Halloween is a fun version of a bad dream. It's a great model for dream work.

Halloween brings the darker side into waking life. For one night, we welcome into our conscious minds, all kinds of ghouls, monsters, witches and threatening entities. The dead, the deadly and the wicked all come out to play.

Halloween and Play

What is crucial – and brilliant – about Halloween is that sense of play. For a short while, as the long winter nights begin, Halloween gives us a model for how to work with and even enjoy our fears.

For those of us who enjoy Halloween (and that is far from everyone), some of the "techniques" stand out:

1. We put on masks and costumes so as to assume other roles -- from the good fairy to Frankenstein.

2. We shrink our fears. We scale them down so that they are no longer threatening. We know that behind that monster mask lurks an 8 year old child who wants candy.

3. Instead of being threatened, we assume the role of aggressor. With the understanding that we are not really intending to hurt or scare people, we pretend to do just that.

4. We assume super powers. We adopt abilities that are commensurate to the worst threats.

These are all techniques that can be applied to dreams.

Paula's Dream

Paula's dream occured around Halloween last year and we intentionally played into the Halloween spirit.

In my dream, I was managing a candy store for my friend. In walked three punks. They were walking down the aisles stealing things. I was powerless and very scared.

Paula went back into the dream. She "tapped" into the fear she was feeling. Then we asked what it would take for the punks to feel the fear Paula had felt. Paula couldn't come up with an answer but she saw herself as Elizabeth Montgomery in the TV series, "Bewitched."

Imagining herself in that superpower/magical role, we used the same playful ideas that are used in Halloween. Paula played tricks on the three punks. She tied their shoelaces together. She banged their heads. She knocked over cans that fell on their heads. She poured treacle over their clothes. The punks knew they were overpowered. She could also have imagined them shrunk down to the size of kids and watched them struggle to move in clothes that were far too big for them.

Being playful but, in her own way, aggressive was enlightening. Afterwards, Paula said that fear is like a ball and it can be lobbed over the fence and back to the perpetrators.

Trick, Treat or Something Else

Of course, in her waking life Paula doesn't possess magical powers but the dream work -- as with Halloween roles -- showed her that she is not as powerless as the dream imagined her to be.

In November I will only be holding my Wednesday 1pm group on November 8th. Saturday dream groups (see below) continue as usual.

NEW DIAL-IN DREAM GROUPS

On Monday and Tuesday I will again be holding more 1-hour dream groups on a telephone conference call.

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 October 30th
• Time: 5pm-6pm Pacific Daylight Time
• Dial-in Number: 620-782-2200 (Kansas)
• Access Code: 707172#

And

• Day: Tuesday October 31st
• Time: 7pm-8pm Pacific Daylight Time
• Dial-in Number: 620-782-2200 (Kansas)
• Access Code: 707172#