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Sometimes the most simple, obvious statement
contains the most profound truth. Case in point: A dream is a story. It's a simple idea,
almost obvious when you think about it. Dreams have the drama of powerful stories.
Have you ever wondered why, if dreams are supposed
to be "messages", that they usually come in the form of stories, rather than in
the form of explanations or instructions? I'm sure you've wished, "If my dreams are
trying to get a message across to me, why don't they do it more directly?" Have you
ever considered that, maybe, the story is the most direct method?
We all enjoy stories. We respond to them more
directly than we do to dry, intellectual explanations. We are now just beginning to
understand, in a dry intellectual, scientific way, how people understand stories and grasp
their meaning. Responding to stories is so natural, we never wondered how we do it. Carl
Jung pointed out the dramatic structure of dreams and began the study of how stories
affect us. Edgar Cayce used the theme of the dream's story as a basis of his dream
interpretations. That method is now a cornerstone of modern dream interpretation.
If story is such an important way of learning, it
would seem natural to teach about dreams by telling stories about them. Of all the dream
experts I know, the one who does the best job of this style of teaching is Robert Bosnak.
A Jungian analyst originally from the Netherlands, Bosnak first came to national attention
with his book, Dreaming with an AIDS Patient. In this book (that became the basis for a
stage play), he told us the story of his involvement with a person who was very much alive
as well as terminally ill. At the same time he taught us a lot about dreams and dreamwork,
using both his patients and his own dreams. In an earlier book, titled, A Little Course on
Dreams, he told us stories about himself and his patients to illustrate the life of dreams
and the attempts to find meaning in them.
Bosnak's latest book, Tracks in the Wilderness of
Dreams (Delacorte Press), is a story within a story, and an important new contribution to
dream interpretation. At one level, the story is about his visit to Australia where he
exchanges professional trade secrets with Aborigenee healers. At another level, it is
Bosnak's own story of his dreams helping him reconcile with his father's death. Within
these two personal accounts we learn how to work with dreams in the Bosnak mode.
An important dimension of his creative style of
dreamwork is attending to the emotional atmosphere of a dream. Much of the value of a
dream is in revealing emotional realities normally hidden from the dreamer. Bosnak
illustrates how the emotional atmosphere in a dream story is a psychic field in which
others can participate. Yet I've found that the story doesn't even have to be told for its
emotional field to have communicative power.
Eleven years ago in this magazine (Sept/Oct,
1985), I described an exciting new dimension in dreamwork. It began at A.R.E. Camp when
some youngsters told me dreams they had about other young campers who were sleeping in my
"dream tent" incubating visionary dreams. These unexpected "bystander"
dreams seemed to seek vicarious participation in the healing experiences of the incubating
tent dreamers. It was serendipitous discovery, that one person could "dream
about" someone else, and it led to the creation of the "dream helper
ceremony."
In this procedure, a group of people
"donate" their dreams to help a stranger in distress who is dealing with an
unexpressed dilemma. What happens (perhaps your local study group has attempted this
healing ritual) is that even though no one knows in advance the nature of the focus
person's problem, most everyone's dreams proves to connect to it! That in itself is
amazing. Yet even more, each person's dream also relates to the dreamer's own personal
version of that problem.
What's going on here? By intuitively recognizing
and uncovering the hidden emotional reality underlying the focus person's problem, the
dream "helpers" seem to be reminded of a related emotional reality in their own
life. Each human story has universal elements. A psychic "field" is created by
the focus person's story and the community of helpers collaborate on tracking down a
healing solution for a dilemma by reflecting upon their own lives. The dreams tamed the
wilderness of the unknown and the stranger in distress became a part of a healing family.
Bosnak calls this kind of communication we observe
in the Dream Helper ceremony "symbiotic communication." We come to understand
the emotions of another person by participating in them. This intuitive link between
people, evident in the empathic experience, is a key to dreamwork. Just as we better
understand a person by empathy than by analysis, so we better understand a dream by
empathy. A story naturally evokes empathy.
If we can empathize with a person's story without
even hearing it, as in the "Dream Helper Ceremony," it suggests that the realm
of stories is beyond space-time, existing in a transpersonal, fourth dimensional realm.
Dreams are stories our souls tell to elicit our empathy. Listen to them!
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