7 days of dreaming: Symbols and Motifs
Welcome to Day 6 of our dreamwork journey!
We have acquired a solid toolbox of skills together: comparing the emotional signature of dreams to waking life situations; tracking the behavior of the dream-self for clues as to how we may be stuck in personal mythologies; titling and transcribing our dream-narrative; decoding the messages strange or unfamiliar Others may carry; and relating to friends and family as aspects of our selves.
You may have noticed that in this work, we have not veered too far from the waking life, and the commentary our dreams make upon it. My intention with this journey has been to give you tools that you can use to confidently and pragmatically work with your dreams. However, we are barely scratching the surface of the profound, mysterious healing that dreams can work on our spirits, our life narratives, and even upon our families and communities.
If this taste of dreamwork has piqued your interest, I highly recommend stepping into deeper work with a trained dream worker or counselor, or teaching yourself by reading the works of Carl Jung, Toko-pa Turner, Bob Hoss, Marion Woodman, and Robert Moss. To whet your appetite for this deeper dreamwork, I have added one of my favorite dream-stories at the end of today’s post!
Dreamwork Skill #6: Objects and Symbols
Have you found that there is a landscape you continue to return to in dreams, even if you have never set eyes on this place in waking life? Or again and again you dream of trains, even though the last time you were on a train you were 10 years old?
Marie Louise von Franz famously said “Dreams don’t waste much spit telling us what we already know.” If we combine this understanding with what we have already learned about everything in a dream being a representation of ourselves, it follows that objects and symbols in our dreams are representations of aspects of ourselves that are in need of our attention.
There are many fascinating ways of working with the potential meanings of dream objects, but one of my favorites is also one of the simplest.
Take the object that appeared in your dream and write down what its function is. For example, if I dream of an elaborate red hat, I might write:
The function of a red hat is to draw attention to the wearer.
I might then ask myself: is there a part of me that would like a little more attention? What parts of me really dislike drawing attention to myself, and how has that been getting in my way?
Obviously this is just one of many possible interpretations of the function of a hat—the important thing is that YOU, the dreamer, are the one defining the function, because it is your associations with these objects that your mind is tapping to create the messages in your dream.
Dream Practicum
The Exploding Oil Cans
i. A man is hiking with several friends and comes upon a clearing filled with men who are sacrificing a victim.
ii. The man runs away and comes upon a clearing filled with peaceful people selling colorful, silken clothes. There are oil cans all around, and the man discovers that if he looks at the oil cans hard, they will explode.
iv. The man is pulled into a fight to the death. In the center of the fight he notices there is a pile of oil cans. The man makes them explode by looking at them, but notices that the exploding oil cans are not killing anyone, and furthermore the combatants are noticing and realizing the man’s only weapon is ineffective.
Before we move forward with this dream, take a moment and “borrow” it. How would you define the function of each of the symbols in this dream? What might you imagine it would be saying to you?
In our work with this dream, the dreamer was particularly taken with the image of the exploding oil cans and the strong emotional reaction he had to their ineffectiveness as a weapon.
He defined the function of “oil can” as “to transport fuel for heating, or for getting people places.” He defined the function of exploding as “letting the pressure off, destroying the form of what is.”
When he combined these two functions, he had a moment of illumination. “I’ve been lashing out, wasting anger that could be a motivating force by taking it out on others instead of changing the situation I am in.”
The dreamer noticed as well that the oil cans were scattered around the clearing of peaceful people, not the clearing of violent men. He shared his understanding of this as “I tend only to lash out when I’m not actually in danger. When I’m really in danger, I freeze because I’ve spent all my energy taking my anger out on passive people that are not a threat to me.”
This was a powerful dream, with many layers of information. As he continued to work with it, the dreamer was inspired to confront the source of his problems rather than continue to lash out in ineffective anger.
Have you had any interesting experiences applying these skills to your own dreams? I’d love to hear from you—feel free to comment below or email me directly at innerlightasheville@gmail.com.
See you tomorrow for the final day of this dreamwork journey, when we will put it all together!
In closing, I offer you this, one of my favorite dream stories:
Back when I was taking some prerequisite psychology courses at UCLA, I lost my keys. I was on my way out to the high desert to soak in wild hot springs, so I didn't let it bother me. I knew the keys would turn up when I got back.
But as I camped and hiked and soaked I turned the problem over in my mind. I'd checked the drawer, all my bags, the table, the counter...
Then, one night, under the clear stars of the desert, I had a dream. Carl Jung was crooking his finger at me from a chair near a window.
"Pssst," he said, eyes gleaming with mischief. "I know where your keys are." He pointed to the wardrobe, which flew open, and I saw my grey corduroy pants there, folded neatly. Of course! I had been wearing those cords the day before! The keys must be tucked into the pocket!
I was so excited the next morning. A personal message from Jung himself! I babbled excitedly to my friends as we hiked about how Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and the mysterious synchrony of dreams was always taking flak from the scientific community for being impossible to empirically verify. Well here I had the means to prove it. Should I return home and find the keys in the pocket of my cords, it would PROVE that there is a collective wisdom larger than ourselves that can transmit messages in dreams!
"Or," remarked one of my friends (whom I suspected had been hoping for a slightly quieter morning) "that some part of your brain remembered where you'd put the keys and, once the constant buzz of your consciousness was out for the count, was finally able to make itself heard."
I narrowed my eyes at him. He smiled at me and nudged my arm. "You have to think of all possible ways of interpreting the evidence, or you haven't proven anything at all."
Our journey came to an end, and my friends and I parted ways. I raced eagerly into my house, hurrying to the wardrobe to feel in the pockets of my cords. I was really rooting for Jung, here.
But--strike one for mysticism. The keys were not there.
I was disconsolate all day. So much for my personal connection with Jung. So much for dreams, and the collective unconscious, and a universal wisdom that surpasses our understanding.
Finally, I dragged myself to the table to study for my finals. I opened my Theories of Personality text to review the reading. And there, marking the place for the chapter on Jung and the Collective Unconscious, were my keys.
Want to join us this September? In a sun-drenched private office in Asheville, we will slow down to the pace of our dreams and work all of these skills and more to harvest dream wisdom through imagery, artmaking, guided dream-experience, and more!
7 Days of Dreaming: Compensating Characters
So, you’ve explored the identifications and amplifications of the mysterious Others in your dream.
But what about the familiar faces of friends and family? What might they be trying to signal to you?
Dreamwork Skill #5: It’s All You
One of the core precepts of dreamwork is this: everyone, everything, every object that shows up in a dream is an aspect of yourself.
It makes sense when you think about it: when our five senses are quiet, all the dream has to work with is your internal model of the world. There is no external data coming in; the dream crafts characters and settings from bits and pieces of your experience.
“We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”
~Anais Nin, quoting the Talmud
This means that whomever you encounter in your dream—your partner, your parent, your friend—is a commentary on the aspect of you that relates to that person or, put more plainly, the attributes in you that behave/react as that person would.
These characters create a “compensatory narrative”, frequently showing us other ways we could approach the problem, other behaviors that we could try out, or storylines that compensate for what is missing in our current response to events.
For example, if I dream that I am quarreling with my friend Amanda, I could use dreamwork skill #2 to identify the behaviors and attributes of my dream-self (let’s say my dream-self is acting embarrassed, avoidant, and quiet) with the behaviors and attributes of my friend Amanda (let’s say that, in waking life, Amanda is a person with verve, presence, and outrageous brashness).
Now I might look at this dream, not as a sign that my friendship with Amanda is on the rocks, but as a signal that the part of me that likes to hide and fly under the radar is experiencing some friction with another part of me that wants to play big and be seen.
Dream Practicum
The Sisters
“A woman is in a boat with her sister. She is acting very warmly toward her sister and offering her some food. They feel really connected to each other.”
The dreamer who brought me this dream fragment was frustrated by the dream, assuming it meant that she should make peace with her sister, a woman she had only recently found the strength to set boundaries with.
As we explored this dream, the dreamer defined her sister as a person who represented antagonistic, alcoholic, and controlling qualities. She noticed that the boat, as a vehicle that passes safely over the water, signified a sense of safety for her, as well as a mode of conveying herself across difficult emotional terrain.
When she altered her view of the sister figure in her dream from that of a literal person to a representation of qualities of control and addiction, she stated the following:
“The way for me to proceed now is by making peace with the parts of me that are scared and want to run away from or avoid the hard parts of life. I need to nourish myself, listen to my fears and work with them, instead of cutting them off. That’s how I’ll get through the rough emotional waters of setting boundaries with my family without succumbing to addiction or over-control myself.”
this dream is shared with permission. Details have been altered to protect confidentiality.
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These skills build on each other—you may have noticed by now that you can use all of the dreamwork skills on a single dream to arrive at a more focused understanding of the information it has for you.
Keep a journal by your bed tonight and record your dream-impressions first thing upon waking. Allow yourself to practice all of the dreamwork skills so far—the emotional signature, tracking the dream-self, writing the narrative, observing Others, and decoding compensating characters. Play with allowing the techniques to inform and comment upon each other.
As always, I’d love to hear from you—comment below or email me at innerlightasheville@gmail.com with any insights or questions.
Tomorrow, we will take a deeper dive into the world of the unconscious as we explore symbols and universally recurring motifs.
If you would like to explore your dreams in person, join us for a daylong deep dive into dreamwork this September. Learn more below:
7 Days of Dreaming: Encountering Others
Welcome back!
I hope you are discovering some new insights, or an awakened curiosity about your dreaming mind…
In today’s blog, we are going to venture into the realm of archetypes. Carl Jung discovered in his study of dreams that the tendency to create representations of certain human characteristics—the Caregiver, the Trickster, the Hero—is universal and crosses culture, age, and history.
When you encounter an Other in your dream— a stranger or unfamiliar personage — this is your dreaming mind participating in this creation, the representation of universal human patterns through icons. It’s a sort of shorthand, a way to portray possibility or danger in a manner that is easily interacted with and recognized. Your particular archetypal images may vary from those of another person, but the instinct to create these images is a collective one.
Dream Skill # 4: Decoding Others
When an unfamiliar person or stranger turns up in your dream, notice how they act and how your dream-self reacts to them. Is the Other threatening? Nurturing? Repulsive? Troublesome?
After you have written out your dream, take each Other one by one and describe their character in a few words. Notice also your dream-self’s emotional response to their way of being.
Then, plug these associations back into your dream narrative any time the character shows up in the dream. This can decode the shorthand and help you understand what your dreaming brain is telling you through these unfamiliar personages.
If you’d like to take this work a step further, you can interview the Other who showed up in your dream. Robert Hoss’s work with dreams has elucidated a few key questions you can ask the Other that will help to clarify their archetypal meaning for you. These questions include:
“Who are you?”
“What is your purpose?”
“What do you like most about being yourself?”
“What do you dislike most about being yourself?”
“What do you fear the most?”
“What do you desire the most?”
I have found that this process works best if conducted much as one would conduct a real interview, speaking the questions out loud and answering them as the Other. It can also be accomplished simply by writing the questions down and answering them.
***The study of Jungian dreamwork is profound and time-consuming, and it is beyond my expertise to provide more than a taste of this type of dreamwork. If this methodology fascinates you, you may want to seek out a trained Jungian analyst or dreamworker, or read Jung’s work on the subject. ***
Dream Practicum
The Famous Stranger
“I was going to give a presentation to my team at work, but the table was crowded and everyone kept talking over me. Just as I was about to have the floor to introduce myself and my topic, a famous person arrived. Everyone recognized the famous person except me. He was tall and imposing. He was wearing a suit made entirely of blue beads. I wanted to talk to him, but I felt too intimidated.”
When we began to work this dream, the dreamer described the Famous Person as “imposing, powerful, and unique.” He described his dream-self’s reaction to him as “intimidated and shrinking.”
When we plugged these representations back into the dream, this was the result:
I Do Not Recognize My Power
“I was going to give a presentation to my team at work, but the table was crowded and everyone kept talking over me. Just as I was about to have the floor to introduce myself and my topic, intimidation arrived. Everyone seemed to have an understanding of being imposing and powerful, except for me. Everyone else seemed to have a relationship to these qualities that I am missing out on. I wanted to stand out and be unique. I wanted to interact with those qualities of power and uniqueness, but felt too intimidated.”
The dreamer felt a sense of immediate recognition. “Any time I am about to really step up and show what I can do, I get this feeling of being an imposter, like who am I to be in this position? I am not unique or interesting enough. And then I don’t step up at all, I back away. No one has any idea what I can really do. Including myself.”
When the dreamer interviewed the blue-beaded man, he heard the following:
“I am strong and I do not care what you think of me. I am here to be true to myself. I most desire that others will stand on their own feet and not rely on me to be the powerful one all the time.”
Through this interview, the dreamer realized he had been afraid to step into his power for fear that others would then perceive him as strong, and add to his workload. Once he realized this fear was holding him back, he was able to change his behavior at work.
He did not stop experiencing feelings of intimidation or the sense of being an imposter, but he did stop engaging in the patterns of behavior that kept him playing small, and he was able to communicate assertively when he felt he was carrying more than his share of the workload.
Later on, he told me that while giving an important presentation at work, he channeled the spirit of that tall, imposing stranger in an armor of beads. He began to cultivate a relationship with this “famous stranger”, the qualities of presence and power.
This dream is shared with permission, with some identifying features changed to protect confidentiality.
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One further note on interpreting dreams: regardless of what you may read about what an archetype “means”, or what a symbol “is known to stand for”, take these generalizations with a grain of salt. The only true expert on any dream is the dreamer, and all archetypes, symbols, and meanings must be interpreted through the lens of that dreamer’s experience. For this reason, take great care in trying to interpret others’ dreams for them, and in letting others interpret yours.
Feel free to share any comments or insights below— and if you’d like the chance to work a dream in person, join us this September for a day-long immersion into dreamwork.
We will work our dreams through art, writing, dialogue, and projective dreamwork, gaining not only profound insight into the dream you work, but also a toolbox of skills to harvest the wisdom of your dreams every day.
7 Days of Dreaming: Writing the Narrative
I hope you are enjoying the journey so far, and discovering the light your dreams can shed on the struggles and triumphs of your waking life.
Dreamwork Skill #3: Writing the Narrative
When you first wake and try to capture your dream on paper, you may be hunched over a scrap of paper in the dark, scrawling impressions before you fall back asleep, or hurriedly scribbling the gist of the plot as you hustle through breakfast.
However, when you return to your dream for a second look, the way you choose to write it down is important. Here are three considerations in the transcription of your dream:
Give your dream a title.
Titles should be simple and direct. “A Tiger Chases a Woman”. “A Man Encounters A Ruined Building.” These titles will help you find your dreams easily if you keep a dream journal, and will also enable you to track themes over time. Often the title itself can provide an “aha” moment!
Write your dream in the present tense, and in generalities. Don’t edit or sanitize.
Consider the difference between these two narratives:
a) “I dreamed of a train station, I was in a hurry and in the dream, people kept getting between me and the trains. I did not handle it well.”
b) “A woman is trying to get to a train, she is in a hurry, and she cannot reach her destination. She flails and lashes out at the people that get in her way, pushing some aside and even trampling one. The train continues to be out of her reach and she wants to scream.”
Which feels riper for interpretation and insight? If the behavior of your dream-self embarrasses or horrifies you, protect your dream journal and keep it confidential, but don’t sanitize your report. You can rob yourself of a great deal of insight doing that, and remember, your dream self is not you! The dream-self is a representation, just like all the other characters we encounter in dreams.
Break your dream into scenes.
Dreams tend to move fluidly and bizarrely through time, and sometimes we move from one setting to another with no continuity of character, location, or theme. For this reason, breaking a complex dream into scenes and processing each scene individually can be a more productive approach.
Dream Practicum
A woman I had been working with for a while arrived at her session in a state of agitation I had not observed before. She was reluctant to share what was troubling her, but finally disclosed that she’d had a disturbing dream the night before and could not get it out of her mind. The content of the dream was so disturbing to her that she did not even want to speak it aloud, but she did consent to write it down later that night and send it to me by email.
As we worked with the dream, here is the narrative that emerged, using the three guidelines above:
A Woman Has A Disappearing Child
i. A woman finds herself giving birth to a baby in the middle of a crowded room, even though she did not know she was pregnant and there is no biological way she could be pregnant. She is horrified and embarrassed.
ii. The baby is born and is perfect, and the woman holds it close and decides that it is not so horrible that it is here after all. The woman feels joyful and warm.
iii. The baby begins to shrink. There is nothing the woman can do. She cannot feed the baby and it gets smaller and smaller, despite the woman’s panicked attempts to save it, it disappears into nothing. The woman is consumed with grief.
Once the dreamer worked through her initial feelings of guilt and failure, she was able to let go of the idea that this dream was about neglect and literal death. She shared that, although the baby was newborn in the dream, it appeared to be about 8 months of age. We looked at what had been happening 8 months ago in the dreamer’s life, and she realized that 8 months ago, she had developed an incredible idea for a book she wanted to write. Although she had shared her idea with a few friends, their enthusiasm frightened her and she backed away from the idea.
Writing the dream in general terms enabled the dreamer to get enough distance to let go of the literal interpretation of the “baby” and realize that her “baby” was her unwritten book.
She began work on her book, motivated by the deep sense of grief she had felt in the dream for letting her idea wither away. She describes feelings of profound fulfillment that emerged once she began her work and have continued as she devotes herself to writing.
These dreams are shared with permission, with some identifying features changed to protect confidentiality.
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Perhaps you can practice this skill on an older dream, rewriting the narrative in general terms, titling it, and breaking it into scenes. Notice any insights that pop up during the process!
Feel free to share ideas, questions, or comments below, or email me directly at innerlightasheville@gmail.com.
Want to go deeper? Join Lissa and Julie this September for a day-long deep dive into the imagery and meaning of your dreams. Learn more below.
7 Days of Dreaming: The Dreaming Self
Welcome to Day 2 of our 7-day dreamwork journey.
For most of us, there is a “Self” that watches and participates in our dreams. Our dreaming self performs actions, feels emotions, and engages with other dream characters much as we do in waking life.
This dreamtime version of ourselves has a lot to teach us. We can unlock some of that wisdom by practicing dreamwork skill #2.
Dreamwork Skill #2: Tracking the Dream-Self
Dreams can feel incredibly disorienting and odd due to one interesting trait of our dreaming minds: we tend to process the events of our waking lives while omitting the event itself. Our dreams may rehearse the characters, emotions, and values conflicts of a situation we are dealing with, without ever directly referencing it.
So, how do we figure out what issue our dreams are trying to resolve?
We track the behavior of the dream-self.
What is the “you” of your dream doing? How is she interacting with others? What is his communication style? What emotions are they experiencing?
Notice the dream-self’s behavior and ask yourself: Is this how I am behaving in waking life? If so, where in my life do I behave this way? If not, what can I learn from the way the dream-self is behaving? If the dream-self is acting in a way that embarrasses or confuses me, what might that have to tell me about how I would prefer to act, or how I am limiting my choices?
When you wake with some recall of a dream, write out the actions of the dream-self as though you were watching a silent film. Where in waking life are you engaging in similar actions?
Sometimes, the behavior of our dream-self will reveal our “personal mythologies” . Personal mythologies are strategies we have learned at certain traumatic points in our history that we continue to apply in situations where they are dysfunctional.
Observing the dream-self perform bizarre or embarrassing actions is often a first clue that we are living out a personal mythology rather than behaving rationally in waking life.
Dream Practicum
“In my dream I am walking to the end of a dock. I want to jump in the water and I see that the houses along the dock are all empty. So I start to take off my clothes and hang them on a fence, but just as I am about to dive in I notice a car pulling in to the house where I had placed my clothes. I panic and grab my clothes and run. I tell myself as I walk away that the water probably wouldn’t have felt great anyway, even though I had wanted to jump in more than anything.”
Before you read the section below, pause and imagine that this is your dream. What might the behavior of your dream self be telling you? Is this like you or unlike you? “Borrow” the dream to practice the Dream-Self skill.
In working with this dream, we used dream-skill #1 to notice the emotions in the dream. The feelings of excitement, vulnerability, and disappointment reminded the dreamer of a recent interaction with a friend.
We then played back the behavior of the dream-self as though watching a silent movie. Here is a woman walking toward something she really wants. Now she is looking around, aware of the presence of others. And now she is walking away without having completed her action.
Immediately the dreamer exclaimed “That is just like me, to back away from the thing I most want! And then to pretend that I never really wanted it anyway. Wow, how self-destructive!”
In her further work with this theme, the dreamer decided that this behavior — pretending she did not care about issues that, in fact, were deeply important to her — was costing her heavily and contributing to the decline of her friendship.
By recognizing the behavior in the dream as being self-defeating, the dreamer was able to identify places in her waking life where she was working against her own best interests. She applied this knowledge by speaking directly with her friend, stating decisively what she wanted instead of continuing to pretend she was satisfied with the status quo.
Although this was very difficult for the dreamer, watching her dream-self walk away from that highly-anticipated plunge felt painful enough that, for the first time, she was willing to risk it.
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