Nightmares are not what you think.
People know that dream monsters and threats are real because that’s what they experience in the dream. Because they experience a dream character as a threatening monster and another as a saving angel or deity, that’s what it is.
But how do you know that you can trust your perception when you are dreaming?
Integral Deep Listening has a simple answer: Interview the antagonist or neutral characters to check your assumptions. But don’t do this if you hate being wrong or being humbled, because you will be.
Henry told a dream in which he was swimming in his flooded living room with several big alligators. He woke up, sure he was about to be lunch.
When the alligators were interviewed they told Henry that they personified emerging potentials of confidence, adaptability, self-assurance, independence, self-sufficiency, and enjoyment of a simple, natural, efficient approach to life. They said that he would have stood no chance of awakening consciously to those potentials if they had not appeared in a form that would jar him awake to their presence.
However, Henry, like most people, simply was jarred awake to his fear and sense of threat, totally misunderstanding the gifts that was being born into his consciousness.
The alligators recommended that Henry practice becoming them whenever he felt self-doubt. He did, and he found that things and people that used to irritate him no longer did.
Nightmares aren’t confined to dreams, and neither is Integral Deep Listening. It will wake you up out of your waking nightmares as well. When you learn how, you can help any child or adult escape not only nighttime nightmares, but daytime ones as well. To learn more, read Waking Up.
