practice of dream tending
When people find out that I work with dreams the response is generally either one of two things. They might shake their heads, recoil slightly, and say something like, “Oh, my dreams are crazy!” Or, at the other end of the spectrum, their eyes light up and they want to know what their dreams mean.
To the folks shaking their heads with the craziness of their dreams I say that all dreams are “crazy” from a waking-world perspective—that the images in our dreams are twisted, unnatural and in pain because they are trying to get us to “wake-up” to the larger story written on our souls because these soul stories are intended to be lived out as mythic experiments in life.
To the folks in the second category, the curious ones who want to know what their dreams mean, I say that any meaning that can be wrought from the dreamtime has more to do with the relationships between the dreamer and the dream images and less to do with what any image “means.” But this generally confuses people, so let me give you an example.
“Yesterday,” a curious woman begins, “ I dreamt that I was walking down the street with my husband, and there—just sitting on the corner—was a fox.” She looks at me with an air of expectancy. “What does fox mean?” she asks. But instead of answering the women, I ask why she didn’t inquire about what her husband means. She laughs, of course, for she assumes that what she knows about her husband in the waking-world is also true of him in her dream. She is not interested, therefore, in the “meaning” of her husband in the dream any more than she is interested in the meaning of him in the waking-world. Yet the woman forgets one very important thing: that the image in her dream is not literally her husband—for he is beside her in bed, sleeping and dreaming just as she is. Indeed, it is not until her husband does something which disturbs the woman in a dream that she might ask, “What does it mean that he was doing that?”
Like the woman in the above story, most of us have been conditioned to ask: “what does this mean?” But this question tends to freeze the dream within one of a multitude of intricately contrived psychological systems. The craft of dream tending, however, differs significantly from the traditional practice of dream analysis. When we “tend” a dream the primary question is, “what is happening here?” This simple question locates the dreamwork in the immediacy of the present experience, looking to the images themselves to reveal their purposefulness, their stories.
Perhaps it might be helpful to think of it this way: We don’t love our friends because of what they mean; we love them because of who they are. This, in turn, has genuine meaning for us, but it’s not why we love them. Well, it’s the same with images in a dream. They don’t come to us at night to impart hidden meaning, they come looking for relationship, and those relationships, like all relationships that are nurtured and attended to, have special meaning for us.
If we can accept psychic reality as really real—not just a bunch of complexes or the effect of society or the result of earlier development—but just as real as bricks and stones and trees, we can start to allow ourselves to be shaped by that reality. Thus, we can learn to handle our dreams, tending them carefully and discreetly, stepping back so the images can come forward to reveal themselves. As these images bring a sense of internal fate, they also bring an awareness of internal necessity and its limitation. A mutual caring envelopes the relationship and we start to feel responsible to the images and for them. Working with dreams this way teaches us how to companion ourselves in perhaps the deepest way possible, so that our images become our keepers, as we are theirs.
There is also a third group of folks that I neglected to mention. When they hear that I work with dreams they generally respond by saying, “Oh, I never dream.” Of course, this is impossible; as human beings we must dream or we quickly go mad. I tell these folks they are dreaming but that they are not remembering their dreams. But that’s another article . . . .
Blogger Bio
Renée Coleman, Ph.D., earned her Mythological Studies doctorate (with an emphasis on Depth Psychology) at Pacifica Graduate Institutein Santa Barbara, CA in 2002. She makes her home in Santa Clarita, along with her husband, four children, their dog, two chickens, and a very noisy parrot. As a certified DreamTender, Dr. Coleman helps dreamers navigate through the many twists and turns of the dreamtime. Using a holistic, embodied approach to working with dreams, she mindfully guides souls from around the world in her private practice.
Contact Information for Renée:
661-288-1901
dreamtending@gmail.com
Excellent article, Renee’! I look forward to more.
I second that, Renee. A lovely article. I appreciate your take on tending dreams as you would a relationship. Yep. Lovely.
I love this idea of tending to dreams as we would relationships with ourselves and others – mutual caring and responsibility to and for the images … beautiful, just beautiful – thank you Renee … I look forward to more.
Renee – I am having trouble remembering my dreams. Do you have any suggestions?
Funny you should ask this, Marlene. Next to asking what a specific dream image “means,” the thing I am most frequently asked is, “How can I remember my dreams?” This question is so very common, in fact, that it’s the subject of my very next blog (so keep your eyes peeled for it!). In the meantime, here’s the skinny.
Start with sleep. Men need an average of 6 hours, women an average of 8 hours of sleep per night, during which we get anywhere from 3-5 REM cycles of sleep. It’s during these REM cycles that we dream, so by making sure you’re getting a good night’s sleep, you’re essentially ensuring that dreams will come.
Remembering them, well now that’s another thing . . . . The most important time for working with dreams, including remembering them, is the time between sleeping and waking up, in what’s known as “liminal” space. Liminal means “threshold” and it’s where we get the word “subliminal.” So you want to practice staying in this threshold space as a way of inviting the images of dreams to re-surface. It’s kind of like fishing, only the fish you are after catching are your dream images. And nothing is too small when it comes to dream-fishing; even the tiniest catch is something to reel in and hang onto.
Five minutes is generally all it takes for this but it requires that we discipline ourselves to not let the busy demands of our waking-world lives encroach upon the time we have set aside to work at remembering our dreams. Remind yourself that soul-making is like any other imaginative activity; it requires tending. Be patient. Devote yourself to sleep. The dreams will come. Most importantly, Marlene, keep up the practice of setting aside 5 minutes of threshold space in the morning for dream-fishing. And remember not to judge what comes–size, in the dreamtime, definitely does not matter. Dream tending is not a quantitative practice. To be sure, more fish will come as you practice, even bigger fish, but as images go they will not be any better because they are bigger or because there are more of them. Hope this helps.