Discussion of Integrating Dream Characters as Parts of Ourselves

I wanted to open up discussion on this subject while I am thinking about it and plan to add more thoughts when I get the chance, if there is enough interest.

I have been reading about integrating good and bad parts of ourselves and how there can be gifts and lessons even from our negative aspects.

This from the Sufi poet Rumi sounds a lot like interacting with dream characters, especially the last line:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,

translation by Coleman Barks

Treat them like you would like to be treated by them, because they are you :)

I always treat dream characters and even experiences as part of myself, even those that seem negative because I'm always carrying around darkness of bereavement and depression all the time It's no surprise some of it manifests as dark elements in my dreams. In lucids I try to harmonize with any negative elements by being accepting. ^^

Here is a great exercise anyone can try while awake, or perhaps even before bed or during a WBTB. It's from the same book where I came across the poem above. The exercise starts at the bottom of the book's page that this link takes you to:

https://books.google.com/books?id=6-...graham&f=false

I highly recommend the book. It is full of great exercises for "rewiring your brain."

I will share one less sensitive negative aspect that came up for me doing the exercise - the couch potato that comes out in me more than I'd like. I realized in doing the exercise that there is still a place for the couch-potato-me. He is there to remind me to relax when I may not want to. If you really dig, you should be able to find a "gift or lesson" from even your most shame-filled negative aspects...when you are ready to.

Back to dreams - I had a foreboding figure in one dream, but since I was fully lucid I approached, gently moved aside his (mask) and got a powerful lesson that really brought home the adage: "the only thing to fear is fear itself." I am not sure that is integrating with my fearful self, but it is certainly greeting it, uncovering it, and finding a lesson in it.

I hope others feel comfortable sharing or at least discussing the mechanics of integrating the different parts of ourselves, whether it be in interacting with DCs or through waking exercises.

I have found that the more I have encountered mean-spirited people, both in real-life and in the dream world, the more I feel that it is somehow wrong to judge them for their deeds, even if they are bad deeds. These days when I read or see something about someone who did something very bad, I start to think things like; maybe they were in a state they could not control - maybe they went mad with this world - maybe they can't act any differently. It does not mean I approve of what they did, but that perhaps there's a lot more under the surface than I can ever know that leads them to that situation.

There's too many kinds of thoughts that can cross my mind. But I know that I can only do this because I am emotionally detached from the situation or person.

I have been badly treated recently and I was very angry at those who were doing me ill, but as time went by and the problem was resolved I felt like it was wrong to be angry and that I should have accepted their own anger and tried to interact with them as I would with a character from a nightmare; I start to think now, why did I not try to reason with them, did my own emotions really take so much control of me that I couldn't get past them and simply decide to try and talk?

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But when I've had dreams with bad characters or scary stuff, which happens less and less, after a while I start to think more about the scary stuff, instead of less, wondering why I didn't try to just interact with them. On a personal level, sometimes it feels too true that humans fear the unknown, and in the case of my dreams and my personal reality, mostly the fear of the unknown reaction of other living beings toward me. Hope I didn't digress too much from the thread with my post, but I'm having a hard time remembering specific mean/bad characters in detail from my dreams at the moment.

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Edit: Oh and I think that something like the Jung model of the psyche, i.e. the Hero, the Shadow, the Animus/the Anima and the Self are a very good way of making a less abstract notion of our own separate parts and seeing how they can all come together. I have had characters in non-lucid dreams appear that I knew immediately represented these facets of my being, due to the way they interacted with me - in each case they were also always dream-generated; the Anima is the most prominent one I've met a few times, but I would very much like to meet something like the Shadow, as I feel that many parts of my life would improve from an in-depth conversation to the parts of myself that I ignore or fear. Books on symbology have been helpful in making me think of how the ignored parts of my own personal symbolisms can be integrated with my normal way of thinking, in a meaningful way.

Thank you for sharing your experience DarkestDarkness :) Various exercises I have done, either related to lucid dreaming or inspired by it, have taught me the same mindset you mention: to try to not to judge others (or myself) and that there is usually a story behind the bad behavior.

If you'd like, feel free to share any of the dreams you mentioned. I'd be interested to hear more.

Darkest Darkness

I'm into the second month of
an 18 month $1,700 Jungian online course.
First month was free

then $75 American, a month is debited,
so
easy to pay for me, a pensioner.

Give me permission to post what's below
into my thread
in the closed Facebook page for the Jungian course.

June, the first month we 150 online student's
did "the Persona"

Now

July, we are doing "The Ego"

Plea give permission

Here is what I want to post

⚘

Edit: Oh and I think that something like the Jung model of the psyche, i.e. the Hero, the Shadow, the Animus/the Anima and the Self are a very good way of making a less abstract notion of our own separate parts and seeing how they can all come together. I have had characters in non-lucid dreams appear that I knew immediately represented these facets of my being, due to the way they interacted with me - in each case they were also always dream-generated; the Anima is the most prominent one I've met a few times, but I would very much like to meet something like the Shadow, as I feel that many parts of my life would improve from an in-depth conversation to the parts of myself that I ignore or fear. Books on symbology have been helpful in making me think of how the ignored parts of my own personal symbolisms can be integrated with my normal way of thinking, in a meaningful way.

Last edited by DarkestDarkness; 2018-07-16

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Edit:

Maybe I could add the address bar to the whole thread
To Dreamviews
Called "....... Dam .... Im in a "reply box" and cant see the thread or its title ☹

Quote:

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Plea give permission

Here is what I want to post

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Even though I personally do not like Facebook, I think that's fine for you to post to your group; thank you for asking for permission, that's considerate of you.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Thank you for sharing your experience DarkestDarkness :) Various exercises I have done, either related to lucid dreaming or inspired by it, have taught me the same mindset you mention: to try to not to judge others (or myself) and that there is usually a story behind the bad behavior.

If you'd like, feel free to share any of the dreams you mentioned. I'd be interested to hear more.

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I still can't remember any particular dreams with explicitly bad characters in any meaningful amount of detail at the moment, but I was thinking about dream character integration in a different way now:

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I don't consider non-human creatures to be "bad" or "ill-intended" in most cases, and if I do, it will be with mammals, as I presume a different level of consciousness between a large mammal and an insect or arachnid; my mind assumes insects, reptiles and birds to be more "machine-like" if that makes sense...

In one of my last arachnophobia related dreams, there was a giant spider (I remember mentioning this elsewhere now), and in retrospect I think the biggest fear I feel in a dream like that is of what I might feel; what I might feel if I'm touched by it, or if I touch it. In waking life, ever since I was a kid, just the mere mention, thought or sight of a spider would make me climb walls myself. Of particular note is the way I address the creature as "it" instead of he or she, despite my general idea of spiders being "feminine" (in part because they lay eggs, weave delicate webs, etc).

I have, since that dream and a few other encounters with spiders in waking life, in a bit under a year's time, nearly suppressed most of my irrational fear of spiders. Simply by doing what you're supposed to do with managing phobias, which is to expose yourself to the phobia, which I have been doing in a simple controlled manner when I'm alone.

Even now if I encountered such a giant spider again in my dreams, I think I would feel strange and repulsed, but less so than before, and it could still have the element of "shock". And I would hope I would realise I was dreaming before I became shocked or panicked, because in a way I am curious to see what my mind thinks it feels like to be touched by something I consider repulsive - I hear the back of my mind shout "disgusting!" now, but the other part of me thinks that this is a crucial element to integrate and understand my irrational fear, for which I can build a bridge to close the gap of other insecurities in my life.

Some part of me fears there could be a truth that I did not want to feel or believe in. Another part of me remembers that all living beings, no matter how complex or simple, are just molecules bunched together, and that feelings are generally transient.

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I do still want to reply to you with some other dreams, but I'll have to either find old DJ entries for them or try to recall them when I'm not at the keyboard, but I thought the above would make for interesting discussion on the subject of integration.

That is great that you have been able to reduce your fear. Thank you again for sharing.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

That is great that you have been able to reduce your fear. Thank you again for sharing.

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I hope you get some more replies from others. :D

I had an interesting experience a couple of days ago, I hope you don't mind me sharing even though it's not a dream... I can't find a SPOILER tag, so if it's possible this post can just get moved to somewhere else maybe. And I did do RCs because of this situation. I was in the kitchen and there was a small black spider in a colander in the sink and it looked stuck (typical...) and I considered vacuuming it or using some paper to get rid of it. But for some reason, and this really is a massive leap for an arachnophobe... I remember thinking, "maybe I can let it on my finger", then immediately rejecting the thought with many other negative feedback thoughts, I got some onion skin from some onions I'd cut the day before and got the spider to go on that and then dropped it on top of a Jade plant we have in the kitchen.

I watched it for a little while as it was different from most spiders we can see outside from the kitchen. And it really was different... I saw it leap from one leaf to a different branch. I didn't even know they could do that. Years ago I'd have already run terrified at the fact it was in the sink, let alone leaping around. It took a while but it got to the top and has just sat there since. :confused:

@DarkestDarkness That is a very inspiring story! Even though it didn't happen in a dream, perhaps it was helped by your dreams or by practices related to your dreams and it was certainly welcome here.

I am sorry for the late reply. I was traveling with very little time to check in on all the threads.

I don't think there's a need to apologise for that. :cheeky:

This year, in particular the last few months, have been extremely different to most of my life in regard to this topic. If you see a recent DJ entry of mine, xiii., which is only a few days old now, you will see that I had yet another dream with initially a random bug and then a lot of spiders, and that even though I was cautious of them (I am still afraid of the "touch" sensation), I did not feel any general panic or fear about them. At any other point in my life, I would have woken up screaming from just from the first bug, let alone the rooms that came after.

Ironically, I'm not sure I'd feel that fine with the situation just yet in waking life... but it's difficult to say until it truly presents itself in the same way.

Having randomly spotted another thread about pets that was recently posted on, I just remembered a dream I had a couple of months ago.

I was at a house or mall of some sort and I remember my parents and my dog. I went out into some garden and outside there were some fairies who initially looked harmless enough and one of them got close to my dog and did something and my dog sort of lied down and for some reason in the dream I knew my dog to be dead, so I got really quite angry and nearly crying chased after the fairies, eventually catching up to them on a bridge and despite their wings they didn't fly up to escape me and I think I grabbed them and beat them individually with my fist and probably threw them into a river below.

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When I woke up I was quite angry at the fairies but I think as time has gone by I've wondered about what this dream meant (and means) for me. For context, my dog is ill with some tumor, though she's medicated and doing well currently, but the tumor can't really be treated, only its symptoms. Unfortunately I'm also not there with her because she lives at my old home with my parents (anything else is just not possible).

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Originally Posted by DarkestDarkness

Ironically, I'm not sure I'd feel that fine with the situation just yet in waking life... but it's difficult to say until it truly presents itself in the same way.

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The fact that you got some onion skin to pick up a spider in waking life sounded like good progress at least. :)

Sorry to hear about your dog's tumor. That dream does sound very interesting. I wish fairies were in my dreams, but not bad ones. I am not great with interpreting dreams but, if you are interested, you might consider posting that dream in the dream interpretation part of the forums.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

The fact that you got some onion skin to pick up a spider in waking life sounded like good progress at least. :)

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Actually the amount of progress I've made with the spiders is really strange because of how quick said progress has become. Like today... I moved a larger-ish spider from being a useless sod on a wall to a tomato plant we have, to see if it catches some of the loads of insects that seem to be attracted to the plant. I think the fact that I can see a practical use for a fear is probably helpful. Though unfortunately I've actually been finding that they're not awfully good at their only natural job... :roll:

And I'm still waiting for someone else to post here so I can stop hogging your thread... Sorry about that. :cheeky:

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Sorry to hear about your dog's tumor. That dream does sound very interesting. I wish fairies were in my dreams, but not bad ones. I am not great with interpreting dreams but, if you are interested, you might consider posting that dream in the dream interpretation part of the forums.

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I am happy with my own interpretations and thoughts on that subject currently. But I really do appreciate the suggestion. :)

I've had other dreams about people passing and the like. I obviously cannot prevent the feelings I'll get when the time comes but I already came to terms with it as a fact of life long ago. My dream to me just showed me how much a moment matters to how we're feeling, and it also made me consider whether putting her down would be the right thing to do; currently I don't think it would be, as with the medication she is happy. But if the quality of life was poor... I would prefer to not be kept around. I already have a condition that affects my life greatly, and if it was any worse, I wouldn't be able to bear it on myself and others if I had the choice. But I can never know what my dog would truly want either.

Sorry, that got a bit longer than I planned again...