Twilight Dreaming:

An Introduction

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Workshop Structure
Exercise periods for practice

Presentation on why, how, who

Slides will be available with additional resources

This is meant to be a good kick-off to practice not the

be all, end all to the topic.

We follow IASD dreamwork ethics – not therapy;

not critical; keep confidential; sharing is optional
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Twilight Dreaming – The
Forgotten Inner Work Modality
of the 20th Century

Will the 21st Century Be Better?

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
The Three Dreamings

Nighttime Dreaming

Twilight Dreaming

Day Dreaming

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Some of the Methods of Work and Their
Depth
General discussion

Journaling

Artwork

Focusing

Twilight dreaming

Dreams
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
What Do You Mean by “Depth”?
A place, usually outside of our workaday world, in
which our mind/body experiences poignant images and
sensations from a source that feels new to us.

In this place, memory, thoughts, feelings, bodily

sensations, dream images, dream sounds, dream
energies get mingled.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 What is hidden:
Present concerns
Past concerns
Anticipatory mechanisms asking “what if”
Wishes
Intuitions
Stirrings of body, soul, and spirit
Adopted perspectives
Adopted personal myths
Adopted roles (“subpersonalities)
Memories
Unknown
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Evidence – Studies & Experience
There is enough “evidence” to conclude:

Much lies below our everyday focus

We can change our focus and this “unconscious” material

becomes viewable in our consciousness (“When reason
sleeps, the sirens sing.” Max Ernst)

Getting to know what lies below can be healing and increase

our life experience.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Journey into Depth with Twilight
Dreaming

What Twilight Dreaming Is Not

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming Is Not:
Guided Imagery

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming Is Not:
Meditation

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming Is Not:
Contemplation

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming is Not:
Authorship

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Journey into Depth with
Twilight Dreaming

What Twilight Dreaming Is

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Twilight Dreaming occurs
naturally in hypnogogia
(approaching sleep) and in
hypnopompia (leaving sleep). We
can develop a practice of close
attention of these natural
experiences and extend them to
other times during the day.
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Twilight Dreaming –
The Experience
Dream like imagery, full range of emotions, realistic to the point we
can treat the images as objects, persons, locations in a physical
world, images range from realistic to fantastic, ideas range from
simple to quite complex, insights range from little “ahas” to
surprising realizations.

Essentially…Creative Dreaming While Awake

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Jung Brings Twilight Dreaming
to the 20th Century
His influences and
how he gets started

Jung had a problem

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Doorway As Analogy

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – The Bottle
Going in

Making contact

Deep observing

Deep engagement

Coming out
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Going In

Have/get experience with calming down and turning in.

Know how to leave the strong drive of daily life for

awhile?
Do I need to get better at this?
Change habits?
Do I really know how to move into altered states?

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Going In
Don’t fight “I see only darkness.” “Nothing
happens.”

Work with a starter image.

Start describing…cheat if necessary

(describe first to see second).

Relax more and repeat above.

Trust and go with what you get.

Starts in black and white, then color. Twilight Dreaming:

An Introduction
Exercise – Going In
#1 –6 minutes

Lead-In

Starter Image - Bring a memory alive

Lead-Out

Come back and report out (optional and

confidential).

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming
Part Two

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Dreamwork and Twilight
Dreaming
Robert Bosnak (IASD
member; past IASD
President)

Uses Twilight Dreaming in

his
Embodied Dreamwork

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Twilight Dreaming for Working
with Dreams and Other
Movements of the Psyche
“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is,
knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

-Ray Bradbury

Twilight Dreaming as discovery practice.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
How to Do Active Imagination
How long do I spend?

Not long.
A majority of your time may be
with Pre-Active Imagination.
Get into the mood and then introduce
your “work.”
It will be hard to remember everything
you experience. Try to set memory markers
and/or make notes.
Finish up and return.

Don’t use junk time Twilight Dreaming:

An Introduction
How to Do Active Imagination

How often?

What is your relationship to your dreams,

small glimpses offered during the day,
engagement in fantasy (books, movies,
Poetry)?

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Making Contact

Making Contact is our first really

looking around at a dream
image/dream. We have gone from
settling down and focusing inward in
the Going In stage to seeing a dream
landscape/stage more clearly. Going In
is finding the landscape/stage darkly
while Making Contact is seeing clearly.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Making Contact
Say hello with trust

Say hello with purpose

Say hello with curiosity

Say hello with sharing the space

Be open to affective connection to

anything and everything.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Exercise – Going In & Making
Contact
#2 – 10 minutes

Lead-In

Seed Image – A dream image/fragment

Lead-Out

Come back and report out (optional).

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming
Part Three

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Jung on the Power of
Twilight Dreaming
“Continual conscious realization of unconscious fantasies,
together with active participation in the fantastic events, has,
as I have witnessed in a very large number of cases, the
effect of extending the conscious horizon by the inclusion of
numerous unconscious contents…and bringing about a
change of personality.”
Two Essays, para. 358.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 More Jung

“in one person, this sort of work enhances their

life-feeling; another…it promises a rich harvest of
knowledge, a third…it provides the key that will
transform that person’s whole life.”

Jung

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Yet More Jung
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully
and as carefully as you can---in some beautifully
bound book. Think of it in your imagination and try
to paint it. Then when these things are in some
precious book you can go to the book and turn over
the pages and for you it will be your church---your
cathedral---the silent places of your spirit where you
will find renewal. If anyone tells you that this is
morbid or neurotic and you listen to them---then you
will lose your soul---for in that book is your soul.”

-Douglas, Translate This Darkness, p. 159

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming Is Part of The
Great Round of Dreaming –
Learn From All Forms
Nighttime Dreaming

Twilight Dreaming

Day Dreaming

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – The Bottle
Going in

Making contact

Deep observing

Deep engagement

Coming out
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Deep Observing

The goal of deep observing is to gather as

much information about the dream
image/dream as possible by looking
closely and widely.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – Deep Observing

Go for details; be a reporter. Be objective,

don’t judge. You are there to get the facts
(including feelings and tone).

Try various angles and perspectives.

Listen with your ears, body, mind’s eye.

Do you hear words? Does your body react
to the image/dream? Are you being pulled
from the image somewhere else?
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Why Did Jung Call It Active
Imagination?
Why is it “Active”
Imagination?

Directed Fantasy

Free Fantasy

Memory/Associative

Active

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Why Did Jung Call It Active
Imagination?
Contrasted it with free association (Freud’s approach) where
all thoughts/feelings are encouraged. Jung wanted to stick
a specific seed image, squeezing everything possible out it.
This is of special interest when an image comes up of its own
accord such as in a dream or as compelling background
image from our daytime world. This work will help us
To find out its role at that moment in our psyches.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Holding an Image -
Framework
Related concept
Related concept

Your image
Related concept

Related concept
Related concept

Stick “to the picture that comes up until all its possibilities
are exhausted…I would not let them go (in this case people)
Twilight Dreaming:
till I had found out what they were going to do…” Jung An Introduction
 Holding an Image for
Amplification (Example)
In a bath
In the womb

In the sea
Cooking

Fish
Drowning

Stick “to the picture that comes up until all its possibilities
are exhausted…I would not let them go (in this case people)
Twilight Dreaming:
till I had found out what they were going to do…” Jung An Introduction
 The Associational Journey
Your image

1st connection
2nd connection
3rd connection
4th connection
5th connection
6th connection

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Exercise – Deep Observing
#3 – 10 minutes

Lead-In

Seed Image – A dream image/fragment

Lead-Out

Come back and report out (optional).

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Twilight Dreaming
Part Three

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – The Bottle
Going in

Making contact

Deep observing

Deep engagement

Coming out
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Jung’s Own Approaches
Tavistock Lectures
Aunt’s photo
(Grandfather coming down
the stairs)

Digging down a 1000 feet

(Read p.47, Analytical Psychology)

Working with a young patient

go into travel poster
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Cautions from the
Jungians

Jungian analysts have been the ones putting the technique into
public awareness and the public domain.

Some cautions for those who have problems telling reality from
the inner world or for people who would be uncomfortable
working with their inner stuff. “The dangers of imaginative
procedures,” claims Jungian Verena Kast, “seem to have been
overestimated. An excessive flood of images may mostly be stopped by
means of a change in body posture, stimulation of perceptions of the
exterior world, and exact description and recording of the images.”

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Further Cautions

Don’t be obnoxious (watch for inflation).

Don’t over intellectualize.

Don’t become an overnight artist

If you need help, get help.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming –
Deep Engagement –
Three Choices–

Dreaming the Dream

Onward
Getting More Info
Testing Interpretations
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
How to Do Twilight
Dreaming –
Deep Engagement –
Dreaming the Dream
Onward
Requires the most engagement and ability.

Requires letting go and following where the

drama leads. No rewriting.

Requires knowing when the new dream ends.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming –
Deep Engagement –
Getting More Information
Most likely source of new information:
Dialogue with inner figures.

>>Jung on inner figures

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Jung’s Active Imagination
Inner Figures

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Jung on Inner Figures

“You must step into the fantasy yourself and compel the
figures to give you an answer. Only in this way is the
unconscious integrated with consciousness by means of a
dialectical procedure, a dialogue between yourself and
the unconscious figures.”
Letters 1, p. 561

James Hillman: “Personifying not only aids

discrimination, it also offers another avenue of
loving, of imagining things in a personal form so that
we can find access to them with our hearts.” Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Working With Inner Figures
Trust the process. At times it will feel like you are
just making up what is being said. Some times this
is true, but this is a helpful process to help get the
process going. Don't worry about the source, just go
with the process.

Record as much as you can.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Dialogue Is Possible With
More Than People
You can also “dialogue” with:

Places
Objects
Feelings
Events
Concepts

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming –
Deep Engagement –
Testing Interpretations
Embody a dream image (be there, sensory
awareness). Bring in idea of what it
is/means to you. Feel your body for shifts
in energy, “ahas”, shifts in breathing,
shifts in emotion. Look for shapeshifting
into another image; repeat above with this
image.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming –
Deep Engagement –
Getting There
Feel things with your senses.

Receive and give dialogue.

Let yourself be moved into other places,

dream scenes.

If too much, ask to be the observer

viewing a drama.
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twilight
Dreaming – The Bottle
Going in

Making contact

Deep observing

Deep engagement

Coming out
Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 How to Do Twight
Dreaming – Coming Out
Find a stopping point…either timed or a
natural place to end.

Thank you for meeting with me.

I will return to this place again.

Honor any understandings.

Open to further involvement in dreams.

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
Exercise – Deep Engagement
#3 – 10 minutes

Lead-In

Seed Image – A dream image/fragment

Lead-Out

Come back and report out (optional).

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction
 Twilight Dreaming
The End (for now)

More info at www.twilightdreaming.com

Twilight Dreaming:
An Introduction