had been disrupting his relationship with Diane. The book suggests that from his connection with Diane, Vincent has become aware of an as yet unexplained — unread — experience of love. There is no suggestion of hidden problems in the dream. Therefore Vincent felt he should trust the positive side of their love, and patiently allow unfoldment in himself. Through such imagery and feelings as Vincent met in his sleep, dreams guide us towards greater love and satisfaction in our relationships. See Dealing with Husband or Ex; Integrating An Ex; Beware of Love; Surviving Love and Relationships; Ages of Love; Love Sex and Desire.
Many of us get stuck in life situations
Many of us get stuck in life situations from which we may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with one’s own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship – the list could be endless. We need to ask our self the question as to why we maintain such an awful relationship with life. To quote a woman’s’ words, “Is your mind or awareness so tiny that you have never realised the forces and processes of your own body are beyond anything you understand? Can’t you see that your very existence is brought about by things so far beyond your knowledge that it is only a statement of your impoverishment to suggest an awareness of God is an expression of some sort of smallness and failure. Have you never understood that? Have you not seen that religion is not only an acknowledgement of what we fail to understand and yet depend upon, but it is also an opening to it, a willingness to relate to it? It can also be something far more even than that. It can be an active loving relationship with what gives you life. And such love is an exchange, a sharing, and a way of merging one with another. It is an exchange – a sharing of bodily fluids – the very substance of life. Imagine that; a glorious love affair with the very spirit of life! A love affair with the invisible and forever indefinable. Is that something you are afraid of?” I think the woman was not talking about religion as the massive organisations and often dogmatic creeds they promote, but as the human recognition that neither we, your mother or father created you. Sure you mother was a host, but she was in no way directing the intricate workings of pregnancy and the forming of your body. It was the processes of Life directing it. Of course many people feel that is all automatic and without purpose, but that is because they have never woken up to and explored the unconscious and its workings. They have never realised that they have a relationship with Life and have to do their inner housework and activities of growth. See Makes Inner To learn to relate to Life you must remember that you are a living example and manifestation of Life, so in a real sense you have to listen to Life in YOU! But most of us are so focussed on relating to the outer world through their senses, trying to earn more, watching TV or hoping for the next sexual exploit they forget how to listen to themselves. Listening to oneself is often called intuition, and to hear what Life has to share with you, you must turn your attention away from the world, quieten the noise of your thoughts and emotions, and listen. I have called it at times learning how to become a virgin – See How I Became A Virgin; Using Your Intuition Of course we often think of relationships being sexual. In that case see Sexercises – Sex and Identity – Sex and Dreams – Energy, Sex and Dreams – Tune in to the sexual power of your pelvis Also we see relationships as being about friends, relatives and our children. So see Love – Love of self – Learning to Love – Surviving Love and Relationships – Teenage Girl’s Love Dreams – The greatest love story in the world – Love Sex and Desire – Beware of Love – Archetype of the Lover
Plot of the dream
In attempting to understand our dreams, it is important to honour their drama or plot. Dreams appear to be very specific in the way they use the characters, objects and environs occurring in them.
Example: ‘I was walking up a steep hill on a sunny day when my husband came running down the hill with blood pouring from his right arm. He couldn’t stop running. As he passed me he called to me for help. I was happy and peaceful and ignored him. I calmly watched him running fast down the hill then continued on my way.’ Joyce C.
Out of the infinite number of situations Joyce could have dreamt about, this was the one produced. Why? There are many factors that appear to determine what we dream. How events of the day influenced us; what stage of personal growth we are meeting – we might be in the stage of struggling for independence; problems being met; relationship situations; past business such as childhood traumas still to be integrated; are some of them.
If Joyce had dreamt she and her husband were walking up the hill the whole message of the dream would have been different. If we can accept that dream images are, as Freud stated, a form of thinking, then the change in imagery would be a changed feeling state and concept. If the language of dreams is expressed in its images, then the meaning stated is specific to the imagery used.
In processing our dreams, it is therefore profitable to look at the plot to see what it suggests. It can be helpful to change the situation as we have done with Joyce’s. Imagining Joyce walking up the hill on a sunny day arm in arm with her husband suggests a happy relationship. This emphasises the situation of independence and lack of support for her husband that appears in the real dream. Seeing our dreams as if they were snatches from a film or play, and asking ourselves what feelings or human situations they depict, can aid us to clarify them. As a piece of drama, Joyce’s dream says she sees, but does not respond to her husband’s plight.
Our internal ‘dream producer’ has an amazing sense of the subtle meanings of movement, positioning, and relationship between the elements used. Some of these are subtle. A way of becoming more aware of what information our dreams contain is to use visualisation. Sit comfortably and imagine yourself back in the dream. Replay it just as it was. Remember the whole thing slowly, going through it again while awake. As you do so, be aware of what it feels like in each scene or event; what do the interactions suggest; what does it feel like in the other roles? We can even practice this with other people’s dreams. If we imagine ourselves in Joyce’s dream, and replay it just as she describes it, one may arrive at a feeling of detachment from the husband. If we stand in the husband’s role we may feel a great need that is not responded to as we go ‘down hill fast’. In this way we gather a great deal of ‘unspoken’ information from dreams.
Looking at our own dreams in this way can be more difficult, simply because we do not always want to see what is being said about ourselves. See: Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; settings; Secrets of Power Dreaming; Creating a New You
Word analysis of dreams
People often look at the main word in their dream, look it up, and leave it at that. But usually a dream has a main theme and several other images, people, animals or things are mentioned.
I will give an example to show how to arrive at a dream’s meaning from use of the Dream Dictionary entries. It is important to first write the dream down as fully as possible. Don’t stint on the use of words. Be descriptive. Then take the very opening scene of the dream and look it up in the appropriate entry.
Example: I was standing in the back garden of a house – one of a row of terraced houses. Each garden was fenced and ran down to a large drainage ditch. It seemed to be raining and water was filling the drainage ditch. The water was backing up into the gardens because something was blocking the ditch. It started rising up my legs. It was quite hot. I realised this was because hot water was running out of the baths and sinks in the houses. I felt I must get out of the gardens. Not only because of the water, but because of how people might feel if they saw me in their garden. I managed to find a way into a farm yard where I felt relaxed.’ Ted F.
The first scene here is Garden. On a piece of paper separate to the dream, write Garden, with space for notes to be put beside it. The entry on Garden in the Dictionary says – ‘Your garden dream often reveals what you are doing with your latent possibilities. It is pointing out whether you have cultivated your abilities, or buried them. A garden is sometimes a place of love in a dream. In which case it can denote what is growing or dying in your relationship. Another garden theme is connected with activities we do in the garden, like pets we keep, or work done.’
The words Houses – Raining – Hot water – Fences – Farmyard need to be looked up and relevant comments written down next to each word. It is important to realise that the dream and its images are a story, not in words but in images with which we have personal associations with. So write down by each word the basic meaning that appeals to you – i.e. makes sense to you.
Houses – Other people. Raining – emotions, release of feelings. Hot Water – Strong emotions or facing difficult situations, such as social criticism. Fence or wall also suggests social barriers, the attitudes and feelings people express to keep others at a distance, to keep a separation between those of different social, religious or economic class. Farmyard – This usually has to do with your relationship with your natural urges, the basic drives, such as sex, survival, social hierarchy, parenthood, the down to earth side of yourself.
If we put them together into a story form, we have: I was in an environment with other people and was in hot water facing a difficult situation such as social criticism. I was also in other people’s space and felt that their fences, their attitudes and social difference were there to keep me out. But in returning to my natural feelings I felt at ease again
Making a story of it is an important step, and through you will probably even see what the message of your dream is. But in doing this with his dream, Ted took it further by adding his own associations and ended up with the following. But it is important for you to see what your feelings are and whether any of what is said applies to you. It doesn’t matter if the entry on garden doesn’t contain what is said in your dream. Instead you can say, ‘None of those things apply, but the entry has made me remember my dream garden is a place of pain where a terrible incident happened to me.’ See Working with associations
Ted arrived at and wrote:
Garden – The growth and changes occurring in my life at present.
Row of Houses – Other people.
Raining – Depressed feelings or difficulties; emotions which take away enthusiasm and act as a barrier to action; tears and emotional release – an outpouring; other people’s emotions ‘raining’ on me.
Hot Water – Emotions. In the Idioms is ‘hot water’ suggesting I have got myself in trouble.
Fences – Social boundaries.
Farmyard – Where my natural drives such as sexuality, parenthood, love or fellowship, are cared for or expressed.
When Ted added his own associations to this the dream became fully understandable to him and read like this:
I am going through a lot of changes at the moment – the garden. These are to do with allowing myself to have a warm but non sexual relationship with women. I have always been too dragged along by my sexuality in the past. Just a few days before the dream I was in a ‘growth’ group; I had made friends with a woman there, Susan, who I felt warm feelings for, but not sexually. The group work required some close physical contact, and I and another man worked with Susan.
It seemed to me to go without complications. But a while afterwards a woman in the group came to me and with evident emotion, said I had made love publicly to my lover, meaning Susan. I had certainly been physically close to her and had felt at ease, but the viewpoint and feelings of the woman’s accusations, coupled with her threat to expose me to the authority figure in the group, bowled me over.
This is the hot water in the dream. The fences are the boundaries people erect between their personal life and what is socially acceptable. For some days, up until understanding the dream, I felt really blocked up emotionally – the blocked drainage ditch all because of the criticism – hot water. I cut off any friendship toward Susan. When I realised that in the Farmyard – the acceptance of natural feelings without neat little boundaries – I could feel at peace, I was able to allow my natural warmth again. I also realised that the woman who attempted to damage my reputation had probably never had love or warm physical contact that was not directly sexual. Many people see any physical contact between a man and woman as having sexual overtones, probably because that is their own view of sexual relationship
After writing the comments next to each dream image or setting, add any personal memories, feelings or associations, as Ted has. Put down anything which amplifies what has been dreamt. For instance, a car is said to be one’s drive and motivation in the entry on car. But it is helpful to add what personal feelings one has about one’s car. Try imagining what the absence in one’s life of the car, or house, or symbol etc., would mean.
Another way to gain quick insight into your dream is to take the keywords and fill in the gaps.
To illustrate this we can use the following dream:
Example: I meet an acquaintance who tells me she is sick. I suggest ways that might help her. As I speak I become aware that others are listening and coming nearer. I apologise and say that I appear to be preaching, but they say, ‘Please go on we want to listen.’ As I continue I find that a rostrum has formed and lifted me two steps higher.
To use the technique of ‘keywords’ on this dream you would need to write down the most important words in the dream. Doing this you might arrive at the words – I meet an acquaintance – sick – I might help – as I speak – others are listening – I apologise – I appear to be preaching – I find a rostrum.
For the next step you ask yourself what you have recently met with in yourself or in life that might link with each of those words. It is something you are acquainted with, and that has to do with not feeling well, whole or satisfied with your life.
So you would ask yourself what you are acquainted with to do with not feeling at your best.
The word ‘help’ suggests you have information that will be useful. What is it?
You apologise for yourself, suggesting degrading what you know. How are you doing that in your life?
Preaching comes next. Have you been giving advice? If so, what is it, and is it relevant to you too?
And lastly, can you listen to your own advice given from a rostrum – higher level of viewpoint?
Having arrived at some associations with the major words in the dream, you next put them together in a way that explains some of the insights or ideas you arrived at. Filling in the gaps between the words you might therefore arrive at something like this:
“I have lately become aware of the feeling that I am ill at ease with myself. This connects with my lack of confidence about how I feel when talking with other people. The strange thing is that I know how to help myself with this. I was talking with a friend the other day, and the advice I gave them about something similar really applies to me. What I need to do is to stop apologising for myself and positively use what I know will help. I can see from the dream that I have a lot to share with other people, so I don’t need to feel I am preaching.”
What you arrive at using this keyword method will give you an excellent overview of your dream. It will take some practice, but persist and you will get very useful results.
Use the body to discover dream power
The brain sends impulses to all the muscles to act on the movements we are making while in the dream. This is observable when we wake ourselves by thrashing about in bed, or kicking and shouting. A part of the brain inhibits these movements while we sleep.
The important factor is that a dream is more than a set of images and emotions, it is also frequently a powerful physical activity and self expression. If we explore a dream sitting quietly talking to a friend, even if we allow emotions to surface, we may miss important aspects of our dream process. Through physical movement the dream process releases tensions and deeply buried memories that are stored in our body. These do not release and heal by simply talking about them.
It is often enough to realise this aspect of dream exploration for such spontaneous movements to emerge when necessary. By being aware of the body’s need to occasionally be involved in expression of dream content, we may catch the cues and let these develop. Frequently all you need to do is to let the body doodle or fantasise while exploring a dream. Jung suggested this technique for times when the person was stuck in intellectual speculation. To practice it you can take a dream image and let the hands spontaneously doodle, watching what is gradually mimed or expressed. When you have gained skill doing this, let the whole body take part in it. This can unfold aspects of dreams that the other approaches might no help with. A fuller description of this process is contained in my book Liberating the Body.