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January, 2009

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I am holding the only copy of a manuscript that tells most of the personal facts about a private life or matter, about which many journalists want to write an exposé or scoop. My possessing it is frustrating them in being first to do so. I ask to see the school administrator (apparently I am on an elementary school campus), whom I believe will either take over possession of the manuscript or help me decide how best to deal with it, whether to hand it over to the journalists or put it away somewhere safe, where laws or the school's rules would protect it.

This is the second time (in dreaming last night) I have referred a matter to this wise administrator, who is also a psychologist. The first matter also involved such a manuscript I had on a school campus, but the personal matter had to do with (I believe) Puff, our dog, and whether or not staff or student journalists at the school could write a scoop about her. Among the student journalists or other interested members of the student body, in that case, were several lovely high school age women wearing very little. They were at the school assembly to hear about this case. We were often pressed so close together there that I feared my physical attraction (erection or hard on) to some of them would become apparent through our loose fitting garments (clothes). The 2-3 young women closest, however, understood and did not seem to mind that they clearly turned me on.

In a third scene, Fran and I are driving each of our cars, caravan style, a long way (distance). We're on a freeway. I am in the lead in my car at this point, in fact pretty far ahead (maybe about a block ahead of Fran in her car), when I unexpectedly reach a complex, large, and unexpected interchange. There are multiple lanes from which to choose, and, because of the prevailing traffic and speed, almost no time to make the decision. From where I am, it is unsafe to just pull over and wait to meet and confer with Fran before going on. Nor is there any way to communicate with each other in our moving cars. In my split-second of choice, I pick what I think is the correct lane to get us back to Austin. On it, I am immediately led into a big turn that seems to take me off at about a 90-degree angle from the way I had been going. The new way is quite wide and multiple-laned, and I believe (but am not certain) it is now the right way on home.

However, looking in the rear-view mirror, I see that Frances is no longer visible behind me, not even quite far back, and realize she must have taken a different way at the big interchange. It would take a miracle, and simply won't happen, to successfully get back there, where we had gotten separated, and find her on whichever of the multiple-lane options she would have taken at the inter-change (interchange). Instead, we each must just carry on separately and see later if our routes (paths) ever merge again.

Looking back, still in an area as yet full of big inter-changes (interchanges), I see that the school administrator/psychologist is driving a car fairly close behind mine. We both recognize each other. I decide to pull over. He does too. So we can discuss the situation, and I can confer with him on what to do about Frances having taken a separate way at the last big interchange. I feel I want his reassurance I'm right to just drive on, uncertain if I shall meet Fran again later.

[I realize, in writing this, that for "inter-change" or "interchange" it is probably appropriate to substitute "inner change," and that the dream is suggesting that Frances (either in reality and/or as my anima character in the dream realm) and I are now going in very separate ways due to inner changes.

In the dream I seem, or at least feel, younger (Jung-er?) than my present age and fairly unsure of myself. I know none of the dream journalists (but keep journals myself, both a dream journal and a regular diary - the diary now covering several decades, with records since 1971) or students in reality.

I know Frances. In the dream she is somewhat younger than her actual age of 50. She is rather independent, tries to dominate interactions in our marriage, and is exceptionally talented and intelligent.

I do not know the administrator/psychologist, except that, as I write this, I realize he reminds me of Dr. Harold Pearl (then in his 50s), an Italian Jewish American mentor of mine, in CA for several years, in the 1960s, an ophthalmologist turned psychiatrist who led a research and therapy group I joined, Insight-Exploration-and-Maturity Group (IEMG), that was intended to get members close enough among ourselves, and mature enough, to support one another in taking intense drug trips. I eventually took several such weekend workshop, chemically-induced odysseys under his supervision, dealing then with a lot of anger toward my father, mostly, to a lesser extent also toward my mother, going to "hell" on a few occasions, dying once or twice, visiting "heaven" for awhile, and experiencing the entirety of "World War III."

Although I retreated from this kind of inner change intensity and returned to school at U.T. in Austin, eventually getting a masters in rehab. counseling, Harold continued to correspond with me and for a few more years provided guidance at times. He was like the good father I had not had. He also provided a key reference when I was applying for graduate school. His vote of confidence was enough with my GRE scores to overcome the fact I had dropped out as an undergrad and had C's, D's, and F's in my first couple years of college (all A's, though, in the two-year graduate program). He was a meditator, brilliant, wise, a real grown-up, competent, confident, happily married and with two great daughters, who had himself dealt with immense levels of inner confrontation and change, and who could work with and relate to others, as psychiatrist, friend, or teacher, even guru or shaman, and was both so sensitive or intuitive and yet so comfortable with others' expressions of sometimes raw, volatile emotions, that watching him work with people individually or in a group setting was like appreciating a master conductor getting the best out of a symphony orchestra playing great music.

The dream includes a reference to a "block," evidently an obstacle to my growth. It also refers to a "complex," perhaps indicating a neurotic aspect to my personality.

After selecting the dream title, I looked up the lyrics on Google, since I could not recall them:

"Words By: Billy Rose
Music By: Al Jolson & Dave Dreyer

Me and my shadow
Strolling down the avenue
Me and my shadow
Not a soul to tell our troubles to

And when it's twelve o'clock
We climb the stair
We never knock
For nobody's there

Just me and my shadow
All alone and feeling blue"]

1/6/09 - The former dream group member, Janet, and I discussed by e-mail yesterday's "Me and My Shadow" dream. Highlights:

• She feels, first, my interpretations, written in this journal at the end of that dream, are essentially correct.

• She cautions that Fran is to be taken symbolically and is obviously not the same as my real wife. Rather, she is simply one of several of my dream animas.

• Thus, there should be no thinking (if I were, which I was not) that since the dream suggests Fran and I are going our separate ways (because each of us has made enough different kinds of inner change that we have grown apart), that the real Phil and Frances are more than likely soon to be finding our needs better met by living separately.

• Rather, the dream situation may or may not be reflected in reality. Even if it is, there might be another type resolution. For instance, Fran might become more feeling, I might become more independent and assertive, etc.

• What is more, even if we are truly going our separate ways in terms of our personalities, we might still share our lives, perhaps complementing one another more than before or finding different outlets for our time, energy, creativity, sources of meaning, connections, etc.

• She mentions that most dreams are symbolic and do not get noticeably reflected in real change in circumstances. Further, when there seems to be an "urgent" need for a more immediate outer reality change, this compulsion is usually from a neurotic aspect, archetype, or complex, not from a true necessity that something be made different in the real world.

• Often changes in dreams need not be manifest in outer world changes at all. In fact, so long as basic requirements of living are being met, few changes are ever needed, even if we feel driven toward "rearranging the furniture," taking long trips, moving, splitting, taking up with new mates, going to work elsewhere, etc. We like drama, but most of life's dramas are unnecessary.

• It is possible, now that Fran has driven off in a new direction in the dream, there will be the appearance of a new anima, with unknown implications for Frances and for my relationship with her in real life.

• Janet likes the following song and finds it apropos:

  "Who you are all depends on what you learned from where you came. All your family and friends are part of you, but in the end you must find yourself and then, now all the answers lie within. Stop and listen to your heart, and you will know who you are."

• On the other hand, she says: "I think all you can do is make the best decision you know how to make at the time, and trust it was the right decision. Being alone can definitely be lonely but being with someone and feeling alone is sometimes more lonely. If you take off your persona and ask your heart, trust that's the right decision."

• Meanwhile, there may be lessons in right feeling from the other animas in the dream. For instance, Puff is much more gregarious and playful, qualities I might cultivate. Puff also, in Janet's view, represents spirituality and its attraction for me.

• The high school age women with very little on are animas there to show me right feeling who have little persona (garments or clothing) and are interested in the spiritual part of me (also with little persona). And when I allow myself to feel without persona getting in the way, this excites me, which is pretty cool.

• Since there are 2-3 of these young women so close they are pressed up against me, there is dawning awareness moving toward transformation in the way I feel about this.

• The first two dream scenes occur in school settings, and so involve learning.

• The context of the first scenes would be answers to the questions or issues about: 1. whether to expose something very personal with either the part of me that is a writer or the part who keeps journals; and 2. whether my administrator/psychologist of learning shadow side (or alternatively my Dr. Harold Pearl shadow) thinks it is safe for me to disclose this very personal something or better to keep it confidential.

• In the scene involving Puff, this something to be revealed or not involves the spiritual dimension.

• There is, then, a question whether the parts of me that are learning, writing, and/or journaling might write something about a feminine type of spirituality, represented in the dream by Puff.

• In the scene with Fran (a more thinking and extroverted anima) driving behind with me ahead, the way we are going is free, without costs or obligations (on a freeway), involves inner change, yet also has a complex which I must overcome perhaps before much real change can occur.

• The way I am going is toward Austin, my relatively secure home base (my whole Self) which has ways I can be comfortable but also ways I can be more engaged, connected, and challenged.

• Once I get through the inner change part, there are many options for how to go.

• I find it reassuring to confer with my close at hand Dr. Harold Pearl or school administrator/psychologist shadow part, about whether it is best to go on without my more thinking anima since she has taken a different path. But in the end that seems the best course to take.

1/11/09 - Title: "A Meeting of Parallel Lines (Lives) Gives Perspective"

I am at home, in the master bedroom and near my bathroom, when I hear noises in the other part of the house and realize Frances is in the kitchen. Thinking she has just come in from parking her car in the garage, I go through the bedroom doorway and greet her, welcoming her with a hearty: "Oh, you're back!" and go toward her to embrace after this return. But then I am confused, since it is I who have actually just returned.

[In waking reality, I remain at this writing in Waco, for a visit with my mom and my nephew, Joel (who is staying with her now). This is the first remembered appearance of Frances as my anima in a dream since the one a few days ago in which we had diverged and gone our separate ways while both originally heading back toward home in Austin.]

1/22/09 - Title: "Ego Trips"

I am alone, in (on) a wide staircase, coming down from the second to the first floor at a large school building. There is a banister that I am holding on the right, and I have something in my left hand, a hard, solid ball perhaps. About half-way down, I trip and lose my footing. I would fall except for my hold on the banister. Yet it is not as though I am not falling. Rather, I begin descending faster and with no normal contact of my feet with the stairs, anchored only by the contact with the banister. I realize that, with this momentum, at the bottom I am about to fall hard and bruisingly.

Instead, however, I gracefully do a slow partial twist around in mid-air and then barely touch a shelf (on what had been my right but is now on my left) with my left hand. I am also still grasping something with the left hand. So my touch there at the shelf is slight, just barely enough to anchor me once more. I notice that the shelf is actually too high for me to be touching it normally. Indeed, when I glance down, I see I am floating about two feet off the floor at the base of the stairs. I gradually float downward then, as though resuming appropriate modes of movement, go across a bright exit/entranceway, and then out through a wide set of doors (big double-doors, I believe).

Outside, it is brighter still, as in late on a sunny afternoon. There is a kind of courtyard there, beyond a small concrete porch and a short set of descending concrete stairs at the exit/entrance. A big old tree, a live-oak perhaps, stands at once (one) side of this courtyard. It is so large and high it forms one side of the court. The 3-4 story school building extends from my left on past it and so forms another side. I do not notice what forms the other two sides. As I am standing with the school on my left and the tree to my front, I notice a young man at a type of stand, as though he is sell (selling) food items or something, in front of and at the base of the tree. He has no customers, except perhaps for me. I am about to walk over to the stand, maybe to order something to eat from him, but am still not fully settled with both feet on the ground.

Instead of this bothering me, I am exhilarated by the feeling of floating and a detachment from normal gravity. As the man is watching, I try out my floating ability and rise up a few feet. I feel smug about this, as though maybe I have impressed the vendor with my powers.

But then I realize there is no reason to be small-minded about testing such abilities. I suddenly know I could shoot up to a great height, thousands of feet up, where my vision of things would be vastly increased. I begin to hurtle upward in this way. It is not so much that I am flying as that I am stretching very quickly, my feet and legs still extending almost down to the ground while I get more and more rapidly extended, my head soaring high into the atmosphere. Before I get as high as intended, though, the dream ends, so I miss the far vision I had hoped for. The exhilaration, accompanied by a luxuriously deep relaxation, continues, however, as I wake up, then feel as if I had been out of my body and am gradually resettling into it, where I am resting on the sofa.

[Thinking about the dream, I note the references to things that might imply drugs, like "shoot up," "before I get as high as intended," etc. However, I have never done drugs other than, in the late 60s to early 70s, a little pot or drinking alcohol - a problem briefly then in my twenties but not since - or other than the supervised "trips" in CA when in a group that experimented with Ritalin plus inhaling carbon dioxide mixed with oxygen.

From the references to school, this is partly about learning. From the numbers included, it appears there is dawning awareness, transformation, and manifestation in reality. And I have 3-4 main stories to tell, or that might be told about my life.

I have mixed feelings about the floating, soaring, stretching, and being unbound by gravity. Of course, the ego gets into this in a self-congratulatory way, disappointed then when reality shows it was only a dream. And I know the ego is almost always wrong. But it may also be a means to reach a higher level of vision, insight, or intuition. I wonder if banister may be a pun, perhaps some play on "ban," but do not see it if so.

The younger man at the vending stall, interesting that I just used "stall" when I meant stand, is perhaps my Jung-er and younger self shadow. I am myself of indeterminate age in the dream and may be much younger too.

The emphasis on brighter places could be spiritual references, as might the notion of vast vision from far aloft. But there is disappointment in missing the intended scope of that vision.

The mood or feeling of relaxed exhilaration at the end seems positive, better than that I am losing my footing, seemingly about to fall hard and injure myself, at the beginning.

The big old tree may represent life, growth, and experience.

A court-yard suggests a place of judgment, which is also where one might "take the stand."

There is a repetition of stand or stands in this dream. Other than the possibility of suggesting I take some stand, this has no association for me. That I am outside near a stall or perhaps "stall-ed out" may be relevant.

One issue here would seem to be whether to keep my feet solidly on the ground (remain well grounded) or to go soaring off into rarified, and perhaps make-believe, realms and experiences.

I do not know the young man in reality, and can tell little about him from the dream. There is no interaction. Except for the shadow character and I looking at one another at one point, I remain alone throughout. In fact, since there is no genuine interaction with anyone in the dream, but rather the emphasis is mainly on floating, flying, or stretching that feels as if it is defying gravity, I wonder if it may be mainly a dream about escaping my own somberness or sobriety (gravity) for a little while, going off on pleasant ego trips instead.]

1/26/09 - Title: "You Don't Always Get What You Want - I"

I am living just a block or two west of a university campus. (It is similar to but not the same as the University of Texas at Austin campus, where I completed an undergraduate degree [after dropping out more than once], between 1961-1972). I walk over there to one or another administration building. I apply for a position. I think it will be for a part-time job that involves a lot of personal contact and working with kids, for instance as a teacher, a counselor, or both, and that it will be in a building close to the western edge of the campus. Then I am talking with a woman who is a human resources/personnel manager for the university. She is a no nonsense type, all business. She explains what she has to offer me, not what I had expected. The work is not where I thought it would be, still on campus but quite a bit farther east of where I live instead. Also, I apparently would be working more with adults and in a more administrative kind of job than I had imagined. I am trying to decide if I would take the position available even though it is not what I had hoped for and applied to get.

Title: "You Don't Always Get What You Want - II"

I have a job. I don't like it. There are long institutional tiled hallways in one-story pre-fab wood frame buildings (such as were put up on military bases for "temporary" use as headquarters, supply, billeting, medical, etc. facilities during World War II or the Korean War, but which then were actually used for schools and office buildings for decades afterward). Small offices, off either side, open onto the long hallways. Mine is one of them. The work is almost all administrative, few interactions with people. It is done in a dreary environment and just seems drudgery. Often enough that I worry I may lose my job for it, I spend several hours at a time out of the office, outside the long buildings but so near them I could return to work quickly. It is as though I cannot face the work but instead keep hoping, on one of these playing-hooky-excursion breaks outside the building, to find what I am looking for to give life more meaning, without having to apply myself and actually do the job.

[Am not sure if this applies to the dreams directly, though it is relevant to their titles, but last Friday I took delivery on a big recliner-rocker chair I had selected and bought for about $400 ($475 delivered) a few days earlier. Once it was set up and in place and I was beginning to try it out, but too late to cancel the order, I realized I hated the chair, that it would likely not be as comfortable or useful for meditation, naps, or anything else as I had imagined it would. So, for many hours a day since then I have, whenever I think about that damned chair, been beating myself up, making myself really miserable, for my poor judgment in buying it, wondering how I will ever adjust to it well enough to like it or to at least get good use out of it.

The error (as I see it now) is compounded because to make room for that new chair I had arranged to get rid of the chair that had been in its place, one that does not serve as a recliner type chair, but would swivel, looked fine, rocked, and was comfortable and sturdy enough to use for many more years. So, all in all, I am getting in touch with a lot of anger over the new chair situation, though, depressingly, it is not directed at anyone but myself. I do not feel we have enough money that we can just throw out or sell at a big loss or give away the new chair and start over. Rather, I must somehow put up with it (my biggest - and also dumbest - furniture outlay in years) for the foreseeable future.

My more rational, intellectual side is reminding me, as I keep beating myself up over the chair purchase, that I almost always have buyers' remorse, finding major problems with each house I have bought, several dogs I have owned, most cars I got, etc., but that, viewed objectively, such acquisitions have generally been good, and I have almost every time eventually come to like very well having these houses, dogs, cars, etc. So, it is even possible that a few weeks or months from now my attitude toward the "damned chair" will also have undergone a transformation. Right now, though, I am still intensely upset.

In my last prior recorded dream, "Ego trips," it was noted that I might need to descend from the second level (dawning awareness) to the first level before being able to really stretch myself and hopefully reach new heights. It was felt this might be a predictive dream, but I wondered what form that descent might take. The same day I was wondering that, the day after the dream in fact, the chair was delivered and I began to have this several days' long descent into anger or frustration about it, my worst bout of negativity in many months.]

1/27/09 - Title: "Demanding The Attention For Which I Had Paid"

I am inside the front, or customer area, of a small 'Stop-N-Go' type grocery/junk food store. The young man running the place from behind the counter seems disorganized and inattentive. He is relatively tall, loud, and unshaven and is not paying attention to me or other customers. He has taken my money and my order, but acts as though he has forgotten almost immediately that I asked for a drink. I had gotten something to eat, a taco or some such, but had also asked for and paid for a soft drink, a coke I believe, and that is still not provided. After a few moments of my trying to get him to go ahead and give me my drink, another man, seemingly more in charge, comes onto the premises. I hear him and the first man talking, but both are ignoring me. I loudly insist they serve me my drink. The first man still ignores me, but he then goes off to do something else, at which point the second man pays attention and does something that he thinks takes care of my drink needs. It does not, however, because now something is wrong with the dispenser. So, once more I must insist on getting the drink I had already paid for. It seems the man wants me to take care of it myself, but for this I would need to know more about the store's operation and to go behind the counter. I am willing to do this to get the matter resolved, but am not yet knowledgeable enough to successfully get my drink from back there. However, the second man, apparently the manager, is by now busy with something else and cannot for the moment attend to me further, having in any case actually attended to my needs only briefly. It seems a really ridiculous and aggravating way to run a business, but as yet I am not prepared to just give up on my drink, especially now that it has been paid for.

1/28/09 - Title: "Inside vs. Outside (De-) Fence(s)"

There are many people who have been in and then are leaving an enclave, a campus-like building or set of buildings on wide open grounds in an urban setting. Many others remain there after I too have temporarily left. However, on my return later that evening, there is a wall under construction (of cinder blocks or concrete, mortar, and barbed wire on top) and almost completed, and there are guards, so that it appears I cannot get back in. I yell across to others inside and they shout something back, not remembered. I try to get back in. It seems I do succeed but only quite briefly, only a few feet inside, before being forced out.

Title: "Too Much Exposure"

I am in a quite large building of many rooms or suites and grandly spacious, lavishly decorated, indeed palatial, rooms or hallways. I have recently moved into a room here on one of the upper floors, on a second or third level. Unlike much of the rest of the place, this room is Spartan and undecorated, with unpainted walls, with even bare plasterboard walls, in places with some inner wire mesh exposed and visible beneath where the wall surfaces would normally be. There are windows but not to the outside. Instead, they look "out" on other parts of the residential areas. People out there can also see into my rooms and look at me, even when I am sleeping. And I can see a few people going about their lives or sitting in an adjacent unadorned hallway, on a simple bench out there. After waking up and seeing that others are close and able to see me, though it is not as though my life is interesting - and I do not see that they have actually been spying on me while I was resting - I have concerns about privacy. I go into another part of my quarters to dress, use the bathroom, etc., and am glad that at least in these areas I am not exposed to others' views.

Title: "Joining the Elite"

Then I am dressed and going down one of the spacious, plush hallways. Both in the hallway and in the vast, palatial, ballroom type space to which it leads there are thick, soft carpets, so posh they look and feel as if they are made of felt or the most expensive, thick or deep weave carpeting one might find in a royal receiving area. All are a deep red or Burgundy hue. There are golden decorations that highlight the mostly deep red decor. I see that there are two lines of people, evidently other residents who are waiting, as I imagine they might on a cruise ship, to go in to eat. The line on the left is long, but the people are patiently waiting and mostly chatting with each other. I ask someone, a tall, thin, uniformed steward (dressed in garments of mostly deep red, but with black instead of gold trim) which line is which. He tells me the shorter line on the right, with as I see only a few people in it, is for folks who wish and can afford a personally prepared and served meal, the dishes made to order. I imagine a few relaxed people sitting around small tables talking and eating in a quiet atmosphere. He says the long line is for people (commoners, I imagine) waiting for the cheaper and quicker meals that have been prepared ahead or are available buffet style. I can tell that more people sit close together in there in a noisy cafeteria kind of atmosphere. I am happy to choose the shorter line.

Title: "Bothered by Things Out of My Control"

I am younger, perhaps in my 30s or 40s and live in a sprawling, big old suburban house in a cozy neighborhood of other such places and with large trees that hang over the road and give shade to much of our yards. My wife and I have at least one pet dog. On this afternoon, my wife (not known in reality) yells something to me as she is on her way out, maybe about looking after things till she gets back, and then goes across the street to see a neighbor woman. Our dog immediately takes the opportunity to run off (out of the back fenced area) as well and goes into another neighbor's yard to the left of our place. There it looks like it may get into a fight with the neighbors' dog and cat. I see the neighbor boy (who must be about eight) up on the porch near the three pets and yell to him, asking if it is OK for me to go into their yard to get our dog. By now the dogs seem to be just sniffing each other and wagging their tails rather than aggressive, and the cat is arching its back but sort of being ignored or tolerated by the canines. However, the boy shrugs and says it's OK, so I go over to get our dog away and to apologize for his (not really sure if the dog's male or female, but the pronoun sounds right) going over there.

1/31/09 - Over the last week or so, former fellow dream group member, Janet (now in NYC), and I have been corresponding about a few of my dreams, the those from 1/26 and 1/27 (see above). A little earlier, I had also helped her with one of hers. I won't try here to show precisely how each interpretation fits with the different parts of the various dreams - too cumbersome by half - but rather will present a summary of the guidance and analyses we came up with that feel resonant for me:

• I have a block or two that are keeping me from as much progress as I might be making otherwise. (Since there may be two, this could also represent dawning awareness.) They keep me from learning something, perhaps something I had missed in the 1961-1972 period (when I was [off and on] an undergrad).

• I go to the part of myself that administers things and ask for a position. This might mean a stance to take.

• I expect to be getting a part time job, one involving being in contact with other aspects of myself and working on projects or new ideas (kids). I expect to be teaching, counseling, or doing both with respect to these new ideas, projects, or aspects of myself.

• The western edge (of the campus) would be sensing, what I could actually touch, so it would be near things that are tangible.

• Then I speak with an anima who can manage human resources and people, and there's no nonsense in her approach.

• Although I had thought the work was on what was tangible (the west), it's really closer to the east or intuition.

• Instead of dealing with kids, immature parts, its with the adult parts of myself. And its about how to manage institutions (the executive function) of some sort, in this case of learning. This isn't what I had expected.

• It is fairly obvious that I do not like the job I have then taken on, of learning or working on aspects of myself, dealing with the blocks, etc.

• What's instituted here in this work environment or setting are long transitions (hallways), but they aren't necessarily straightforward. And these transitions require the (conditional) frame (of reference) of: I would do this or I would do that. This kind of willingness is what was built during WWII or the Korean War. In other words, I may not have much choice, so I may as well take the attitude that I am willing to do this.

• Where I work, or the conditions of my work, lead or will lead to these long transitions. The work I have to do doesn't involve people. It either involves getting the numbers right or making sure policies and procedures are in place. In fact, its the stuff that creates the institution. But it feels like drudgery.

• Even though I don't like this work, I am afraid of losing it. I leave it often, but can get back to it easily. Instead of having to really work for it, I am hoping in one of these excursions away from the work that I shall break outside the self and find the meaning I am looking for in the work.

• In the "Ego Trips" dream of several days earlier, I had mentioned going down stairs from the second to the first level, a descent, something I did not like. It might mean a need to express dissent. Also, in discussing the recent dilemmas, I seem stuck in seeing just two choices, but really there may be a number of responses to a problem.

• The symbolism of a chair includes personal power, authority, or leadership. In the recent upset over a recliner chair I had bought, that did not at first seem to be living up to expectations, the disturbed emotions may be partly due to feeling limited in my personal power. Maybe I need to voice dissent more. Perhaps the dreams' administrative work is drudgery because I am simply rubber stamping things instead of questioning whether some (internal) policy(ies) is(are) appropriate vs. should I change it or them? In World War II and the Korean War, we made some pretty foolish mistakes, and soldiers were required to just go along. In this scenario, the way for me to find more meaning, then, is to voice more dissent.

• The changes I had made in the past, to become a more stable and responsible person, were really important. It is vital to learn acceptance and not be challenging every little thing, to sometimes just go along. However, having learned that and maybe even over learned it, I need to move back some toward center. I do not need to go back to what I used to do before getting those lessons, but a little bit of that is probably needed. As Sonya has pointed out, first one goes one way, then another, toward the other pole, then one goes back a little bit, and so back and forth, back and forth, until finding a middle way. Do not expect to get things perfectly. Just try to learn that middle way. If things are too much one way, then one knows to go back a bit to the other way.

• A retail establishment or restaurant front, its customer area, is where people get served, and in the next dream I am there inside the front (what people see, but which is in some ways just a cover for what's really there).

• In this "stop-n-go" place there's a store of food, some of it junk and some good food. The stop and go aspect may also have to do with prostate difficulties, that cause a lot of limitation in the flow of the stream, with much stopping and going involved in it but the whole process taking much longer and more care that it would otherwise. One can also say, in dream terms, that there is a partial blockage in self-expression. This may be related to the other dream idea, that there needs to be more dissent.

• The guy or shadow, who knows the unconscious, is running the place but isn't organized, and he is not paying attention to me (the ego) as I am repeatedly insisting on my soft drink or coke, something I want to take in that would not be good for me. He knows better than I do what I need. Also, a taco is a negative term or slang in Spanish for a woman, so there might be some meaning here of taking in a negative feminine aspect, though I do not think that applies, since I did not at all know this meaning of "taco."

• Later, there are two shadows there, so it is dawning awareness. Neither is paying attention to me. I want and expect (feel I have paid for) a coke, but it can mean discord, a drug, or something else problematic, and so is not good for me. Nonetheless, I even order (demand) it. Yet they don't want to give it me. It could mean that I expect to have to be angry and upset to express dissent, but the guy isn't going to give it (this anger, discord, or upset) to me.

• The shadow says if I want disorder or the drug, I must get it myself. To do it, I have to figure out (go behind) what really counts (counter meaning one who counts). But I don't think I know enough yet to understand what counts. The shadows obviously don't agree.

• I am then still determined to get this disorder but the shadow, the guy who knows the unconscious, is not concerned about that.

• The reference to some problem or dysfunction with the drink dispenser may again be partly to do with my own stop and go dispenser, i.e. with partial blockage of the urinary flow due to an enlarged prostate, despite treatment. This, in turn, could once more be indicating insufficient personal expression, perhaps creatively, but perhaps also with respect to not (or not often enough) voicing dissent when it is called for. Interestingly, in my acupuncturist's eastern medicine philosophy, my ongoing throat problems, diagnosed as acid reflux by my western medicine doctor, are thought as well fundamentally to be due to inadequate self-expression. In addition, a nightmare last year involved the killing off of a vital aspect of my self by an express train, which Sonya interpreted to mean she was killed off, or in severe danger of being "offed," by "express strain," meant too, she said, a lack of sufficient voicing of what needed to be expressed. (Ironically, Sonya, when I was in dream group meetings with her, would not countenance mild questioning of the views she was broadcasting, for instance when she was pointing out the flaws she saw in someone not there at the time, saying these were due to her not eating meat, so that, in Sonya's assessment, the woman was by being vegetarian restraining a full and natural expression of her aggression. Yet when I quietly asked if merely one example could prove such a case, she snapped at me angrily, a typical reaction to light skepticism about her views, not very conducive of free expression. Of course, who among us takes kindly to criticism?)

• On the other hand, from the outlook of the shadows, it seems I am expecting something to be wrong when it's not. They know the unconscious and don't think I should imbibe or get more of this disorder or drug. It is as though the discord, neurosis, or upset is the drug: I can make use of it in my system or daily life like an adrenaline drug, perhaps, but the shadows, who know what counts, see that this is not what I need and so won't give it to me. That may be the bottom line.

• In that dream, ego was coming on really strong, being positive in the sense of expressing its dissent. But fortunately the shadows knew better what was really needed.

• The point about dissent in these dreams is probably that it needs to be voiced in a palatable way, not by being furious. I was thinking I had to be angry or something, but that's not it. Instead, I just needed to know I could express it and then act on that when appropriate, but in an acceptable, firm, assertive way, or even fairly pleasantly or humorously, without conveying upset, confrontation, or discord.

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