Eugene Kovalenko, Ph.D., from Los Alamos, NM, has created a simple method of using images from your dreams to infuse your writing with deeper meaning. It’s called the CREEI Method.
Remembering what you dreamed about can be a challenge for some people. “If you have to get up to turn on the light and start getting ready for the day, usually the dream will fade -- unless it was a nightmare!” said Kovalenko, who recommends keeping a notebook by your bed, or in the bathroom, so that you can write down your dreams with the least amount of effort. “If you make a minimum effort to wake up to record a dream, even a few key words can be like a little thread. You pull that thread and it becomes a string; the string becomes a cord; then a line, and before you know it you've landed a dream fish!”
“Dreams are your language, your personal metaphor. Every dream has something original in it, something new,” said Kovalenko. For writers, simply writing your dreams down can help you overcome writer’s block. The raw dream images can help you find your writing voice. Discussing dreams is a way to put aside ways of thinking that can hamper creative growth.
But CREEI can do more than help you collect images. It can actually change your life by helping you work through problems that lead to writer’s block.
Using CREEI people can record their dreams by answering 12 yes or no questions and plotting the answers on a spreadsheet. The questions are:
The questions are:
1. Is the scene Clear? (Can you describe it?)
2. Is your Role proactive 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?
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-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?
12. Are you beloving of all beings? (Do they experience their own beauty in your presence?)
Answering them quickly makes it possible to avoid judging, analyzing and interpreting the dream prematurely. The questions lead to “AHA! moments” that foster creative and spiritual growth and also help you identify problems and issues.
Each dream is categorized based on how many yesses and no’s you have. Dreams can be “transformative,” “motivational,” “anticipatory,” or “traumatic”.
When a dream is puzzling, disturbing, or thought provoking, CREEI offers a technique to help you gain further insight.
In the three stanza poem, the first stanza is a word sketch that captures the dream as you remembered it. In the second stanza you can mess with the dream: ask questions, make changes, or reject certain parts. In the third stanza you rewrite the dream, bringing in heroes or outside support, so that it scores transformative. Kovalenko said, “The very act of writing these words actually makes changes in you, and they are permanent.”
Dreams are close to the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world. Looking at that boundary will help you answer questions like Who am I? Where am I going? Why am I here? and will give you a new style of writing that is more creative, direct and honest.
Kovalenko offers a free online video course at www.creei.org.
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