When our waking and dreaming minds are working together in harmony to co-create our world, magic happens on a daily basis. The Dreamwork process is a facilitation of the marriage of our sun/waking and moon/dreaming minds. Lucidity is the name of this marriage. Lucid dreaming invites the Sun Mind into the Moon Mind’s realm of Dreaming as we sleep, while dreamwork invites the messages from our Moon Mind’s dreams into our Sun Mind’s realm of waking consciousness.
The objective of dreamwork is to help our over-active Sun Mind to be still and really listen, to be open and to receive, the wisdom that dwells within the nightly creative expression and communication from our Moon Mind via our dreams. The first stage of MOD dreamwork is making Connections – to the feelings of the dream, to the poetry of the dream and to the parallels in our waking life. From this point we are ready to move on to the Dream Magic stage of dreamwork – dream manifestation and magical co-creation of the physical world.
Once we have recorded a dream in our Dream Journal, with the date and a title, we can begin our facilitation to bring the deeper truths of our dreams into the light of our Sun Mind. Dreams are very topical to our current waking life so its best to work with a recent dream that is freshly potent for us. Dreamwork can be embarked upon either alone or with a group of dreamers.
Connections: Feelings
The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau
The first stage in MOD-style dreamwork is to let go of the Sun Mind’s burning desire for a clear and easy explanation or ‘meaning’ to the dream and embrace the Moon Mind’s watery ability to flow and be gently guided by the topography of the dream landscape. Although occasionally dream messages will be clear and simple, usually they are far deeper and more complex than they appear. Dreams are reflections of our multi-dimensionality, and in being so they contain multiple layers of meaning. Because dreams come from a place beyond our rational mind we want to avoid projecting our rational mind’s meanings onto them. If we can observe the feelings of our dreams from a place of neutral non-judgment, then we have a chance to allow the things that we don’t already know to surface and become known.
In MOD-style dreamwork, instead of ‘working’ on the dream, we invite the dream to ‘work on us’. A dream is like a riddle to be mused over not just by the mind but by the whole intellectual-emotional body. So we begin by really feeling into our dream by returning through the sequence of events of the dream in our minds and allowing our bodies to recall how they felt at every stage of the dream. When we allow the harmonics of the dream to ripple through our energy bodies the dream will change us from within, altering our psychic landscape and preparing us for deeply profound discoveries. For this to happen we begin by quietening the rational Sun Mind and inviting the essences of the dream to swirl their iridescent colours and feelings up through our body. Just by delicately dancing with the essence of the dream in this way can bring much of its message into the light. Identify the most potent symbols and themes of the dream, the ones that trigger the strongest feelings and curiosity, and be receptive; listening and feeling where they lead you within your body.
Our dreamwork process involves bringing treasures of truth up from our underworlds worlds to sparkle and shine in the light of day. Our dreams call us to better embody our true selves and our true feelings, and this can be challenging. Our dreams can often evoke unpleasant feelings of fear, disgust, violence, anxiety or sadness, and we usually try to avoid these kinds of feelings, not willingly embrace them. But embracing these feelings is precisely what we need to do; it can be crippling to attempt to squash these ‘negative’ feelings because to do so is to deny a part of ourselves that is aching to be revealed and expressed as our truth. We need to embody the full spectrum of life’s emotions to allow the full magic of the Dreaming into our lives. Which isn’t to say that we allow these feelings to overwhelm us, or to express themselves violently or dangerously, but we allow them to be felt and acknowledged in a safe, loving and non-judgemental way. We honour them and their validity. Their truth. Once these feelings are warmed in the light of our Sun Mind and fully embodied or heard, then they are usually able to resolve and find true peace. The terrifying dark figures who we have been running from in our dreams are often revealed to be our most powerful allies once we embrace them.
Our dreamwork encourages us to make peace with the scary and horrible aspects of our dreams, recovering the forgotten pieces of our lost soul in the process, and bringing ever deepening levels of self awareness and texture to the mythic journey that is our life. Once we have created a working understanding or ‘map’ of the emotional landscape of our dream, we begin to delve deeper intellectually, by connecting with the specific symbology within the poetry of the dream.
Connections: Poetry
What are dreams really? As well as being travels into the dreaming realms, our dreams are living poetry; they speak an ancient language of poetry-of-form. Poetry communicates deep levels of meaning through the languages of metaphor and symbology. These poetic languages are known to communicate on far deeper levels than literal language is able to. Poetry evokes emotions and points us towards meanings that are beyond the ability of words alone to convey. Our dream-makers, our Moon Minds, are master poets and every aspect of our dream is communicating multiple levels of richly symbolic meaning. This poetic language is our indigenous language and our dreams are incredibly adept at speaking it. Our waking Sun Mind, however, is quite challenged in the poetry department to say the least! So we need to really work at unpacking the symbology contained within our dreams in a linear way, to help our Sun Mind to understand the poetic connections. We do this by asking many questions and working through the dream in a linear fashion, questioning the symbolic meanings behind each symbol and character one at a time.
Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Questioning our dreams must not be an interrogation, but a process of genuine open-hearted curiosity. Because our dreams are messages from beyond the usual territory of our waking mind we need to gently probe the dream to open and reveal itself without imposing our Sun Mind’s literal meanings or judgements. The right questions will serve as keys to open the dream’s secret doors and reveal its meanings to us. Following our internal ‘Aha!’ moments, and the waves of energy that we call ‘chills’ or ‘goosebumps’, will help to lead us down the right track.
The Setting
We begin our gentle questioning with the opening scene of the dream – the setting – as this will provide clues as to what area of our life this dream is referring. We can follow our curiosity and be creative, asking many kinds of questions such as:
“What are 5 words that describe this setting?”
“Is it indoors or outdoors?”
“What is the weather like?”
“What action is taking place here?”
“What is my role in the action?”
“What other characters are there?”
“How would I describe those characters in 3 words?”
“How am I feeling about these characters?”
“What are the main symbols of this setting?”
“How would I describe these symbols in 3 words each?”
The Plot
Narrative dreams tend to follow a structure that mirrors and informs our innate human pattern of story-telling. So once our dream has established a scene it will usually now introduce a plot or story-line in which we are the main character. We will find ourselves with an opportunity being presented, or a challenge, some kind of incentive or motivation being developed, something that we want to ‘do.’ Often there will be numerous challenges/opportunities along our path and we will make decisions that lead us through the journey of the dream. The closing scene of the dream is often an expose of the results of the decisions we have made through out the dream.
Questions to ask of the plot may be:
“What is my main motivation in this dream?”
“What am I trying to ‘do’?”
“Why am I trying to do that?”
“What are the obstacles or challenges?”
“How do I respond to these challenges?”
“What are the opportunities in the dream?”
“How do I respond to these opportunities?”
“What are the main symbols that appear?”
“How would I describe what these symbols ‘do’ in 3 words each?”
“What characters appear?”
“How would I describe these characters in 3 words each?”
“How would I describe my feelings about these characters in 3 words each?”
“What was the outcome of the dream?”
“What decisions did I make in this dream?”
“How did my decisions shape the outcome?”
Connections: Waking Life
Through dreaming, one connects to the true self and recognises the potential she is here to actualise.
Connie Cockrell Kaplan
Once we have asked as many questions of our dreams as possible, and noted the answers down in our dream journal, we can begin to make connections between the dream and our waking life. As we look over the notes in our journals, we ask some more questions, but ones that relate back to our experience in our recent waking life. Keeping in mind that dreams will usually be responses to specific thoughts, conversations, emotions or events that occurred in the past 48 hrs before the dream. The setting of the dream will usually suggest the area of the dreamer’s life to which the dream relates, while the dream plot will relate to the dynamics of the situation to which the dream is referring.
Some example questions are:
“Can I see how the associations I made from the setting of the dream might relate to an area of my current waking life?”
“Can I see from the associations I made from the plot of the dream any similar motivations I have in my waking life?”
“Can I see anywhere I am making similar choices in my waking life?”
“Can I see any similar obstacles or opportunities I am confronting in my waking life?”
“Where in my waking life do I experience the same feelings?”
Usually at this stage we will be feeling some familiarity between the dream and our current waking life. Because we have collected so much extra information about the dream through our asking of questions, connections seem to appear almost magically. Just by exploring deeply our connections to the dream material, the true meaning of the dream will usually bubble to the surface of our conscious mind.
However, if we have reached this stage and still haven’t a clue of what this dream is symbolically showing us it can help to reach out to outside sources. Many people look to sources such as websites and dream dictionaries to help explain their dreams, but these are usually far too simplistic and general to shed light on our personal dreaming. Because we all have our own unique dreaming and our own unique associations with our dream symbols, its crucial to remember that we are always the expert on our own dreams. Others can give us feedback and will sometimes offer great wisdom but it is always our own intuition that must decide whether their advice is relevant or not.
That said, there is one dream dictionary that I do love and recommend; it is written by a psychologist and has excellent information on our collectively shared dream symbols and themes. You can check it out here. Still, always remember that your own intuition is your number one guide in dreamwork. I recommend to only use dream dictionaries, mythic encyclopaedias and Google searches as starting points to exploring your dream symbols, and then allow your own intuition and the world around you to lead you deeper on your personal quest into the wisdom of the dream.
We might also consult oracle cards or take a ‘lucid walk’; asking questions to the waking world and watching and listening to the symbolic responses – snippets of overheard conversations, lettering on number plates or advertisements, verses of songs on the radio, birds flying by, even the shapes of the clouds in the sky can all deliver symbolic clues that relate to our dream story. There are no limits, the whole world is alive to this conversation once we begin to engage. Because consciousness is the basis of the world we are deeply connected to it all.
A Dream Circle is a beautiful and ancient way to share our dreams with a dreaming collective and receive the wisdom and insights of our fellow-dreamers, who each bring their own unique views and associations, adding new layers of depth to our understanding of our dreams. Explains Connie Kaplan, “Sitting in circle, hearing each other’s dreams, and discovering that we are all dreaming together allows us to reconnect with mystery… The mirrors held by dreamers (in dream circle) are the mirrors of mystery, power, magical transformation, and manifestation.”
Because our dreams are multi-dimensional and multi-layered, a Dream Circle is a magical way to share and hear multiple responses to the symbols in our dreams. Every voice can add another layer of potentiality to our dreamwork. If you wish to join the MoD Dream Circle then please join our group. The Dreaming is vast and wise and when we bring the gifts of our dreaming minds together we are each deeply empowered to live a broader, wiser and far more magical lives.
Dreamworker Toko-Pa Turner describes dreamwork as like following a mysterious trail of breadcrumbs prompting us to take “deeper and deeper leaps into the unknown.” Despite delivering many ‘Aha!’ moments along the way as we glean wisdom, sometimes it can take years of carrying a dream inside us before we finally understand how the “symphony resolves itself.”
Journeying
‘Dream re-entry’ journeying (to journey back inside the dream and receive further instruction and information from the dream itself) is an amazing addition to dreamworking, and was taught to me by my teacher Robert Moss. Journeying is a kind of waking-lucid-dreaming; when we relax our Sun Mind and allow our Moon Mind to speak through the medium of our creative imagination, we can ask questions and receive clear messages from the living symbols of our dreams. There are guided journeys on my youtube channel to help facilitate this adventure into lucid waking-dreaming. When we still our Sun Mind and journey inwards we create space for our Moon Mind to converse with us in her own language of symbol, imagination and intuition. This mode of shamanic dreaming is the most powerful form of dreamwork to lucidify the gifts of wisdom from our dreams.
Types of Connections
When we make the correct associations that connect our dreams to our waking life we will feel a magical sense of connection between the worlds of the seen and the unseen. Sometimes our dreams will suggest clear guidance or a solution to the parallel waking life situation. Often times they will not give us clear guidance but will reflect a truth that we have been blind to. They may show us how our Soul is really feeling about this situation. Our dream connections will differ depending on the type of dream and, being poetry-of-form, they will usually contain multiple levels of connection and meaning.
Here are some possible kinds of connections to be made from the various types of personal dreams:
Psychological dreams will have connections that demonstrate the truth of how we are feeling/behaving/transforming in relation to a specific area of our lives.
Problem Solving dreams will have connections that offer solutions to a specific problem in waking life.
Rehearsal dreams will have connections that leave us feeling more prepared for a future event in waking life.
Mundane dreams will have connections that are either advice for day-to-day issues, solutions for day-to-day problems, or be a suggestion to the dreamer to either take a break or find a way to bring more creativity into day-to-day life.
Anxiety dreams have connections that demonstrate patterns of anxiety in the dreamers waking life and how the dreamer is responding to them.
‘Being chased’ dreams have connections to what we may be running from in our waking life.
Nightmare dreams have connections that demonstrate a very important aspect of the dreamers waking life that is demanding attention, and how the dreamer has been responding to that aspect in waking life.
Lucid dreams will have connections that suggest that the dreamer is freeing themself from unconscious patterns of behaviour.
Collective dreams do not need to be ‘connected’ symbolically to our waking life because at this level our dreams are literal experiences that have really taken place in the dream realms; eg. a healing dream means that a healing really happened, a shamanic dream with a power animal means that you have this spirit as an ally, an astral projection means that you have travelled to a real place in the astral realm, a teaching dream has taught you new knowledge, etc…
These kinds of dreams are magical in-and-of themselves and should be recorded in your dream journal and honoured with great reverence and gratitude. For clarification of what has taken place in a collective dream I recommend journeying to ask questions directly to the dream itself. Remember that most dreams will have BOTH personal (symbolic, waking world) and collective (literal, dreaming world) layers of meanings.
~ Artwork ‘Girl from Tehuacan, Lucha Maria or Sun and Moon’ by Frida Kahlo ~