This morning we're going to build an equation that uses dreaming. We can say that anything that produces one of these things—a new idea, practice, or improved perceptions—implies doing something better. That's the same equation I just talked about. We still need something that will produce the new idea, etc., and we'll use dreaming to do that.
Exercise 7
In a moment I want you to make generative changes with each other. Do this in pairs so you can all do it fairly quickly. Person B, I want you to choose some particular behavior that you already do well, and would like to do even better. Person A, I want you to do any induction you choose with B, until you get a fairly deep trance state. Then reach over and say "I am now lifting up your arm, and I'm not going to tell you to put it down any faster than you begin to dream a dream… . During this dream … odd and diffuse things will begin to happen… . But you know that unconsciously … something is building up … which is going to crystallize … into an idea … which will produce in you … a change in your perceptions … which will allow
you to be able to do X … even better than you ever suspected… .
Because there is something about X … that you have overlooked … and your unconscious knows how to go back … and look again.
… What does it mean to overlook something? … Overlooking means you looked too high … so now you can go back … and shift your gaze … past experiences … at the unconscious level, when you were in that particular experience … only this time … your unconscious can look at it in a new way … and find out … what it was in the times you did it absolutely exquisitely … that was different … from the times you only did it … sort of exquisitely… .
Discerning that difference … it can present you that difference in a mysterious dream … so you will continue to dream that dream … a very colorful dream … and enjoy it immensely and wonder …really wonder … what it is you are about to learn … and the idea will not come to you any faster , . . than your hand moves slowly down . , . and touches your knee … such that when it does that, that idea will crystallize in your mind , . . and you will wonder how you could have been so foolish as to overlook it all along." …
This is another example of a process instruction. 1 said to have a dream and learn something from it. However, I also added specific instructions about how the unconscious is going to learn it. I said "Go back, review your past experiences, extract the difference between when you do really well and when you do only a mediocre job, and present this new perception in a dream."
However, if I were to just say those things directly, I wouldn't be as effective. It wouldn't work as well, because it wouldn't have the color or the punch. It also wouldn't have the artful vagueness that allows the unconscious to respond in a way that's natural to it. Dreaming is a very natural means for the unconscious to present material in a way that the conscious mind doesn't understand, and then to have it slowly evolve into something which is more meaningful consciously.
Man: What can IdoifI want to come up with a solution to a problem that has so many factors I can't compute them all consciously?
What would be a way of going about that? Let's do it this way. Let's go back to the dream. This is one of my favorite instructions. Let's have him dream six dreams, and each one will be the same dream, but will have a different content and different characters. However, he won't understand the first dream at all, because there will be too many things going on in that dream. He won't really understand the second dream either, but unconsciously, with each dream, he will begin to collect and distill the meanings and understandings of all the factors involved into a more and more coherent package. In this manner, by the sixth dream even his conscious mind will be able to understand what is going on. The first dream will be totally confusing. The second dream will be a little less confusing. The third dream will be even less confusing than that. The fourth one will begin to become clear, but he won't quite grasp it. And the fifth one will feel like it is on the tip of his tongue. But in the sixth one, the meaning will suddenly burst fully into consciousness. This is a pretty direct way of going after it—indirectly. It's a great instruction.
Now I want you to pair up and try one of these utilization methods. You've been practicing inductions quite a bit already, so don't spend much time on that. Just tell your partner to close her eyes and relax and pretend that she is in hypnosis. That's always a quick induction. Then either give her a process instruction, or give her an instruction to use hypnotic dreaming to learn something. If you give her a process instruction, make it a more involved one than you used when you practiced inductions previously. Give her a sequence of steps that can lead to learning. Use everything else you've learned up to this point too. If something unexpected occurs, you can incorporate it into what you are doing, and what you want to have happen. OK. Go ahead.
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Clean–up Routines
Dorothy: What do you do if the person is in a trance and the hour is up before you've finished working with her? What if she's right in the middle of something?
You need to have a way of dealing with that kind of situation in many contexts. I call such methods "clean–up routines." You might be a family therapist, with mother here, daddy here, and baby Joan over there. They've all just gotten into a disagreement, and it's two minutes before the arrival of your next client. In any situation like this, you ought to have two–minute "tape–loops" — absolutely meaningless content–wise and absolutely meaningful process–wise—to put everything together.
"We've worked very, very hard and a lot of things have been stirred up at the unconscious level that are extremely useful in a positive way. Over the next days and weeks, you will notice understanding emerging from your unconscious. As a result of beginning to put things together here, you will notice changes, alterations in your behavior that will delightfully surprise you. And now, as you gather all the parts of yourself that have expressed themselves today, once again into yourself, you can sense the energy that they represent made available to your unconscious mind, to continue these processes which we have begun here, in a meaningful way. …"
This is another example of a process instruction. You stay entirely at the process level and say "Put yourself back together." You include post–hypnotic suggestions that their behavior will continue to change as a result of many of the things that you stirred up. The instructions essentially say "Continue this process even though I won't be here." You can suggest that her unconscious will continue to search for an optimal solution which it will reach sometime before she awakes the next morning.
"During the afternoon, as your unconscious mind continues to work hard to find and test the various possible solutions, in order to find the one which most uniquely fits your needs as a total organism, leaving you free at the conscious level to go about the rest of your day in safety and perform adequately any tasks that you intend to. So as your unconscious mind continues this work, your conscious mind will attend to the tasks of the day and your own safety." Doing this kind of thing is important as a close. It's an integration; it's reassembling the person.
I remember once when I first started doing gestalt therapy, I was working with one person as a demonstration in a group. I didn't have the faintest idea of what I was doing, and as far as I could tell, nothing happened. So at the end I said "Now Irv, we've worked hard here today, and we've stirred up a lot of things inside you. So I want you to be particularly alert and sensitive to those behavioral changes which will occur over the next two–week period until we get together again, which are the direct result of the marvelous work that you've done here today. And don't be too surprised to discover how radical these changes are — but appropriate to your particular needs." That's saying nothing, but it will work. It's a post–hypnotic suggesion.