From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Interpreting dreams
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:34:32 GMT

In article <2935462288.8.wk00191@worldlink.com> "Eddie Kovelan" <wk00191@worldlink.com> writes:
>I had a dream not long ago that to this day is still baffling, 
>maybe some of you can help interpret this dream.  I'm just curious to 
>get other points of view...
>
>The dream started with me looking at myself sleeping in the bed.  I then 
>looked beside me and saw the grim reaper (the typical g.r. most people 
>envision).  I then turned and began flying straight up into the dark, starless 
>night.  Suddenly, I heard a voice say "This is your purpose and mission 
>in life, you must take this and go back to earth," and I was handed a 
>bright neon blue stone that was heavy enough to pull me down to earth 
>and into my body.  In my dream, I woke up to see the grim reaper 
>nodding his head then disappearing.
>
>I know it's not much of a dream, but strange to me nonetheless.  
>
>Bundy

Are you kidding?!  That's a hell of a dream!

I'm not going to offer an interpretation, since the best interpreter
of your dreams is YOU.  However, there are some techniques that are
that can help you a lot.

One is from Jeremy Taylor (from _Dreamwork_, Paulist Press), and that
is to look at everything in your dreams from more than one point of
view.  Things in dreams are often multiple -- each person, place or
thing is usually often a composite.  So why not multiple interpretations?

An elaboration on this strategy is from Eugene Gendlin, described in
his book _Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams_.  The title almost says
it all: a dream interpretation is right when you *feel in your body*
that it is right.

There are two major tasks in letting your body interpret your dreams.
One is hypothesis generation -- coming up with possible interpretations.
The other is hypothesis testing -- trying out the different interpretations,
and trying to feel the (often subtle) visceral response you get to each
one.  "Focusing" is a technique promoted by Gendlin for testing these
hypotheses.  (He has a book by that name that described it in more
detail.)  The hypothesis testing approach used by Gendlin is eclectic:
he has borrowed from every major school of dream interpretation, so
as to leave no bases uncovered.

Here is an outline of Gendlin's approach:

ASSOCIATIONS

	1.	WHAT COMES TO YOU?
			What are your associations with the whole dream?
			With a part?

	2.	FEELINGS?
			What did you feel in the dream?
			How does the most striking part of the dream feel?
			What in your life feels like that?
			What does this feeling remind you of?
			What is new about this feeling?

	3.	YESTERDAY?
			What did you do yesterday?

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS

	4.	PLACE?
			What does it remind you of?
			How does it make you feel?
			Have you been in a place like that?

	5.	STORY?
			Summarize the plot, in two or three steps
			Abstract it, generalize it, like a parable.
			What in your life is like that?

	6.	CHARACTERS?
			Take any unknown person in your dreams
			What does this person remind you of?
			How do you feel about them?
			With familiar people: did they look as usual?
			Look even at the foggiest memory of a person

WORK WITH CHARACTERS

	7.	WHAT PART OF YOU?
			What part of you is embodied in each character?
			How does this person feel to you?
			What ONE adjective would you use to describe?
			What part of you would you describe that way?
			Does the dream make sense as a story about how
				you relate to that part of yourself?
			
	8.	BE THAT PERSON?
			In your body: how does it feel to be that person?
			Exaggerate the role.
			What comes to you to say or do?

	9.	CAN IT CONTINUE?
			visualize the end; feel it.
			wait for something further to happen.
			what do you impulsively want to do when something
				new happens?

DECODING

	10.	SYMBOLS?
			What does some object in your dream stand for? 
			What is it used for?  Abstract or generalize.
			Substitute the abstraction for the concrete
			thing in the story.
			How does this fit with your life?  

	11.	BODY ANALOGY?
			What in the dream is analogous to a body part?

	12.	COUNTERFACTUAL?
			What in the dream is different from any actual
			situation?
			Why these changes?
			Opposite from real life?
			Is this a correction of your waking attitude?

DIMENSIONS OF DEVELOPMENT

	13.	CHILDHOOD
			What childhood memory?
			What felt like that then?

	14.	PERSONAL GROWTH
			How are you developing, or trying to develop?
			In what way are you limited?
			What if the dream were about that?

	15.	SEXUALITY
			What if the dream were about your sexuality?
			What would it be saying?

	16.	SPIRITUALITY
			What creative of spiritual potential of yours
			might the dream be about?
			Are you something in the dream that you aren't
			in waking life?

Gendlin says: "Don't try to use all these questions on once dream.  There
are too many.  Nor need you do everything you can with one question....
when nothing works, the list enables you to keep going."

I've found it useful.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: alt.dreams