Telephone  (0)1361 890329 - 9am and 9pm UK local time. 

Email: contact@1to1phonecounselling.com

Conor McKenna

"Knowing yourself means knowing the Dreaming from which problems and symptoms arise. In that world, there is less pressure from human or social behaviour; you are closer to nature, to existence as it is."

Arnold Mindell.  

"When a person rediscovers that his deepest nature is one with All, he is relieved of the burden of time, of worry; he is released from the chains of alienation and separate-self existence. Seeing that the self and other are one, he is relieved from the fear of life..."

Ken Wilber.

Clare Hill

"It is best to follow your true teacher, your own true self. Who else could help if a tiger is about to chase you."

Arnold Mindell.

This page will contain various articles, that may appear from time to time, that the reader may find useful. Each article will contain practical exercises that are designed to connect the reader to their inner world. The articles could include a variety of topics such as conflict resolution, deep body work, shamanism, depression or a myriad of other subjects. 

Dreams

We all dream at night, some of us are unaware of any dreaming at all, many of us remember them and simply discard them as "just dreams". Some, however wonder about their meaning and occasionally discover insight and understanding through working with them. There are many ways of categorizing dreams and any good book on dream methods will outline the various ways. 

For our purposes we will broadly divide dreams in three categories - the normal regular dreams, big dreams, and early childhood dreams. The dream world is a much more fluid level than our normal consensus reality world, therefore these three categories are interrelated and interconnected.

Our normal regular night-time dreams are usually related to day to day waking problems and can hold the key to the resolution of those problems. It is this category that we will be working with in this article. Big dreams are similar to childhood dreams. Big dreams - those awesome night-time experiences that may be astounding or terrifying - often happen at times of major lifetime changes, the demand of a new direction in life, spiritual awakening, long buried parts of your nature, etc. 

Childhood dreams, or dreams that you may remember from childhood - between 0 and 7 or 8 years - can be discovered when unraveled, to hold the pattern or path of your life. They appear to have a similar process of that of the acorn. The acorn will eventually grow into an Oak Tree and the future of the tree is already contained within the acorn. 

Just as the wind, the seasons, and the place where the seed lands have an influence on the shape, sturdiness, and foundation of the tree, so too do circumstances have an influence on that initial pattern in the dream as it expresses and unravels itself in the course of a persons life. However, it seems that the essence of the childhood dream will develop according to its pattern one way or another.

Dreams, it has been found, continue even within our waking life. Moods, accidents and incidents, quarrels with others, short and long term symptoms, all appear to be intimately related to night-time dreams. To put it another way, there is a dream-like quality underlying day time events that connect directly to the seemingly random and illogical events that we call night-time dreams. 

A typical example of how dreams connect to a symptom in the body. 

Imagine you had a pain in your arm and, on focusing on it, you allowed it to become stronger. If you described the sense of that pain to yourself you might answer that it feels like a stabbing pain. You may notice also, if you are quick, that you see a vision that would correspond to such a pain, lets say a knife, as you describe the stabbing pain. 

At this point you have changed channel from feeling the pain to verbalizing it, and finally to seeing it. This process may or may not happen at the same moment. If you then brought in movement - another expressive channel - and acted out the stabbing by thrusting with a pretend knife, you may be getting closer to a psychological process that may be creating the pain - a pain maker. (if the pain is a different type and feels different, such as a dull or throbbing pain then the information as it reveals itself might be a dark sky or a pounding hammer, etc)

If you identify more with the pain maker - knife energy - and live it a little, then the pain will usually lesson or stop altogether. This is a matter of personal experience and internal evidence. The part that creates the pain usually does not suffer from it. Again, this depends on individual processes. 

If the pain increases on its own, consider that it might be that you automatically changed the knife- like energy into something more pleasant like a blue sky. This may increase the rejected knife-like energy in its desire to reach awareness thus making the pain worse. 

At any time in this process of following the same information through the different channels of the body you may suddenly remember a night-time dream. Perhaps you dreamt, in this instance, of spears being thrown, or a pointed building pushing upwards, or indeed someone being stabbed with a knife. Such internal  patterns that correspond to outer experiences provide the awareness that body symptoms are intimately connected to our dreams. This awareness, or insight, is more than simple association.

Our normal perspective on dreams is that dream life and waking life are parallel worlds that are often mutually exclusive. With added awareness, as mentioned, they can be seen to be intimately connected and reflect each other constantly. Working on dreams can resolve waking problems and working on waking problems can reveal dreams and their meanings. 

There are many ways of working on dreams and we have outlined just two methods below to help you to enter your particular dreamland and make use of any insights. 

Caution. If you suffer from major mental health issues that requires specialist help, it is advisable that you do not do these exercises. 

Dream Exercise - shape shifting.

This exercise is about becoming "other". "Other" in this case means becoming a part of you that seems alien or different to you. Dream contents, particularly those parts or behaviors that are unknown, can be considered to be split-off parts of ourselves.  

1.    Think of a problem you have at the moment, big or small. Then put it aside.

2.    Now think of a recent dream.

3.    Recall the most mysterious, most fearful, or most unknown part and think about it for awhile.

4.    Imagine how that figure experiences itself, rather than your reactions to it. Perhaps the figure is a dark sea, an animal, an atmosphere, a person, something indescribable, etc.

5.    Shape-shift and become that figure, identify with it by moving, feeling or seeing the world from its perspective. 

6.    Sense and feel its essence or quality, the essence that is there even before its manifestation as a form.

7.    Now become that essence. Feel like it, move like it, express yourself as it. In some way identify with it.

8.     keep doing this until you really become and sense the essence of the figure. When you feel that your awareness has changed, see if you can now understand the meaning of the dream. 

9.    Does any new insight help with your outer problems from step 1.

Questions to ask yourself?

How different is this behavior to my normal way of being?

What use would this way of being be in my life?

Does it help with my problem in some way?

Do I have symptoms that relate to this dream?

Does the culture around me prevent me from living this way? Can I do it anyway if it means more freedom for my being and for the general good?

What in me is against this way. Is this attitude that is against this new way of being in some way limiting me?  

There may be a question in your mind about identifying with something repulsive, dangerous, or fearful. What we would say is that it is safer to bring awareness to these aspects of our dreams because awareness brings control and choice. Not bringing the awareness to the identity of these aspects enables them to be more powerful, out of control, and unconscious. Dream manifestations can evolve in an instant when supported by awareness. Consciousness brings control. 

Second Dream Exercise - the influence of the dream on the observer.

The psychologist Arnold Mindell in his book "Quantum Mind" has observed reality from three perspectives or levels. The first level is our ordinary world or Consensus Reality, the second is night-time dreams or Dreamland and the third is the quality found underlying our ordinary world and our dream world, which Mindell calls Sentience or the sentient world - a term also found in Buddhism. This level, if experienced, holds the essence out of which our everyday world and our dream life manifests.

In the first exercise we focused on integrating dream figures into consciousness. In the following one we will choose to reduce our normal thinking processes and allow the dream to influence and change us. In following this exercise we may also enter the sentient world - a sense of "oneness" with the universe. 

Most dream methods focus on the individual trying to understand a dream or attempting to become an aspect of a dream, but switching that process around and letting the dream enter the one trying to understand can be a beautiful and rewarding experience.

This method is best done soon after waking from the dream and before your mind has had a chance to fully attune to the ordinary everyday world. It is a very simple method and easy to do, you probably already do it but usually don't notice. We are generally not taught to reverse our thinking, therefore a simple process takes a lot of explanation. It may flip your being upside down and may give you amazing awareness if practiced.  

The steps are:

1        To track and catch the observer.

2         To discover a dream figure from a recent dream that is similar in some way to you, the observer.

3         Let that figure become the observer or metacommunicator.

I've set out a more complete explanation below. If you learn to objectify the thinker as she thinks during this exercise, you may feel liberated by the confines of habitual thought.

1.    Think about the dream in your normal way for awhile. Choose the main figure or another aspect that seems important or interesting in the dream. It can be the "you" in the dream or another part, but for this experiment, it may be best to chose a part other than "you".

2.    Now the task is to discover the one who is awake and now thinking about the dream. It’s quite an interesting thing to do because it means catching yourself thinking, which is a very intimate and also an objective experience. Observing the observer is a paradox but very liberating. It may be that you need to continually track back a mille-second to discover the observer while thinking. Anyway, don’t stay too long thinking about thinking, just catch yourself wondering about the dream's meaning and observe the process of thinking.

Step two may be so interesting and liberating that you may wish to stay there. One could enter and practice this state as a spiritual path without going anywhere else.  

3.    Go back to the figure that you’ve chosen and discover how that figure is, in some way, the same as you, the observer. Discover how its behaviour, its quality or its essence are the same in some way to the one who is observing. At this point, having made a real connection, the dream may enter the observer and begin to interpret you. The dream may start to work on you, relieving you of the task in a deeply democratic process.

That’s the whole thing. The result may not be an understanding of the dream in a normal consensus reality way because normal thinking or verbalizing is stopped and you are being worked on. Working on understanding is reversed and the state of dreamland will enter and become the observer. The observer will deeply experience meaning but not in the normal thinking fashion. 

Telephone (0)1361 890329 - 9am and 9pm, UK local time  

Email contact@1to1phonecounselling.com

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