I tend to explore dreams the way I explore waking life, and I like to use a variety of approaches.
A FEW WAYS I EXPLORE DREAMS
Here are some general ways I explore my dreams.
I explore how they reflect dynamics in me. Dream life and waking life reflect the same dynamics in me. Both show me what’s challenging for me, what I am exploring and learning about, which hangups and wounds are coming up these days, and so on.
I explore how all parts of the dream reflect parts of me. They show me different sides of myself.
I see dreams as bringing what’s on the edge of conscious awareness more into conscious awareness.
I prefer to explore dreams in ways that access what’s outside of my conscious view. If I only rely on mental interpretations, I would stay within what I think I know which is a limited and small world.
I use a range of approaches to explore my dreams, depending on what seems interesting and useful.
I notice that dreams happens within and as the consciousness I am, just like waking life and any content of experience.
In short, I explore dreams just as I explore waking life.
DYNAMICS REFLECTED IN WAKING LIFE AND DREAMS
In a conventional sense, waking life may bring up things in me that are then reflected in dreams, and dreams may also bring up things it’s good for me to notice and bring into more conscious awareness.
In a more real sense, my life is one and lived in waking life and dreams. Dreams and waking life both mirror themes and dynamics in my life.
MIRRORING ME
Everything in my world – whether it’s waking life or dreams – reflects sides of me.
Whatever story I have about anyone or anything in the world or dreams, I can turn that story around to me and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true.
I can also take the role of anyone or anything, find myself as it, explore and talk as it, and see that it’s already what I am and somewhat familiar to me. (Voice Dialog, Big Mind process.)
I am as rich as my world, whether it’s my waking world or dream world.
HAPPEN WITHIN AND AS WHAT I AM
Waking life and dreaming life happens within and as what I am.
In one sense, I am this human self in the world just like other people see it and my passport tells me. That’s an assumption that works relatively well, although if I take this human self a what I fundamentally am, I create stress for myself.
I find that in my own first-person experience, I am what all of it – any content of experience including anything related to this human self – happens within and as.
To myself, I am what a thought may call consciousness. The world, to me, happens within and as the consciousness I am.
A FEW TRAINING WHEELS FOR EXPLORING THEM
I use the same approaches to explore dreams as I do to explore waking life.
Through active imagination, I go back into the dream, replay it, explore and dialog with more sides of it, and see how it unfolds. This often leads to unexpected interactions and insights.
I dialog with or as the different parts of the dream. I may be dialoguing with it and hearing their responses, or I take their role and explore from their view (Voice Dialog, Big Mind process).
I follow processes in the dream, as we do in Process Work (Process Oriented Psychology).
I find in me what I see in the different beings and dynamics in the dream. I find the essence, find it in me, explore how I have lived from and as it, and intentionally own it – viscerally feel it as me.
I identify and investigate stressful thoughts through The Work of Byron Katie. This also helps me find in me what I see in the different parts of the dream.
I explore how it all appears in my sense fields through sense field explorations and the Kiloby Inquiries.
I use heart-centered practices towards myself in the dream or other beings in the dream. This is often tonglen or ho’oponopno.
I notice how it’s all happening within and as what I am. It’s the consciousness I am forming itself into these dreams and waking life. (I don’t need training wheels for this, but if I did, or if I want to explore it more thoroughly, I use the Big Mind process and Headless experiments.)
IF I LEFT SOME OF THIS OUT
If I only relied on mental field interpretations of dreams, I would stay within what’s familiar to me and that’s a small and limited world. By using other approaches, I give myself a chance to be surprised and expand what’s familiar to me. I give myself the chance to receive information from outside of what’s already familiar.
If I only looked at dreams as reflecting dynamics in my waking life, it would also be unnecessarily limiting. All parts of my dreams represent sides of me, just like all parts of the world reflect sides of me. Dreams and the world is an invitation for me to get to know more sides of me.
If I saw dreams and waking life as different, I would miss out on how both mirror the same dynamics and explorations in me. I would miss out on how I can use the same approaches to explore both. And I would miss out on how both happen within and as the consciousness I am.
MANY MORE WAYS TO EXPLORE DREAMS
This is just how it is for me now, and how I have explored my dreams for a few decades now.
It’s by necessity a very limited approach. There are many approaches out there equally or likely more helpful.
What we use depends on what we are familiar with, what’s calling us, and what seems to work for us now.