Issue 81, May 2005
One Liners
©Jane Teresa Anderson, May 2005
Imagine watching a movie of all the dreams you’ve ever had from your earliest ones in the womb right up to the five you had last night. Reviewing your life through the eyes of your dreams, what might you see?
You’d see many recurring patterns and cycles that had an uncanny resemblance to your life but – and here’s the thing – you would only recognise these looking back. It’s much easier to understand your life in retrospect.
Look at it this way:
Write down the names of one friend, one colleague you work closely with, one relative and one person who is suffering in some way.
Now describe a pattern you see in each of their lives. For example, for your friend you might see a pattern of “always giving up just when she’s winning”. For your work colleague you might see “starts too many new things, losing track of the big picture”. For the person who is suffering you might see “spends all her time trying to rescue others and is blind to her own need for help”.
How do you think your friend, your colleague and the suffering one would respond if you described these patterns to them? Would they recognise them? Would they own them? Would they understand how they started? Would they know what to do to change the patterns that are not helpful to them?
You rarely recognise the patterns of your attitudes and beliefs – the patterns directing your life – while you’re in them. Your friends, family and colleagues may try to point them out to you but the richest and most reliable source about your personal patterns is your dreams.
Here’s how to identify them:
Stand back from your dream and see if you can summarise it in one sentence. In other words, change it from a detailed drama or mini-novel into a one liner. Here are two examples:
Jim’s dream
I am driving down a road and come to a roadblock. I reverse and try a different way. I’m anxious to get to the conference where I am going to make a presentation. I suddenly find myself travelling the wrong way down a one-way street. I back out. I find myself back where I started. The conference will have started by now and I’m worried that I won’t get there on time. My presentation may not happen. By now the car has slowed almost to a standstill in a traffic jam. I grip the steering wheel but I can’t feel anything because the ends of my fingers have gone dead (numb).
ONE LINER:
Jim’s progress is delayed by blocks, dead ends, reversals and back-tracking, bringing him back to where he started, worried about not making his presentation.
(This dream shows Jim’s fears about his creative work are blocking him, causing him to continually backtrack in an effort to seek perfection. This gets him nowhere.)
Julia’s dream
A man is showing me a picture in a book. It’s dark and I can’t make it out. He starts describing it to me. I feel faint. I feel myself fading out, collapsing to the floor.
Next I am in a hospital. They tell me I have been in a coma. A doctor shows me an X-ray of my heart. I see a dark patch. His words are muffled. I think he is telling me my ears are blocked. A nurse comes to syringe my ears but I am frightened of the syringe so I pretend to fall asleep.
ONE LINER:
Julia is choosing not to see or hear something.
(This dream shows Julia is in denial of how deeply a loss in her life has affected her. She has buried the grief in her heart because she is frightened to face its pain.)
Apply this approach to some of your own dreams. If you can’t relate to your one-liners, ask a good friend, “Can you see this pattern anywhere in my life?” If your friend is truly a good friend, be prepared for a surprise!
Once you’ve seen the light of the one liner you might like to try this:
If finding the time to keep a dream journal is too difficult, then instead of writing down all the details of your dreams JUST record your one liners. To do this, take a moment when you wake up to recall and review your dreams and then decide on the one-liners before you get out of bed. Keep a journal by your bed and write them down before you get up.
Every six weeks look back through your journal and read the one-liners in date order, like a story. You will see patterns upon patterns, cycles within cycles, new insights, turnarounds, breakthroughs and, running through it all, clues on how to make helpful changes.
Give it a whirl. Let the patterns directing your life today teach you how to change them for a better tomorrow.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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