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BASIC DREAM TECHNIQUES FOR STUDENTS OF THE ENNEAGRAM
© Belinda Gore, 2005

There is not one of us who has not at some time been moved by the power of dreams.  Through dreams we have access to an inner world that is not readily available to the perception of our waking minds.  While there are several altered states of consciousness that reveal this inner world, dreams are the most familiar gateway.  We all dream, every night, and with a little assistance most people are able not only to recall their dreams but to also understand their meaning. 

Carl Jung was Freud’s student and heir apparent until he challenged his mentor with the belief that dreams are normal experiences of healthy individuals.  The symbolic nature of dreams was, in Jung’s opinion, simply the revelation of a deep and profound wisdom that supported the consciousness of all of humanity.  This Collective Unconscious held archetypal symbols that are the pre-verbal structures for human consciousness.  Understanding symbols could lead to greater psychological health rather than revealing only our dark secrets.

The language of symbol and metaphor is the key to understanding dreams, and the power of symbol derives from what psychiatrist Carl Jung named “archetypes.”   The symbol is the psychological mechanism that transforms the energy of the archetype for the individual.  There are endless images that express these fundamental patterns in human consciousness.  These images appear in our dreams as well as the varied manifestations of symbolic expression such as movies, poetry, and literature.

Because I have taught dream workshops over the past thirty years, people often ask me if personality type influences how we dream.  While I have not made a thorough study of the specific characteristics of the dreams of Eight’s compared to Two’s, for instance, it is clear that how we understand our dreams is connected with how we perceive ourselves and the world.

Here are the basics for beginning your own dream explorations.

First, get a journal that you keep especially for recording your dreams.  Find something you really like, anything from a spiral notebook to a fancy book with handmade paper.  Keep it beside your bed with a pen so you can record your dreams as soon as you awaken.  Because dreams are primarily experiences of emotion and non-rational events, our rational minds tend not to recall them easily.  So many people have said to me, “Oh, I had the greatest dream last night (or last week) but I can’t remember anything about it.”  So be prepared to write at least a few notes to yourself when you wake up.

Try to get to bed early enough so you can awaken without an alarm clock.  The shock of the sound of the alarm can divert your attention from the dream experience and you lose the memory before you can write it down.

You don’t have to record dreams every night.  Once a week is often enough until you can count on remembering your dreams regularly and then you may only document those that are particularly strong in image or emotion.

When you write your dream include these items:

• The date, to place dream events in context with waking events;
• The basic story:  how did the dream begin, what happened, and how did it end;
• The major characters in the dream, including animals as well as people;
• The setting, whether indoors or outdoors, or a known location or not;
• Your emotions, how you felt during the dream and how you felt upon awakening.

One technique I always use is to ask myself to pay attention to the first thing that comes to my mind when I ask the question, ”If this dream were a movie or a book, what title would it have?”  The first thing that comes to mind may not seem relevant but it is an indication of your intuitive mind’s awareness of the general meaning of the dream.  For instance, in the dream I recounted in the newsletter, the first answer to the question about a title for the dream was “It’s alive!” 

Once you have a title, you can begin to use the primary technique in dream work, the tool we learned from Jung’s original word association experiments as a way to explore the unconscious.  Association as a dream technique means simple to ask yourself what you think of, or what you associate with, a word or phrase, a person or seeting.  When I associated to the phrase “It’s alive!” I first related to horror movies, in which the monster is alive.  But then I moved into a feeling of joy that what I thought might be dead is still alive.  My fear transformed into excitement and hope about approaching the dark statue.

After associating to the title, do the same for the characters and the setting.  It was most meaningful for me to associate with the setting, as that exercise brought into focus the entire story of The Lord of the Rings.  I have read the trilogy twice and have the set of all three movies, so the setting was rich with emotional connections for me, reminding me about the journey toward integration and wholeness.

Another tool is to tell your dream to someone who knows you and to ask, “If this were your dream, what would it mean to you?”  Sometimes we are too close to our own dreams to see the connections.  Some dream workers have suggested that we share a “tribal consciousness” with other people who share our cultural or familial worldview.  They can make associations that might be relevant for us.  In any case, you are the expert concerning your own dream and if another person’s interpretation does not fit, let it go.

As a student of the Enneagram, I then go through what I have unearthed about my dream and identify what issues are related to my issues as someone with a Type Three personality.  I include indications that I am shutting down or avoiding, like my point of stress, Type Nine, or that I am seeking community or valuing loyalty, as in Type Six, my point of integration, or feeling the kind of anxiety that I connect with my Soul Child. Sometimes elements of my Four wing show up as well.  As I learn to look for them, clues to my personality functioning become increasingly clear.

In the final analysis, you can tell if you have found the core meaning of your dream when you feel an emotional shift inside or a mental “Ah, ha!”  If it is particularly important, you might have tears in your eyes or burst out laughing.  Don’t resist your body’s way of giving you a confirmation that your waking self and your dreaming self have communicated.