You Are the Images in Your Dreams

You are the witch and the monster.     This may be a hard pill to swallow if you are used to doing what we all love to do, which is to blame everyone else for our problems.    How could that thief or killer be me in the dream?    How could my boss who fired me be me in the dream?   You are the hurricane and you are the tsunami.   Furthermore, you are Snow White and you are the Evil Queen.    You are Red Riding Hood, and you are the Grandmother, and you are the Big Bad Wolf.    The Big Bad Wolf is you.    Get used to the idea that you are Mr. Big Bad. The poisonous snake in your dream is the poisonous snake in you. It is killing your life and it is killing you.

Blaming is a huge epidemic and probably the main reason why the science of psychology is so slow in comparison to other sciences.    Blaming puts the burden of responsibility for change on the Soviet Union.    It takes our attention away from the inner work and then asks that our mothers and fathers change so that we can feel good about ourselves.    Here is the bad news.   The Soviet Union changed, but we didn’t.   If you honestly believe that sending your perpetrator to jail is going to improve your life, you are in for a lot more pain.    Imagining that you are Snow White who is a victim of jealousy and deception leaves you vulnerable for a hoard of other evil queens.   Getting out of blame and into taking responsibility is a huge step.   Most of the world practices blame as a way of life and a way to advance.    It is how you get elected president in most countries.   If you are elected president by pointing out the faults of everyone around, then what are you going to do when you get into office?   Exactly.  You will do nothing but pointing fingers at other people, blaming them for all of the problems and then going to war with them.  This is because you haven’t accepted who you are, The Big Bad Wolf.

Consider the following dream.

I was trying to help a girl escape from a government-controlled zombie so I kicked him in the balls so we could run away. I kicked so hard that I actually kicked in real life and it woke me up. I was so surprised.

 There are three figures in the dream.   There is the dreamer, the girl she is trying to help escape, and the zombie.    It is such an elegant process to think of yourself as all three.

First I would like to share a little aside about waking up in a dream.    Several years ago I noticed that a lot of times when people would tell me their dreams they would end up the expression, and then I woke up.    I became very interested as to why so many people have this experience, so then I asked myself if “waking up” was a metaphor just like everything else in a dream.    I wondered if waking up from the dream was when they woke up in their lives because negative experience is often the thing that causes us to change our patterns.   When I started using it with the dream work, it was very helpful to me and to them because I could identify the exact time when they got a wake-up call in their lives.     So you could say that the wake-up call for this dreamer is when she kicked the zombie in the balls.

Above all else I use the quality of curiosity when I deal with the dreaming and transformation processes.   Curiosity is the quality of being able to wonder.   The lead-in is being able to say,  “I wonder what that means.”    In the dreamer’s process I ask myself how kicking the zombie in the balls was a wake up call to her.   She felt surprised which seems to be a very positive feeling in the dream.   The dream says that she woke up in her life when she realized that she could kick a government-controlled zombie in the balls and get away.    This has to be a very empowering feeling.  The dream wants her to remember that the way you get away from a government-controlled zombie is by kicking them in the balls metaphorically speaking.  She also says that she kicked so hard that she kicked in real life meaning she kicked while she was in bed.   This further reinforces the idea that what she was doing in the dream is what she did in real life.  It was so strong that it woke her up with surprise.   She must have thought that was very capable to getting rid of zombies.

Despite the fact that the dream work will take her to realizing that she has an aspect of herself that is zombie-like, there is a very helpful stage ahead of it, which is to find out when she has run into government-controlled zombies in the past, kicked them in the balls, and helped herself and maybe others to escape.   It is ok to jump right ahead to taking responsibility for being a government-controlled zombie inwardly.  Some people can do it, but most of us need to identify the zombies outside of ourselves first.

Where or when in my life have a kicked some government-controlled zombies in the balls?

Having already worked with this woman before I know that whenever she didn’t like the way her life or education was going, she metaphorically kicked the system in the balls and got out with the girl which means that she got out with herself who is the girl in the dream.   In a way you can say that she was empowered to see that what she was experiencing in school was being lead by government-controlled zombies.   By kicking them in the metaphoric balls she was able to leave the system and get positive results by doing something else.  If something wasn’t working for her, she just kicked it in the balls, started finding an alternative solution, and then was very successful.     If school was not working for her, she was always able to find an alternative solution.   She saw the government-controlled zombie-like situation for what it was.  As a result she got the education she wanted.

In dreams that are partially negative and partially positive the positive parts are there to teach you that you have positive resources inside of yourself that you can use in new circumstances to overcome the current problem.    In dreams that are entirely negative like in a nightmare the process of development is from the very beginning.    She does not need to learn a new process in this case.  She simply needs to kick her own zombieness in the balls.   The proper term for kicking a zombie in the balls would be the feeling of empowerment to take control over one’s life and then act on what is best for your true self.

Why is she having the dream right now?  

This is a vital question.   It is the one I am usually the most interested in, and the one that demands curiosity at its maximum.   If she can see that she has the inward ability to take control over her life and find alternatives that work, what are the circumstances right now in her life that make the girl under threat again?  If this were my dream, I would want to know what the threat is.   When you have a half and half dream, some negative and some positive, you know that it is ok to do the full responsibility work for the zombie inside.    This is an important distinction.   Totally negative dreams mean that there is an outer threat as well an inner threat, that you have to do a lot of inner work to be able to face the threat that exists in the real world outside of yourself.    Half and half dreams mean that the threat is coming much more from inside of yourself rather than from the outer world.   You are your own worst enemy.    When you do the work on a half and half dream, the positive energy remains fixed permanently in your life becoming unmovable and unforgettable.     When you only do enough transformation to deal with your current situation in the outer world, then the energy may come and go.    When you recognize that you are the zombie and you change it from that standpoint, you will always be able to kick the zombie in the balls.   You will always be able to take control of your life and leave your current circumstances for better alternatives.

How do I do being a government-controlled zombie inside?   A government-controlled zombie always has the same structure so when she solves this riddle for herself, then the whole world is cured of being this way.   This is one of the reasons she has the dream.   If she can escape from being a government-controlled zombie, she can help the whole world.      The way people become zombies is that they unconsciously accept whatever the culture says is the right way to do things and then they just do them.   They don’t question the culture because the culture is always right.    When you are a zombie inside yourself, you are just going along with your current circumstances as if they are right ones even when they are not working.  Most people who are stuck with being zombies believe that they are just not working hard or long enough.    They think that if they work harder, everything will be better, but it just always gets worse over time when you are a zombie.   It really affects relationships.   Zombies try to work harder, but don’t usually work on improving the relationships with others.

What can I do to transition to the positive pattern of “kicking the government-controlled zombie in the balls”?   The most important realization is that there are some current patterns in my life that are just not working.  I can believe that I have the power to change my circumstances.   I start looking for other alternative ways to solve the problems I am having.   I can just act on them.   New solutions are available and I can be open to them and find them.

 Who am I when I can kick the government-controlled zombie in the balls?    I am very empowered and feel control over my own life.   I look for new solutions and alternative ways to do things.   I act decisively on solutions that are better for me.