In this unit you will learn…
How and Why IDL Accesses Different States of Oneness
How does IDL dream yoga differ from other approaches?
IDL dream yoga differs from other dream yogas as well as other approaches to dreamwork, not only by becoming and interviewing dream characters with a structured protocol, but in that it uses this protocol to interview any altered or anomalous state experience. These include mystical and near-death experiences, psychic experiences (like dream powers of flying, walking through walls, dying and resurrecting, precognition and visitations), drug-induced experiences, shamanistic travels, waking fantasies, and synchronicities. As with dreams and nightmares, you become one or more element from the experience and see what it has to say. What is its interpretation? What is its take on the meaning of the experience? What recommendations does it have regarding your life issues?
The dream interviewing protocol is the altered state interviewing protocol
Because dreaming is an altered state, the dream interviewing protocol is also the altered state interviewing protocol. Dream interviews access perspectives inherent to one or another of all four transpersonal states: oneness with nature, deity, the formless, and the non-dual. Deity mystical experiences amplify a sense of devotion, awe, and wonder. All of the above examples of altered states produce interviews that amplify one or more of the above states of oneness. Mystical experiences will most likely focus on one or another of them. Some will leave you with a strong sense of oneness with nature or with the Divine, another with clear, formless witnessing, while yet others with a strong experience of the dissolving of all distinctions. Synchronicities and psychic experiences will likely focus on amplifying natural oneness. Shamanistic travels may put you in touch with natural or deity forms of oneness. Drug-induced and near-death experiences can be all over the place, amplifying any and all of the four varieties of oneness.
Interviewing other perspectives from altered states can radically expand our experience and understanding of oneness
Remember that the overt narrative of altered state experiences reflects the perspective of you, the “dreamer,” and only one element of the experience, that of you as perceiver of the dream, called “dream self.” Because we have a visitation experience we may conclude that it centers on oneness with the psychism of the natural realm. However, when you interview other elements in the visitation, say deceased aunt Ulla, or your bedroom, you may find that from their perspective the experience centers on oneness with divinity, the formless or non-dual. Your experience of oneness may not reflect that of other elements in the experience. More than one state of oneness may be revealed and amplified by any interviewed experience.
This amplification of different varieties of oneness is one of the major advantages and functions of Integral Deep Listening interviewing. We live most of our lives identified with a waking reality that is highly dualistic. The distinctions between self and other, mine and yours, real and unreal, true and false, natural and unnatural, and good and bad are largely defined and important for decision-making and relationships. Such distinctions generally form the foundation on which our identity, our sense of who we are, is built in our infancy and early childhood, out of our awareness and largely before we can remember.
A broader and deeper integration of consciousness
Interviews with perspectives from altered states serve to reduce the relevance of such dualities and at the extreme, dissolve them altogether. The consequence of this process, which is both transpersonal and a yoga, is integration. This integration is not simply intrapsychic, which is important enough; it is also integration with the “other.” These “others” may be ingroup or outgroup members. While ingroup members are those with whom you share common interests, beliefs, or origin, outgroup members include perceived competitors, foreigners, enemies, or adherents to a different ideology or religion. Elements of the natural world, like trees and mountains are also outgroup members, as are artifacts, such as dishes and houses. However, unlike human outgroups, we generally view natural outgroups as mundane, secular and approach them with indifference, since we typically have no strong emotional preferences toward them.
Interviewing as a unique way to access altered states repeatedly
The generation of integration of microcosm and macrocosm, of your interior reality and perceived “others,” is facilitated by repeated experiences of oneness. Mystical experiences tend to be unique and rare – very hard to duplicate. All experiences of oneness do not generate the same quality or quantity of integration. Most experiences of oneness do not generate lasting higher order integration. This is because they access states that by definition are wholly “other” and therefore are not experienced as “who you are.” As a consequence, they tend to become submerged, repressed, or rendered irrelevant by the daily forces that maintain your habitual sense of who you are. We can observe this in how quickly we typically forget who we interviewed and what we were told by interviewed characters. The advantage of interviewing over meditation is that it accesses integrative experiences of oneness “on demand,” that is, whenever we decide to interview ourselves or someone else or have someone interview us. As a consequence, we immerse ourselves in experiences of oneness repeatedly. Although most of these experiences are forgotten, a residue of integration remains and builds up over time, speeding up the dissolution of our normal experience of the reality of dualities of all sorts.
Interviewing provides concrete and relevant objectivity and oneness
Interviewing, whether of altered states or life issues, provide an important, and powerful variety of access to oneness that is different from that accessed by meditation. Regardless of its variety, meditation purposefully involves the generation of radical objectivity. Radical objectivity is formless, detached from any particular life issue or object, even if some object, like a candle, mantra, mandala, or mala (prayer beads) is used to evoke a mental state of radical objectivity. States of radical objectivity tend to generate detachment from life, suffering, and your identity – who you normally experience yourself to be, while building your identification with formless and non-dual states of oneness. This is important and useful, which is why the IDL Coaching, Practitioner, and Trainer Curricula contain modules on meditation and pranayama.
Limitations of states of radical oneness
However, most of who we are and most of the mental filters that keep us stuck in states of non-integration are in the world of dualism. Simply identifying with non-dual states does not make these problems go away, much less solve them. Instead, states of radical objectivity make us indifferent and non-attached to our problems. That is fine until we come across a matter toward which we cannot remain indifferent, such as the prospect of harm to a child or for which non-attachment is no solution, such as ignoring a serious wound or illness.
We need both the radical oneness of meditation and the concrete and mundane relevance interviewing provides
We require not only the radical objectivity and access to formless and non-dual states of oneness that meditation provides, but tools for developing objectivity of a dualistic sort. That is because we live in a dualistic reality and that is the world where the problems that we need to solve exist. IDL interviewing provides access to transpersonal states of oneness that are anchored in our everyday dualistic experience. The result is that we gain access to experiences of oneness that are not only abstract, as in meditation, but concrete and specific, due to the way accessed interviewed perspectives relate to our life issues. Dreams are particularly important in this regard because they provide ongoing biofeedback on our state of integration as well as access to states of objective but concrete and specific oneness that can provide recommendations regarding the issues and problems that matter most to us today.
This interviewing template is also available on the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-dream-characters/
Types of Protocols
Single element interviewing protocols: These provide a deep dive into experiencing reality from one other perspective, including whatever transformations/transmutations it chooses to make. Single event interviewing has the advantages of being quicker, easier, simpler, while still effective at teaching empathy, identification with alternative worldviews, thinning and broadening the self, and generating recommendations to operationalize and test. Disadvantages of single element interviewing are that they may focus in on one aspect of a dream or life issue without providing context or access to other perspectives that may be as important or more important.
Multiple element interviewing protocols: In IDL, these are called “Dream Sociometry,” and were the source of IDL interviewing in 1980. In Dream Sociometry, several characters in a dream or life issue are listed as “choosers” along the left margin of a grid, called a “Dream Sociomatrix.’ Those characters and sometimes others, are listed along with important actions and feelings, on the top margin of the Dream Sociomatrix as “chosen” elements. Subjects become each chooser and state preferences toward chosen characters, actions, and feelings. There are seven varieties of preference, “like,” “like a lot,” “love,” “no preference,” “dislike,” “dislike a lot,” “hate,” and “transcending all preferences.” All except the last are given a corresponding numerical value: 1, 2, 3, 0, -1, -2, -3. These scores are tabulated at the right and bottom margins of the Dream Sociomatrix and can be plotted on a “Dream Sociogram,” which consists of four number lines and concentric circles. The charting of the preferences of dream choosers and chosen dream elements objectifies the relationships among the characters, their actions, and feelings in a dream or life issue. It is as if you were looking down on the dream from outside the various different preferences and worldviews that are represented in it, allowing you to see relationships and meanings that were invisible to you as long as you stayed in your role as dreamer. Dream Sociometry provides a deep dive into any dream or life issue due to its interviewing of multiple perspectives. The “Trainer” level of Certification in the IDL Curriculum teaches Dream Sociometry and its use as a research tool with specific populations, such as people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or personality disorders. In addition to publishing research, Trainers supervise IDL student Coaches and Practitioners. Dream Sociometry is derived from the sociometry of J.L. Moreno. Two books, “Dream Sociometry,” and “Understanding the Dream Sociogram,” explain the creation of both Dream Sociomatrices and Dream Sociograms as well as how to interpret Dream Sociograms.
Life Issue Interviewing: This template is in the Life Issue Module and also on the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-life-issues/ Interviewing Children: You can access this template at the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/childs-life-issue-interviewing-protocol/ Interviewing a Physical Symptom: You can access this template at the IDL website at: https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/interviewing-a-physical-symptom/
A case can be made that the interviewing of life issues can be categorized as altered state interviews because the personifications of feelings associated with a life issue is to interview a “waking fantasy.” However, in life issue interviews the interviewed elements are generated out of a waking state, while in the other varieties they are generated while in an altered state. In both domains varieties of oneness are accessed and amplified, with it not uncommon to find different interviewed elements or characters amplifying different varieties of oneness.
Subjects of Interviews
Who gets to be interviewed?
Yourself: IDL uses self interviewing to support your self-development, generate empathy through identification with other perspectives, support problem solving, access transformational perspectives, generate objectivity, thin identification with habitual waking definitions of self, expand identity, and move from psychological geocentrism toward polycentrism. As you broaden and thin your identity through identifying with an increasing number of alternative, authentic and relevant perspectives, you get out of your own way. The result is you project your interpretations and assumptions onto others less often and improve your ability to listen to them in an integral and deeply empathetic and respectful way. There is a second way that you are interviewed: by others. In addition to the above benefits, you learn IDL interviewing much quicker and are more insightful and effective in your interviewing when you experience interviewing from the perspective of an interviewed subject.
Others: IDL uses your interviewing of others to generate a support system of like minds, develop interpersonal respect, intimacy, honesty, and transparency, provide a way to experience others as aspects of yourself, gain insight into your issues through the interviews of others, provide reframings of your life issues, provide additional recommendations for your life issues, teach interpersonal application monitoring and accountability, spread the values, methods, and culture of IDL, and receive feedback on the effectiveness of IDL for others and for different specific life issues other encounter. These two varieties of interviewing, of yourself and of others, generate a polar dynamic that speeds and deepens your competency applying IDL interviewing in your life and in the lives of others.
Dream (and Altered State) Interviewing Protocol
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
Tell me a dream you remember… (Or, choose a strong feeling or symptom…)
Why do you think that you had this dream?
These are the characters in the dream…
If one of these characters were able to provide you with a different and improved perspective on your life, which one would it most likely be?
(Character,) would you please tell me what you look like and what you are doing?
What do you like most about yourself in this experience you are a part of? What are your strengths?
What do you dislike most about yourself in this dream?
(You are in this person’s dream or life experience, correct? He/She created you, right?)
What aspect of him/her do you represent or most closely personify?
(Character,) if you could change yourself in any way you wanted, would you? If so, how would you change? (Character,) if you chose to change, is that really what you want to do or is that something your human would like to see happen? Only change if that is something you want for yourself!
(Character,) How do you score yourself 0-10 in the following six core qualities? “O” lower numbers are a lower score and higher scores are not necessarily better. Lower scores can sometime be better. Confidence means an absence of fear and self-doubt; Empathy means an ability to take the perspective of others; Wisdom is not smarts but a knowingness of being in the right place at the right time; Acceptance is both of yourself and others, and those may differ; Inner peace is the absence of distress; and Witnessing is the ability to stand back and watch the drama of your life, thoughts and feelings go by.
Confidence: 0-10:
Why?
Compassion: 0-10
Why?
Wisdom: 0-10
Why?
Acceptance: 0-10
Why?
Inner Peace: 0-10
Why?
Witnessing: 0-10
Why?
If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her, would you live it differently? If so, how?
If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle his/her three life issues differently? If so, how?
Do you have different or the same life issues? What life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his/her life?
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for your human to imagine that s/he is you and act as you would?
Why do you think that you appeared in this dream at this point in your dreamer’s life?
(Dreamer,) what have you heard yourself say?
If this /experience were a wake-up call from your life compass, what do you think it would be saying to you?
If this experience were a wake-up call for the world, how might humanity change if it listened to it?
What have you learned from this experience? How can you use it in your waking life? Look at the recommendations your Character made. Which one or two are most important for you? Which do you think would be most life changing? Take at least one recommendation and operationalize it. That means apply the SMART formula to it. How can you make it
Specific?
Measurable?
Achievable?
Relevant?
Time-based?
Contract with a fellow student or intern of IDL to be your accountability partner. Share with them how you want to be held accountability for applying and testing your chosen recommendation to see if IDL really does improve your life in meaningful ways. Help your partner via daily or weekly email or video contacts to do the same.
Assignments and Homework
Reading:
Under “Essays and Interviews,” read several of the “For Beginners” and/or “For Coaches” essays under “Transformation:”
Videos:
In the IDL video curricula, watch:
Our Different States of Consciousness
What are the differences among waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and non-dual turiya? What is the relationship between how the dreaming and deep sleep states are described in classical Hindu and contemporary spirituality, on the one hand, and science, on the other? How does that affect how Integral Deep Listening approaches them? This is the third in a series of videos on IDL as a dream yoga.
Quizlet Self-Tests
Interviewing
Think back on some experience of oneness that you have had in your life. It can be from one of any of the various categories that are enumerated above:
mystical and near-death experiences
psychic experiences (like dream powers of flying, walking through walls, dying and resurrecting, precognition and visitations)
drug-induced experiences
shamanistic travels
waking fantasies
synchronicities.
- interview yourself regarding one of these topics.
- Interview someone else regarding one of these topics.
- Have that person interview you regarding another one of these topics.
Questions
- Write down your answers to the following questions.
- Share your answers with your other study team members.
- Discuss.
- Submit your written answers to your team supervisor.
How have your experiences of oneness impacted your life?
What have you learned about experiences of oneness from interviewing yourself, someone else, and being interviewed by someone else?
What did the person you interviewed learn about oneness from their interview?
How does interviewing oneness relate to IDL as a dream yoga?
How do such interviews relate to your work as a coach?
Setting Intent
What do you want to take away from this unit to improve your life?
How would you like it to influence your dreams tonight?
How can you format that as a statement of intention to read over to remind yourself, before you go to sleep, to incubate in your dreams tonight?
