Using The Tools With Dream Figures

by Dr. Judy White

“I had another damn cyclops dream last night,” an exhausted teen complained as she dropped into my office chair. “This time he chased me into the ocean and I woke up gasping for air.”

I am a passionate Tools practitioner. I am also a dreamworker. Both have enriched my personal and professional life for decades. But only at that moment, when I was desperate to help this anxious and angry kid who couldn’t shake a recurring nightmare, did it hit me—I could have her use Active Love with this monstrous figure!

On the spot, I guided her back into the dream waters. With the rhythm of the waves that buoyed her when she surfed in waking life, she felt her heart swell with a vast, oceanic love. “Now,” I said, “turn and face the cyclops and pour out all the love concentrated in your chest to him.” Immediately, I saw my patient’s shoulders drop and her brow unfurrow. She reported that at that moment—the moment the outflow of love reached the cyclops—he dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms in supplication.

THE TOOLS AND DREAMWORK

Dreams are a source of profound inner wisdom far greater than conscious awareness. Tools help bring that awareness into waking life with actionable impact. Active Love defused the menace in my young patient’s cyclops figure and her nightmares stopped. She could then focus on her real-life issues with renewed calm and vigor.

The dreamwork and Tools combo also offers opportunities to experience embodied versions of The Tools, especially if you’ve been practicing them all along. I had the chance to test this out recently as I was preparing to go into surgery that was making me anxious: I dreamt I was about to host a party. At the same time, I needed to tend to a disheveled, hungry baby. There was no food in the house, no one had done any planning for the hordes of guests about to descend, and the person who’d volunteered to help me was nowhere to be found. In short, everything was in chaotic disarray.

THE MOTHER TOOL

This state of feeling responsible yet powerless in the face of an overwhelming challenge is familiar to me and yet in this dream, I felt strangely calm. With the help of Robbie Bosnak’s Embodied Imagination method of dreamwork, I began to explore this dreamscape. There in the kitchen, I saw the source of soothing as a maternal figure hovering over me and radiating a silvery light, suffusing me with a confidence that got me moving. I’m convinced that a daily practice of sensing this illuminated energy in my body helped me sail through surgery and recover well. Only later did I realize that this experience was the result of converging work with The Mother Tool and specific healing dream imagery, each of which I’d been engaged in for years.

In dreams related to earlier health challenges, the stream of light above me became a form of healing energy. When I started using the The Mother Tool with my party dream, the divine archetypal Mother became the wellspring of this energy. I imagined the state of chaotic disarray as a toxic substance threatening to plunge me into despair. I then actively invoked The Mother to remove and absorb this heavy substance, replacing it with a penetrating and uplifting light. Now I’m astounded at how easy it is to call on the Mother when I need her.

LOSS PROCESSING

Loss Processing is another Tool I’ve successfully applied to dreams. One patient’s mother was dying—a protracted, premature death that was agonizing for him to witness. He dreamt he was a refugee from Central America, who had to leave his family and friends and the place he’d always known as home. As it turns out, it was less traumatic for this patient to begin to process his mother’s death through the losses of the refugee of his dream than to expose himself to the blunt force of his waking-life loss. I first had him step into the grief-stricken body of the refugee, forced to leave behind all his familiars. Then whenever he fell backward into the sun, becoming one with its eternal radiance, my patient felt stronger and more able to cope with the pain of his own mother’s death.

SHADOW WORK

If you think about it, a dream is always an encounter with the Shadow. Dream figures who seem alien to us at first are aspects of the Shadow—unfamiliar images with qualities we can’t identify with or we disown. Dialoguing with dream figures is a form of deep Shadow Work. I even help people develop the fluidity to inhabit their Shadow perspectives and ego perspectives in dreams at the same time, forging a bond between these apparent opposites. Remember my nightmare-plagued teen? Active Love was just the beginning of her healing journey. Over time, using the Tools method for Shadow Work, her cyclops turned into a beloved figure she turned to for ongoing counsel.

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to come to my office or join me over Zoom. How you adapt The Tools to dream material is limited only by the scope of your curiosity, imagination and, as always, the discipline of practice. Before you go to sleep, set the intention to recall your dreams, record them as soon as you wake up, and then begin to explore. Pay particular attention to the most foreign, emotionally vivid images or the parts that seem most relevant to core issues in waking life. Hang out with the homeless man, the prima donna opera star, or the beached whale. Once you get to know them, an appropriate Tool will present itself.

Wishing you all sweet and savory dreams!

Dr. Judy White is a psychologist and dreamworker with a wide-ranging clinical practice focused on awakening the self-healing response inherent in each of us. For over 30 years, she has used The Tools and dream exploration to help people facing health concerns, creative blocks, traumatic events, parenting and partner issues, and more.

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