Integral Dreaming: An Interview with Fariba Bogzaran and Daniel Deslauriers
I had the privilege of speaking with both Fariba Bogzaran and Daniel Deslauriers earlier this week, about their important new book Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams. Watch our entire 45 minute interview here, or see below for topics covered.
Conversation highlights:
On using Integral Theory to create an overview of Dream Studies (0:54)
How the book came to be (1:30)
Presenting the Theory of Inclusivity to a diverse audience in 2004 (4:10)
Integration begins with co-authors who are both scientists and artists (4:55)
“Dreams are the art of the mind” (6:12)
The dangers of “compartmentalizing” our beings (7:15)
Somatic awareness is not disengaged from the mind (8:30)
Dreaming as a spontaneous eruption of creativity (8:53)
Valuing dreams as an experience, approaching them with a clarity of awareness (9:30)
Recent research demonstrating the creativity of the dreaming process (10:15)
Classic steps of creative problem solving: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification (12:00)
Important to begin with focus, then a period of opening, dreaming (13:22)
Einstein on solving problems (13:55)
We value the dream that we remember–living a richer life by engaging in a process of inquiry with our dreams (14:30)
Ken Wilber, Sri Aurobindo, CIIS, and using Integral Theory to map Dream Studies (15:15)
Ken Wilber as a master synthesizer (16:50)
Four Quadrant model and the evolutionary arc of Dream Studies (17:10)
Three principles that form the basis of the book (19:02)
Asking questions from one paradigm, and seeking an answer from another (20:35)
Bringing a meta-view to all models of dreams (21:40)
Integral dreaming as a way to overcome the assumption of many dreamers that they have “The” answer to unlocking dreams (22:22)
Deconstructing the assumption that as soon as we have a dream we must interpret it (24:15)
Chuang Tzu’s classic butterfly dream, Taoism, and looking at the dream with an open mind (25:32)
Two main metaphors for approaching dreams in Integral Dream Practice: reflexive and reflective (27:37)
Allowing time to work in the unfolding of a particular dream (30:01)
The reflexive phase, with three steps of Integral Dream Practice: dream re-entry, creative expression, poetic synthesis. (30:25)
The reflective phase asks how the dream matches one’s life experience (31:24)
The length of time it takes for a dream to truly unfold, and trusting that process (32:02)
Working with one dream for many, many months for personal transformation (33:15)
One chapter devoted to a single dream that is being seen and approached through different processes (35:28)
Automatic writing leaves a trace to look back on, creating a data set (36:18)
Fifth step of Integral Dream Practice: integrative acts, and lucid waking (37:15)
Embodiment and creative expression of dreams is powerful, but full integration of that energy is a longer process (38:08)
Applying dream wisdom to waking life takes time (39:16)
Not a hurried writing process, wanting the book to be a slower read, encouraging the reader to slow down (40:38)
The difficulty of explaining the complexity of Integral Dreaming in a media sound bite (41:44)
A flow of information from waking to dreaming, and from dreaming to waking, experiencing an expanded self through lucid waking as well as lucid dreaming (43:17)