In this unit you will learn why…
Why IDL asks questions
Integral Deep Listening interviewing is built around asking questions. Why? There are other common alternatives to asking questions, including observation and drawing conclusions, analysis, interpretation, and experiential interaction. While questioning is foundational to the medical model, in the process of gathering a history, that questioning is used to arrive at a diagnosis and then to construct a treatment plan. That is not how or why IDL asks questions.
Asking questions accesses additional information. That information clarifies, corrects misunderstandings, challenges or confirms assumptions and interpretations, It puts the questioner in a receptive, responsive mode rather than in a powerful, confident, and reactive mode. Questioning reflects a higher order confidence based on not needing to assume or pretend we know what is best for another person or even for ourselves. It puts us in an open and receptive space, which is phenomenological. In it we can suspend our assumptions and interpretations in order to challenge or confirm them with more information.
In this way, questioning is also a way of testing our assumptions, interpretations, and hypotheses about why we or others are stuck. The more information we can gain from multiple sources regarding why we may be stuck, the more likely we are to arrive at a realistic and useful way forward. And clearly, perspectives that know us at least as well as we know ourselves, because they are innately and authentically our own, are likely to provide relevant information that may prove surprisingly creative because it reflects worldviews and perspectives that we either do not share or have not considered.
Who is most likely to know both the source and solution to a problem?
Our answers to our life issues reflect our waking perspective. However, there are other perspectives that are relevant. There are those of objective experts and information sources. There are those accessed through altered states of consciousness such as mystical or drug-induced experiences. By becoming dream characters and the personifications of life issues we access non-waking perspectives that not only have opinions about how and why we have the life issues we do, but often provide creative solutions, diagnoses, and “treatment plans.”
The normal approach is to provide treatment based on what has worked for others presenting similar symptoms. That is a clear path forward with physical heath issues and even with some mental health issues, but then there are multiple reasons why a tried and true solution does not work for this or that particular client. Why not?
Just as important is who or what is questioned. Most approaches to questioning interrogate the client, patient, or subject, based on the assumption that they have the problem, medical or psychological, that they want to make go away. They are the customer and you are the service provider. IDL questions such assumptions as part of its questioning process. Yes, it is true that clients come to you because they have some problem they want to have fixed. However, what if they lack the information necessary to reach a diagnosis and prescribe treatment?
IDL questioning has some similarities to the Socratic dialectic, in which incorrect premises and assumptions are surfaced and challenged. However, unlike the Socratic dialectic and most other approaches to questioning, IDL does not direct its questions primarily at the patient or client. This is because IDL assumes that if we knew the answers consciously we would meet with more success at getting unstuck. However, we have resistances to applying what we know and require support and structure. Habits and addictions often work at cross-purposes to out conscious intentions and knowledge. Freud’s defense mechanisms provide a useful outline of important ways we can sabotage treatment, as well as our health, self-development, and best intentions.
Questioning subjective sources of objectivity
IDL questioning accesses interior source of objectivity provided by non-waking perspectives that are accessed through inducing a light “altered state.” This is achieved by simply disidentifying with your normal waking perspective and becoming, embodying, identifying with, or experiencing yourself as looking out at life from the perspective of a dream, fictional, historic, or mystical character or element or the personification of a life issue, and then answering questions designed to access different authentic and relevant perspectives on how and why one is stuck and what might best be done about it.
These perspectives are not necessarily superior or “right;” they are imaginary, and their interpretations and perspectives must be assessed as to their relevance and pragmatic value. Are they reasonable? Can they be operationalized? Can they be safely implemented in a way that tests their validity and usefulness? When that is done does one’s life issue move toward resolution or not?
Interviewing as one aspect of a multi-perspectival approach
IDL interviewing is therefore only one tool in a multi-pronged approach IDL uses to approach healing, balancing, and transformation. As explained in the problem solving module, we require objective and waking sources of input and that, combined with our own experience, common sense, and intuition is often enough to resolve many life issues. However, just as “two heads are better than one” at problem solving, so “three heads are better than two.” When consultation of objective “expert” sources is combined with common sense and interior and subjective sources of objectivity are also consulted, the accessing of three different informational domains is more likely to yield a workable solution than accessing just one or two.
The feedback we receive from interviewed characters is often nothing new. It is normal that IDL interviewing is met with the comment or thought, “I already knew that.” That is indeed true, because if information comes from perspectives that are innately your own, then on some level you are simply hearing something you already know. However, hearing new things is not the purpose or function of IDL interviewing. It is not primarily about insight or revelatory knowledge. Rather, it is about considering how your life might be if you approached it and your life issues from a different set of priorities. You have your goals and priorities but you may be blocked or stuck in moving forward toward them. Why? Could it be because your priorities are not aligned with those that want to be expressed, to be born into your waking awareness and acted upon?
Most of us are working at cross-purposes to authentic, innate emerging potentials that have their own priorities that are surfacing in our dreams and life in hunches and unexpected spontaneous thoughts and feelings. IDL interviewing is a way to learn to listen to them in a deep and integrative way.
Why three life issues are requested
There will be times when one issue is so immediate and intense that other issues fade in significance. By all means, focus on that. However, even in such circumstances it makes sense to ask for a couple more life issues. This is because helpful information about issues that are not on the front burner is often provided by interviewed characters.
Asking for three life issues often turns up an underlying issue that is not so pressing but supports and helps maintain more immediate issues.
Why you are asked to pick only one life issue
Picking one life issue provides a focus for the interview in terms of the identification of one character to interview. As noted above, it may well give helpful input about the other issues.
Why you name a feeling or feelings associated with it
Accessing feeling states gets us out of the abstractions of our thoughts and into a level of awareness that is much closer to the consciousness of the dream state and the intentions that generate dreams. Similarly, our life issues have important, often poorly recognized or understood, emotional roots. Accessing our feelings about an issue help us turn the issue into a form to interview.
Why you associate that feeling with a color and surround yourself with it
This mimics the creation of dreams by giving intentions and feelings form.
Why you watch that color condense into an animal or another form
Just as in your dreams images condense into interactive scenarios, so stepping back and allowing feelings and colors take whatever shape they want to provides opportunities for innate creative processes intrinsically related to your intentions, feelings, and life issues, to manifest as some representative form.
Why you take the perspective of that animal or form throughout the interview
Taking one or more alternative perspective provides alternative framings and solutions for you to evaluate and test. Staying in the perspective of the personification has multiple benefits. It is practice in learning how to surrender control when and how you choose to do so. It suspends your waking assumptions so that creative alternative perspectives have the space to express themselves. It provides you with an extended opportunity to amplify a different relevant perspective within you, thereby broadening your identity. If is practice in the development and deepening of empathy, a fundamental moral attribute.
Why you as the character are asked to describe yourself and where you are as that character
This question is designed to help you let go of your waking identity and perspective and identify with that of the interviewed perspective.
Why you as the character are asked for your strengths and weaknesses
These questions help to amplify your experience of yourself as the perspective of the interviewed character. It also provides information about the place in your life these strengths and weaknesses occupy.
Why you as the character are asked what aspect of the dreamer you personify
Interviewed characters, perspectives, emerging potentials are self-generated self-aspects. Therefore, they personify aspects of yourself that are more or less disowned. That is, you do not recognize them as self, but as “other.” This holds for dream trees and monsters as well as waking world people and objects. Recognizing what aspects of yourself they personify enables you to own, take responsibility for, and incorporate them into an expanded sense of who you are.
Even objectively “other” dream, mystical, and waking others are to some degree self-aspects.
What keeps this understanding from collapsing into solipsism, in which there is no real objective reality are two things: at some point, in any interviewed or waking “other,” you bump up against some degree of authentic “otherness” that is not reducible to a self-aspect. For example, how helpful or realistic is it to see gravity as a self-aspect? Some limits are real and some sources of fear do not go away simply because we consider them self-aspects.
To clarify this point, interviewed elements can also be asked, “What aspect of you does your human most closely personify?” This is not the way we normally think. But if we take the question seriously we can develop a degree of objectivity that teaches us not to personalize everything.
Why you as the character are asked if you want to transform
Reality is not dependent on how we see it. Reality has the ability to change itself regardless of our assumptions and preferences. Inviting interviewed elements to consider if they want to change and if so, how, is a way of reminding ourselves that we need not stay locked within our identity, emotions, preferences, or worldview.
However, we can sabotage this process by having the character change in some way that we desire rather than to allow it to choose for itself. This is why we ask, “Character, is this you wanting to change or is this the dreamer wanting you to change?” Often the response to this question is a reconsideration, and that sometimes leads to the character changing its mind. Perhaps it wants to change into something else or choose not to change at all.
If it chooses to stay the same that probably indicates its preference to be heard, understood, respected, and understood for how and what it is, rather than transformed into something or someone more pleasing to you.
Why you as the character are asked to rate six core qualities
The genesis of the six core qualities is in qualities associated with each of six phases of every breath – abdominal inhalation, chest inhalation, a short pause after inhalation, chest exhalation, abdominal exhalation, and a longer pause after exhalation. This is explained in the curriculum module on pranayama.
Scores both differentiate from and align with those of the dreamer. Asking why the character scores itself as it does explains how and why.
Higher scores are not necessarily better. A high score in false confidence is foolish; Rocks are authentically not compassionate. The particular profile of scores given by a character is more important than how high or low they score. They point to authentic and instructive differences that support a recognition of the autonomy of interviewed perspectives.
Why you as the character are asked about life issues
You have your own understanding of why you have your life issues, as well as how you feel about them. You have your own ideas about why they won’t go away and what strategies to try. You may think you know what to do but just haven’t done enough of it, or you may blame others for your issue. All of that is your framing. What about other approaches and perspectives? How about the framings of one or more interviewed characters that know your life issues at least as well as you do and certainly better than others in your waking world do – because they aren’t you.
You will find that some interviewed perspectives are highly invested in this or that life issue and have little to say about others. Just like you, they are not equally invested, much less highly invested, in everything or in every issue.
Why you note character recommendations
It is not unusual to get five or six recommendations regarding your life issues from an interview. It is common to forget about these or to overlook them. That is why it is important, after the interview, to go back through it and list the recommendations that were made. Once you have the entire list you can decide which seem most helpful and which you want to work on.
Why you generate an action plan
An action plan is how you test the process and the trustworthiness of your interviewed character. After all, they are imaginary – why should you trust them? IDL does not base trustworthiness on reality claims but on functional usefulness, what is called pragmatism. The only way to find out if a character’s recommendations are trustworthy is to test them in your life. If you find yourself less stuck, or improvements in healing, balancing, or transformation, then you have built trust in the methodology, regardless of how irrational it may appear.
Why you are asked what you have heard in the interview
When you ask those you interview to summarize what they have heard you are likely to be surprised at how different what they have heard and gotten out of the interview from what you heard. There are many reasons for this, but in any case it is important information for you, the interviewer, to hear how your subject is internalizing and integrating the information.
This is important to know before you read back the interview and before you chime in with your comments and interpretations. You have heard the character’s interpretations and then you have heard your interviewed subject’s interpretations. Now is the appropriate time for you to add your own, as you now have the benefit of having received the input of both.
When you are being interviewed by someone else, it is a recommended practice to have them read back to you what the character has said, rephrasing it as things you have said to yourself. This is to help you hear it with your “waking” ears and not simply from the perspective of the interviewed character, as you did during the interview. This helps to transfer the information from an altered state into your waking frame of mind.
Why you are asked for the implications of what you have heard for the world
We are all members of collectives, and the fate of those collectives can have a large influence on the arc of our lives. For this reason, it is important we focus not simply on our own self-development but on improving the world.
While we all have ideas about how to go about that, so do most of your interviewed emerging potentials. Hearing their thoughts on the implications of their viewpoints for the world can clarify and strengthen your sense of how you can be most effective in making the world a better place.
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?
Interviewing 102: Interviewing Protocols
Subjects of Interviews
Who gets to be interviewed?
Yourself: IDL uses self interviewing to support your self-development, generate empathy through identification with other perspectives, support problem solving, access transformational perspectives, generate objectivity, thin identification with habitual waking definitions of self, expand identity, and move from psychological geocentrism toward polycentrism. As you broaden and thin your identity through identifying with an increasing number of alternative, authentic and relevant perspectives, you get out of your own way. The result is you project your interpretations and assumptions onto others less often and improve your ability to listen to them in an integral and deeply empathetic and respectful way. There is a second way that you are interviewed: by others. In addition to the above benefits, you learn IDL interviewing much quicker and are more insightful and effective in your interviewing when you experience interviewing from the perspective of an interviewed subject.
Others: IDL uses your interviewing of others to generate a support system of like minds, develop interpersonal respect, intimacy, honesty, and transparency, provide a way to experience others as aspects of yourself, gain insight into your issues through the interviews of others, provide reframings of your life issues, provide additional recommendations for your life issues, teach interpersonal application monitoring and accountability, spread the values, methods, and culture of IDL, and receive feedback on the effectiveness of IDL for others and for different specific life issues other encounter. These two varieties of interviewing, of yourself and of others, generate a polar dynamic that speeds and deepens your competency applying IDL interviewing in your life and in the lives of others.
Topics of Interviews
Dreams: Any element from the sleep state can be a subject of an interview. It could be sleep paralysis, in which case one would personify the experience, say of fear, and interview it. Night terrors can also be interviewed in a similar way, since these rarely have visual content. Elements from a lucid dream or nightmare, false awakening, or visitation by a deceased relative can also be interviewed. Day residue and dreams we are confident are meaningless mundane junk, like random thoughts remembered from sleep upon awakening, are important to interview in that they often challenge our assumptions that some dreams are meaningless, unimportant, or irrelevant.
Life Issues:At the beginning of all IDL interviews three life issues are stated. Subjects always have the option, instead of interviewing a dream character, of choosing a life issues, accessing a core feeling it evokes, allowing it to assume a form, shape, or character, and interviewing that. People often bring up life issues in the course of conversation. Instead of providing suggestions and risk getting into the role of Rescuer in the Drama Triangle, the appearance of such life issues can be an easy entry into an interview, either impromptu or to schedule for some later meeting. Interviewing life issues is a way to demonstrate the practical relevancy of IDL interviewing to issues that matter to the subject in the here and now. If a subject is new to interviewing or draws a blank when attempting to turn a feeling regarding a life issue into a form, ask, “If that feeling were an animal, what animal first comes to your mind?” The reason this strategy is effective is because as children our dreams were filled with animals and so there is a natural affinity toward such personifications that helps people learn to take another perspective besides their own. Another reason this strategy is effective is because we easily associate different emotions with different types of animals: sloths are lazy, lions are brave; dragons are magical; tortoises are protected. Of course those are stereotypes, and your sloth, lion, dragon, or tortoise may be associated with completely different qualities.
Other: Mystical and near death experiences, synchronicities, life dramas, like an argument, bullying, or failure, can all be subjects of interviews. Fictional characters, like Voldemort from Harry Potter, personas and events from the geopolitical zeitgeist, like Donald Trump or the War on Gaza can also be interviewed, as can historical and mythological events and characters. Interviewing life issues and non-dream events quickly demonstrates the dream-like nature of waking experience. That does not mean that your waking reality is unreal or illusory, but that it has a dreamlike degree of reality and meaning when approached from the perspectives of interviewed emerging potentials. Recognizing that waking experience is very much a collective, waking dream is something of a revelation for some students. While anything can potentially be an object of an interview, things or nouns work better than processes or verbs. For instance, it is better to interview a bat than to interview “flying” or a fire rather than “burning.” This is because things are more concrete than processes, meaning that it is easier to become or identify with, and to speak as a thing like a sink than a process, like draining.
Interviewing Protocols
Types of Protocols
Single element interviewing protocols:These provide a deep dive into experiencing reality from one other perspective, including whatever transformations/transmutations it chooses to make. Single event interviewing has the advantages of being quicker, easier, simpler, while still effective at teaching empathy, identification with alternative worldviews, thinning and broadening the self, and generating recommendations to operationalize and test. Disadvantages of single element interviewing are that they may focus in on one aspect of a dream or life issue without providing context or access to other perspectives that may be as important or more important.
Multiple element interviewing protocols:In IDL, these are called “Dream Sociometry,” and were the source of IDL interviewing in 1980. In Dream Sociometry, several characters in a dream or life issue are listed as “choosers” along the left margin of a grid, called a “Dream Sociomatrix.’ Those characters and sometimes others, are listed along with important actions and feelings, on the top margin of the Dream Sociomatrix as “chosen” elements. Subjects become each chooser and state preferences toward chosen characters, actions, and feelings. There are seven varieties of preference, “like,” “like a lot,” “love,” “no preference,” “dislike,” “dislike a lot,” “hate,” and “transcending all preferences.” All except the last are given a corresponding numerical value: 1, 2, 3, 0, -1, -2, -3. These scores are tabulated at the right and bottom margins of the Dream Sociomatrix and can be plotted on a “Dream Sociogram,” which consists of four number lines and concentric circles. The charting of the preferences of dream choosers and chosen dream elements objectifies the relationships among the characters, their actions, and feelings in a dream or life issue. It is as if you were looking down on the dream from outside the various different preferences and worldviews that are represented in it, allowing you to see relationships and meanings that were invisible to you as long as you stayed in your role as dreamer. Dream Sociometry provides a deep dive into any dream or life issue due to its interviewing of multiple perspectives. The “Trainer” level of Certification in the IDL Curriculum teaches Dream Sociometry and its use as a research tool with specific populations, such as people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or personality disorders. In addition to publishing research, Trainers supervise IDL student Coaches and Practitioners. Dream Sociometry is derived from the sociometry of J.L. Moreno. Two books, “Dream Sociometry,” and “Understanding the Dream Sociogram,” explain the creation of both Dream Sociomatrices and Dream Sociograms as well as how to interpret Dream Sociograms. Dream Character Interviewing: This template is in Unit One of this Module and also on the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-dream-characters/ Life Issue Interviewing: This template is in Unit One of this Module and also on the IDL website at:https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-life-issues/ Interviewing Children: You can access this template at the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/childs-life-issue-interviewing-protocol/ Interviewing a Physical Symptom: You can access this template at the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-a-physical-symptom/
Types of Questions and their Purposes
Character identification:Getting into Role: Looking out at the dream or life issue from the perspective of the interviewed character is essential for a successful interview. These initial questions are designed to support and validate that such identification with the character is occurring and is maintained.
Ownership:What is the character’s interpretation of what aspect of the subject it represents or most closely personifies? You are asking the character not only what place it has in the life of the subject but more broadly for its interpretation of the dream or life issue. This supports ownership of the experience of the interview. An advanced additional question only asked of experienced subjects is its inversion: “What aspect of you, (character), does this human represent?” The purpose of this inversion is to de-centralize identity and to help the subject recognize that interviewed characters are not simply self-aspects, but, from their perspective, the subject is a self-aspect of any interviewed character.
Transformation: Does the character wish to transform? If so, how?
Life Issue Recommendations:These questions focus on application. It is very easy to forget about the contents of any interview, regardless of how impactful it might be, because it represents perspectives that are not typical or normal, and therefore tend to be ignored, forgotten, discounted, or repressed. Application not only helps keep the interview alive but integrates the interviewed perspectives into a broader, deeper identity while building trust in the process through testing its efficacy.
Interviewing Formats and Recording
The purposes of making a record of an IDL interview include reminding the subject of what they said, as the perspective of this or that interviewed character, during an interview. While subjects are not in an altered state of consciousness during an interview, as occurs during hypnosis or in a shamanic trance, some degree of dissociation occurs whenever we identify with another perspective. Consequently, it is easy to forget or discount the value of that perspective after an interview, due to our ingrained and natural desire to stay in control by identifying with our normal waking perspective. We quickly return to being “us” and as quickly forget the dream-like perspective of the interviewed character and what it said, regardless of how relevant and meaningful it was at the time. Making a record of an interview allows us to compensate for this normal combination of forgetfulness and reluctance. When you read over an “old,” forgotten interview, don’t be surprised if you are amazed at its wisdom and relevance and puzzled at why and how you managed to forget about something so relevant and important.
Written: Interviewing answers can be written down with pencil or pen and paper. In IDL salons, a piece of paper with the questions written down on front and back can be passed out to group members and the answers to each question written down as the host reads them off to the group. Something similar can be done with self interviews. Initially, over a hundred Dream Sociometric interviews were completed in this fashion.
Recorded: Interviews can be voice recorded, translated into text, and then edited. Computer mediated: For years I have typed answers into computer mediated interviewing templates and then shared them with students, subjects, and clients. IntegralDeepListening.Com contains both individual and multiple (Dream Sociometry) character interviewing formats that are not part of the on-line protocols, that students can access for both self interviews and interviewing others. The on-line protocols generate a PDF which can be emailed to students. It also provides a record for comparison of interviews, whether of self, others, or of subjects presenting some similar life issue, for research leading to publication, to document and present findings for assessment by others.
Keeping track of interviewed elements
Over time you will collect quite a menagerie of interviewed characters, perspectives, emerging potentials. What do you do with them? How do you keep track of them? How do you make use of them? From early on in your work with IDL interviewing it is good to create a grid that lists the names, major characteristics, and recommendations associated with each one. Otherwise, their contributions to your life or that of your interviewing subjects can quickly be forgotten.
Common Issues and How to Deal With Them
Subject Not in Role: If you have any doubt that your subject is not taking the perspective of the interviewed element, ask, “(Character,) is that you answering or is that your human?” “Your human listens to their own thoughts and feelings constantly. Now is the time for them to be quiet and listen to what YOU have to say.”
Interjecting Interpretations:Interpretations by interviewers normally come after the interpretations of the interviewed character(s) and the subject. However, if you have an interpretation of what’s going on during the interview, you can ask the character. For example, “Sink, are you saying that sugar is draining your human’s energy?” If you ask such questions, don’t be surprised if the character either comes up with an interpretation you didn’t expect or else adds a considerable expanded understanding to your own.
Controlling Transformations: Make sure it is the character’s wish to transform. Getting information from the transformed character about itself. Make sure that the subject is looking out at the experience (dream or life issue) from its perspective, not that of the subject.
Not operationalizing recommendations: This is a skill set that takes time and support. Start simply and introduce pieces over time with additional interviews. Don’t be afraid to back off if the expectations for follow through are too much or unrealistic. It is normal to underestimate the amount of effort, time, and commitment any life change is going to require.
Not setting up an accountability structure:Most of us require an accountability structure to achieve goals. That’s why school attendance is more likely to lead to completion than home study. IDL requires course progress with fellow team members to compensate for its distant learning. Being both accountable to your team and supporting other team members in their learning is a way of learning to more effectively support your clients as a Coach, Practitioner, or Trainer.
Problems Operationalizing Recommendations
Not specifying recommendations from the interview:Recommendations can be vague. For example, if an interviewed roadrunner tells you to “try harder to be on time,” what exactly does that mean? What do you need to do differently to be where you say you are going to be at the time you are expected to arrive?
Not prioritizing recommendations: Not all recommendations are of equal importance. For example, a recommendation that is important to you may not be as important to multiple interviewed characters. For example, you may think gaining the appreciation of others is very important while characters you interview may not care about that at all. They may instead encourage you to build your peace of mind. In such situations, you can of course work on multiple recommendations at the same time, and you may find you are more motivated to work on recommendations that matter more to you. Just keep in mind that as you accrue a menagerie of interviewed characters and a pile of recommendations, you can always ask interviewed characters as well as your fellow team members for help in prioritizing recommendations.
Not setting up an accountability structure:As interviewer, it is your responsibility to introduce this concept to your subjects and provide them with a degree of support that feels right and keeps them engaged, motivated, and making progress toward the resolution of life issues important to them.
Not monitoring your accountability structure daily: Ask your subject, “How can you track your application of (the application they choose) day by day? What do you think would work best for you?” You can also ask their interviewed characters what they recommend in terms of accountability. Start where they are and then introduce ideas for accountability when and if their plan isn’t working.
Not asking, “How will you know if there is a change?”This question helps your interviewed subjects to operationalize recommendations of their choice.
Not asking, “How will I know that this change is due to IDL and IDL interviewing and not to other factors?This question will also help your interviewed subjects to operationalize recommendations of their choice.
Assignments and Homework
Quizlet:
Quizlet is an excellent study aid. You can make sets of study flach cards as well as review sets made by other students. https://quizlet.com/870739171/interviewing-101-unit-2-interviewing-protocols-flash-cards/?i=abkcr&x=1jqY
Reading:
Under “Essays and Interviews,”read:
How to create an IDL Salon:
Videos:
In the IDL video curricula, watch: Choosing Life Issues https://youtu.be/5vuGCCT0BP4
Generation of the Personification of a Life Issue for Interviewing
This video explains how personifications of life issues are created by associating the chosen life issue with feelings, those feelings with a color or color filling one’s field of vision, and then spontaneously allowing those colors to congeal into a form, preferably an animal for subjects new to the process.
Writing Your Dream and Your Associations to It:
Providing Date, Name, and Deciding Who to Interview: How to add a title and name in the on-line interviewing protocol and important information about how to choose a character to interview.
Taking the Perspective of an Interviewed Character
The critical piece of IDL interviewing is your ability to step aside and let your chosen character have its voice and spontaneously answer as it chooses. These initial questions are designed to help you authentically take its perspective. At the same time, you are learning more about how to fill out the on-line interviewing format.
Personifications and Possible Transformations:
What aspects of yourself does your interviewed character say it most closely personifies? Does it want to transform? If so, how? Noting these responses in the protocol.
Integrating What You Have Heard: Adding Your Interpretation and Those of Others
When we interview others we often recognize issues and receive value for ourselves in our lives. The feedback of others, in terms of what they have heard and how they are integrating and applying the perspective of the interviewed dream character is generally a valuable resource. Dreamers are surprised how much their interview resonates with others, and others are often surprised at how the interview awakens within them goodness, truth, and harmony that is rich and fulfilling.
Suggestions for Introducing Others to IDL Interviewing
IDL Interviewing of dream characters and the personifications of life issues is fun, powerful, and intimate. As a result, interviewing others can be extremely valuable, meaningful, and rewarding, but at the same time, problematic. This is because fun, power, and intimacy don’t always go together. Fun can often mean an escape from intimacy. Power can be manipulative and also an escape from honesty and intimacy. Intimacy can be threatening. Both intimacy and power can undermine our sense of personal control over our lives. What looks fun at the beginning can turn into something that is dead serious. Here are several recommendations for how to approach introducing IDL interviewing to others.
Interviewing
Create a grid to keep track of the recommendations you are working on. This is an example from the previous Unit: Daily Recommendation/Application Tracking Chart
| Character/Recommendation | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Snowball: Chill out when criticized | √ √ | √√√√ | √√ | √√√ | √ | ||
| Cactus: Avoid engaging prickly people | √ | √√ | √√√√ | √ | √√√ | ||
| Gila Monster: Maintain peace of mind | 7 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 4 |
– Trade interviews of both dreams and life issues with one or more partner once a week. – Interview someone else at least twice. – Have others you have interviewed interview you at least twice. – 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.
What interviewing formats have you used? What problems have you encountered? Have you applied any character recommendations? If so, what have been the results? What method do you use for keeping a record of your interviews for future access? 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?
