Battle Zen

“I’ve had a recurring dream for 20-25 years,” said Josh, calling into a breakfast radio show last week, “and I’ve always wondered what it means.”

I was talking about dreams and chatting with callers on Sarah Howell’s breakfast show on ABC Sunshine Coast. I always enjoy engaging with listeners about their dreams on radio, even though we have only a few minutes to dip into a dream compared to the full hour of a private consultation. My intention is always to offer something of value to the caller while looking for nuggets to share with the whole audience, and tips on how to understand and work with their own dreams.

In Josh’s recurring dream, he is sitting with a young boy, aged about five or six, watching television. There’s a battle going on, and soon Josh finds himself inside the television, as if in a video game, battling the monsters. He always wakes up, unsettled, scared, then goes back to sleep again and continues the dream, only this time he defeats the monsters and “I wake up feeling all Zen”.

There’s limited time on radio to ask callers questions, so I didn’t discover Josh’s age, or whether he’s been having these dreams since he was five or six years old, but if the young boy in the dream is unknown to Josh in waking life it’s likely that the dream refers back to an issue that began when he was about that age.

As you might imagine, Josh’s dream is about the battles he encounters in life, whether he perceives them as battles in the outer world, at work or in relationship, or battles with his own inner fears and demons – or, more probably, both.

In the first round, he battles but to no avail. Waking up at this point is an opportunity, if Josh knew how to work with his dreams, to acknowledge the force of the battle, to recognise his fears, to assess his weaknesses and strengths, to relate all of this to his waking life, and to apply some dream alchemy to help resolve underlying issues and conflicts.

When he returns to sleep, Josh finds a way to defeat the monster, and all is well, at least for now. This is a recurring dream, so we know the monster is only temporarily defeated. He will rise again, and the battle will repeat.

I imagine, when Josh wakes up feeling all Zen, that he feels on top of his inner and outer world battles, whether he feels energised with fresh perspective and a sense of empowerment in dealing with them, or whether he senses the battles as having lessened, calmed, or ended.

Though an individual battle may end, the war may continue.

In Josh’s case, the defeat is not permanent, as indicated by the future recurrence of the dream. The enemy, in defeat, retreats to repair damage, to fortify its resources, to plan a new attack, and to reappear in full battle dress for another round.

When it comes to dealing with conflict, the key for long-lasting results is not defeating the enemy. The key is transformation.

I gave a very much-shortened version of this on radio, and Josh said that he has difficulties dealing with conflict in his life.

I didn’t ask, but I imagine, listening to Josh’s voice, that his approach to conflict may be to withhold expressing his feelings, to stay calm, to practise Zen. His dreams may be a vehicle for release of his feelings, a space to attack and defeat monsters, to balance his energies, to wake up feeling Zen, at least until the pressures of the unexpressed feelings build to breaking point again.

Josh might like to reflect back to being five or six years old to see whether there was an event that triggered his future patterns of dealing with conflict.

Here’s where the magic comes in.

Let’s look at the battles in Josh’s dreams as representing the conflicts he has difficulties dealing with in life, both on an outer world and inner world level, and the monsters as representing what he perceives to be the enemy.

For every outer world conflict that remains unresolved, there’s likely to be a parallel inner world conflict: there’s an unconscious set of beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and patterns that keep us caught up in conflict, either responding ineffectively or paralysed as to how to respond. When this is the case, dealing effectively with the inner world battle brings clarity to how to deal with the outer world battle. In some cases, the moment the inner battle is resolved, the outer battle automatically resolves, as if by magic.

Begin with the inner world, and the dramas and symbols offered by the dream: reimagine the dream (while you are awake) only this time instead of defeating the monster, transform it. It doesn’t really matter what you transform it into, as long as it is something that feels positive and peaceful to you. Josh might imagine jumping into the battle and uttering some magic words that transform the monster into a powerful medicine man or healer, for example.

So why is it important to transform rather than defeat the monster in this exercise?

Everyone and everything in a dream represents something about the dreamer, so if you kill or defeat a dream symbol you’re effectively killing or defeating something within yourself. You might think it’s good to ‘kill off’ a negative aspect of yourself, or a fear, but each death creates a hole in your psyche. Better to transform the negative, or unhelpful aspects of yourself, into positive or helpful aspects. What better than to transform the fearful monster into a healing force?

Even if Josh’s outer world monster is something deeply traumatic, and his inner world monster the sheer force of that trauma lodged in his psyche, transforming it into a healing energy opens the way to heal from the trauma within while seeing new ways to find helpful resolution in the outer world.

This reimagining process is what I call dream alchemy. It may be performed as a visualisation, or in any of at least seven different modalities (for example, writing, art, body work). There are rules to follow in creating the alchemy, one being to transform a dream symbol, not to kill it or disappear it. There are other rules and tools you can learn to refine dream alchemy for positive healing outcomes.

We all have our conflicts and battles, both inner world and outer world. Working with our dreams and with dream alchemy can help us to identify the unconscious elements that keep us stuck in conflict, and transform those elements to release us from their hold and free us to move forward in true Zen.

 

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