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beautiful
old woman who explained to me how love and
sexuality change appropriately through every
stage of
life.
I meet these characters
primarily through the use of
dreamlanguage (see below) and then get
to know them
well through many other
dream tools. I feel
their
physical reality in my body, sensing
their presence in
my gestures, stance, facial expressions and
my voice. I
see the body symbolism of my body
speaking to me.
Through a stiff neck I experience
a rigid, controlling,
arrogant part of me. Through leg cramps, my
body tells
me how I am cramping my style. My sore feet are
angry
at me for not sending them enough
energy; I am not
grounding myself. Through art
I give my cast
of
characters form and reclaim their energyin
drawing,
painting, poetry and dance. In daily
living I recognize
characteristic ways of being myself and
how I feel in
each.
DIALOGUE: I talk
with my inner characters,
in
dreamwriting, in imagination, or by
going inside my
dreamspace to get in touch with what makes
them tick
and to learn what each offers me. For example, I
held a
conversation with the creative dreamer part
of me and
the logical critic part of me concerning my
work with
dreams:
"Incoherent! Too vague!"
logic judged.
"Keep going," my
dreamer told me.
"It doesn't make sense,"
logic argued.
"It makes more sense,"
said my dreamer, "as logic is
too judgmental and critical."
Then, as a diseased lung
is collapsed and allowed to
heal, my rational structure collapsed and healed
while I
lived intuitively, exploring my inner world.
I wrote and
wrote, dreamed and dreamed. A sleeping
part of me
stirred and came to life, and brought
me back to life.
Logic awoke, refreshed. The dialogue
continues now,
but in a totally different mood.
"You know," says
logic to my dreamer, "your vague-
ness and disorganization conceal you from yourself."
"Thank you,"
replies the dreamer,
"for I am
beginning to see that being more lucid actually
frees
me to be more myself."
Logic and the
dreamer are on good terms now. As
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