Dream Work

Dream work holds an important place in Progoff's Intensive Journal. Since the Journal is non-analytical, however, even the dream exercises do not seek to analyze. One might ask how a participant learns the meanings of his/her dreams, given that the dream exercises do not analyze. The answer is that meanings are not actively sought. 

They emerge, they pop, but not by any direct, identifiable route. You write the exercises in the Dream Enlargements section. Dream Enlargement exercises simply take a dreamer back into a dream, not while sleeping, but by writing after having induced a meditative state. You write out your experience. You correlate the material with other entries in the Journal. The symbolic then yields to the concrete; the irrational reveals the rational. Two plus two equals more than four. That is what is meant by "non-analytical." The beauty of bringing directed consicousness to bear upon one's inner life is that growth can proceed more deeply and perhaps more quickly.


When I was young, years before I'd heard of the Intensive Journal, I used to wake up fretfully from intense dreams, feeling unsatisfied, interrupted. I used to consciously decide to go back into the dream and finish it off to my satisfaction before either resuming sleep or getting up. What I didn't know was that my deliberate return to a dream was a form of non-analytical dream work. I always felt better after "completing" a dream, but I never examined the process, and I certainly never asked other people whether or not they did the same thing. I've done lots of Dream Enlargement exercises. Recently, however, I've actually by-passed the need to do the exercises, at least with certain dreams. Recently, I have woken from dreams and known immediately what my unconscious wanted me to know.

Next time, I'll write a particularly vivid dream, and then show how to work with it in the context of the Intensive Journal.