Less is More: Dream Reports that Tune into Events *

Paper for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) 2016 PsiberDreaming Conference (PDC)
 © by Beverly D’Urso, PhD

What if we worked with dreams the way the Hindu God functions: create, preserve, and destroy? [1] First, we create the dream. Then, to preserve it, we  record it and create a report. Finally, to make use of the dream for a particular purpose, we destroy the parts that relate to different purposes. I will discuss how to best create dream reports to preserve them, as well as demonstrate a technique I call cutting, where I eliminate, or cut, words from a dream report to end up with a report which matches a possible target of a dream contest or other event.

What purposes do dreams serve? Dreams may help our brains work more efficiently by creating and destroying neural associations. They may bring up emotions that we have not yet effectively processed. I discuss dream emotions in several other papers. [2][3] In some societies, dreams diagnose illness or predict the future. [4] In lucid dreams, we resolve conflicts or have exciting adventures. [5] [6] The purpose of dreams seems endless.

For decades, we have had events at IASD conferences, such as dream contests or games, to demonstrate extra-sensory perception, or ‘psi.’ Throughout my life, I have had many psi dreams where I tuned into a future event. I discuss some of these in another paper. [7] Many of them have occurred during IASD conferences where I predicted a target picture. See FIGURE A .

The telepathy contest at the live IASD conference uses four very distinct pictures chosen by an unknown person, usually from an extremely large pool, such as random internet images. These possible pictures get printed and sealed into envelopes. Another person designated as the sender, secretly chooses one of them, called the target, to focus on during the night. In the morning, people drop their written dream report into one of four boxes, each associated with one of the four pictures.

A panel of judges, including the sender, then choose the dreams that they feel best match the sender’s target picture. Of course, judges differ on how and what they see as a match based upon their own background, ways of sensing, and many other factors. In any case, we have had amazing results. One year, I won the telepathy contest with my dream of cats appearing everywhere when the target picture showed a cat!

During online conferences, we have similar events. One called the group game combines and expands such events. In the game, a group of people submit dreams from one night before several possible pictures get chosen. Then, the group must use all of the submitted dreams to predict which of the possible pictures will get randomly chosen as the target the following day. I focus on these possible pictures while I look at the dream reports to determine if picture and a dream might match if I cut some of the words, while not changing their order.

I have been cutting my own dream reports for many years. At last year’s IASD 2015 PDC, I correctly predicted the target of the group game event by cutting my dream reports, as well as the dream reports of the other participants. See FIGURE D for examples of some these. I seemed to influence the group to predict the correct choice as well.

Cutting could also get used apart from such psi events to more effectively understand dreams in general, but I will focus on how I use it during conference events. Think of my cutting technique as uncovering ‘hidden’ messages in dreams. I will describe my technique, but will begin with how I record my dreams and write up my reports to enhance tuning into an event.

I describe what works for me, but others can modify what I do, hopefully sticking with my main intentions. First of all, I record and transcribe only ‘raw’ dream data into a dream report with no embellishment of the dream story after becoming fully awake. Then, when cutting out parts of the report, I imagine that the dream is taking me into the scene of the target picture, and that I might be describing it from different perspectives.

On the night of a dream event, I ‘ask’ myself when I get into bed, and whenever I awaken in the night, to dream of the target picture. I record my intention as the first entry in my recorder. Sometimes I become lucid in my dream, and I ask again in the dream to see or experience the target picture. I may even go search for it. In some cases, the target appears as an actual picture on a wall or as a photo in a drawer. However, I do not need to become lucid in a dream to discover the target. Many of my best event submissions came from non-lucid dreams. Most often, I find myself inside the scene of the target picture.

I use a digital recorder with raised buttons that I can easily press in the dark to record my dreams all night long on event nights. I usually have about six to ten dreams per night. Two or three of them usually point to the dream target, and often refer to each other. I do not use the recorder of my iPhone because it adds light and takes more steps. I want the simplest function that keeps me in the hazy state of the dream. People who do not wake up with dreams in the middle of the night, do not want to use a recorder, or seem more sensitive to sound than light, can write their last dream as soon as they awaken, using as little movement and light as possible.

I do not use paper and pen because they usually involve light and more movement which disturbs my sleep. It also takes more effort to use my hand and fingers than my voice. My husband does not seem sensitive to sound as much as light, so I can occasionally record with him in bed. However, I usually sleep alone for events. I do keep paper and pen nearby that I can grab in the dark for sketches. I do not wake up enough to make great drawings or wait to draw after fully awake. I have done well in contests by submitting simple squiggly line sketches.

My life work involves having lucidity, or presence, as much as possible in every moment whether awake or asleep. In a lucid dream I know I am dreaming while I am dreaming, but I cannot merely record while in that dream. I have to ‘wake up’ enough to end up with words that I can submit. However, I want to stay as close as possible to the state of my last dream when I record. This includes noticing sensations and emotions. I need this presence to best capture the raw dream data. During event nights, I have often recorded too early, while still in a non-lucid part of a dream. This does not work because my words will not appear on my waking state recorder, but it can act as a helpful rehearsal of the recording.

When I finally get out of bed, I have all my dreams on my recorder, but I usually do not remember most of them. I wait until I feel clear and functional to transcribe them to my computer to create my dream report. I feel it best NOT to embellish the dream story. If I add or change even a few words for clarification, I might lose valuable information. In Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, he agrees that we can better understand dreams by not enhancing the dream story. [8]

Therefore, I only use the exact words that I recorded during the night to create my report, not counting meta information, such as times, titles, themes, and emotions that relate to my dreams. Some people believe that such information can enhance the raw data and assist the judging process. I add this information only if I remained with the emotions, feelings, and sensations of my dream while recording them. After completing my report, and attaching any sketches I made in the night, I always highlight in boldface the words or phrases that seem unusual or just ‘feel’ related to the event target. We call these predictions, and judges look for them when rating any potential winning dream reports.

I also predict which dream will best match the target. When two or three of my dreams have related topics, I predict that the clearest of these will match, while the others provide support. Many judges look only for words in dream reports that match elements of the target picture. I prefer a matches to the environment, location, quality, feel, history, or other aspect of a picture or description. These become clear after the cutting process.  FIGURE B shows how I cut predictions in the IASD 2015 PDC contest.

After everyone submits all their dreams for the night of an event, the possible target pictures get posted. I stay with presence when first viewing the pictures. I don’t react to the pictures which I prefer, but notice if any of them remind me of any parts of my dreams. Then, I begin the process of cutting my report.

When cutting any dream report, perspective seems very important. For example, if the target picture showed people getting their photos taken on the White House lawn, in my dream report I might have described the scene from the perspective of the photographer, one of the photographed people looking at the camera, or someone on the side or above the whole scene. For one contest, I described a man dressed in suit walking in a door. The target picture showed a boy not wearing clothes, but the angle and size of him in relation to the whole picture exactly matched the man in my dreams. Without cutting, no one else would see the connection between my dream man and the target boy.

I realize I may use a type of ‘instinctual’ skill or psi ability when cutting. However, I believe any person who has both a simple dream report, made the way I described, and a picture, can easily notice what matches, especially if they imagine that in the dream they were exploring inside the scene of the picture.

In the IASD 2015 PDC group game, I chose picture D, which we called ‘Jesus on the Mount,’ of the four possible pictures because six of the eight dreams of my report seemed to match it after the cutting. See FIGURE E. I also cut twelve other people’s dream reports that seemed to match this picture. Again, see FIGURE D for examples of some the the cut dreams of others. By posting their cut dream reports, I convinced several of them, and others, to choose this picture as the one of the four that would randomly get chosen as the target the next day. When it did get chosen, I felt very excited and knew that I needed to write this paper.

I will not include my full dream report of eight dreams. I will show two of my six dreams that had matches to the eventual target, using strike-through to demonstrate what I cut, and ‘…’ to show where I made cuts. Note that none of the cut nor non-cut words matched the other possible pictures.

Dream Number 4
4:54 am PDT

BEFORE CUTTING:

[I am in] a church. This person, the woman, is a friend of mine. Just before she goes up to talk, I find out that she doesn’t have very long to live. She is hiding this a little from the audience or the congregation. I know it from the end of the dream. I can’t help it and start to cry and trying to participate in this chant she started. I felt kinda desolated and emotionally drained. I guess we had a longer conversation about all of this before this started.

Note that I use ‘…’ to indicate that I cut some letters or words, but do not change their order nor add any other words.

AFTER CUTTING:

[I am in] a church. This person….. Just before he goes up to talk, I find out that .. he doesn’t have very long to live .. he is hiding this a little from the audience or the congregation. I know it from the end of the dream. I can’t help it and start to cry and trying to participate in this chant.. he started. I felt kinda desolated and emotionally drained….

Note that all of the words in Dream Number 4, which I highlighted as predictions before the possible pictures went up, remained after the cutting.

Dream Number 6:
7:32 am PDT

BEFORE CUTTING:

Dreamed that I was at an event. It was this big circular room with maybe a hundred people. It was supposed to be Wayne Dyer talking, but since he died it was more like a memorial. His daughter was there. I introduced myself. Supposedly, I had met her before. Then we started singing. She would lead the phrase and we would all sing it. It was really beautiful. The thing that surprised me the most were the glasses she had on. She was wearing these really thick glasses, the whole thing was thick, not just the lens. The whole thing was thick – almost like goggles.

AFTER CUTTING:

Dreamed that I was at an event. It was this big circular …with maybe a hundred people. It was supposed to be … talking, but since he died it was more like a memorial. … he would lead … It was really beautiful. ….

Note that at the time of Dream Number 6, Wayne Dyer had just died, I was helping my son get glasses, and I was swimming daily with a mask similar to goggles. This demonstrates another reason I cut these parts.

FIGURE C summarizes the matches from my six dreams after cutting them all.

I could use this cutting technique for many other purposes besides matching event targets, such as to see if my dreams match ‘regular’ life events or locations. In these cases, if I didn’t have a picture, I would need some description of the event or location. I could also more easily discover ‘messages’ imbedded in my dreams after I cut parts of my dream report that relate to my recent experiences, such as movies I just watched. I’d love to hear about people’s use of my cutting technique, and how my suggestions of preserving dreams and creating reports may have helped them make better use of their dreams. **

REFERENCES:

[1] Trimurti in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Trimurti

[2] Emotions, Intentions, and Implications of Knowing I Dream in the Moment in http://wedreamnow.info/?p=394
[3] Lucidity and Self-Realization through Emotional Surrender in http://wedreamnow.info/?p=391
[4] What Purpose Do Dreams Serve? in http://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/dreams/facts-about-dreams/purpose-of-dreams
[5] Amazing Dreamers: Interview with Beverly D’Urso in http://lucidbeverly.com/Dreamtime_Interview.pdf
[6] Lucid Dreaming and Self Realization in  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/lucid-dreaming-and-self-realization
[7] Beyond Space and Time: Personal Experiences with Psi Dreaming in  http://wedreamnow.info/?cat=5
[8]  The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interpretation_of_Dreams

FOOTNOTES:
[*] I write without the verb ‘to be’, other than when I need to demonstrate the continuous, as in ‘I am dreaming.’ We call this e-prime and it helps with presence. I used the word ‘is’ in my title because this common phrase: Less is More really seemed to fit!

[**] Try cutting the following phrase to find the hidden message.: Thinking too much makes Life seem fast while it is going slowly but feeling is delicious but not too much because I must have a dream.  Description = My favorite song!