Confessions of
a Veteran of the Dream Quest
Noreen
Wessling
Member of the Association for the Study of Dreams
So what’s it like to spend a month doing Henry's Dream
Realizations / Dream Solutions: The Dream Quest Guide Book?
For me, it’s akin to being stranded in a semi-dark magic labyrinth
with Sherlock Holmes, his cleaning lady and a thick guide book left by a
Jungian elf.
The process cajoles me to clean up my act and unravel a mystery or
two, then voila! I see the light. Again and again this cycle repeats
over the four weeks of intensive spiraling towards greater
understanding. This is filled with the sweat of hard work and the fun of
the quest.
Dreams Realizations is not for namby-pamby dreamers or those who want
instant results to their question. You have to work persistently and
keep applying what you learn, but that's the secret of its success.
I should know. I’ve done six of them in the last few years. Each
was unique in what it gave me and helpful in a way that sparked me to
USE the insights.
A typical session has me plunked down in front of my trusty word
processor, geared up for the four hour session I know to be necessary.
My previous week's dreams are eagerly waiting to be entered and
creatively played with...following the directions in the workbook.
I find it best to come to each session with no preconceptions and a
sense of innocence about where all this may take me. This is especially
true of the "Inspirational Writing," where you just let it all
hang out and fly with your fantasies.
Each session usually goes great till about the third hour, by which
time I'm bone-weary. I want to go to bed. I ask myself, "Isn't it
time to clean out the dog bowl?" or "Better go to the bathroom
(again)" and ultimately, "Gadzooks, why am I doing this to
myself when I could be watching Johnny Carson?"
But like a good dream-trooper, I take a stretch break then doggedly
persist, with the knowledge that somewhere in that last hour I will have
some of the most helpful breakthroughs. And no wonder! My defenses have
already brushed their teeth and gone to bed, leaving the rest of me open
to what I really need to hear. I suspect this is part of the plan of how
the workbook is set up to do its magic.
Now about this workbook...how does it work and why does it work? I
see it as a remarkable method for enticing my "intuitive
knowing" to the surface where I can DO something with it, and
therefore feel better about myself.
Each of the four weekly sessions is an adventure unto itself,
although obviously connected with what came before. Initially, the most
potent, image-exciting dream aspects are drawn out and experienced from
various perspectives, in order to see the uppermost concerns of the
dream and how this might coincide with waking-life concerns and
questions.
From this, I come up with my "Best Guess" solution to my
quest and take some ACTION every day till the next session, based on
what I've just learned.
I find this action part a bit tough to follow sometimes, and have
been known to say such rationalizing things as, "Henry's full of
it...he's an action-nut...I've got better things to do." Then I
pull myself up by the old bootstraps again and do enough of it
apparently, because I DO get results.
The second session is geared at flushing out mistaken notions, if
there are any, from the first session. One of my favorite techniques is
called "Personal Symbol Translation," where I write out
spontaneous thoughts on what each symbol means to me, then rewrite the
dream by inserting these sentences in place of the original symbols.
This technique always astounds me. The final version is as if written
by another person (or at least my Higher Self) and has layers of
insights not visible to me at the start. This process, which
incorporates Inspirational Writing, manages to bypass the logical mind
and zoom right into the intuitive mind where our truest answers lie.
Now these latest threads of understanding are woven in with the
previous thoughts and a new "Best Guess" on how to solve the
quest (although the initial quest may have also changed by this point)
is born and hopefully acted upon during the coming week.
The third week's session is what I consider the climax. My favorite
week! This is where things start coming together for me and I see the
light at the end of the tunnel. This is the "Searching with New
Eyes" week, and there's lots of dialogue with enticing dream
images. Yes, you talk to people and things in your dream as if they were
real (aren't they?!) and let them give you some answers.
It's also time to relive a peak experience--a time where I felt
wonderful-- and see what relevancy this has now. I contemplate on how
others will be affected by the fulfillment of my quest, then I put all
this together and see if it suggests new ways to deal with my problem.
It usually does, and up comes the Best Guess for the final week.
The end is in sight (insight). "Taking Stock" is the key
for the fourth week. After reviewing and evaluating everything so far, I
have a chat with a "Wisdom Source" within me who is now quite
eager to be known. This is the final zinger for me and the last pieces
of the present puzzle fall beautifully into place.
It's fun to celebrate all this good stuff by writing a poem or doing
a painting (or something else tangible) based on the essence of what has
been discovered. Stick this on the fridge or someplace where you can see
it often. It has power. It shows me just how much creative intelligence
I have inside myself, just waiting to be recognized and used. That's the
best part of the Dream Realizations experience and why I have gone on
this 28-day Dream Quest so many times. I hope you too enjoy your quest
and realize your dreams!