AWAKENING IN THE DREAM GROUPS
I'm not sure whether to say that my friends and I havedeveloped a new way of working with people's dreaming processes, or to say thatwe've discovered something. In any case, it is clear that we've tapped intosomething profound.. More accurately, I feel safe in saying that something hasbeen revealed through following our inner dreaming process (what I call"following the dreaming"). I feel strongly drawn to share what myfriends and I are experiencing in our "Awakening in the DreamGroups," as it can be of great benefit to many people.
Let me start off by saying that these groups are not foreveryone, as they require a high degree of being able to self-reflect and bevulnerable. They only work if enough people in the group are awake enough torealize what we are doing, as they act as so much yeast in the dough, so tospeak, helping the bread to leaven. The groups are radically changing people'slives.
These "Awakening in the Dream" Groups are basedon our life being a dream, more specifically, they are based on how we are"dreaming up" our life moment by moment. In a sense, we are doing aradical experiment, as we are actually imagining that our situation is indeed adream, and following what this shows us. The groups are based on the projectivetendencies of our mind, how we are in essence dreaming in and up our life in away that's similar to how we do at night, where our inner process is gettingdreamed up into and as our waking life itself. The same dreaming mind that isdreaming our dreams at night is dreaming our life. In a sense, in the groups weare just doing real dreamwork, with the dream being what happens in the group.
We are discovering that we can inquire into who we are byfollowing the process of our being together, without any agenda, structure orstrategy about what we're going to do. I call this "following thedreaming." The groups and the relationships in the group themselves becomethe vehicle for realization, as over time, our psyche's intermingle, pushingeach other's buttons, triggering projections, touching and effecting eachother's unconscious. And we simply inquire into this process, by entering thesame present moment together with the realization that we are merely dreamcharacters in each others dream. What this means is that we realize that we areall embodied reflections of each other, as well as that every moment we are alldreaming up this mass shared dream together. This is a waking dream that ismutually, interdependently getting dreamed up by all of us together. We are allgetting dreamed up and picking up roles in each other's process. We are alldreaming up the deeper dreamfield, while concurrently, we are being dreamed upby it. This is not some sort of elaborate visualization practice, but is simplyseeing the truth of our situation. When everyone is training seeing thedreamlike nature of our situation, a certain field gets conjured up that isvery lubricated for healing.
Part of the process is the sharing of our imaginings, ourprojections, our hallucinations that we have onto each other's inkblots witheach other. Imagine a dream where all of the dream characters are sharing theirprojections with each other. We are all in a position to see each other in away that each of us, by ourselves, can't. Of course, it is up to each one of uswhenever we get the rest of the group's reflections to discern if people arejust projecting, or are they really seeing our blind spot? When a dream characterin a dream shares their imaginings, their projections of who you are, of whatthey imagine you are doing, it would be foolish to at least not consider whatthey are saying.
There is something about being really seen by otherpeople. Imagine being in a dream and have your fellow dream characters actuallysee where you are asleep, see your unconscious, your blind spot. If this is adream, who are those fellow dream characters who are seeing your unconsciousbut the awakening parts of you? And how can this not have an effect on you?
By inquiring into the nature of our experiences together,we discover that we are not in a position to actually know what is happeningseemingly "out there" in the group (there's always the possibility ofus projecting, distorting, deluding ourselves). Someone might be doingsomething, for example, and everyone will be seeing what they are doingdifferently, it's not a question of who's right, but this is pointing tosomething- that we are not in a position to know what is"objectively" happening out there, but we are in a position to knowwhat we are perceiving (what our particular hallucination is). By everyone inthe group expressing themselves out of this realization, it cuts through blame,as well as allowing people to not take things personally. People can thenopenly share their projections, for we are taking responsibility for ourexperience.
In the groups, we have the intention to awaken, totransduce light. What this, of course, means is that we will invariably evokethe unconscious, which will act itself out in and through the group. Like Jungsays, when an unconscious content is ready to be integrated, it always appearsphysically, ie- it gets dreamed up into the dreamfield. The split-off, unconsciousparts of ourselves get projected out and dreamed up by, through, and into thegroup. To again quote Jung, "everything unconscious, once it wasactivated, was projected into matter- that is to say, it approached people fromoutside." There's something about having fellow dream characters who areturned onto this realization that creates a net, or container, in which,instead of allowing the unconscious to vaporize, we can catch and anchor theunconscious content to consciousness, taking away its omnipotence and autonomy,as well as liberating the energy that was bound up in it for creativeexpression. This is true alchemy.
When someone steps into the unconscious, they are likepsychic flypaper, or an out of phase inkblot that immediately attracts people'sunconscious projections. For you cannot see the unconscious and remain apassive member of the audience, once you see the unconscious you are aparticipant in the scene, it all depends on your ability to self-reflect andassimilate what has gotten triggered in you. Any one of us being able tometabolize what has gotten activated in us helps all of our fellow dreamcharacters,, as this realization registers in the collective consciousness ofthe group (not to mention the whole universe). In a sense, this isfull-embodied, group dreamwork.
To the extent that we are disconnected and dis-associatedfrom ourselves, we are incongruent, which will evoke and attract other peoplesprojections and processes onto our out of phase inkblot, as we get dreamed intoa role in their dream, and they in ours. We unconsciously react to and amplifyin our waking dream exactly what needs to be played out so as to express inembodied form our inner process. We all project, or dream onto the inkblot oflife, connecting the dots in such a way so as to literally "dream up"into materialization our very inner process onto and as the seemingly outeruniverse, and then we become entranced by the manifestation, imagining it to beobjectively existing and separate from us. In the group, we are helping eachother to actually stay in and work through this very convincingly real andseductive situation, as this is the place where we can, in real time (thepresent moment) transmute this energy, dream the dream differently and assimilatethis unconscious content.
At any one point, just like the pendulum with thestrongest swing entrains the other pendulums, someone's (unconscious) dreamingprocess gets activated and everyone else gets dreamed into that person's dream,playing whatever roles are required for the unfoldment of that activateddreaming process. And of course, the role we get dreamed up into by the fieldis magically not only the role that others need us to play, but is at the sametime the very role we need to step into and unfold for our own deepest healing.That is simply what is happening all the time with everyone, I am talking aboutgetting a group of people who are awake to this process and creating acontainer where, instead of just acting it out unconsciously, thereby perpetuatingour woundedness, we add one key ingredient- consciousness.
Let me just say that it is not easy work. People could bestudying with me for weeks, months, and really "getting" the wholetheory of how we are all dreaming each other up, picking up roles in eachother's process so as to actually incarnate, into materialized form as our verylife itself our inner dreaming process. But once someone's unconscious isactivated, and their projections fly out onto the inkblot of the group, theyare typically not aware that they are dreaming (that the boundary has collapsedbetween inner and outer- they are then "inside" of their mind). Tothe extent that people get absorbed into their own dreaming process, they willbe unaware that what they are experiencing in embodied form as the actualprocess in the group, is itself nothing other than the materialization, theembodied expression played out in real time on the screen of their wakingconsciousness, of their own inner dreaming process. When this happens, it islike their inner wound, their trauma has blossomed out of their psyche and hasspilled into actual reality and is playing itself out on the real time stage ofthe group. People can become so entranced with the seeming "realness"of the reality that they have dreamed up that they actually decide to leave atthis point. I have seen this happen again and again, and it is happening as Iwrite this in one of my groups. It is so interesting to watch- right at thepoint they have dreamed up into seemingly solid form the very inner processthat they need to work through, they get freaked out, scared and leave. Thegroup has come up with a saying "You either change or you leave the groupand blame the group."
It's those times when the person recognizes the deeperprocess that is happening and stays, that they literally as well assymbolically, access it in a way where they can dream it through, actuallymetabolizing and assimilating part of their unconscious. It's like enacting onthe stage of life an inner process that you just needed to play out, toactually incarnate and give physical form to, doing it in the imagination alonejust wouldn't work, you had to imagine it into being. There is something aboutwhere these two worlds co-incide that is where the real healing happens.
Whenever a shadow element manifests through someone, andthey embody and act out the unconscious, instead of in a typical group, whereany sort of conflict is marginalized ("we're about love and harmony here,we can't have any conflict," which is just a reflection of how inwardlypolarized we all are towards our own darkness), in these groups, any sort ofconflict is seen to be a doorway into the deeper process- friction createslight. Like an alchemical container, there needs to be enough"pressure" for the "prima materia" to transform. To theextent that these shadow energies are consciously seen, worked with andembraced, they become integrated and literally flesh out our full-spectrum(both light and dark) holograms, which is what genuine incarnation is allabout.
Being awake to the dreamlike nature of our situation is tosee that we are all inifnite wave functions pulsating in and out of the voidevery nanosecond. I'm very interested in what you say about physics moving awayfrom the whole idea of collapsing the wave function, please let me know moreabout this if you can, for I find it to be a perfect description of whathappens when you become lucid in a dream- the way you observe the dream has aninstantaneous effect, on the way the dream manifests, as the observer isliterally the observed.
In this waking dream of ours we are, like I havesuggested, mutually collapsing each others wave functions- ie, dreaming eachother up (or down)- but in a nonlinear, acausal way, where I am dreaming youup, but you are dreaming me up to dream you up, ad infinitum as well as visaversa. In a process with no beginning in time, but rather a process thathappens outside of time itself, in no time, faster than the twinkling of aneye, we dream each other up to unconsciously act out, in embodied form ourincomplete processes. To the extent that I'm asleep to your intrinsicmulti-dimensionality (as well as my own), I will solidify your convincinglyreal manifestation, making it more probable that this will be how you willcontinue to incarnate in my waking dream, and once you manifest in this way, itconfirms to me even more my solidified view of you, so I will "dream youup" this way even more, ad infinitum, and visa versa (you are doing thesame thing to me). In addition, once you experience me as a dream character inyour dream who is solidifying you in this way, to the extent you fall asleepand get hooked by my manifestation, you will not only be more likely tomanifest in exactly that way, but you will solidify me as someone whosolidifies you, which will even more increase the probability that I will dreamyou up in that very way, ad infinitum, as well as visa versa. I am trying toget across a sense of how the dreaming up process is collaborative, circular,what Buddhism calls "interdependent co-origination." I am merelymapping and describing what is happening all of the time with everyone, onlyit's happening unconsciously. .
In the groups we are having insight into when someonemanifests in their limited, problematic identity pattern (what I call theirHalloween costume). The habitual tendency is to become entranced, as if under aspell and imagine that this is who they actually are (as their manifestation iscertainly convincing, in a full-embodied way), thereby solidifying andconcretizing their infinitely fluid multi-dimensional hologram (not to mention,solidifying ourselves in the process), which increases the probability evenmore that this is how they will continue to manifest. When we don't get hookedby their impermanent display, however, not solidifying them as being how we aremomentarily experiencing them, and then reacting to our solidified image of whowe imagine them to be as if it's objectively who they are, we discover thatthey have much more space to step out of the concretized role that theythemselves were caught in, which not only helps them but ourselves as well.This can potentially snap us out of an infinitely self-perpetuating, closedfeedback loop, an infinite regression that we were co-llaborativelyco-dreaming, as we are both able to step out of and transcend a role each of ushad been caught in. We continually re-discover that we are all mutually,interdependently dreaming up our dreaming processes together to a point wherethey synchronistically co-incide and co-rrelate, actually materializing andincarnating into and as our waking dream itself. Simply recognizing thedream-upable nature of our situation and following what this is showing usoffers us an opportunity for healing and integration that simply isn'tavailable to us by our seemingly alienated selves.
So in the groups we give each other permission to stepover our edge and speak the marginalized voice, to step into a role that thedeeper dreamfield is thirsting for someone to pick up and play. If this isindeed a mass shared dream that we are all dreaming up, then whenever someonepicks up a role in the dream, falls into their unconscious, pushes our buttons,gets into a conflict, etc, they are just getting dreamed up by the deeperdreamfield to play this out for all of us. And if this is truly a dream, if weview what is happening in this way, then this dreamlike reality of ours has nochoice but to spontaneously shape-shift and manifest in this way.
I am not in the normal role of facilitator, as I, as muchas anyone, go over my edge, sharing my struggles and step into my unconscious,becoming vulnerable and open for reflections. When I step into my unconscious,the role of facilitator needs to get picked up by someone else in the group, asnot only can I not play both these roles at once, but the facilitator isclearly just a role in the field that needn't be monopolized. When anunconscious content is in the process of getting integrated, that particularrole starts to fluidly switch between members in the group, as it is literallygetting metabolized by the group (instead of just one person all the timegetting dreamed up into the same role). This is all just dreamwork, with thedream being what happens in the group.
When an awakening in the dream groups stabilizes andconfigures in a way where a certain resonance is created, it is what I call an"in-phase dreaming circle," which is actually an organism of ahigher-dimension. Instead of there being, for example, ten seemingly separateselves who are imagining that they are alien to each other, imagine if theseten seemingly separate selves woke up and recognized that they areinterconnected and parts of one another (reflections of each other, each other'sdream characters).
Furthermore, when these awakening in the dream groups arecontemplated as a symbol that has precipitated into and out of the dreamfield,they are recognized to be what I call microcosmic fractals, reflecting a deeperprocess of awakening that is available both individually and collectively, as aplanet. What is happening in the groups is then realized to be an evolutionaryquantum leap of human consciousness that has crystallized into materializedform in this waking dream of ours.
A healer, Paul Levy is a spiritual and political activist. Heis in private practice, helping other people who are also spiritually awakeningto the dream-like nature of reality. He can be reached at
© 2005 Paul Levy