Dreaming & Imagery
Did you know that dreams can show you the path you’re meant to take?
Understanding the meaning of our dreams can help us clear blocked patterns that hold us back, so that the blueprint of who we’re meant to be can be realized. Dreaming and imagery are the language of the Self – they are the product of our sensing, experiencing selves, and provide the blueprint for all of our actions. Dreaming and imagery are the same thing, and they form the basis for all human thought, emotion and decision-making.
Did you know you’re dreaming right now? A brain scan would show you that we dream all the time. Night and day, our experiencing self and our right brain is actively in relationship with the world. However, we’ve become trained to give more attention to our conscious processes, so we have forgotten how to see images in the daytime. At night we allow the conscious processes to cease and so the images come forward, which we call dreams.
In fact, images and dreams are always there, and you can learn to see them!
A little Imagery 101:
We meet our world through our senses – we either taste, touch, smell, see or hear all that we experience. Those sensing ‘products’ – a flavor, a texture, an odor – are electrical impulses that travel our nervous system to our brain, where they form an image. These images include all past knowledge, memory, emotion and associations we have with that experience. They are holistic and present-time. The ‘left brain’, or pre-frontal cortex, then takes these images and uses them to make decisions that direct our actions. It is here that we attach language to them, so that we can express our experiencing to others.
We have images for everything: all of our emotions, our feelings, our goals, and even abstract ideas like friendship, respect, how we feel about our co-worker, how we see a conflict resolved, how we understand our potential, who we want as a partner, the change we want to make in the world, and how we see our company.
Sometimes we get stuck in our experiencing which can create a stuck image. This can happen if we have an experience we feel is unpleasant, if we are curtailed in achieving our goals, become disappointed, or etc. We carry these stuck images forward in our present-experiencing until we find a way to shift them. Stuck images, over time, become repetitive patterns and belief systems. Because images direct all our actions, stuck images means we become stuck. Being stuck narrows all of our possibilities and the ability to see new avenues and create a different path for ourselves. We know we are stuck if we feel dull, stagnant, anxious, or notice that we aren’t achieving what we would like to accomplish.
Here is an example. Let’s say as a child all of our creative efforts are thwarted by a parent who rejects them, or who takes the spotlight for themselves. Our images around our creative self, and the images that appear when we attempt to create things, may become stuck. The child whose creative efforts are thwarted may grow into an adult who stops attempting to put ideas forward, may have anxiety when asked to produce something at work, or may procrastinate until opportunities to show their creativity pass them by. That person might say they aren’t creative, or that their mother was always the creative one, and thus narrow their own life possibilities, perhaps never exploring their creative potential, such as never starting that business for the great idea they have, never taking the art class they always wanted or never getting their website written. Working with this stuck image can change everything.
Working with images and dreams: 1) shows us where the stuck places are, 2) informs us of what our body and experiencing self are trying to say to us, 3) and is our way of clearing the blocks, getting unstuck, broadening our potential and increasing the possibilities of our future experiencing.
Thus, understanding dreaming is actually a practical art!
Imagery and dreaming are the same thing. It is a language. There are four ways I work with that language with individual clients: imagery, dreams, dream openings and waking dreams. With businesses and organizations I add a fifth method: StoryOpenings ™. In addition, I teach the primary practice of Reversing.
Imagery. Imagery exercises entail closing your eyes, hearing a short prompt that I give, and saying aloud what you see. Then, with your eyes still closed, we will work with the images until they are complete. Most exercises are 1-2 minutes in length.
Dreams. Clients bring in a recent dream. These dreams may suggest a specific imagery exercise that I give. Or, they are worked with using a dream opening and waking dream.
Dream Openings. Dream openings are a way of understanding a dream where a dream is ‘dreamed back’ to the original dreamer. It is a way of unfolding the meanings to a dream, and uncovering its necessity. There are four levels to a dream, and four kinds of dreams. These, and other understandings of the process, are applied in an opening. If working individually with a client I will open the dream. If working in a group, each secondary dreamer of the group will open the dream of the original dreamer. Dream openings are a technique within the lineage specifically developed by Dr. Catherine Shainberg.
Waking Dreams. Sometimes a dream will have a clear necessity, or illuminate a pattern or place of being stuck. In this case, a waking dream is a way of going in and addressing the necessity or pattern, or shifting the stuck place. To do this, you simply close your eyes and re-enter the dream at a place where I will provide a prompt. Like with the imagery exercises, you will say what you see and we will work with the images that arise.
StoryOpenings™. StoryOpenings™ is a method I developed for working with businesses and organizations based upon dream opening techniques, and adapted for identifying and understanding an organization’s vision. This is a multi-step method that is taught in a one-day workshop.
Reversing. This is one of the primary practices of this lineage. It is a way of going back through the day, or specific moments in the day, to see it from a different perspective and begin to recognize and unravel patterns.
Imagery and dream work is experiential, quick and enlivening. Not only does it shift stuck patterns, it develops the mind and its ability to gain broader perspectives, and it increases creativity!
About the Kabbalistic Lineage:
The imagery and dream techniques that I use derive from an ancient Kabbalistic lineage. The lineage extends from my teacher, Dr. Catherine Shainberg, to her teacher, Collette Simhah Albouker-Muscat. Collette was a renowned Kabbalist from Jerusalem, and her lineage extends, on both her maternal and paternal side, to an ancient line of Sephardic Kabbalists that includes Rabbi Isaac the Blind of Provence (the first recorded Medieval Kabbalist) and Rabbi Jacob ben Sheshet of the Gerona circle of Kabbalists. It is an ancient lineage and the most ancient form of Kabbalah, whose practices of the visionary process were recorded as far back as the first century.
Kabbalah means ‘receiving’. Unlike other Kabbalistic methods, which look at texts and use methods like gematria to understand them, this work is pure Kabbalah, referring to the receiving one does when looking within. It is called the Kabbalah of Light.
The Blue Vase
Close your eyes. Breathe out all that disturbs you, all that tires you, all that obscures you. Breathe it out as a light smoke (carbon dioxide) that is easily absorbed by the plant life around you. When your breath comes in on the inhalation, see it as blue as the radiant blue light from the sky, and filled with sunlight. See the blue golden light filling your nostrils, your mouth, your throat, and flowing down your back as a great river of light. See it filling your feet, your toes, and stretching out of your toes as long antennas of light. See the light circulating up your legs to fill your pelvis, see it rising up into your chest, flowing in and out of your heart until your heart becomes a glowing blue lamp. See the light flow down your arms like smaller rivers of light, fill your hands and fingers, stretch out of your fingers as long antennas of light. As you continue to breathe in the blue light, see the light continue to fill you. See it begin to radiate out of the articulations of your joints: out of your ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. See the light fill you until it radiates out of your skin in all directions. See yourself as a crystal vase filled with light and radiating light in all directions. Open your eyes, seeing yourself as the crystal vase radiating blue light in all directions. Then stop.