Peer Dream Group

Tony and Hyone Crisp

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Outline - The way of working known as the Peer Dream Group came about from our experience that dreams are largely self explanatory if approached in the right way. An exterior expert or authority is not necessary for a profound experience of and insight into dreams if certain rules are respected and used. The dreamer is the ultimate expert on their own dream, and when treated as such, and supported in their investigation of their dream drama, they can powerfully explore and manifest the resources of their inner life.

Fundamentals of Practice - The suggestions that follow have arisen from thirty years of dream work. They have been particularly tested with a number of small groups, and are usually employed with groups of three to five people, but sometimes with just two people working together.

The foundations of this practice rest on an understanding, or a standpoint accepted or taken by the listener and perhaps the dreamer. It is that the person before you is an expression of life. Let's forget about dream theory to start with, because the very first step is to form an attitude to what is in front of you - in other words, another human being.

Here is a being, an expression of life itself, and at the core of this living being, this living process, a process that has developed a sense of self, is the stuff of life. It is the stuff that makes heroes and saints, mothers, fathers, friends and foes. It is the essence from which arises the whole thrust of life. It is the living core of creative possibilities.

If you look around you at what life does, you can see it can be a multitude of things. It can manifest as a lion or a flea, a giraffe or a tree. It is, at the same time, both a galaxy and an amoeba. And here it is in front of you as a living being.

At the core of this being is that freedom to choose -- it is the freedom that life expresses in its multiplicity of forms. Another word for that freedom is potential or creativity. So at the core of the person in front of you lies that potential, that creativity, that problem solving ability that life itself expresses. But perhaps with this being before you that freedom, that creative ability, that potential, has got lost, forgotten, damaged or buried in some way. Or perhaps this being wants help to explore their creativity and problem solving further. So our work as the listener is to help them remember, help them find their way, to rediscover or uncover their creativity and problem solving ability. That creativity and ability to solve problems is always there inside them. That wonderful ability belongs to them. So it is not for us to solve their problem or to find the way for them. It is for us to help them uncover those possibilities within themselves.

• Step One - Find a partner you can relax with who can give sympathetic and non intrusive support. Agree with the partner that any confidences disclosed during the dream exploration will not be told to others.
• Step Two - The dreamer tells the dream. It is sometimes helpful for them to tell it in the first person present, as if they were experiencing the dream as they are telling it. The telling of the dream can include any relevant information, such as immediate associations, or events directly linked with the dream. The telling is not simply for the listeners, but for the dreamer. In telling the dream with skill, the dreamer discovers more about the dream and themselves, especially if they note what feelings or memories it stimulates. It is important also to tell your helpers what it is you feel or realise. This clarifies it for yourself, and starts the process of forming your understanding of the dream.

Example - This is my dream. I am driving my car, alone. I can see a female friend and stop to offer her a lift. I partly want her to be impressed by my new car. She looks at me. Now she tells me she doesn’t want a lift and I am watching her walk off with a man I do not know. I have recently bought the car I am driving in the dream. I like it very much and like to have my friends ride in it. (Joel)

• Step Three - The helpers now ask the dreamer questions to clarify for themselves the imagery and drama of the dream. The questions at this point should not be to explore the dream, but simply to gain a clear image of the dream.

Example - Q: You didn’t describe the street you were driving along. Was it a shopping centre or quiet place?

A: It was quite a crowded road, with people, not so many cars. I think this was also connected with my feeling of wanting to be seen in my new car.

Q: Are you attracted to your female friend?

A: Yes.

• Step Four - The dreamer next chooses one of the characters or images in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of the dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream.

In choosing an image to work with, such as a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any person, animal, object or environment from the dream to work with.

• Step Five - The dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be the car in the example dream above, they would close their eyes, enter into the feeling sense and imagery of the dream, and describe him or herself as the car. It helps if you actually imagine yourself as being the very shape of the chosen thing, entering into its shape and situation with your imagination. The same applies when you explore the role of a person or animal in the dream. Imagine yourself inside their body. Take their shape and feel their quality or feelings. Look at the world and dream as they might.

Example - I am a car. Joel has recently purchased me, and he is driving me, largely because he feels I will help him gain respect from other people. I am quite a large car, and have a lot of power. But even with all this energy I do not make my own decisions. I am directed by Joel’s desires and wishes, and enable him to fulfil them more readily.

From this short description it can already be seen there is a suggestion the car represents Joel’s emotional and physical energy, directed by his desires and decisions.

To go more fully into this approach, as you take on the role and have finished describing yourself as the object or person, now notice what you are feeling in yourself. Give attention to what changes occur as you notice what is arising in your body, your feelings and imagination. This is a bit like watching a blank television screen, waiting for something to show. Watch until something relevent or promising starts to arise then observe it as it grows.

Describe what is observed to your partner until you have got to the end of your description and observations. Take your time with this.

• Step Six - The helpers now ask questions of the dreamer who stays in the role of the dream character or image. The questions must be directly related to the role the dreamer is in. So Joel, in the role of the car, could be asked - Are you a second-hand or new car? Who was driving you before Joel? Do you feel that Joel handles you well? What does it feel like to be directed where to go all the time? Do you have places you would like to go? What would you say to Joel about his driving skills or the way he handles you?

Joel should be helped to remain in role. If he slips out of it and stops describing himself as the car, gently remind him he is speaking as the car. Also the questions should be asked with an awareness of time necessary for the dreamer’s adequate response. So do not hurry the questions to the point where the dreamer cannot properly explore his or her associations and feeling responses. If emotions are stimulated by a question allow the dreamer to discover what the emotion is connected to. By this is meant that an emotion is usually a response to something, and therefore gives information concerning what is moving us deeply. In fact unless you uncover some level of feelings, you are probably missing the full understanding of the dream.

If a line of questioning is producing promising results, do not lead the dreamer off in another direction. For instance Joel may have been asked if he wants to get out of his car and follow the woman, and shows some feelings about this. A question such as ‘Are there any shops in this street’? would then take him completely away from such feelings.

• To help ask relevant questions it is useful to be interested in the dreamer and their dream. Have a questioning mind in relationship to the dream. So do not have already fixed opinions about it. Be like a detective gradually unfolding the information and emotions behind the dream.
• As the dreamer answering the questions, let your helpers also know what you feel in response to their questions, or what memories or associations occur when a particular part of the dream is being explored. Give them as much information as you can. Also, they are simply your helpers, so if you are experiencing a feeling and one of your helpers tries to move you on with another question, explain that a feeling arising that needs to be explored.

Example - Joel: When you asked me if I want to follow the woman I immediately realised that in real life I am holding myself back from letting my feelings about her show.

At this point Joel could be asked what those feelings are, and what he wants to do about them

• Step Seven - When you have come to the end of what you can ask about the dream image, the dreamer should be asked to summarise what they have understood or gathered from what they have said or felt in response to the questions. To summarise effectively gather the essence of what you have said about the symbol and express it in everyday language. Imagine you are explaining to someone who knows nothing about yourself or the dream. Bring the dream out of its symbols into everyday comments about yourself. The helpers should reflect back to the dreamer what he or she has said, not their own opinions of the dream differing from what the dreamer has said.

Example - A man dreamt about a grey, dull office. When he looked at what he said about the office, he rephrased it by saying, "The dream depicts the grey unimaginative social environment I grew up in after the second world war. It shaped the way I now think, and I want to change it toward more freedom of imagination and creativity.

• Work through each of the symbols in the dream within the available time.
• A dream that leaves the dreamer unsatisfied, or in a difficult place, can usefully be approached by using the technique of carrying the dream forward. Or perhaps the dreamer did not engage with any feelings, perhaps unconsciously avoiding them. In which case he or she needs to ask themselves what they are not seeing or experiencing.

Here is a longer example of working a dream with the group. The work is expressed in the words of the dreamer.

This evening I worked on my flying conservatory dream with the dream group here in Oxford. It was the last evening and some of the group asked if I would work on a dream.

The dream is as follows:

I was standing in an open space on sloping ground facing downhill. It had a feeling about it of the garden where I used to live in Piggots Orchard. There were differences however. There didn’t appear to be any fences, and any houses seemed to be nestling among trees and not crammed together. As I stood my attention was on a conservatory or summerhouse that was gently flying around the area, about a hundred or so metres up. I felt very happy watching, and with a smile, because in the conservatory, which was quite sturdily built, were an elderly couple who I knew. The man was not clear in my mind, but the woman I understood on waking, was the actress who played the part of the elderly woman in the film Green Fried Tomatoes.

I felt connected with the couple and felt love for them and laughter. I felt to myself something like - look at that couple of crazy buggers flying around in their summer house. They don’t give a damn what people think. They’ve got this magic that can lift them off in their summer house.

The couple signalled to me in some way to tell me to move my arms in a circle above my head in the opposite direction they were flying. I did this and the summer house then moved in a circle the opposite way. I feel it was going anti-clockwise and it turned to go clockwise. I could feel a connection with them, in a similar way one does when holding the steering wheel of a car. You can sense the energy or power of the car - not only through the wheel, but through the seat of your pants. In this same sort of way I could feel the movements of my arms connect with the movement and energy of the conservatory. As this happened I felt a particularly loving connection with the woman. I loved her crazy eccentricity, and that of the couple.

I was a bit anxious about working with the group as I hadn’t opened myself to them before. As I started though I felt okay and there were no hesitations. I told the dream and felt changes in my body and feeling state. I felt happy and laughing, and also a rising up feeling, an opening.

It was suggested that I be the flying summer house. This was a lovely feeling. I described myself as being well-built, built with skill and with strong material. Until recently I had been well fastened to the ground and a house. But I had felt filled with a lightness that had lifted me up. I had broken the connections that used to hold me anchored. There was something I felt deep in me about this that I wanted to communicate. It felt like a powerful feeling and at first came out only as a loud cry.

Someone asked me what had enabled me to fly. I immediately felt it as something generated by the couple. It was love, a sort of love that wasn’t locked onto one person, one place. It was a love that had the sort of easy, laughing eccentricity of the couple. At this point I began to feel a lot of emotion. It was very powerful, to do with the beauty of being free and mobile and uplifted.

Caroline asked me what it was like to be the couple, or something about the couple. I immediately identified with the man, saying something like - I am an old man. I have learned to love this one woman. Through the years of difficulty I have found my love for this woman. Through the changes of age I have found love, and the love has gradually changed me. It led to the death of love. But in its place something is growing. Something that is a finer love, a touch of the spirit. This was at the same time incredibly beautiful and painful. So much so at the beginning I could hardly breath. Energy was pouring through me and my body was shaking and my breath going through many changes of pace.

To understand what was said I explained that I had been married for a long time and recently my marriage had broken up so we were no longer together. For a long time I had been worried because I could no longer love in the same way. I felt a change was going on but was unclear. The dream was showing me that a much freer and broader love was emerging.

Basically though it was about love continuing through the face of its own death and the changes arising from old age. It was about love continuing in the face of difficulties, in the face of losing all the things that stimulate love in the everyday sense, in the purely sexual sense. It was about what I sense is emerging into my life through bearing with this direction and the strange stresses it has let loose in my life. I felt as if the elderly couple depict what I sense, or what my intuition tells me, can become of myself in my old age - a couple of eccentric old buggers who are silly enough to let life express through them, and therefore let the magic of life express in the everyday world.

Someone, Miche or Chris, asked me what it meant to move my arms about. This was even more deeply felt and took a long time to emerge. Again it was an intuition, or an encompassing sense I have of my life and what I do with my life, my hands, and my arms. I said something like - What one does with ones life, what we will from a good heart, is the will of life. We are life. Our actions connect with the larger life around us.

I felt as if my hands were not simply expressing my desires or will, but were also part of the larger life of which I am a part. I didn’t feel as if I were a special person or divine being, just as an ordinary person, connected, as everyone is, with the extraordinary reality of life - that our ordinary life is part and parcel of the extraordinary. The experience put me on the spot of meeting the depth of feeling about this, feeling how amazing this is, that each of us are inextricably linked with the immensity of life, but that often our vision is so circumscribed that we fail to see this, and therefore fail to feel the impact of this fact.

My hands were shaking and moving, trembling. Movements were made that I did not fully understand, except that they were exploring the sense of being both Tony as an individual, and being Tony a part of life. In the end I touched my body as a sort of blessing. This expressed the wonderful paradox. That one was a single independent entity, and yet one was never self-existent, but always nothing more, nothing less, than life itself.

I also felt that the action of moving my arms in the dream had in it the suggestion that what I do now with the activities of my life, what I express in my life at the moment, helps create the future that I face, the direction I go. I know this is pretty obvious, but because of the imagery and feelings of the dream, because of the beauty and love felt, it had in it great hope and wonder. The hope that my life and the life of the partner I am with can become beautifully crazy and offbeat - that our lives might demonstrate without any show of high social position or power, the loveliness of life and love, the power to exist without being tied to the material world exclusively. I suppose what I mean here, if I can define it, is that often we feel our survival depends upon holding fast to a relationship, a job, money and maintaining control of the direction of our life and social place. There was a nice sense of living from something else in the dream, of a loving connection.

Then I think it was Miche, asked about the summer house again, because I had left it before saying fully who or what I was as the summer house. This was a beautiful extension of things I had touched before. I said in this role that I was something Tony had built. That I was something that Tony found difficult to see. Tony finds it difficult to see what he has built with his life. Our life, Tony’s life, is not simply here and now, not simply this body, this place. It includes all the actions, all the things, all the people that his life has entered into over the years. What we build with our life has a life of its own. What we give of ourselves into the lives of other people, what we build in the way of objects or ideas, has a life independent of us. All of this is our life. What Tony has built is going on independently of him. I as the summer house show that he has built something that has windows, that let’s light in, something that is moving and being outside of him, and that he can still be involved in and continue to be a part of in the future.

I find it difficult to put into words the depth of feeling I had about this wonderful fact that our life is more than we usually grasp. It was an odd insight in that thinking about it I see that at birth we have a sort of beginning as a physical object in the external world, in the social world. From that moment on we enter into other peoples lives through our relationship with them. We also interact with our environment in a way to leave marks, or things in the world - a diary, initials scratched on a tree, something we make or create, such as a painting or poem. Over the years we leave a widening wake of such things and relationship events. So our ‘life’ becomes a sort of reality in the world apart from us, although we are may still be contributing to it.

At the end of this I felt that our life when given to others can extend on into infinity. In that way we enter into eternity in some mysterious and expanding way. I felt that by itself our life is nothing. It ends when it ends. But if it has been given away, it is lost in the progress of life. I felt I willingly gave my life over to that remarkable and wonderful mystery.

The three following techniques describe how to carry the dream forward, how to use the body in dream exploration, and how to use dialogue between dream characters. These are extremely useful tools to occasionally use in peer dream work.

Carrying the dream forward Imagine yourself in the dream and continue it as a fantasy or daydream. Alter the dream in any way that satisfies. Experiment with it, play with it, until you find a fuller sense of self expression. It is very important to note whether any anger or hostility is in the dream but not fully expressed. If so, let yourself imagine a full expression of the anger. It may be that as this is practised more anger is openly expressed in subsequent dreams. This is healthy, allowing such feelings to be vented and redirected into satisfying ways, individually and socially. In doing this do not ignore any feelings of resistance, pleasure or anxiety. Satisfaction occurs only as we learn to acknowledge and integrate resistances and anxieties into what we express. This is a very important step. It gradually changes those of our habits which trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems.

Example: When my husband died, for quite a few times I had this funny dream. I was walking along a field and saw a lot of sheep guiding me, and I followed them. Suddenly they disappeared into a cave. I went in the cave and a row of mummies were there. One was wearing a medallion on a chain round its neck. The dream recurred quite often. One day Tony came to me and I told him the dream. He asked me to sit in a chair and relax, which I did. Then he said for me to go to the cave, and in my relaxed state I went and walked to the mummy with the medallion. Then he said take off the bandage from the top. As I unwound it the face of my husband was uncovered. I screamed and screamed and came out of the relaxation. Tony then said now let him go. I have never had that dream since. Betty E.

Use the body to discover dream power The brain sends impulses to all the muscles to act on the movements we are making while in the dream. This is observable when we wake ourselves by thrashing about in bed, or kicking and shouting. A part of the brain inhibits these movements while we sleep.

The important factor is that a dream is more than a set of images and emotions, it is also frequently a powerful physical activity and self expression. If we explore a dream sitting quietly talking to a friend, even if we allow emotions to surface, we may miss important aspects of our dream process. Through physical movement the dream process releases tensions and deeply buried memories that are stored in our body. These do not release and heal by simply talking about them.

It is often enough to realise this aspect of dream exploration for such spontaneous movements to emerge when necessary. By being aware of the body’s need to occasionally be involved in expression of dream content, we may catch the cues and let these develop. Frequently all you need to do is to let the body doodle or fantasise while exploring a dream. Jung suggested this technique for times when the person was stuck in intellectual speculation. To practice it you can take a dream image and let the hands spontaneously doodle, watching what is gradually mimed or expressed. When you have gained skill doing this, let the whole body take part in it. This can unfold aspects of dreams that the other approaches might no help with. A fuller description of this process is contained in my book Liberating the Body.

Have a dialogue between two characters or objects Every part of a dream, whether an object, person or animal, is alive with our own intelligence. Each part has been created out of ourselves in some way, and depicts some area of our own total being. We can therefore talk with them. Such dialogue is of great importance and very revealing.

As I wrote in my book, Lucid Dreaming:

No computer, however amazing, can yet do what your mind does in creating a dream. It produces a living being such as a dream character that can have a conversation with you, and in doing so draw spontaneously from huge areas of your experience or memories. Behind the image lies enormous data, emotional response and created patterns of behaviour. So the main thing to remember at this level is that you are in a full surround databank of fantastic information. You can tap this information just as you would with any person, by asking questions and prodding for a response. But, even the trees and animals in your dreams are also enormous reservoirs of information, linking back perhaps infinitely with your potential and experience.

To do this, imagine yourself as one of the characters, animals or objects in your dream. It may help at first to have two chairs - one empty and one you are sitting in. The character or object of your dream is in the empty chair. When you are ready to be that character move from your chair, sit in the empty chair and speak as that character. To answer or question the character from your own identity, move to the original chair and speak from your own character.

Be playful and curious in doing this. Question the character, and when you move to that role, let whatever your feelings are as that character motivate what you say and do. Exploring your dream in this way unfolds a great deal of information that would otherwise remain unconscious. It also enables you to make real changes in unconscious attitudes or habits, as you are literally dialoguing with areas of character patterning or programming, and can change them.

Example: When I spoke as the new born baby of my dream I really felt as if this was me, newly born. I had had a difficult birth and my reaction was that I wanted nothing to do with life. I wanted to stay curled up like an egg, not getting involved in the exterior world.

The adult observing me could see how this aspect of my inner life had led me to be withdrawn from social activity all my life, so I explained this to the baby me, saying - I need you to be ready to meet the world. You are a part of me and if you continue to withdraw I lack the enthusiasm to get involved with other people.

Back as the baby I felt totally vulnerable and didn’t want to take any risks - No I don’t want to come out of the egg.

As the adult again I said - Look, if you remain curled up this is more of a gamble than actually getting out and taking risks in life. Just lying there anything can get you.

As the baby this really got to me. I felt a change in me and a readiness to begin the journey of meeting life outside the womb.

This change really made a difference to my everyday activities. A lifelong habit of being introverted gradually dropped away. Trevor P.

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