Session 3: Application, Monitoring, and Support

From Insight to Embodiment

Approaching IDL not only as an integral life practice but as a yoga. 

A yoga is a sacred discipline. IDL is an integral life practice, which means that involves ongoing engagement, like learning to walk or talk or learning a profession. Changing the world from the inside out and from the bottom up means a revision of your daily priorities, based on the input of your interviewed emerging potentials, because they put you in touch with the priorities of your innate life compass. When you do so you are most likely to experience your daily life in flow and yourself in harmony with whatever is happening. 

IDL is sacred in that it is designed to put you in touch with sources of meaning that are most authentic and intrinsic to who and what you are, today and every day, for the rest of your life. 

Why are application, monitoring, and support important?

Integration requires repetition and social support. Insight, mystical breakthroughs, and emotional highs are the spice of life but they are sporadic and hard to maintain. As the Chinese Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower says, “The light is easy to raise but hard to fix.” This means that to maintain transpersonal breakthroughs in ways that are transformational you require a structure that includes application, monitoring and support. 

Application tests the feedback you get from interviewed characters to build your confidence and trust. 

Ongoing monitoring keeps both emerging potentials and your connection with your life compass alive and reduces reversion to habitual patterns.

Support provides cybernetic, self-correcting feedback, saving you time, effort, and confusion. IDL involves the creation and development of two support communities: that of your fellow students and your own interior or “intrasocial” sangha, comprised of those perspectives which you have previously interviewed. 

How it works:

Accountability and reflection transform state dependent interview openings into lasting behavioral change through reinforcement and community validation. The ongoing curriculum and application over time, combined with support gives new habits time and space to take root and grow in a naturalistic and comfortable way. 

What makes IDL application, monitoring, and support different is 1) you get to choose what you are going to apply and test; 2) you rely on feedback from your intrasocial sangha to see if what you choose and apply reflects the priorities of your life compass; 3) the community of fellow students of IDL dream yoga, to whom you are holding yourself accountable, share this unique approach. The result is that you are transforming and building a transformative interior and social cultures, sacred communities that build and support what is of central importance and meaning for you in your life. IDL’s aim is not mere self-improvement, but transformation — a gradual growing into, a becoming, an identification with the wisdom of your emerging potentials.

Application/Homework:

• You will normally find you come away from any interview with a number of recommendations, some of which relate to your life issues. Choose one recommendation that excites you — something that sparks curiosity or joy when you imagine living it.
•  Make it small, realistic, and desirable to increase the likelihood that you will experience motivating improvements that will make it easier for it to find a home in your busy life. 
• Operationalize your chosen recommendation using the SMARTER formula, explained below. This is because your success and confidence will depend on the reality of the results in your life from your application. After all, why should you stick with IDL dream yoga if you do not experience real, lasting changes in ways that are important to you? 
• Meet with your partner to operationalize your recommendation. Choose a fellow student for mutual support and accountability. You can work with more than one, but you need someone to report to on how your homework is going to keep you on track and help you problem solve challenges. The support to provide to your partner and your partner is to provide to you is to ask one or more of your previously interviewed perspectives how you are doing and what they recommend, if anything. IDL defers to the wisdom of the healer, balancer, and transformer within. 
• Ask your partner what feels most meaningful about their chosen recommendation. When you hear your own purpose reflected back, motivation deepens
• You can stay in touch with your partner via email, WhatsApp, video conferencing, whatever works best for you.  Integration thrives on repetition, recognition, and shared excitement — the contagious energy of people growing together
• Before sleep, rate yourself 0-10 on how well you assess your follow through with your recommendation today. Some items may just require a √ off if it has been remembered. Plan what you want to do do better or differently tomorrow, if anything.
• When you rate your follow-through, don’t ask, ‘How well did I obey my plan?’ Ask, ‘What progress am I noticing in how I show up?’ Confidence grows not from perfection but from noticing small consistencies over time.
• You will find that you will quickly generate a menagerie of interviewed perspectives, each with important reframings toward issues that matter in your life. Because interviewing is a state-specific activity, you will quickly forget them if you do not write them down. You are likely to lose characters in the maze of future interviews and recommendations if you do not create a method of keeping track of who recommended what. At minimum, write down the name of the character and the key recommendation that it made that you want to experiment with, incorporate, or embody. 
• How long you want to track implementation is up to you, but you do need to track it or you will not realize the changes that you are making. Like learning to walk, talk, or growing up we normally lack the objectivity to recognize the incredible changes we are making. It will therefore help you if you have one or more person that you can trust but that has some distance from your daily life so that they are more likely to notice change over time and give you objective feedback.
• Use pre-sleep dream incubation to focus your intention for your dreams as well as to set your frame of mind in expectation of tomorrow, around your plan for implementing your application. 
• Transformation grows through repetition, reflection, and the shared enthusiasm of a supportive community. Each recommendation you apply is more than a task; it’s a small act of becoming. Accountability and humor keep the process human, while curiosity and wonder keep it alive. Over time, what began as a conscious effort settles into natural expression — a living dialogue between your inner compass and daily life.

Recommendation — “Stop personalizing.”

From Interview: The interviewed element (e.g., “The Storm”) says: “Stop taking things personally; flow through conflict like wind through trees.”

Applying the SMARTER Formula:

SMARTER Step	Operationalization
Specific	“When someone criticizes or disagrees with me, I’ll pause, breathe, and remind myself: ‘This is about their weather, not my worth.’’
Measurable	“I’ll record each instance where I catch myself not reacting defensively.”
Achievable	“I’ll apply this practice in at least 3 interactions daily.”
Relevant	“This reduces reactive identification and embodies the detachment modeled by the Storm.”
Time-bound	“I’ll practice this consciously for the next 10 days.”
Evaluated	“Each evening, I’ll reflect for five minutes on what worked, what didn’t, and how my emotional reactivity changed.”
Reviewed	“After 10 days, I’llreread my notes and decide whether to extend the practice another 10 days or refine the technique.”

Recommendation — “Organize your living space.”

From Interview: The dream element (e.g., “The Closet”) says: “Clean and organize your space; it reflects your inner clarity.”

Applying the SMARTER Formula:

SMARTER Step	Operationalization
Specific	“I will organize my desk, bedroom floor, and closet so that all items have a place.”
Measurable	“At least 90% of visible surfaces will be clear; all clothes will be hung or folded.”
Achievable	“I’ll do this in 30-minute segments each day for 4 days.”
Relevant	“A tidy environment supports mental balance and embodies the harmony I experienced as the Closet.”
Time-bound	“I’ll finish the initial cleanup by next Sunday at 5 p.m.”
Evaluated	“At the end of each session, I’ll note how I feel and what insights emerge about inner order.”
Reviewed	“After two weeks, I‘LL reassess to see if the new organization supports a calmer mind and modify as needed.”

After writing your SMARTER steps, add one sentence that answers: Why does this matter to who I am becoming? This anchors your practice in meaning, not just discipline.

Interview your obstacles, challenges, and resistances to application

Interview your conflicts, environmental/familial resistances, self-sabotages to application, monitoring, and support. You can always get in touch with the underlying feeling, turn it into an animal or shape and interview that. 

All projects or learning experiences go through four phases: honeymoon, resistance, work, and resolution. 

All learning goes through four processes: unconscious incompetence, in which we don’t know how much we don’t know; conscious incompetence, in which we are confronted by just how much dedication and perseverance is going to be required to reach the third process, conscious competence. Then, as we settle into adjustment to our new competence we become unconsciously competent.

You will learn best if you strive to continuously combine work, learning, and fun. Attempt to maximize all three: work hard; ask a lot of questions; enjoy it all. IDL has all three built in, with the interviewing of arational, non-sensical, absurd elements reminding us that cosmic humor is intrinsic to a life well-lived. 

IDL progress is like gardening — if you don’t see flowers after three days, don’t fire the gardener.

Why IDL Requires Personal Testing and Verification

IDL refuses to stay theoretical. It insists that truth is not proven by belief or authority but by testing—in your dreams, your relationships, your moods, and your daily decisions.

Only through application do insights mature into transformation. As in alchemy, the fire of repeated practice fuses insight into gold.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna doesn’t just listen to Krishna’s wisdom—he tests it in battle, moment by moment. Similarly, IDL’s interview recommendations only come alive when you test them within the “battlefield” of daily life. The wisdom you embody becomes your own Krishna, your inner compass.

Why It Is Important

Integration requires repetition and social support. Ongoing monitoring keeps emerging potentials alive, strengthens your connection with your life compass, and reduces reversion to habitual patterns.

Transformation rarely happens through insight alone—it grows through repetition in relationship. In mythology, Odysseus doesn’t become wise because of a single revelation; he becomes wise through countless trials, each testing his commitment to return home. Likewise, every small act of following through on an IDL recommendation is a step on your own hero’s journey toward integration.

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”

— Delmore Schwartz

IDL transforms dream-like openings into waking-life embodiment by marrying vision with accountability.

How It Works

Accountability and reflection transform state-dependent openings into behavioral change through reinforcement and community validation.

Ongoing curriculum and application, combined with social support, give new habits time and space to take root naturally.

Think of bamboo: it spends years growing roots before shooting upward overnight. Monitoring and support cultivate those invisible roots of transformation. Without them, insights remain seeds left on the surface.

The Principle of Co-Evolution

Just as the observer and the observed co-emerge in quantum mechanics, personal growth unfolds through a reciprocal relationship between action and awareness. Each moment of practice reshapes perception; each shift in perception guides new action. Application, monitoring, and support sustain this dance of evolution.

Interview to Engage

Interview any resistances that arise—conflicts, environmental or familial obstacles, or inner self-sabotage to application, monitoring, and support.

Resistance itself often hides a guardian impulse—some part of you protecting safety or identity. Approach it with curiosity, not combat. Every resistance, when interviewed, may turn into a guide.

In psychological terms, this is shadow integration; in mythic terms, it’s learning to befriend your dragon before it burns your castle.

Application and Homework

1. Choose one recommendation to implement.
   • Pick one that sparks enthusiasm or personal meaning, not just one that seems practical.

2. Operationalize it using the SMARTER formula.
3. Meet with your partner to refine your operational plan.
4. Before sleep, rate yourself (0–10) on how well you followed through today.

1. • Reflect: “What one thing will I do better or differently tomorrow?”

5. Review your interview for embedded advice about how to implement your chosen recommendation(s).
6. Share one motivator and one obstacle in peer discussion.
7. Choose a support partner to sustain accountability.
8. Track implementation for one week.
9. Share results with your partner via email, WhatsApp, or another channel.
10. Use pre-sleep dream incubation to focus your intention for dreams and for tomorrow’s practice.

“Dreams are life’s rehearsal studio. Application is opening night.”

Bringing It All Together

IDL’s transformation unfolds not through grand insight but through small, consistent acts of alignment—each one a quiet revolution. Application is your daily myth in action, monitoring is your inner historian, and support is your circle of allies.

The process mirrors the way cultures evolve: through feedback, cooperation, and experimentation. As the Renaissance blossomed through shared inquiry and accountability among artists and scientists, so too does inner development flourish through dialogue, testing, and mutual inspiration.

Each time you apply an IDL recommendation, you enact the cosmic rhythm of emergence: awareness becoming form, form becoming awareness.

And if you forget, smile. Even evolution needs a nap before it continues creating worlds.