All who work with dreams recognize their direct and immediate relationship to waking life. You can ask yourself for a dream to comment upon or clarify some current issue or relationship but it really isn't necessary because if the situation is on your mind, if you are directing your energy toward it, then that is what your dreams are going to be about.
One of the ways of working with my life is that of looking at life as a dream. If we believe that our dreams are commenting on our waking life and seeking to give us direction, insight and healing, isn't it possible that our waking life might also be providing us with symbols, personalities and situations which are reflecting back to us our own beliefs, fears, desires, etc.?
Jung gave us the concept of projection which has been a marvelous tool in the search for self-understanding. In terms of dreamwork, it means that all parts of the dream represent parts of the dreamer. Fritz Perls took the concept and turned it into an effective dreamwork technique.
If I dream about Aunt Maude, it means that she represents some part of me, some attitude or emotion that I haven't yet accepted or integrated. It may be negative or positive. Our saviors heroines and gurus also represent un-integrated parts of ourselves. But if the dream Aunt Maude represents a part of myself, what of the "real" Aunt Maude? Would she not also represent the same thing? Would it not be possible to work on my relationship with Aunt Maude or a particular incident with her as if it were a dream and get the benefits and insights I would seek through dreamwork?
In fact it is possible and it does work and if we never remember a dream, we still would have a tool for self-knowledge that can pierce us to our depths. Our waking experiences do tell us about ourselves and we are seeing ourselves reflected in all of the persons, objects and situations in which we find ourselves.
Now dreams do give us a variety of experiences that are unrepeatable in our waking lives. They have a fluidity and an emotional impact that isn't often met in our waking lives. What is the advantage, then, to working with waking life as a dream?
One of the immediate advantages for me is that I am able to back up a bit and remove some of the emotional charge from life experiences. It's just a dream. It also removes me from the position of victim in any situation. I say to myself, "Why have I created this dream and what part of me does that person represent? Why have I attracted this person or situation into my life and what am I trying to tell myself?" I become a witness to my own life drama and can therefore try to see things more clearly.
The only way for you to see if this tool has any validity for you is to try it on your own life or on others. Use the dreamwork techniques you normally use and see what happens. It can give you a whole new way of looking at life and can empower you in the sense that you may never be able to look upon yourself as victim again. And if lucidity represents a high state of awareness within the dream state, then think about what waking lucidity could mean and what it would feel like to be totally conscious of our waking dream as it unfolds.
NON-INTERPRETIVE DREAMWORK
There are a number of fine dream interpretation techniques around and I use a number of different ones for my clients and for myself. As I have cone to understand and experience the power of symbols in dreams and in life, I have become more and more impressed with the results that can be obtained by working completely on the symbolic level, with no attempt to interpret or understand the meaning of the symbols.
This method of working with dreans was partly stimulated by the Senoi method of working with nightmares. What struck me was the fact that the children worked strictly on the symbolic level. You confront your fear symbol and overcome it or kill it. It becomes your friend. You receive a gift from it.
Without knowing what the dream symbol represents, something is overcome. An act of courage in the drean state changes the dreamer. Without understanding, without interpretation, working completely within the symbolic realm, growth and change occur.
A boy of six is afraid of flies in his waking life and has nightmares about flies when he sleeps. We do not know why he is afraid of flies and we never find out. One night his father, exasperated over his "silly" fear, unknowingly does something very wise. As his son is about to go to sleep, he shoves a fly swatter into his hand and says "Here, if the flies bother you tonight, hit them with this."
From that night forward, the boy is no longer afraid of flies and never has his fly nightmares again. I could give more examples, equally interesting. What is of further interest here, besides the fact that this happened on a symbolic level, is the fact that the symbol which overcame the fear symbol (flies) was an actual waking object. Ancients and "primitives" knew what they were doing when they played around with symbols in their waking lives.
How can we use our dream and waking symbols to make changes in our lives without interpretation? We can use the method the boy used. If we have a symbol that represents a particular fear or something negative, we can try to cone up with a countering symbol to overcome it. It might help to manifest that symbol in painting, sculpture or some other way. If you know you have a fear but don't have a symbol for it, go into a light meditational trance and ask for a symbol, then ask for a counter symbol or even do a symbol transformation and turn your fear symbol into its opposite.
I believe that what this method does, is to redirect our energy away from the thing that frightens or blocks us, to the resolution. It may be that many of our problems are not easily overcome because we continue to energize them as problems. Creating a new symbol gives a new point of focus for our energies, a point of focus that represents the change we desire.
The Senoi method can be used as a fantasy. Suppose you have a dream which ends badly for you. Re-run it in fantasy and make it turn out the way you would like. You may have to do this more than once. You will know when your energy has really shifted and the change has taken hold.
Of course any of these non-interpretive methods can be used on waking life situations as well. Rerun an experience you had that didn't feel good. Feel how it would have felt to have acted differently. Do this as a fantasy and do it over and over until you can feel yourself change and feel the situation change and it will become de-energized.
I continue to be delighted by the creativity I demonstrate nightly in my dreams and I seek to bring more and more of that creativity into my waking life. I seek to break down the artificial barriers between waking and sleeping so that I might wake up in my dreams and bring my dream powers into my waking life.
