[Letter to the editor]
The crucial aspect of dreamwork to me is its personal, humane approach. Our dreams help us to understand ourselves and relate to others, they enrich our lives from the inside out. There's a lot of extraneous psychobabble that can be discarded. No Ph.D. is required to understand that dream messages usually explain our feelings about our day to day lives. These can be felt and shared.
What excites me about my dream group is the personal sharing that results from the careful exchange of dreams. My own help me reach into myself and out to others. They encourage me to feel included in the Universal Mind. My intellect tends to say, "This part of me, that part of me," but in my dreams, all "parts" are aspects of a psychic family. In the same way, individuals are "parts," but only intellectually. Actually we are on the same evolutionary path toward the recollection of our natural wholeness.
Dreams are things we share in common - they are "safe" because the message is veiled in symbology. Sharing a dream message about feeling scared is easier than saying "I feel scared" to a group in a room. Dreams also seem to "happen" to us, even though we usually create them.
I have a vision of a network of dream hotlines, where listeners could receive calls from people who wanted to understand their dream message. It could be a one to one interview method, anonymous unless the caller wanted to join the larger network. Then they would pay dues and be entitled to newsletters and meetings. They could become listeners themselves.
The most serious problem facing people is the separation we feel from our selves and one another. This manifests in the social attitude of "every man for himself" and damaging competitiveness. We all long for community and family. If we look deeply into our dreams, this common thread becomes evident. It cuts through all the red tape in relationships.
