Chapter 3

Draft (Please do not distribute)

The Twelve CREEI Questions

Objectifying the Dream

Answering the twelve CREEI questions below will help prevent the initial tendency of the conscious mind to get in the way of a deeper understanding of the dream by judging, analyzing and interpreting it prematurely.

Questions briefly explained with respect to the dream self in each scene:

1. Is the scene Clear? (Can you describe it clearly?)
   
2. Is your Role proactive or responsive? (Rather than absent, passive or reactive.)
   
3. Is your Emotion (passion) high?
   
4. Are you Expressing your emotion?
5. Are you Interacting with others? (Rather than withdrawing or being alone.)
   
6. Is the scene complete or resolved? (Is there a sense of closure?)
   
7. Is it pleasant? Does it include satisfaction, joy, beauty, aesthetics and/or abundance?
   
8. Are you secure? (Do you feel safe?)
   
9. Do you have a sense of healthy self-esteem or self-worth?
   
10. Are you being your authentic present self? (Rather than pretending.)
    
11. Are you becoming all that you can be? Are you on the path towards self-actualizing?
    (Rather than procrastinating.)
12. Are you beloving of all beings? (Do they experience their own beauty in your presence?)

 

CREEI Work Sheet

Title the Dream

The dream title needs to be only one or two words. If you and I were visiting about your dream, the title is all I would want to know.  You needn't disclose the dream at all. This is to show you how the CREEI Dream Process allows you to talk about your dream with others without disclosing what may be sensitive material.  We all have such dreams. 

 

If your dream has many scenes, each scene may be examined separately.

Question 1. Key word: CLARITY 

Is the scene Clear? (Can you describe it clearly?)

 

The dream need not be lucid or vivid.  Simply ask yourself, ÒCan I describe the dream in my mind?Ó  NOT whether you understand or can interpret it. If youÕre confused, the answer is a question mark.  Any hesitation in determining whether the answer is yes or no should generate a question mark.  A question mark is just as important as a yes or no in the CREEI Dream Process.

Question 2. Key word: ROLE

Is your Role proactive or responsive? (Rather than absent, passive or reactive.)

 

Is the role of your dream self proactive or responsive? If you are responsive (NOT reactive), the answer is yes.  Sometimes your dream self can be passive or even absent. That is, you may not be aware of a dream self, but may be simply witnessing but not involved in the dynamics of the dream. ThatÕs a no.  If youÕre confused about your dream self role in the dream, the answer would be a question mark.

 

Question 3. Key word: EMOTION

Is your Emotional energy (passion) high?

 

The energy can be positive or negative (remember, the process does not judge!). Are you feeling emotional or passionate in this scene? If so, the answer is yes.  Otherwise, the answer would be no or a question mark.

Question 4. Key word: EXPRESSION

Are you fully Expressing your emotion?

 

Is your dream-self passionate or expressing the emotion in question 3 in this scene?  Suppose your dream-self expressed something, and then someone else expressed something and then your dream-self didnÕt express anything; is the answer yes or no?  The ambivalence about the answer would require a question mark.  DonÕt worry about answering with a question mark.  As noted earlier question marks are as useful in the CREEI Dream Process as yes or no.

The relationship between Emotion and Expression

Emotion and Expression are intimately connected.  I like to use the metaphor of electricity to explain this relationship.  In your home you have at least one electrical outlet.  Emotion is like the energy potential or voltage accessed from that outlet ready to be used when you plug in and turn on an appliance such as a mixer or vacuum.  Once plugged and turned on, the electrical current flows through the wires to cause the dishwasher, vacuum or other appliance to function.  Thus, expression is the action produced by the emotion.  Emotion is a feeling thing; expression is an action made possible by feeling.

 

Suppose the CREEI question on emotion is answered no, could the question about expression be answered yes? I don't think so.  If you donÕt have emotion, it can hardly be expressed, right?  So if the answer to emotion is no, the answer to expression must also be no.

 

Two other issues often arise with the relationship between emotion and expression.  Is it possible to have high emotion without transforming that emotion into expression? Most certainly yes!  It is much like having an electrical outlet but plugging nothing into it.  It is not unusual that a strong emotion in a dream goes unexpressed. For example, have you ever had a nightmare in which you were greatly frightened, but could not scream or speak? That would score high emotion and low expression. If there is any hesitation about answering yes or no to these questions the answer, of course, should be a question mark. Again, the CREEI Dream Process does not care whether the answer is yes, no or a question mark.  Each response gives useful information to analyze and interpret your dream.

Question 5. Key word: INTERACTION

Are you Interacting with others? (Rather than withdrawing or being alone.)

 

Is there convergence or divergence? Are you a player in the scene or are you watching a movie?   IÕve had dreams where I canÕt see myself.  IÕm just seeing the scene and not interacting with anything. In that case, the answer would be no.

 

Again, the initial phase of the CREEI process is not concerned with whether the interaction or convergence is viewed as positive or negative.  For instance, if the dream-self is participating in deadly combat, the tendency is to judge the scene as bad or negative and thus the dreamer might want to answer the CREEI question with a no.  But, in a deadly battle, there is generally a coming together, which is clearly convergence.   The question is asking whether there is interaction, not whether the interaction is pleasant or unpleasant, positive or negative. In this case the correct answer to interaction is yes.

 

The question sometimes arises, suppose I am not interacting with people at all, would that be an automatic no?  In dreams, the dreamer is not always interacting with people. Sometimes the dreamer is interacting with animals or plants or even inanimate objects.  For instance, a dreamer may be interacting with the trees in a forest, cutting a tree down or perhaps planting a tree.  If so, this question would be answered yes even though the interaction was not with a person.  Another case where the question about interaction would be answered yes is a dream that involved a hunter shooting a bird or a hiker stopping to enjoy the beauty and sweet scent of a mountain flower. 

 

Question 6. Key word: COMPLETION

Is the scene complete or resolved? (Do you have a sense of closure?)

 

This is a straight forward question.   If the scene is unresolved or open-ended, the answer, of course, would be no.  The ÒCÓ in the word ÒcompletionÓ could just as well have been used in ÒclosureÓ   If there is closure in the dream, especially emotional closure, the answer would be yes. 

 

Question 7. Key word: PLEASANTNESS

Is the scene pleasant? Does it include satisfaction, joy, beauty, aesthetics and/or abundance?

 

The first six questions are what I call structural.  Now weÕre moving into mood questions.  Next three are mood questions.  So, is this scene pleasant; yes or no?

Question 8. Key word: SECURITY

Are you secure? (Do you feel safe?)

 

The purpose of this question is to detect fear.   If you feel safe and secure, the answer, of course, is yes.  If not the answer is no.  If youÕre unsure, again the answer is a question mark.

Question 9. Key word: SELF-ESTEEM

Does your dream self have a sense of healthy self-esteem or self-worth?

Question 10. Key word: AUTHENTICITY

Are you being your authentic present self? (Rather than pretending.)

 

These questions deal with the attitude of the dream-self.  The first of these is authenticity.  Is your dream self behaving with authenticity, rather than pretending to be something it is not? I've had dreams where IÕm a pretender, or performer -- sometimes a big phony. It got my waking attention!

Question 11. Key word: BECOMING

 Are you becoming all that you can be? Are you on the path towards self-actualizing?
(Rather than procrastinating.)

 

This question tests your dream to see whether your inner self is on the path to becoming your best self-actualized self.  If in the dream you are moving in that direction, the answer is yes.   The opposite is procrastination. 

 

If you are feeling empowered by the dream, even though there is no action, it would seem the answer would be definitely yes.   But suppose you do not feel empowered?  Suppose you feel that you are not becoming your better self, but perhaps the dream reveals you are not what you have been pretending to be?  Maybe you believe you are not becoming your better self because the dream-self is manifesting a violent nature.  While there is a tendency to judge the dream-self adversely and thus shy away from it, that is not what we are after in the initial phase of the CREEI Dream Process.  Suppose in this dream-scene where the capacity to be violent is expressed, you have stepped up to the plate and have responded bravely. That would be answered yes to the question on becoming. 

 

So it is possible to answer yes to ÒAm I becoming all that I can be?Ó even in a negative situation.  It is important not to confuse becoming with beloving.  Beloving will be discussed in the next question.  The difference will be easier to understand after we discuss that question. 

Question 12. Key word: BELOVING 

Are you beloving of all beings in this scene? (Do they experience their beauty in your presence?)

 

This question is probably the most important of all twelve CREEI questions.  I want to tell you how I learned the word beloving and why it came to be included in the CREEI questions.  I learned the definition of this word in 1990 from a new friend and retired professor of education.

 

Beloving is defined as spending time with someone in such a way that that someone experiences his or her own beauty and in so doing, you receive your own.  The opposite of beloving is power tripping.

 

When I learned this word, I was incredibly convicted! This is because I had been behaving in the name of love in ways that were, in fact, power tripping.  In behaving that way I couldnÕt understand why certain people werenÕt speaking to me anymore, including some of my children or why other people were taking umbrage at many of the things I said.  I thought I was being honest, open and loving.  Not so! It was a wonderful, painful, but exciting word for me to learn.  So, that's why this word belongs here and is the most important question, if there is any priority importance to these questions. 

 

Suppose you are passive in the scene, perhaps even awed by what you are witnessing.  Would that be a yes or no?  You might be tempted to answer no because you were passive.  But this question is really not so much about you, but what those, other than you, are experiencing. Is that person, character or creature feeling his or her or its beauty in your presence?  Can you see that the emphasis in this question is not on you, but on the experience of the other in your presence?

 

Difficulty Deciding Yes or No?  Consider the Opposite.

If you have difficulty deciding between yes and no, and are leaning one way consider choosing the opposite.  If you are leaning to yes, consider how no feels.  If it doesnÕt feel right, the answer is probably yes.

 

The Concept of Every Element of the Dream is either a Character or Self-aspect.

One might ask what if there are no people in the dream.  Is the answer an automatic no?  This is tricky because the CREEI Dream Process, as I say, does look at people within a dream, whether they are recognized or not.  But in the dream, every element of a dream is considered a character or a self aspect.  Your dream might contain a tree, an animal, or something else that has something significant to say to you. But that is beyond the primary purpose of CREEI, which is to examine how your dream self is behaving.

 

In the earliest applications of the CREEI Dream Process I emphasized interactions just with people -- human beings, whether you recognize them or not, and ignored so much else in a dream. These days I have learned to value more than people in the dream. IÕll discuss more of this later and not complicate this basic process with the idea of self-aspects that are not human.

 

We have just covered the main concepts of the CREEI Dream Process.  Next I will now show you a way that you can keep track of your own dreams over a period of time.