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Dreams and Relationship
The second part of a 2 part series
by
Hal Stone, Ph.D. & Sidra L. Stone,
Ph.D.
Last month we discussed certain categories of
dreams that give us pictures of ourselves and the way in which
we are living our lives. You can see, as we study these dreams,
that we have a friend inside of us, a kind of dream master. This
dream master, who is really the intelligence of the unconscious
manifesting itself in the dream process, is an amazing advisor.
It brings us all kinds of information, ideas, insights, and new
ways of looking at things. It seems to want us to look at and
embrace more and more of what we are. Its insights about relationship
are staggering.
The Psychological Divorce Listen to the following
dream of a woman who had come to one our workshops with her husband.
They had both begun to separate from rigidly controlling primary
selves and were beginning to meet each other in an entirely new,
far more flexible way. This was her dream the last night of the
training:
People are waiting for me
to come down to the wedding ceremony except that it was actually
a divorce ceremony. I'm wearing the same dress as the wedding
dress I wore to my actual wedding. The bodice of this dress is
different however. It is beautiful with colored beads across it.
Neither of us have the script quite ready and so we are not quite
ready for the ceremony to begin.
This is a remarkable dream. What is this divorce
ceremony the couple is about to go through? It is the divorce
from their primary selves. We think of it as a psycho-spiritual
divorce, something that every couple truly needs. It marks the
end of the relationship between two primary selves and the beginning
of a relationship between two complex, sentient, soulful partners.
Many years ago Hal dreamed that he was in a court
of law standing before a judge. The judge asked him what he was
there for and Hal told him that he wanted a divorce from his wife
(Sidra). He then asked Hal why he wanted this divorce and Hal
told him that he wanted it because he loved her so much!
At that particular time Hal was learning to separate
from the good father and the responsible father, the primary selves
that had been so dominant in his life. Both of these selves had
bonded him to Sidra in a way that worked against a deepening of
the relationship. So long as Hal was identified with his good
father, he could not react properly to Sidra, nor could he establish
appropriate boundaries for himself. With the divorce from his
primary selves - and from the bonding patterns - he was released
and the relationship could move to the next level. This psychological
divorce is the divorce that all partners must ultimately get from
each other. It is the one that really counts.
Bringing Vulnerability into the Relationship
Let's look at another example of how the dream process can point
the way in relationship. A physicist to see us. He married to
an artist, his total opposite in every way. Try as they might,
they could not get close to one another. He had no connection
to his feelings and his vulnerability. Needless to say, these
were her strong suit. During one of our workshops he had the following
dream:
I'm walking down a road and
I hear someone crying. I look to see where it is coming from.
I walk to the side of the road and there I see a hand sticking
up from the earth. I rush over and start to dig. When I finally
dig deeply enough, I discover a very young child and I pull him
out of the earth.
Who is this young child that he discovers, that
he is ready to discover? It is himself as a four year old when
he had to "bury" his vulnerability. The dream master
is giving him a picture of his own feeling nature that was buried
at that time because his family was too disturbed and he needed
to protect himself. He developed a strong logical mind that figured
things out. With this, he felt safe no matter how much emotional
disturbance surrounded him.
No wonder the physicist and his wife had such
difficulty relating. To live in relationship without vulnerability
is to live in torment because there is no place to touch at that
deeper level that can provide the real food for the soul.
The Dream Master's Picture of the Relationship
Sometimes the dream master of the unconscious uses humor to describe
what is happening in a relationship. Many years ago, we got into
quite a negative place with each other. It was pretty grim. Hal
went into negative father mode and began taking potshots at Sidra
for much of the day and into the evening. These took the form
of constant criticisms that she blithely sidestepped. That night
Sidra had the following dream:
Hal is throwing lit matches
at me. I keep dodging them so he cannot hit me. Finally Hal explodes
and yells at me: "Stop jumping around so much. Stand still
so that I can hit you."
When we woke up the next morning and Sidra shared
her dream, we both started laughing. The unconscious had made
its statement and it was very difficult for Hal to stay locked
into the negative energy any longer. We cannot tell you how many
times in our life together a dream, or a combination of our dreams,
has broken a negative bonding pattern between us. What a gift!
Sometimes the directness of the unconscious is
quite extreme when it wants us to get the picture of what is happening
in the relationship. In one instance, a woman dreamed that her
husband was having an affair with another woman. She felt it was
a dream so she did not say anything and the next night she had
the same dream. Then, amazingly enough, the dream repeated itself
a third time.
On the morning after the third dream the woman
asked her husband at breakfast if he was having an affair. Once
he got over the shock, he admited to her that such was the case
and they began to deal with their relationship and its problems.
Imagine the intelligence of the dream master who insisted, who
demanded, that this woman become conscious of this affair so that
she could meet the challenge and move on with her life and deepen
her process. It is as though the dream master forces us to shed
our skin over and over again so that change can occur. For anyone
who works with dreams, the hand of God is patently obvious and
truly inspiring.
Another woman was married to a man who saw himself
as very spiritual. He meditated a good deal and often criticized
his wife because she did not meditate or have a spiritual practice
of any kind. You might almost say that he was spiritually arrogant.
During the course of one of our trainings, the wife had the following
dream:
I am standing in a line of
people next to an altar. Each person has a gift to bring to God
that they place on the altar one by one. Many of the gifts are
beautifully wrapped. All I have is a pile of loose gunk in my
hand. The gunk is all of the confusion and problems of my life.
It is loose and I can hardly hold it in my hand. I feel so very
ashamed that this is all I have. Finally it is my turn and I place
the gunk on the altar where it quickly spreads all over. Then
from above a large fist comes down into the middle of the gunk
and suddenly the gunk begins to solidify and out of it emerges
a large fish. It is given to me as a gift and I am meant to eat
it.
What a remarkable gift the dream master brought
to this woman. She never thought of herself as being spiritual.
It was her husband who knew how to do that. Suddenly everything
was framed in a different way. There was a meaning in her life.
Her problems were not just problems. They were the substance of
her own transformation. Her dream was a dream for all of us. It
showed her that God lives here, now, with all of our problems
and all of our imperfections. All we need to do is to step to
the altar and give to divinity our greatest gift - ourselves with
all of our imperfections. You may be sure that a decisive shift
occurred in their relationship as a result of this dream and its
message.
With another couple the dream master provided
another picture. The husband was always complaining about the
fact that he felt his wife was overly protected. He wanted to
reach her but never could. During one of our trainings she had
the following dream:
I dreamed that I was in a
large fortress made of concrete. It had thick walls and great
battlements. I was snuggled down safe inside of the fortress feeling
comfortable and glad that I had its protection all around me.
I felt safe and well taken care of. Then I could see outside of
my fortress and I saw what it was protecting me from. I saw that
it was protecting me from a very soft gentle rain that was falling
all around, a rain that would have felt good and would have nurtured
me and helped me to grow. I was still glad that I was in my fortress,
however.
What a remarkable picture of herself the dream
master brings to her. Here she is, encased in her fortress. What
is outside? A beautiful soft gentle rain that can nourish her
if only she would allow it. Eventually she will leave her fortress
but for now she needs this protection. What is the fortress? It
is her primary self system. It is her mind, her control, her iron
discipline, and her absolute requirement that she show no vulnerability.
So we see how dreams so beautifully reflect the
dance of the selves as they operate within us and in our relationships.
The dream world is like the handwriting of God. What a creative
collaboration it is when partners learn how to decipher this writing
with each other. Just telling your dreams to one another is a
great way to start. There are many different ways to look at and
work with dreams. It does not matter where you begin. Just know
that the dream master and the unconscious love attention and they
both flower when you spend time with them.
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