When you interview a dream character you take that role. You look out at the world through its eyes. You imagine you are it. You become it to the fullest extent possible. If the knight in this picture were to wake up and do an IDL interview on his dream, he would have many choices as to who to interview. He could interview the other fighters, the horse, his wooden sword, his garbage lid shield, the spears, or even the feathers on the helmets. Characters may be singular (“Mom”) or plural (a group of women, clouds, pictures, etc.). They may be entities (people, extraterrestrials, spirits, walruses, body parts), places (houses, cars, parks, outer space), and things (credit cards, toothbrushes, clouds, novels, water.) Just about anything can be a dream character, but Integral Deep Listening puts feelings (happy, sad, confused, guilty, angry, fearful, etc.) and actions (thoughts, riding, driving, surfing, climbing, coughing, etc.) in other categories because they are essentially processes rather than things, and things are easier to become than processes, because they possess identity.
Integral Deep Listening does not make ontological assumptions about who or what a dream character may be, other than to say that it is partially a subjective self-creation and partially an objective perspective that doesn’t belong to us. If you dream of your recently deceased uncle Ned, you may in fact be having a literal encounter with the old chap. But we do not start by making this assumption, no longer how confident we are that it is correct. We simply identify with Ned, as we would with any other dream character, and see what he has to say. Let’s let Ned tell us whether he is a disincarnate visiting us from the other side, an aspect of ourselves, or both. In any case, he represents a perspective which includes our own and usually transcends it as well.
To interview an adult’s dream, go here.
To interview a child’s dream, go here.
