Dreams

Well, Ali's recent blog gave me incentive to write about this topic. She spoke about the value of a dream she had. I recently listened to, "Your Sleeping Genius, Harnessing the Hidden Power of Your Dreams", by Gayle Delaney, Ph.D. It doesn't sound like much but gives some really good tools to work with your dreams. The first thing it says is to toss out any thing you think you know about dream images (street knowledge she calls it). Then to work with you dreams by writing it out first thing in the morning (I've actually done it in the afternoon as long as I rehearse the dream in my mind a few times). Then you recognize the different elements of the dream: setting, people, objects action and feelings. Then you write out the characteristics of each and every element. Then you ask yourself what in your life this element taken separately reminds you of. Then you try to put it together. It takes some work but to me it's really fascinating.
Anyway, I made a pledge to myself when starting this blog that I'd write about any book (or audio) that excited me and I've done it so far. This somehow relates to writing, though I haven't consciously taken a dream image so far and made a story about it (as Ali did). But the stories we write come from the same unconscious as the dreams do, I believe. And I think dreams can teach you about which archetypal figures are really important to you versus the ones other people tell you should be important to you.