DREAMING REQUIREMENTS - Ione

Dream Awareness and Creating Dream Community

• Quarterly Dream Consultation with Ione via Skype/Phone/Email (guidelines will be provided). 
• Participation in Ione’s  Dreamers’ Blog and/or The Dream Sack - an online community dream blog and depository,  The blog is interactive and will periodically post information on new developments in the Dream Field.  The Dream Sack accepts and randomly offers up dreams 24/7.

• Participation in Deep Listening Latin Languages Dreamers’ Blog ( if appropriate).
• Ongoing commitment to dream journal upkeep including sleep and dream experiences and experiences of the night.   Commitment means periodic (ranging from daily to weekly) entries.
• Particular attention to the phenomenon of sound in dreams. Journals should also include drawings, diagrams, maps etc.
• Ability to show development of interest in dream awareness and techniques related to dreaming.   Development of personal dream systems is encouraged.
• Lucid dream investigations- light research or experiential study
• Show ability to explore the interface between the “reality of the dream and the dream of reality” through art work, music, movement and/ or other creative means.
• Listening in Dreams: A Compendium of Sound Dreams, Meditations and Rituals for Deep Dreamers PLUS This Is A Dream! : A Handbook for Deep Dreamers by Ione (note: extensive bibliography included) is available from The Ministry of Maat Press, 156 Hunter St. Kingston NY 12401 or iodreams@deeplistening.org

Commentary

Toward a Dream Community
Dream Community is a beautiful thing. We are all automatically members of this community, and we share the dream dimensions whether we are rich or poor, young or old. We dream in Angola and we dream in New York City. We dream in all weathers and through all the varying events and emotions of our lives. We are all dreamers. Because of this, dream sharing is a extraordinarily effective way of communing with other humans.
Arnold Mindell, in The Shaman's Body, relays the comment of an Australian aborigine he met during his travels, " We dream individually because we share the same dream."

The idea of people simply telling each other their dreams on a regular basis is the most rudimentary form of "Dream Community". All dreams, those that have already occurred, and those yet to come are eligible to be honored; and dreamers living, dead and yet to be born are welcome members of the community.

The ability to honor a dream, its contents, characters and inhabitants for what they are, without imposing a preconceived structure can yield great rewards. It is my hope that as we become more and more used to telling our dreams to each other we will eliminate the need for such common disclaimers as " You're going to think I'm crazy but I had this weird dream last night! "

When two or more people are telling each other their dreams, communication automatically takes place on a deep feeling level. When "full body listening" is taking place, it doesn't matter whether the "meaning" of the dream is understood from a logical perspective. Something else important is being transmitted; something palpable that comes through on a body level and on the subtle, non-linear levels of the psyche. Understanding is taking place, but it is of a different kind, an especially soul-satisfying kind.

When a rigid structure is imposed on a dream, the dream can become "flattened", its life juices completely squeezed out. Often, to my way of thinking, the dreamer is in danger of losing the gift of her own dream as it becomes the property of another. As brilliant as the dream experts can be, relying solely on the theories of others has limitations. If you give yourself permission to shop around, you may discover that you prefer one method or theory to another, or that a given method seems to fit a certain dream better than another. It can be fascinating to apply more than one method to the same dream OR one method can apply at one time in your life, but not another.

Opening up your understanding of dreams to include the concepts of multiple or simultaneous meanings is a way of allowing these precious messages from the psyche to breathe more freely. Once you begin to honor these gifts by paying attention; writing them down in journals, talking about them, telling them to friends and family- the "meanings" of your dreams begin to become clear in an organic way-from the inside out, as it were. A person who has been working with her dreams in this manner, for even a very short while, begins to open to a fuller way of being in the world, and ultimately, this latter, is the most important thing of all.- Excerpt This is a Dream! by Ione