THE WORLD DREAM BANK: TOPIC: Assertiveness

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Assertiveness

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Dreams of self-assertion.

Hmm... So much of the voluminous literature on dreams and visions caters to the apocalyptic or the beatific. On the one hand, nightmares and monsters and the end of the world (dreams hiding a secret comfort--since they're so damn overwhelming, we can't do anything but relax and lie back...) And on the other hand, paradise handed to us, preferably chocolate-coated on a stick. No need for assertion there, either.

But most of your really important dreams are in between. They may look quite ordinary, even feel blah, boring, nothing happening... Well, make it happen. Stand up for what you really want--or do you literally dare not even dream it?

Of course, dream assertiveness has a secret discomfort hidden in it. Once you've stood up and announced your desire in a dream, you can't so easily hide from it in daylight. You feel ashamed, if it was disreputable or a sin; or cowardly, if it's dangerous, or criminal; or frustrated, if you think it's impractical or hopelessly beyond you.

So, assertion in dreams feels good and it's great practice--yet we don't do it much! Not because it's a waste of energy that just evaporates when you wake. But precisely because it doesn't.

RELATED TOPICS: dreams of self-defense - initiative - opportunity grasped - opportunity blown - frustration - ambition - perseverance - initiations and ordeals - bullies and threats - endless climbs - hunted! - topdogs: cops, authoritarians, and rule-enforcers - warnings and advice - fear - shyness - guilt - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

The World Dream Bank has 1500 dreams and dream images plus 500 other pages on dreamwork and shamanism, creativity, genius, art, surrealism and fantasy. Unless otherwise noted, all material copyright Chris Wayan, 2001-2006.

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	THE BANKERS' TABLE: by Lily and Wayan; 1991/7/28, a shared psychic dream A friend and I have simultaneous dreams of absurd quarrels over seating bankers at picnic tables...
	BILL COSBY'S WIFE: by Wayan; 1994/5/5, an insulting dreamtale. I'm Bill Cosby's wife, finding it hard to cook for him without a stove or fridge... CAUTION: SLANDER, I HOPE
	BREAK FREE: by Emily Joy; 2006/5/11, an encouraging dream on the price of safety. I search for family skeletons, but then a talking plant on TV inspires me to seek the sun and fly free. But certain velociraptors and barbarian swordswomen object... CAUTION: DUELS, FISH ABUSE, THE F-WORD
	BRIGHT NICHES IN THE CASTLE WALL: by Jenny Badger Sultan; summer 2003. A painting of a series of dreams. Dreams warning of mania and paralyzing shame alternate with calm dreams of life and growth...
	CAT COUPLE: by Wayan; 13K, 1996, a digital wish. I cover my computer's desktop with this image tiled endlessly. And will, till the lesson sinks in... CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
	THE CHINESE PROFESSOR'S WIFE: by Wayan; 1997/2/4, a dream on abuse. My neighbor thinks I'm sleeping with his wife, who he abuses. Only I think she may be me... CAUTION: IMPLIED BATTERING
	CIRCUS GIRL: by Wayan; 1993/1/10, a dream of love and trouble. I fall for a circus girl. Her brother is jealous, so all the dwarves show up with guns... CAUTION: INCEST ISSUES
	CLAY MAN: by Wayan; 1980/6/1, a golem dream . I fight a clay golem of resistance, until inspiration hits, and I do what it may have had in mind all along...
	THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR: by Wayan; 1995/8/8, a dream on body image. It's the Vietnam era; my draft board tolerates only a secret quota of COs. I decide not to tolerate THEM...
	A CROOKED BAND: by Wayan; 1996/8/21, a dream of chutzpah. A spinoff band sues the original group for playing their own songs and using their own name...
	DAWN'S DIVORCE: by Dawn Z; 2002/3/1-21, an outrageous dream sequence While going through a painful breakup, I kept having sexy, lucid, psychic dreams...
	A DINNER WITH DEATH: by Wayan; 1979/2/12, an optimistic nightmare. The dinner didn't go well. Still, I'm here to tell you! So Death is weakening...
	DISSECTING PESSIMISM: by Wayan; 1997/4/14, a stubbornly educational nightmare . A serial killer stalks our office, and our bosses deny it. When we defend ourselves, things turn weird... CAUTION: VIOLENCE
	DIURNAL AND NOCTURNAL WORLDS: by Wayan; 1993/11/8, an epic dream of the multiverse. Round the ring of twelve worlds and their twelve gods, seeking one god who's giving me grief...
	DO YOU LOVE ME, JOHN?: by Wayan; 1991/7/6, a dream on the courage of the shy. I dream of a future where blondes are a too-cute endangered species. How can they survive? Like this... CAUTION: NUDITY
	FAIRY WIFE: by Wayan; 1985/1/17, an epic dream of love and choice. A fairy woman and a mortal man? Can't work! They're flighty, we're crude. Doomed, right? Well, some people are so sure of it they decide to help things along a bit. Or a lot...
	FALL OF A PRINCE: by Wayan; 2006/11/17, a dream on the morality of predicting. A time-traveling historian’s caught in a moral dilemma: warn an ancient prince he died of a fall in her history books? What do you owe history?
	(ON THE OLD) GENDER TRAIL: by Wayan; 161K, 1995, digital picture-poem with dream intrusions. For me, the path to love is difficult, elusive, convoluted...
	GIRLHEAP, OR CHOICE?: by Wayan; 1998/10/29, a dream on initiative. I'm on a women's sports team, and I should be in paradise. But I want more; not love exactly, but...
	THE HEAVIEST FLYER ON EARTH: by Wayan; 1979/1/25, a dream of clumsy flight I can't turn into a bird like all my friends. The most I can do is grow wings and try to fly, solid-boned...
	HICKOPHOBIA: by Wayan; 320K, 1996/5/13; dream-comix (or plain text version) Whenever I run out of ballet class to Japanese without asking my classmate Wendy out, I change sex... CAUTION: LANGUAGE
	HIS DEER WIFE: by Wayan; 195K, 20 images, 1995/7/9, a parallel world love story. I'm a slave, a scribe in the house of a Captain of the New Aztec Empire, when he brings home a wife... CAUTION: SLAVE SOCIETY, SEX, SPOUSAL ABUSE/NEGLECT
	HOLD HEAD: by Wayan; 1993; nondream digital sketch. This started as an exercise in dramatic figure-drawing and shifted round into an exorcise in guilt... CAUTION: NUDITY, SEXUAL CONFESSIONS
	THE HONEST INMATE: by Wayan; 1997/5/8, a dreamfable on truthfulness. I'm a psychopath in a prison for the insane. But I fall in love, and change. Blunt honesty fuels the change...
	A HOTEL ODYSSEY: by Wayan; 1994/2/21, a Borges dream. I live in the Infinite Hotel, but the other guests in my wing are no fun. It's time to set sail...
	I WANT MY INHERITANCE: by Wayan; 1989/12/18, an obsessive dream. My relatives call me a blonde bimbo and won't give me my inheritance, so I take drastic steps... CAUTION: MORAL HAIRSPLITTING
	I WAS A SEX SLAVE: by Wayan; 1994/11/20, a dream on isolation I'm a slave dancer. I run for it, and make it over the border. But my owner comes looking for me... CAUTION: NUDITY, SLAVE SOCIETY
	IN THE SHADOW OF MAN: by Wayan; 850K, 3 illus., 1994/3/4, a dreamfable on needs. I'm a lab animal who discovers voice software and creates a personal zine, testifying for our rights...
	THE INCIDENCE OF BUDDHAS: by Wayan; 1996/4/24, a dream testing me. I'm in a mall that enlightened customers alter with a thought. But too many Buddhas spoil the architecture...
	JADE JACKPOT, or, A HEAP O' CHANGE: by Wayan; 1990/1/7, a dream of shaking down God. I'm slipping dimes into a boulder of jade: a vending machine that fills every order wrong. Why feed it? Well...
	KICK HER: by Wayan; 1994/8/9, a gameshow nightmare. I'm a blonde gameshow bimbo. Each week, I'm beaten up. Ha ha ha! But my bruises are real. At last, I... CAUTION: GAMESHOW FROM HELL
	LET ILLNESS GO: by Wayan; 1999. Acrylic/digital painting of a meditation not a dream. Illness is such a handy excuse when you need solitude, care, rest, or just time to think... but...
	LET'S IMPOSE: by Wayan; 1992. Nondream digital painting. Engineers! How they do love to impose clean lines on our messy world...
	LET ME REVISE THAT...: by Wayan; 1998/8/28, a dream of clarity. I pray to the Love Goddess for help, but then realize there's a problem with my phrasing... CAUTION: UNROMANTIC
	LIES!: by Wayan; 1992/7/10, a dream that thinks it's a two-page novel. To investigate a criminal couple, I have to lie. And that's hard, since all my lies turn true... CAUTION: NEW AGE AND FILM NOIR DON'T MIX
	LILY THE LION: by Wayan; 1991/4/7, a small psychic dream. My housemate Lily is a lion. She bursts into my room. Stare-down. And then she pounces. So I... CAUTION: VIOLENCE! MUTUAL GLARING! THE VULCAN NERVE PINCH!
	THE LIZARD LESSON: by Wayan; 1996/12/12, a hard-hittin' shamanic dream. I'm a shaman in Nunavut who shows a rubber lizard and his foxy niece that reparations have limits...
	LYNN HALL'S "FLYAWAY": by Wayan; 1997/7/6, a journal extract on religious abuse A book that kept me up late. Ariel and Robin get abused as subtly, as deniably as me and my sisters... CAUTION: RELIGIOUS/PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
	MOA: by Wayan; 1995/9/9, a dream on assertion. I was an avian Mr Niceguy with sore knees, till I got some advice from my supposedly extinct big brother...
	MY THREE HUSBANDS: by Wayan; 745K (15 p), a digital comic drawn 1991 from a 1981 dream. Or view page by page: Cover, p.1, p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5, p.6, p.7, p.8, p.9, p.10, p.11, p.12, p.13, p. 14. I'm three women who marry a unicorn, a goat philosopher, and a magic cat.. We form a commune, but the police quarantine us... CAUTION: INTERSPECIES MARRIAGE, UNDERAGE SEX, and BAD COPS
	NEWT WEDDING: by Emily Joy; spring 1995, 100k, a six-year-old's epic dream Through wild jungles and over the Mattress Mountains, I lead a giant purple newt to love...
	NORASINGH: by Wayan; 1987/1/15, a Tantric Frankenstein dream. I fall in love with my sculpture of a mythical Southeast Asian creature. Then a mad yogi breaks in... CAUTION: SEX, TANTRA, AND GENERAL WEIRDNESS
	OLD AND IN THE WAY: by Wayan; 1999/5/3, a veiled predictive dream. On a dead-end street, I meet a beautiful psychic and fight a tentacled monster that's stalked me for years...
	PASSION: by Katie Hofgard; 100K, 2006, an undream portrait of a complex woman. Talk about mixed messages! Or... is it really? CAUTION: NUDITY, SLIGHT FIRE HAZARD
	THE PEAK WHERE I DIED: by Wayan; 1983/1/16. A dark dream-comic. I froze to death trying to climb an icy peak. But I try again, and this time, no holds barred. Wow, am I selfish! But alive...
	PIED MAGE: by Wayan; 1995/2/6, an architectural dreamfable. A wizard into spots and dots invites me into his beach house, hungry for advice on his peculiar fears...
	THE PIRATE TWINS: by Wayan; 1996/7/25, a dreamtale on intrigue. I love the Twins. They love intrigue. So when a hired crocodile sabotages our Egyptian treasure-hunt... CAUTION: BAD GIRLS
	POIROT: by Wayan; 1994/11/15, an anti-lucid dream. I escape a trap via a plane I manifest. Lucid? Not at all! Why should Poirot bother with such abstractions?
	POLES NOW, TROPICS LATER: by Wayan; 1997/3/27, a dream on the pace of change. I'm a Martian revolutionary, making the glaciers grow. The equator's still dry, but change is coming...
	PREGNANT WITH KRYTHA: by Wayan; 1998/2/3, a monomaniacal dream My best friend and I are shapeshifters; I seduce him, just so my daughter Krytha can be born... CAUTION: MAMMALIAN NUDITY, PHEROMONAL SEDUCTION, RECKLESS PREGNANCY
	THE REAL MAO: by Wayan; 2006/7/9 and 7/11: two dreams (one possibly psychic) about an appalling book Jung Chang’s exposé of Mao's brutal deeds and legacy provoke dreams I demand that leaders listen...
	REHEARSING THE LOVE SCENE: by Wayan; 1999/9/17, a dream of advice. An insecure girl who looks like my anima is rehearsing a controversial love scene with an alien wolf...
	RIBBING: by Wayan; 1992/12/25, an assertive dreamtale. After seeing 150 years of family photos, I dream of being teased by time-traveling cheerleaders, and...
	ROAR!: by Wayan; 2000/4/3, not exactly a nightmare... Night. A jungle full of prowling lions and leopards. So naturally, I get up on a rock and roar back...
	SAMURAI MARE: by Wayan; 1993/2/23, a time-travel dream. A feral mare will only let me ride her if I quit being a Japanese diplomat and become... a Samurai!
	THE SKIN'S COMPLAINT: by Wayan; 1996/11/17, a dreamtale. A huge rubbery mass of skin complains I made it sick. I get tired of its whining, and...
	SLAVES ON RED MARS: by Wayan; 1999/8/15, a dreamfable on will. As Mars demands independence from Earth, Jovians enslave us all! Now freedom-fighting is personal...
	SPOON CHALLENGE: by Emily Joy; 2006/8/30, a mathemagical dreamlet. I want to drink the elixir, but negative twenty spoons block me! Can I remove them? With warped teacup logic and reciprocals…
	STEP THIRTEEN: by Wayan; 1997/7/8, a rebellious dreamtale. Two realities pester me like big spoiled babies to care for their mythic figures, till I go on shamanic strike...
	THE TAKEOVER: by Lee Olivier; 2004/6/28, a triple diagnostic nightmare An alien is taking over our world, and I feel so helpless that even when I wake I want to just forget the dream...
	THE THREATENERS: by Wayan; 1997/4/23, a small psychic dream. Two gunmen break in, call me by a strange name, and demand I repay a loan I never borrowed...
	VOR: by Wayan; 450, 1984/3/27, an indescribable dreamtale. Am I King Kong? No, it's a city of midgets! I leave and find I'm gay. Gay bugs come out of the closet, too, storming the fundamentalist flies of Heaven. And then Vor, the purple alien, does something peculiar... CAUTION: SEX, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
	WHAT GOD BELIEVES IN: by Wayan; 1984/9/23, a dream of working for a difficult deity God's my boss, but like a bratty little brother, he's Not Speaking To Me. It's slowing down our office... CAUTION: CHRISTIANS WON'T WANT TO KNOW
	A WILD WOUNDED BITCH: by Wayan; 1979/11/28, a dream of displacement. My dad steals my girlfriend! The maid and I spy on them; we get hot and do it, but it's not the same... CAUTION: SEX WITH THE WRONG PERSON
	WOLFWALL: by Wayan; 106K, 1995-1999. Digital image of daydream/trance Drew all night in a trance and only learned at dawn what this flirting otter and wolf were trying to tell me... CAUTION: NUDITY AND SEXUAL THEME