The best test is to wait for the next similar dream and see how the dream theme progresses.

Stella’s Dreams

Stella had a recurring dream for over ten years.

I dream I am in a cave-like building. I am under a sheet in a bed with two tigers circling me. I’m totally frightened, frozen, afraid to move an inch or I will be eaten.

After experimenting with several techniques, Stella imagined she was an animal trainer who had the ability and confidence to simply walk out of the room leaving the tigers behind. That made her feel great.

The next week, she returned with the following dream:

I dream I am showing my parents this condo and inside are two cute kittens on the bed in a garage. I open the garage door and give them sunlight.

Her dream progressed. Now the threat and fear have gone. The big cats have been replaced by kittens and the cave-like room transformed, opening the situation to the sunlight. This second dream assures us that the dream work was successful.

In fact, six month later, Stella’s ten-year-old nightmare had still not returned.

Kate’s Dreams

I dream I am in the kitchen cooking. My father and my ex-husband are watching TV. There’s a knock on the door. No one answers. The person keeps knocking and I keep telling the men to answer. Finally I go to the door, but the person has gone. I tell the men it is their fault. They argue back.

In the dream work, Kate realized that she felt bitter. She worked while the two men were so lazy that they wouldn’t even answer the door. She replayed the scene thinking about what she wanted to say and do.

For a couple of weeks, Kate’s dreams seemed to bear no relation to this one. Then she dreamed:

I dream I am with two friends. A monk asks them to join the Church of Zen. My friends argue with the monk that there cannot be any such thing as a Church of Zen. The three of them are very serious. I seem to be the only person who sees the ridiculousness of this situation.

This dream is very similar to the first dream. Both involve two men who are close to her, a fourth person, and an argument.

Kate noticed important progressions in the second dream—she is now the observer outside the argument and the fourth person has made an appearance. When Kate compared the two dreams, the resentment in the first dream towards her ex-husband and her father melted. Now it seemed comical that none of them had answered the door in time. Kate also noticed that in the first dream, she expected the men in her life to answer "her" door for her. She then understood the dream as a "message" that she was responsible for opening her own doors.

The measure of your dream work is how succeeding dreams respond to it.

In the extreme example of a nightmare, in Stella's dreams, it is clear that kittens are preferable to tigers and she has made a remarkable change in her dream life.

Like Kate's dreams, most people's progress is more subtle. It is easiest to start by looking back over a number of dreams. You will begin to see the main elements of your dream themes and the ways in which they can change. At that point you are often quite dissatisfied with the lack of progress in your dreams and would like them to be different.

You explore the ways in which you would like them to change by using techniques such as Continue or Movie Method. Your test of that dream work is the succeeding dream (the next dream about that subject). It will tell you what to do next.

Over the long term, watching the progress of your dream life is more important than what happens with any one dream. It takes time and effort but you can create a dream self that is dramatically happier and self expressed.

On Monday, September 18th and Tuesday September 19th, I will be holding two 1-hour dream groups on a telephone conference call. These are currently free and are experimental as I learn how to handle the challenge of a group without being able to see anyone.

Whether you live far away or close by, a phone group allows you to get a sense of dream work in a very convenient way. With this new work, I hope to communicate the pleasure and the excitement of dream work to many people.

• Day: Monday September 18th
• Time: 6pm-7pm Pacific Daylight
• Dial-in Number: 620-782-2200 (Kansas)
• Access Code: 707172

And

• Day: Tuesday September 19th
• Time: 4pm-5pm Pacific Daylight Time
• Dial-in Number: 620-782-2200 (Kansas)
• Access Code: 707172