Personal Narrative: My Unknown Woman

relaxation practice that works for you. If not then simply close your eyes and pay attention to your breath. Once you feel calm and centered, visualize a scene from your dream. Visualize it as clearly as you can, clarify details of color and texture. Stay with that scene and see if anything spontaneously changes or evolves. It is important not to try to influence the events, people or things in the dream but it is sometimes helpful to try to interact with them. Using my “Unknown Woman” dream as an example, I might want to go back into the dream and look more closely at the book my friend gave me, to see if I notice anything new about it. However, I would not make a conscious decision to have the book show me something in particular. I might

Bring dream reality a little more into the day, so that your waking mind is reminded of it and will continue to chew it over. A woman in my dream group dreamed about a wedding at which there was a particular kind of lace decorating the walls. Another member of the group happened to find some similar lace at a garage sale and gave it to the dreamer. She put it up in a place where she would inevitably see it every morning. This kept the atmosphere of the dream with her while she sorted through it 's meaning.

Telling your dreams to others

“The unconscious intends that dreams be difficult to unravel because it wants us to think about them. To remember them. The unconscious doesn 't say that you can 't ask for help”.—Cormac McCarthy (2017)

Getting help from someone in understanding your dream is often enlightening. It’s not usually a great idea to casually tell your dreams to other people. Dreams are not entertaining small talk. They are communications from a deep part of yourself. Be thoughtful about who you share these communications with. If someone gives you a flippant or judgmental response to a dream, make a note to yourself that this is not someone who knows how to respond usefully to a dream. Don 't tell that person another dream. Along the same lines, don 't show your dream journal to anyone except people you have decided are good at helping with