The Dreamful Way
There are five aspects of dreamfulness.
- Mindfulness
- Mindfulness is the realm of The Mind, of thought and thinking. This is the aspect of us that uses logic and reason to understand the universe and to help us make things happen.
- Heartfulness
- Heartfulness is the realm of The Heart, of emotions and non-physical feeling. This is the aspect that connects us with the universe around us, allowing for an expanded sense of who we are and what we want. This is the territory of likes and dislikes.
- Bodyfulness
- Bodyfulness is the realm of The Body, of physical Sensation. This is the aspect of our being embodied / in body on the face of this planet. Our bodies are the vessels that allow us to travel through our lives on Earth.
- Soulfulness
- Soulfulness is the realm of The Soul, the mysterious aspect that deals with our sense of unique Self, and is experienced as deeply internal as well as broadly external. This is the aspect of us that has to do with Meaning and Purpose, with connection beyond the self.
- Carefulness
- Carefulness is the realm of Caring. This is the aspect of paying attention, as well as the aspect of forming loving connection to all the aspects of ourselves as well as to the universe around us.
Dreamfulness is the cultivation of an attitude of compassionate curiosity that seeks to understand everything that a dreamer experiences. This means nurturing both a genuine deep and broad questioning stance coupled with a loving and caring attitude. We can practice asking incisively and deeply caring exploratory questions in order to understand our sleep dreams. The skills we develop at understanding sleep dreeps can be applied to every other phase of our lives.
There are various questions that help us nurture compassionate curiosity regarding sleep dreams. First off, the task is to discern the content of the dream, the story that it tells. The standard investigative questions prove to be very useful for this purpose. Who is in the dream? What it is that transpired in the dream? When do the dream events transpire, past, present and future? Where do the events occur in the dream? Finally, Why did those particular events occur?
After capturing the content, attention moves to understanding the dream. What is the dream showing you? What seems to be its purpose? What is its Message in terms of enriching your life? What does it want you to pay attention to in your life?
In each dream instance, dreamers need to explore the question of Whose dream is it? Dreams are limited by none of the human rational boundaries. Often enough people can find themselves dreaming someone else’s dream. But particularly in waking life dreams, we need to be aware of whether or not we are participating in our own dream or have we been caught up in someone else’s dream.
Next, the Dreamer needs to assess: is this a dream you want to be dreaming? If the dream is a nightmare, we typically don’t want to find ourselves participating in it and have the opportunity to figure out what we need to do to get ourselves out of it into a more pleasant scenario. The other side of the nightmare coin is to figure out what is a desirable, alternate version of the unpleasant dream, one that that you want to be part of.
In each and every dream situation we can ask ourselves: Is this HOW I want to be? Is the role I played one that suits me? Did I behave in a manner that I fell good about, or am I uncomfortable and embarrassed at what I thought, felt or did?
And finally, gazing at the story told by each dream, we can ask ourselves: Is this WHO I want to be? Am I happy with who I was in the dream? If not, Who would I rather be?
This exploratory stance used to work with sleep dreams can be employed in examining all the other realms of dream of which our lives are made. We can ask these same questions in exploring our daydreams, our visions and hallucinations, our goals and aspirations, our ideals. Further, we can also view waking life events, the world of art, as well as the realm of world affairs as dream events that we can make sense of. Finally, this questioning stance is eminently useful in working with Nightmares, both of the sleep and waking variety,
Dreamfulness is a process of developing perception and response-ability, the ability to respond flexibly and usefully to whatever life presents to us. It has to do with seeing clearly what is, and based on this awareness, formulating how we want to respond to all the internal and external events of our lives. Dreamfulness allows us to formulate what we want to change, particularly in ourselves, but also in our circumstances. Dreamfulness can then guide us in making real the changes we desire. Dreamfulness offers dreamers immensely valuable skills as well as insight into patterns of thought, feeling and action. We are afforded opportunities to define and practice awareness, compassionate understanding, connection with self and the world, authenticity, decency, coherence, voice, freedom from addiction, useful responses rather than habitual patterns, creativity, ecological thought and action.
All of life can be viewed as various manifestations of dreams, regardless of whether the dreamer is asleep or awake, whether the dream is created by the conscious or the unconscious, whether the dream occurs hidden away within an individual or is externally performed by a multitude of participants. Every thought, feeling and action that each human experiences individually and that groups of humans experience collectively can be understood as a dream.
The infinite variety of human dreams can be separated into the broad categories of Inner-World Dreams and Outer-World Dreams.
Dreams of the Inner World play out within individual dreamers, they are made of the invisible stuff of thought and emotion, private thoughts and feelings, intangible yearnings. Inner-World Dreams have to do with aspects of perception, thinking and feeling which, at the time they appear to an individual, are not manifested in the world outside the individual. They can be seen as interfaces between an individual and the tangible, “real” world. They are sources of information that can help a person better negotiate her way around and within consensual reality. They offer information and possibilities to foster individual growth and make possible lives of greater richness and joy This dream realm includes: sleep dreams, daydreams, visions & hallucinations, goals & aspirations, ideals.
Dreams of the Outer World consist of visible, if not tangible, actions and interactions. This is the realm outside the individual. It is the world of external dreams, of public dreams, of collective dreams. These are internal dreams manifest and made visible. This realm has to do with dreams as they are made manifest in the world outside of the individual. This is the realm of activity and doing. It, too, can usefully be viewed as an arena of dreams and understood in such a fashion. This is the realm of Art in all its manifestations and the realm of World Affairs, all the activities that constitute human life.
The realm of Nightmares pertains to both the internal and the external realms. This is where information is given to the dreamer indicating that dreams from the other realms have gone askew and need to be adjusted and calibrated in order to attain balance.
The boundaries between all of these ways of dreaming are fluid, overlapping and interwoven. All of these types of dream need to constantly be equilibrated against waking reality and against one another. Any dream, if not tested against clearly-perceived waking life realities, can all too easily initiate patterns of thought, feeling and action that are anything but rich and joyful. Our dreams can create situations, internal and external, that are horrifying nightmares. As we cultivate Dreamfulness, we participate in making our lives and the world more beautiful and liveable and lessen the role of nightmares, whether in the realms of sleep or waking life.