Free Course on the Five Star Method Available from DreamStar

If you're interested in learning the FiveStar Method of dream analysis, but aren't interested in receiving CEs or the Certificate in Dream Study, you can take the free version that can be found in the course management area of the DreamStar site, at www.dreamanalysistraining.com/moodle2. You can login to the 7-module course without cost, and participate fully in the learning process, which includes posting in the DreamStar Cafe--the course discussion forum. I hope you will join me there!

FYI, the FiveStar Method originated in my early work in lucid dreaming back in the 70s, and evolved in the context of doing psychotherapy since the early 80s. Of course, I think it's the best approach around, but if you're a therapist or coach, I think you will find it especially conducive to the competency-based orientation of modern therapy and coaching. 

Galantamine and Meditation-induced Lucid Dreams

10/2/13

For over a year now, I have been using galantamine––an extract of the snow drop lily––along with meditation as a catalyst for lucid dreaming. I have found that the combination of the two results in a lucid dream almost 100% of the time. Dreams have been long, visually stunning, and sometimes full of light and deep interpersonal connectedness. But not always. In the past three years, I’ve experienced darkness in most of my longer, more memorable dreams. Whether lucid or not, darkness has been a predominant quality of my dream life. I have wondered whether it was an existential element, signifying decline and the approaching end-of-life, or whether it was, from alchemical standpoint, the deepening of the mystery my journey. I often find myself groping through dreams of darkness trying to find my way, only to suddenly see a brilliant light that dwarfs the previous darkness. It may signify that I have come to a point in my life where there is no clear authority, no clear direction. I’m reminded of Dante’s opening statement to his Divine Comedy which goes something like: "In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood, and the true way was wholly lost."  Here are a few other lucid dream highlights of the past month and a half. With all of these have followed ingestion of 8 mg of galantamine, usually in the latter half of the night.

 In one dream that lasts a very long time, I find myself in a beautiful setting surrounded by old buildings that are exquisitely beautiful.  As I have often thought of late during such lucid dreams, the texture of the visual imagery is so rich and complex that I reflect on how impossible it seems that my mind alone could be creating it. I seem to cross a threshold into an area where there is more of a gathering of people in some kind of deeply purposeful activity. I’ve since forgotten all that I experienced, but the experience seemed to last for an hour. I do recall being with some artists  who were creating the most exquisitely beautiful jewelry and sculpture that was mounted on the wall and hanging from the ceiling. Some of it was constructed from precious jewels of bright and vibrant colors, and the light shone through it in a spellbinding way.

In another one, I become aware that I’m dreaming and I go and look for light or encounters with higher beings. I find a small village in the countryside, and walk-through the village for a while before concluding that what I’m looking for is not there. I turn and push off and begin flying up through the trees toward the south and come upon a old cathedral or castle. I find myself inside this huge stone enclosure, which has windows that are not rectangular, but more the shape of a keyhole or some curvilinear opening. However, I cannot pass through the windows nor do I find any doorway through which I can gain access to the outside again. I hear voices and look in through a window, and see people milling around below me. I’m up high as if on the second floor or near the ceiling of his stone building. I finally decided since I’m dreaming, I will simply go through the wall and so I do. As I passed through the southern wall I enter a dark wood, which only has a slight greenness to the darkness, and a slight mottled quality to the otherwise amorphous dark field. I grope through the darkness looking for the master. Suddenly I feel an arm and I’m shocked by the presence of another person. I can suddenly see, and see that there is a woman between me and Julie, who was sleeping. The woman is unknown to me, so I asked her who she is. She tells me her name which I’ve since forgotten. I asked her why she is there. She says that she’s come to make sure that robots do not take over the earth. She goes on to tell me that she’s from another star system and introduces me to a small group of people who have come from her star system to visit our world. When I expressed interest in visiting her world, I’m told that it’s best that I remain where I am because my work is here not there. In another experience, I am drifting off to sleep after meditation. I hear the energy, which I’ve heard all my life when I’m on the verge of leaving my body. The Tibetan Buddhists refer to it as the “gift waves,” and believe that it signifies the presence of a master. Robert Monroe, author of Journeys out of the Body said that he could not leave his body if the energy was not present. It’s been happening quite often lately as a byproduct of the meditation-plus-galantamine regimen that I’ve been doing about once or twice a week. Anyway, when the energy rises, it comes in waves as if a valve is opening and closing. But it responds to my state of mind, and if I meditate upon it, it becomes more intense and eventually flattens out into a constant stream of energy. I do this, and as the energy increases, I feel pressure on my back as if someone is clinging to my back. He or she seems to hold on more and more tightly, so I whisper to it, “I’m not afraid of you.” I feel absolutely no fear at all, a fact which I marvel at.  The being says something to me, which I cannot understand through the sound of the energy. Then I reach up and grab it with my hand and pull it over my shoulder. It tumbles off the bed onto the floor and so do I. I see that it’s a small black cuddly animal of some sort, resembling a small bear or pig with fur.  It seems startled that I have been so bold, and it scurries away before I can take it in hand. Julie is sleeping nearby, and the dream ends.

 In last night’s dream, I was supposed to be speaking on dream work in front of an audience of about 100 people.  The meeting room was very tastefully done, and part of a larger community center comprised of many such auditoriums. I leave the room for a few minutes for some reason, but when I try to return I cannot find the room that I’m supposed to be in. I open two doors, only to find that there are other classes or presentations underway. I am confused and lost in this rather rich interpersonal setting. People are everywhere, and I simply milled through the crowd looking for the place that I’m supposed to be in. At some point, I become aware that I’m dreaming. I continue walking about exploring and observing the interpersonal dynamics around me the buildings in the rooms. I go through several doors, only to find myself increasingly unattractive and tiny rooms. I finally decide simply to fly through the wall and leave the place, and so I do. As I pushed to the wall, I find myself up high as if I’m on the third floor of a building flying over a very attractive grassy open expanse. Below me I see many people who are visiting and enjoying each other in a kind of unorganized social setting. I go down to be with them, and I playfully show them that I can fly. I then go up in the air higher and higher looking for the light, which I do not see in this dream.

Would I recommend using galantamine?  On one hand, all that it does is to increase acetylcholine, which is a necessary neurotransmitter that increases cognitive performance.  It’s not a controlled substance, and has no serious side effects. You may experience headaches and indigestion if you're a sensitive type (like me), but that’s about it. It has been used effectively to treat mild to moderate dementia in Europe, so if you're forgetting things, hey, you might reap a double benefit. The prescription Alzheimer's drug Aricep accomplishes the same thing (i.e. it's a cholinesterase inhibitor, or impedes the breakdown of acetylcholine), and has been shown to induce lucid dreams in a very high percentage of people who take it, as reported recently in Stumbrys, Erlacher, Shadlich, and Shredl's important survey of lucid dream induction method (Consciousness and Cognition, 21 (2012)), which is available online at www.elsevier.com/locate/concog.
I believe that any artificial means for inducing lucid dreams needs to be paired with spiritual practice. My wife asked me just the other day, for instance, what was the purpose of becoming lucid?  Good question!! I mean, what's wrong with ordinary life? Since the very beginning of my work with lucid dreaming back in the early 1970s, I have always been concerned about the wholesale promotion of lucid dreaming without regard for a higher purpose for the journey. So, if you’re going to use galantamine, I recommend pairing it with some form of spiritual practice so that whatever it stimulates or awakens in your dream life occurs in a context of seeking something above and beyond your own ego’s desires. If the ego is at the helm, all kinds of detractors will rise up to challenge you. But if the master is driving the ship, well, you're in much better hands whether on sunny beaches or in the midst of a cyclone. But once you feel satisfied that the endeavor is legitimate, you might want to try 8 mg of gulantamine in the middle of the night. I usually take it around 4:00 AM, meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, and then returned to sleep for a couple of hours. As I’ve said, it works almost 100% of the time for me. But then again, I don’t do it every night. It’s been found that the effect of gulantamine  wears off if you use it too often. A good source is HealthSupplement Wholesalers.com. Let me know how you do!
By the way, please take advantage of my free course on learning to use the FiveStar Method of dream analysis--an approach to dreams based on my early research into lucid dreaming--at www.dreamanalysistraining.com/moodle2. I have just launched the Course Management System, which includes the Certificate of Dream Study training program.

The Importance of Not Seeing too Directly into the Beauty of the Soul

I introduced my lucid dream about the veiled women to raise the question, Why the veiling of their presumed beauty? The first wore a dark mask, the second a blue fabric veil. It reminds me of Robert Johnson's analysis of the myth of Tristan and Isolde in his book We. Johnson argues that the relationship with the anima (or animus) should remain "chaste" and not eroticized. As you may recall, Tristan's fate all turns on whether he will have sex with Isolde the Fair, King Mark's queen. Well, they do, and all hell breaks loose. Until then, the relationship is magical and potent; but afterward war breaks out and Tristan's future is dark.

If the relationship to the inner self becomes eroticized and exploited, then the image of the soul is projected onto the world, and becomes identified with a real person. This is a burdemsome, impossible mission for the carrier of the projection, and she/he will surely fail in living out that expectation. Johnson says that by maintining a chaste relationship with the inner self, and by having a sexual relationship with a "real" person (Isolde the White), the Tristan within us lives out a balanced life in which his soulfulness gets expressed in creativity, feeling, imagination, and the like.

I have found that in my deepest lucid dreams, my feelings for the characters (who are, sometim, esperhaps actual souls) are hard to describe: they are so deep, so timeless. Holding the woman in the black mask gave me a feeling of having "come home." But it was not my home, at least for now. By not being able to see her, some degree of mystery remained, and a necessary distance was preserved. Johnson might say that I was fortunate not to see the face, for I may have overly personalized that moment. The lucid dream in all of its intensity and felt reality could have effectively fixated me on the image of her face. That connection with the soul, while being perhaps the "best thing we have," may also be the rocks upon which our ship goes to ground. In the Odyseus, Ulysses wants to hear the song of the sirens, but he is wise enough to have his men tie him to the mast of the ship. Without that grounding, the relationship with the anima can overwhelm the ego and find its expression in the external world, to our detriment. So it is grace itself that inserts a certain obliqueness into the relationship with the inner self, in order to keep our attention oriented to the real world, and committed to real relationships that can afford us what we need in this world of form and necessary compromise. If Tristan could only have been content with Isolde the White, his wife, it would have been a near-perfect world, but the vision of the anima lured him into thinking it could be a perfect world, and that is always an ill-fated belief.

Why Are Some Dreams Veiled?

Freud believed that dreams were purposefully obscure, distorted by an array of defenses that would permit the reprehensible urges of the id to be vented through the avenue of the dream while protecting the dream ego from the stark truth.  This view of dreams has been largely overturned by the "continuity hypothesis," in which research has shown that dreams generally parallel waking state content. But if dreams are, as Jung said, "the message," and not some oblique reference to the truth, then why do some dreams seem to veil the truth? I think we have to turn to Robert Johnson's work to understand the following dream.

As a backdrop, I have been having a series of hour-long lucid dreams during the past couple of months. They are very deep and beautiful, full of darkness and radiance. The following one was particularly memorable and raises the possibility, once again, that the dream protects the dreamer from a direct apprehension of the truth. Here is the dream. Note the "veiling" of the female figures.

I am in darkness. I seem to be on a rocky ledge next to a stone or cement wall. I run my hands up and down the wall, and sense that it curves around to the left, perhaps defining a circular room. I reach up and feel the top of the wall. It’s about a foot wide, and has some loose stones on top. I push some of the loose rubble over the other side, and hear it hit water on the other side. I come down off the ledge and find myself with a woman in the darkness, with whom I immediately feel a profound, resonance. It’s as if we belong together for all eternity. Just being with her brings me unutterable joy and solace. We lie beside each other, holding each other in the dark. As the room becomes brighter, I look at her face and I’m shocked to see that it’s pitch black. I look more closely and see that her face is covered by what appears to be a black leather, close-fitting mask. I think, it doesn’t matter how she looks beneath the mask: I love her anyway. Then I am lucid and exploring a rich nighttime setting. I enter a room full of people, who know that I do not belong there. A woman, who seems to be their leader, challenges me. I decide to prove that I am dreaming, and from another plane, so I manage to levitate after overcoming my mental resistance to believing that I can. As I float up to the ceiling and float back down, the people are impressed, and no longer challenge me. Another woman appears, who says to me that the second woman made a mistake, and didn’t realize who I was. I feel deeply connected to the new woman, but in a different way. She seems to be my guide in this realm, and she begins to lead me through an array of settings. Sometimes she seems to be with me, and sometimes she leaves me for a while. At one point, I am in a room full of brilliant jewels and light sources, so I try to commune with the light. But as before, every time I stare at a light source, it shuts down. So I see a lamp-like light source to my left, so instead of looking directly at it, I get close to it, turn my eyes down and close them. I try to open myself to it, and my vision starts to brighten until my whole visual field is bright white with a subtle pattern throughout. The woman reappears, and I notice that she is shrouded in a blue veil, which is a medium blue with a dark blue thread of subtle design running through it. I ask her how she manages to remain covered. She laughs and says that it’s necessary for now, and that don’t worry--she can kiss and eat! The blue veil is actually very beautiful. I am alone again amid a lot of people. I realize that I’ve been in the lucid dream for a very long time, and wonder when it will come to an end. Suddenly, the people take on a uniform pale appearance and begin to sing a dirge-like song. The woman appears right before my face, and kisses me goodbye. Then I find myself back in bed.

I will comment on this dream in the next couple of days. But in the meantime, you might ask yourself, "why the veiling?" Was it somehow necessary for the dreamer's protection, and further development? Why? I have my own ideas, but since I'm the dreamer, I might be the best judge, not matter what people say about the dreamer being the ultimate authority on the dream. Dreams come to illuminate our blind spots. I am not sure that makes the dreamer the best judge!

I just returned from the annual conference of the IASD. What a great conference, and what great friends! Each year, the conference experience becomes richer and richer as I get to know fellow dream workers better, and follow their work as it develops.

After attending more presentations than I ever have, and delivering two of my own, I have decided to incorporate a modification into the FSM: a projective dream work segment. In my efforts to make the FSM client-centered, and process oriented (non-interpretive), I believe that I may have unwittingly limited the method, at least when it comes to group applications.

So...it's a simple modification. When the group has done its disciplined work in steps 1-3, which by the way includes the provision for "If this were my dream, I would have responded..." in step three (but in terms of response, not interpretation), I will suggest that the group be encouraged to engage in "vicarious appropriation" during steps 4 and 5, as long as the dreamer goes first in step 4. Jung was pretty adamant in saying that amplification is a relational process, given our connection on a collective level, even though the primary source of associations should be the dreamer. So the dialogue should enrichen the process.

It's always a matter of respect, and good leadership, regardless of the "rules" of a given method. As Henry Reed so aptly and provocatively said during his presentation at IASD, "no one's safe." With that in mind, we can do our best to create a methodology that is as safe as its deeply interpersonal.

I will be describing this in more detail in the certification course in the next few weeks, and creating a video of this process as soon as I can manage to do so. I'm teach a course on Advanced Techniques in Counseling in July, and will be introducing the FSM for individual and group work, and I hope to be able to video one of our sessions. Of course, confidentiality is an issue, so I've got to work that out.

Against Interpretation

In Susan Sontag's most famous essay, "Against Interpretation," she wrote,

Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can't admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.

Most approaches to dream analysis uphold the idea that the dreamer, rather than the dream worker, is the ultimate authority on the meaning of the dream.  While leaving the interpretation up to the dreamer is on the surface a good way to avoid the biases or "projections" of the dream worker, it doesn't solve the underlying problem that gives rise to invasive projections. Sontag argues that the deeper fallacy is to  pursue interpretation in the first place. That is, she says that the real error is treating art (and dreams) as equivalent to their "content," and then setting about to reveal what that content is. The content is usually thought of as the dream's assumed "symbolized" meaning. For Freud, it was the disguised hedonistic desire to express some unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses. For Jung, it was the individuation urge expressing itself through archetypes, or the compensating function of the psyche attempting to restore balance. For art, it's the artist's conscious or unconscious message that they intend to convey through the form. But regardless it has to be "revealed," and that's where interpretation comes in.

It is very hard to overturn two millenia of thinking about understanding dreams. The mind synthesizes what it sees and renders it meaningful if it can. But there is an alternative to the revelation of the dream's underlying content. It is simply put, an exploration of the relationship between dreamer and dream imagery. This dimension is already largely revealed by the story or narrative that the dreamer reports upon awakening, but is largely overlooked when the intent of the analyticial process is to reveal something that is not already manifest. By focusing on the relationship, we stay  tethered to what is actually there, and what is actually happening. When we add our associations to the imagery, using noninvasive methods such as amplification or Gestalt dialoguing in the larger context of exploring the dreamer-dream relationships, we arrive at a holistic approach that is phenomenologically congruent with the dreamer's own experience. We don't abandon the dreamer's story or alter it with our analytical brilliance, all in the name of "disclosing it's true meaning." To put it in Sontag's words again:

What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation.

The Dreamer's Global Response Set--Very Important Concept

The distinction between content-focused dream work and process-oriented dream analysis that the former focuses on visual content, and latter examines the dreamer-dream relationship. Questions that were never asked now become central in the "cocreative paradigm." I have recently introduced the term "imagery change analysis" to describe how our work with dream imagery needs to reflect the constant changes in the content that are mirrored by the changes in dreamer response. Which comes first? Since the dreamer is our "client," not the imagery, we would do well always to make the dreamer's response the "first cause" in the creation of the dream. But, of course, in any real relationship, the circular or reciprocal dynamic between participants is in constant motion.

The dreamer's response is more than what he or she does in the dream. It's always everything that the dreamer brings to the relationship. I have recently termed it the dreamers' "global response set" in order to get beyond the connotation that the dreamer's responses are merely behavioral. What we want to do is to encourage the dreamer to examine his or her beliefs, feelings, fears, assumptions, etc. that predispose the dream ego to take a particular stance in relationship to what is emerging in the dream imagery. This is a fertile line of inquiry, because it opens the dreamer's eyes to how he or she "sets up" the dreamer-dream relationship. For instance, if a dreamer--once becoming lucid--always flies away from conflict (as one client once reported), the dream worker can examine the assumptions that give rise to this behavior. What fears, desires, etc. prompt her to do that? What experiences in her life form the backdrop to this predictable response? It may turn out that someone who reflexively avoids the dream encounter has been mistreated in some way, and still suffers wounds that have not healed. This analysis, rather than "blaming the dreamer" allows the dream work to assume a compassionate attitude toward any non-constructive behavior, since it seeks to find the reason that such action seems to still make sense to the dream ego.

I have written about "chronic adaptive responses" in a paper that is posted on the DreamStar site. It's titled, "Understanding Adaptive Responses in the Analysis of Dreams from the Standpoint of Cocreative Dream Theory," and forms part of the curriculum for the new Certificate of Dream Study program. Understanding how repetitive dream responses can be traced to early experience is a very valuable tool in helping the dreamer expand beyond a narrow range of relational capacity. Please take a look at this paper at http://www.dreamanalysistraining.com/offsite/offsite-8/page30/page30.html