In this unit you will learn…
What the basic life issue protocol looks like
Life Issue Interviewing Protocol
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
1.
2.
3.
Select the one that is most important for you at present.
What feeling or feelings does it evoke in you? Use a feeling word or words to describe it: happy, sad, scared, confused, angry, jealous, anxious, depressed, joyful..
If this feeling were a color, what would it be?
Imagine that color filling the space in front of you so that it has depth, height, and width.
Now imagine that expanse of color congealing into a shape. What shape does it take? An animal? Human? Entity? Plant? What?
Don’t think about it; there’s no right answer! Be spontaneous! Just say the first shape that comes to mind…
Now proceed to interview the shape, answering spontaneously. If you pause that is you trying to figure out the “right” answer and attempting to control the process.
(Character,) would you please tell me what you look like and what you are doing?
What do you like most about yourself ? What are your strengths?
What do you dislike most about yourself? What are your weaknesses?
What aspect of your human are you most like?
(Character,) if you could change yourself in any way you wanted, would you? If so, how would you change?
(Character,) if you chose to change, is that really what you want to do or is that something your human would like to see happen? Only change if that is something you want for yourself!
Character, if you chose to change, answer the following questions as your changed self. If you did not change, continue to answer as who and what you were before:
(Character,) How do you score yourself 0-10 in the following six core qualities? “O” lower numbers are a lower score and higher scores are not necessarily better. Lower scores can sometime be better.
Confidence means an absence of fear and self-doubt;
Compassion is caring for others;
Wisdom is not smarts but a knowingness of being in the right place at the right time;
Acceptance applies to both yourself and to others, and those may differ;
Inner peace is the absence of distress;
Witnessing is the ability to stand back and watch the drama of your life, thoughts and feelings go by.
Confidence: 0-10:
Why?
Compassion: 0-10
Why?
Wisdom: 0-10
Why?
Acceptance: 0-10
Why?
Inner Peace: 0-10
Why?
Witnessing: 0-10
Why?
(Character,) If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her, would you live it differently? If so, how?
(Character,) If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle his/her three life issues differently? If so, how?
(Character,) Do you have different or the same life issues? What life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his/her life?
(Character,) In what life situations would it be most beneficial for your human to imagine that s/he is you and act as you would?
Thank you (Character!) Now here are some questions for your human:
(Dreamer,) what have you heard yourself say?
If this /experience were a wake-up call from your life compass, what do you think it would be saying to you?
If this experience were a wake-up call for the world, how might humanity change if it listened to it?
What have you learned from this experience? How can you use it in your waking life?
Look at the recommendations your Character made. List them:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Which one or two are most helpful for you? Which do you think would be most life changing? Take at least one recommendation and operationalize it. That means apply the SMART formula to it. How can you make it
Specific?
Measurable?
Achievable?
Relevant?
Time-based?
Contract with a fellow student or intern of IDL to be your accountability partner. Share with them how you want to be held accountable for applying and testing your chosen recommendation to see if IDL really does improve your life in meaningful ways. Help your partner via daily or weekly email or video contacts to do the same.
Why IDL interviews life issues
IDL started off as a way to investigate what dreams looked like from the perspectives of different characters and elements in dreams, as a transpersonal dream yoga, interviewing dreams in 1980. It wasn’t until some years later that it became apparent that these interviewed dream characters did not differentiate between waking and dreaming the way we normally do. From their perspective, life was all waking or all dreaming. Therefore, it became obvious that just as interviewed dream characters dealt with waking life issues, so life issues could themselves be personified and life issues important to us could be directly interviewed.
Interviewing life issues has its advantages and disadvantages. An obvious advantage is to gain different and often creative and helpful alternate framings and perspectives in areas where we are stuck. Because this help is coming from interior or intrasocial perspectives that know us better than any exterior professional or expert possibly could, these perspectives are likely to be relevant and helpful, even if they do not reflect the breadth of knowledge or experience of an expert. (This is why IDL recommends consulting both interior and objective sources of objectivity.)
A disadvantage of interviewing life issues is that the focus is on where we are stuck, what our priorities are. These may be different from where interviewed dream characters and elements are stuck or view us as stuck. This is an important reason why IDL encourages the interviewing of both dream characters and the personifications of life issues.
How IDL interviews life issues
IDL interviews life issues by attempting to mimic the process by which our night time dreams are created.
Every night we go to sleep with a certain mood and certain preoccupations from issues of the previous day. Dreams process these moods and issues and attempt to integrate or “digest” them into the overall fabric of our lives. This process of going to sleep with the events and feelings of our day as the background and fuel for our dreams is a type of informal dream incubation. Instead of going to sleep with a conscious intention set regarding what we want to dream about, as is done in formal dream incubation, we normally and naturally do informal dream incubation. We might think of our emotional and issue preoccupations as the intent or intentions that we take into our sleep and dreams, whether or not we are aware that we are doing so.
When we dream these intentions, issues, and feelings combine and are depicted in ways that are not chosen or understood by us. IDL calls the source of this intrinsically creative process “Dream Consciousness.” Think of it as the context, holon, or perspective that creates or generates your dreams. It is a process, a verb, not an entity, thing, or noun. It is not a god, angel, or demon. It is a purely naturalistic process.
Interviewing life issues begins by attempting to respect and follow this naturalistic process. It does so by stating life issues, which parallel the intentions, emotions, and issues that you normally have in the background of your awareness when you go to sleep. It then associates the most salient with an emotion or emotions because the dream creation process appears to do something similar: take our intentions and associate them with emotions in the creative process. Once we name an emotion we amplify it by arbitrarily associating it with some color. This mimics the dream process of congealing intent and emotion into form. When we surround ourselves with that color that helps us identify with form associated with the issue-related emotion. Then, when we allow that color to congeal into a shape we are mimicking the dream process of congealing intention, emotion, and issues into dream characters and elements.
For students new to IDL interviewing, it often helps to suggest ask, “If the color that is surrounding you were to become an animal, what animal would it be? The reason for this is that children’s dreams are full of animals. We seem to have an innate tendency to associate animals with emotions. Also, because our emotions were associated easily and often with animals as children, we are attempting to make the process of generating and becoming the personification of a life issue normal and natural, by drawing on innate human developmental processes, even if we left them behind years ago.
Different varieties of life issue protocols
While the protocol provided above can be used with any sort of life issue, it can be slightly modified to deal with specific conditions and subjects. For example, when interviewing a somatic complaint the personification may already be there, jumping out at you: You have a “hammering headache.” Interview the hammer. You have “burning in your stomach.” Interview the fire. You have a “gnawing pain.” Interview the rat or other gnawing critter.
There is also a distinct protocol for interviewing children. The initial aspects of the adult interview protocols for dreams and life issues are the same, but the children’s protocol uses simpler language. You can find the children’s dream protocol here. You can find the children’s life issue protocol here. All of the various interviewing formats can be found under “Questionnaires” in the main site menu. Just click on “here” in the one you choose from the list and it will take you to that protocol.
How to use life issue interviewing as you move through the IDL curricula
IDL interviewing of life issues is designed to provide you with alternative authentic and useful perspectives onto the life challenges that you and your family, friends, and clients face. In addition, each interview is set in the context of the skill set you are focusing on in your studies: healing, balancing, or transformation, and then the modules associated with each of these. For healing, those are scripting, exiting toxic drama, and clear thinking. For increasing balance, those are goal setting, assertiveness, and problem solving. For transformation, those are interviewing, meditation, pranayama, and setting intent.
Depending on what module and unit you are currently working on, look at the information in your interviews through that lens. For example, if you are working on understanding life positions in the associated script unit, Ask yourself, “What does this interview have to tell me about my life position? If you are working on learning Naming meditation, ask, “What do the perspectives of my interviewed characters have to tell me about meditative consciousness? How might they approach meditation? Use your interviews of dreams in a similar way. Encourage the students that you interview to look at their interviews in the context of this or that related aspect of healing, balancing, and transformation, depending on their focus.
Assignments and Homework
Reading:
Under “Essays and Interviews,” read:
Videos:
Quizlet Self-Tests
https://quizlet.com/870723617/interviewing-101-unit-1-interviewing-overview-flash-cards/?i=abkcr&x=1jqY
Interviewing
Because IDL interviewing facillitates healing, balancing, and transformation it accompanies every unit of every module of the Coaching, Practitioner, and Trainer curricula. It functions as a lens through which you will approach the material that you learn and the skills that you practice in your life and with others.
Because we grow better and more rapidly when we do so with others, IDL uses Team learning. Use the dream interviewing protocol to interview yourself and others. Trade interviews of dreams with one or more team member. This way you will not only experience being interviewed but develop confidence in your own ability to interview others. Submit your written interviews to your supervising team member. To have your interviews automatically created for you, use the on-line interviewing format on this site. Keep track of the interviews you do by listing the following: Name of the interview Date Who/What interviewed Major Recommendations Choose one or more recommendation from your interviews to apply and monitor.
Questions
- Write down your answers to the following questions.
- Share your answers with your other study team members.
- Discuss.
- Submit your written answers to your team supervisor.
Which of the above purposes of IDL interviewing are most important for you? Why? Which of the above purposes of IDL interviewing are least important for you? Why? Are there other unnamed purposes or benefits that you experience or that you are aware of? If so, what are they? How are they important? How does familiarity with the above purposes of IDL interviewing change, affect, or broaden your interviewing of others? How would you rate the usefulness of this unit 0-10? Why? How can it be improved? Meet with your team at least once a week.
Setting Intent
What do you want to take away from this unit to improve your life?
How would you like it to influence your dreams tonight?
How can you format that as a statement of intention to read over to remind yourself, before you go to sleep, to incubate in your dreams tonight?
