Sharing Dreams

Issue 65 –

Suggestion # 9: Sharing dreams

Hal: I think we mentioned the importance of sharing dreams. I want to be clear about this. Dreams always bring up new content in the relationship: bonding patterns, disowned selves, all kinds of things. The main thing to keep in mind is that when the dream brings up another person in a negative way, very often people take that to mean that that is really a negative person. But what the unconscious is doing is balancing out wherever you are.

I’ve had a lot of experience with dreams. (Hal winks.) You might know that about me. I love them and think I’m very good at working with them, and with my own dreams as well. But you have no idea how often I wake up in the morning and say to Sidra that I had a dream, and I don’t have a clue what it means. I just don’t have a clue! Then she laughs and she says, “ “blah, blah, blah, ” ” and I say, “ “Oh! Of course. ” ”

Just a few mornings ago my Primary Self picked up this dream and this really negative guy was the main figure in the dream. And he was just such a negative character! I told it to Sidra … It felt like such a terrible nightmare and I was telling her and, suddenly, I got it. I said, “ “Oh my God! This is fantastic what he is doing! ”

Sidra : We need each other in that way.

Hal : It’s not that uncommon that a couple will have differing relationships to their dream life. When that happens, I would make a couple of suggestions. First of all, you have to have respect for someone whose connection to their dreams is different than yours. The fact that some people don’t work with their dreams is okay. But if it’s your passion and you’re interested, there are a couple of things you can do.

Keep two dream journals, or one dream journal and make two entries. Write down your dreams and write down your partner’s dreams and actually get their associations if they’re willing to give them. That way, if they dream about John Smith, you know who John Smith is to them. That’s one possibility. Literally record their dreams as well as your own, and just watch the process.

The second thing you might do is to develop a ‘pole’ for yourself. In other words, create one or more places where you can deal with your dreams. You can call up some friends or colleagues and have a weekly dream group on the phone every other week or so. You should create more than one place for yourself to deal with your dreams, just as you create a pole for your medical problems: your thyroid physician, your general internist, your alternative medicine person. You can create poles for your psychic life as well, a place to attend to your soul. A lot more people than ever before are now interested in their dream life.

Sidra : It is a tough thing in relationship when that’s such an important thing to you and the other person’s not really on board. As I said, for me at first, there was real value in just being able to tell him. Also, you (to Hal) heard that it was as far as I could go at the time.

Hal :   Of course, if the other person feels pressure from you to share their dreams … well, I can pretty well write out that scenario. It’s likely to go badly in a hurry. But if you wait, and invite, honoring the timing of the unconscious … things go better.

Sidra : And if you wait long enough, the next step might be, “Aren ‘ t you going to ask me anything about my dream? Just remember, though, everybody is different and we all do things differently. Don’t force it.

Hal : But if you make up your mind that you want more contact around dreams, and your partner ‘ s not on the same page as you, then create that contact elsewhere. You can set up something like this group, or a contact on the phone. There are a bunch of different telephone dream groups out there and they ‘ re being used by a lot of people, for different reasons: time, distance, expense.