The dream - a projection

Some enchanted evening you’re going to meet your soulmate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfil all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and at one with our mothers; it’s no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. but, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it is amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality.
Nobody, whether it’s your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter - nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.

Osho Zen Tarot, Water: Emotions, The Dream

Anything in the unconscious is projected!
An example:
If somebody exhibits a personality trait we ourselves harbour unconsciously and which we like

• we like that person.
  If somebody exhibits a personality trait we ourselves harbour unconsciously and which we dislike

• - we dislike that person
  
  Every lower level of consciousness is dreamlike seen from a higher level of consciousness.

Jes Bertelsen.

The dream

This has been said again and again, down through the ages. All the religious people have been saying this: we come alone into the world, we go alone. all togetherness is illusory. the very idea of togetherness arises because we are alone, and the aloneness hurts. We want to drown our aloneness in relationship…
That’s why we become so much involved in love. try to see the point. ordinarily you think you have fallen in love with a woman or with a man because she is beautiful, he is beautiful. that is not the truth. the truth is just the opposite: you have fallen in love because you cannot be alone. You were going to fall. You were going to avoid yourself somehow or other. And there are people who don’t fall in love with women or men - then they fall in love with money. they start moving into money or into a power trip, they become politicians. That too is avoiding your aloneness. If you watch man, if you watch yourself deeply, you will be surprised - all your activities can be reduced to one single source. the source is that you are afraid of your aloneness. everything else is just an excuse. the real cause is that you find yourself very alone.

Osho Zen Tarot, Water: Emotions, The Dream

Authenticity
The purpose of dreams: Dreams are always attempting authenticity - that you manifest who you are, unconditionally.

The simplest dream is the attempt from the Self to provide a wholeness, to integrate and to make the person whole.



Jim Warren

Dreams work in symbols, not by logic

Jung defines a symbol as
The best possible expression of something
That in principle is unknown

Freud and in particular Jung worked very hard to uncover rules and regularities in the language of symbols. Every naivistic dictionary description of dream symbols and their meaning must, particularly in the light of Jung’s work, be regarded as misguiding.

The task is to learn to think symbolic
Point one is to realise that the symbols always have two aspects,
a positive and a negative.




Symbols, also archetypal symbols,
are initially units beyond good and bad, positive and negative, etc.


Separating things into categories

Our normal way of thinking, separating things into categories, results automatically in symbols being split into two, light and darkness, positive and negative.
But the symbol is in itself ambivalent, or rather, neither positive nor negative, or both positive and negative. The symbol is pure nature. For the full understanding of a symbol one have to take both aspects into consideration.
This makes a definition dictionary-style unreliable.

Edited from Jes Bertelsen books and notes from courses

The exceptional position of dreams
The real progress in the dreamer can be measured;
The dreams have to change character.

Dreams always show only those things from the unconscious hat the dreamer is able to assimilate without entering psychotic conditions at the given time.



Contacting the dream via in the body
It is directly possible to contact the dream via certain areas in the body - the attitude in the dreams will directly reflect the bodily position of the client.

People who can work together are dreaming about each other. This will ensure good results, as there will be a channel via the unconsciousness.

Dreams that are dreamt immediately prior to starting on for example counselling or psychotherapy can be very significant pointers to the process and outcome of that therapy


 

A dream has a compensatory function in itself
even if you are not working with it or remembering it

By working with dreams, cleansing them to make them a better channel for guidance, working with understanding them and integrating their messages in daily life, the growth or recovery process can be speeded up.

Dreams from the same night are displaying the same theme, even if they appear very different.
The theme in the initial dream might be from a deep level, and the following dream might deal with the same theme from a more superficial level.



A reliable picture of everything
In your personality
If you read your dreams through from one year back and up to the present, you will get a complete and reliable picture of EVERYTHING in your personality, and also an understanding of - in more or less general terms - in what direction your life is moving. Gradually, you will be able to detect and recognise the inner guidance.

As a general rule, significant changes and improvements in an inner development process, will first manifest itself in dreams, and then in meditation, and finally in the ego consciousness.


If you want to understand wether the dream basically is good or bad, don’t listen to the feelings or reactions you had after you woke up, but to the feelings and reactions you had while dreaming.



Dreams might be compared with a radar
"The mechanism in dreams might be compared with a radar, which constantly - regardless the level of development ­is scanning the personality, psychologically as well as bodily, in order to reveal unbalances or one-sidedness in an attempt to correct and adjust matters that are not conductive.

Jes Bertelsen.

THREE LEVELS IN DREAM WORK
1. Meaning 2. Energy 3. Consciousness

Edited and translated from Jes Bertelsen: Droemme Chakrasymboler og Meditation

Every dream can be worked with on all three levels, but in practice it is only relevant to let important dreams go through all three levels of integration.

1. Meaning

Most methods of dream work belong to this category. The dream has a text and a language, which has to be understood. It is important to know about dream symbols etc. in order to open the dream and understand its meaning; it is characteristic that the dreams is worked with one at a time.
Freud and Jung and Perls belong to this category.

2. Energy

The aspect of the aura that shows up as light, colours, vibrations and movements, very closely resembles the energy aspect of dreams.
Thus it is possible through dreams to characterise the individual aura structure.
It could be said that the dreams in their energy-aspect are the aura reflecting itself in the individual.
Many dreams are needed to give a full picture of the aura.

3. Consciousness
   The dream is understood and worked with as a dimension of consciousness. On this meditative level, the dream is seen as dull light phenomena, and the task is to transform the dream to increased levels of light and consciousness.
   
   
   
   DREAMS AND THREE PSYCHOLOGICAL LEVELS
   
   1. The psychology of polarities
   No contact between the various aspects or parts in the dream reflects a black-and-white psychology.
   The centre core in the psychology of polarities is "the shadow".
   Personal development can start with the lowest level, the shadow.
   
   It is important to raise the total psychology, to raise the darkest or lowest parts of ones psychology and at the same time transform the consciousness in to higher levels of consciousness through meditation.
   
   Sigmund Freud describes the psychology of polarities.
   Carl Gustav Jung describes the ying-yang psychology.
   
   
   2. The yin-yang psychology
   Here the individual begins to understand and feel, that anything has its hidden polarity or nature embedded, and that even something that is considered negative or wrong can lead to something good, something he can learn and develop from.
   When the dreams with contact between the various elements begin it means that higher levels of psychology are manifesting.
   
   Yin-yang psychology experiences another person more as an energy field than as a separate, solid substance or "thing".
   
   As an example is romantic love related to a psychology of polarities. From the perspective of a yin-yang psychology, falling in love means that you lose 50% of yourself.
   In love, as distinct from romantic love, there is a meeting between two individuals, a union. There is no loss of oneself.

3. The psychology of Oneness
This is the highest form of psychology. The ego isn’t there any longer, or it is at least temporarily suspended, and there is no duality between inner and outer, and between you and me. There is unity with everything; even in a yin-yang psychology there is an organic distinction.
In illumination the balance between subject and object is so perfect that the consciousness flies away from the attachment to duality.


COMPENSATION
The "remnant" from the day before.
Every dream, even very powerful and collective dreams, has an element that links it with specific experiences or moods from the previous day

This can be a person, an intuition, a strong thought or a feeling etc. that associatively is interweaved in the dream picture. It can also be distant childhood memories, birth trauma symbolism or even ancient, collective experiences.

The purpose of the dream work will accordingly be to try to understand these dream images as a comment, a correction or as a supplement to yesterday; the dream acts as the compensative and balancing other polarity to the unconscious aspect that was not in a balance yesterday

Accordingly, a self realised person who is 100% present in every situation do not have dreams, he or she is 100% awake - also when he is asleep.



The emotional gravity point
In the dream is the focus point
Particular scenes or pictures or elements
That contains the strongest feeling or puzzlement

Most dreams have particular elements that contain the strongest intensity of feeling or puzzlement.
This part is the focus point of the energy.
This point is often immediately obvious.
If the dream is long and varied, it can be traced down by giving the dream a headline, or by imagining sending a telegram with the essence of the dream.

Jes Bertelsen.

The focus point and everyday life

When the focus point in the dream has been found, one attempts to find the same feeling or mood in other areas of ones life:
Where else are there experienced of these feelings of for example anger, fear, grief or happiness?
A simple comparison between the dream and these situations in ones life, all with the same mood and feelings, will often make the meaning of the dream obvious. Un-understandable symbols or images can open up by the feeling it emanates, and which one knows from other situations when awaken.

 

You can work in the same way with the conduct in the dream.
Maybe the dreamer was uninhibited aggressive in the dream, so comparing with the situations where one in the daily life has been uninhibited aggressive, one can come closer to an understanding of the dream image.

Jes Bertelsen.

The mental attitude in dreams

The attitude in dreams is the reactions and behaviour in general of the actors - the way the various factors (persons, things, animals, etc.) are relating to each other.

The dream ego.

In all dreams there is a focus of awareness, a witness. This "focus" is the dream ego.
The dream ego is the part of the dreamer’s awake, normal consciousness that is still there. This witness is the reason why the dream can be registered at all.

Projection change the world into the replica
Of one’s own unknown face

C. G Jung

Everything subconscious is projected
When we do not acknowledge an aspect of ourselves,
That aspect becomes subconscious.


The dream ego
If the dream ego is very passive, an eye that sees, a fly on the wall or just a sort of camera lens in front of which the dream takes place, if the dream ego is present in a so distant and unengaged way, it will normally mean that the dreamer has a very poor connection with the aspects that the dream mirrors.

A human being is split up in many parts, and development means to create connection, coordination between all these personality aspects The dream ego who is passively observing, shows that the person lacks engagement in himself, he only have a connection with few aspects of his totality.

Jes Bertelsen.

The Conduct
In normal dreams the rule of thump is that the more actively the dreamer takes part in the activities in the dream, the more contact this person has with the aspects in himself that the dream are reflecting
The second area where the conduct is manifested in the dream is in the degree of contact between the individual parts of the dream or between the dream ego and the rest of the dream world.


There are three categories:

• No contact

• Conflict

• Connection, warmth, integration

Jes Bertelsen.

1. No contact:
Alienation

The most inexpedient conduct is that there simply is no contact.
There is an involvement present, a presence, a feeling that the individual parts of the dream or the personality concerns each other, but no tangible exchange happens. Many nightmares have this build up. He can hear steps behind him, he gets afraid, walks faster, the steps behind walks faster too, the fear increases, and he wakes up.[…]
The dream reflects that the dreamer is up against something unknown in himself, aspects of the personality that hitherto has been separated and un-integrated are approaching each other.
The situation reflects the fight between on one side, the synthesising, tendency, the movement toward unity, and on the other side, the separating, compartmentalizing tendency
One part of the dreamer seeks integration, unity, another part seeks to get away from the confrontation, wants to continue to sleep in unconscious separateness

Jes Bertelsen.

2. Negative contact:
Friction has started

The second common conduct in dreams is the negative contact: conflict, fight, clashes, anger, hate, rape, murder and so on.
The two aspects of the personality, and therefore the two elements of the dream have gained some connection with each other, friction has started.
To the extend that integration is the goal for the growth of humans, the so-called negative contact is preferable to the no-contact situations, where no energy movements takes place.
Two aspects of the personality, to sets of behavior, or two feelings that previous had no connection with each other, can’t be brought to cooperation without a confrontation, an engaged meeting.
The condition for moving from separateness to oneness is friction, conflict, and suffering. This inner confrontation is also the possible condition for higher consciousness.

Jes Bertelsen.

3. Connection, warmth, and integration

The last, typical conduct in dreams and in the inner dynamics of the personality is the positive, connecting contact. Dreams about teamwork building, intercourse, feeding of animals, rain and so on, all belongs to this category. The positive contact mirrors the integrative tendency, the tendency to connect and unite the different aspects and powers of the personality.

Observing of dreams over a longer period from the same person will show that a development from no contact to conflict to integration is a natural tendency in the process of the dreams.

Jes Bertelsen.

A way of working with dreams:
Before falling asleep, as a preparation for dreams, the following is contemplated:

If I dream about something strange or hostile,
Rather fight than flight,
Rather see it in the face than turn my back to it,
And if I fight in the dreams,
Or if fights are going on,
Rather attempt peace


In the language of personal growth:

Rather see yourself than close your eyes,
Rather make peace with one self than fight oneself.

Jes Bertelsen.

Working with dreams

Working with dreams over a longer period, you will some day realise that what is normally considered for reality and awake life, in its essence is the same as a "dream" - projections of your own energy; a covering up and symbolising of WHAT IS.

From the perspective of the normal ego consciousness, the more dull-minded visions of the dream looks exactly like a lower and more unconscious existence - as a dream.

From the perspective of a meditative, higher consciousness, the normal ego consciousness and daily life looks like a lower and more unconscious way of existence - in other words like a dream.

Jes Bertelsen