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February, 2011
4 6 11 162/4/11 - Title: "Happy Reunion"
My brother, Ralph, has unexpectedly come for a visit to my apartment. He is buoyant and very upbeat, with lots of smiling and easy laughter. Our visit is going extremely well, both of us having a great time together. Ralph spontaneously comes up with the idea to make toasted cheese sandwiches, and so we do. It is great fun. They are hot, greasy, and delicious, and it seems terrific just doing such ordinary, simple things and appreciating the moment together.
[In my Alanon step work, I have been doing amends to my deceased brother, Ralph. He and I over the years, after we were both grown and until his death from a brain tumor at age 38, had a mixture of marvelous times like this and painful periods of estrangement. While doing Step 9, I have been focused on the negative and my part in contributing to it. Yet since his death I have had a few dreams like this, very positive, and none that were negative at all. Ralph was highly intelligent, a thinker more than a feeler (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and had a great sense of play, enjoying the moment and infectiously involving others in his fun. He could also be touchy, resentful, competitive, egotistical, critical, and sarcastic, but these were not his usual or dominant traits.]
2/6/11 - In dream group we discussed, among others, my "Happy Reunion" dream. Highlights:
- It is very upbeat, a way of tasting the cheesy, more schmaltzy, nostalgic, or emotional side of life plus a reunion or integration with my positive shadow, Ralph.
- It is also about healing as a direct result of the Alanon step work I have been doing and the amends I have been making, owning up to some not so perfect aspects of myself.
- It is too about the joy of being in the moment, fully into the simple, ordinary aspects of existence.
- It is an "It's OK; all is forgiven" affirmation in answer to the not-so-good aspects of my relationship with both my deceased brother and my Ralph shadow.
- It is as well about aspects of myself I do not normally acknowledge: intelligent, playful, a thinker (Myers-Briggs), and, to a lesser extent, touchy, competitive, and sarcastic.
- It is significant that this buoyant dream came immediately after a letter I had written detailing (and apologizing for) a number of specific things I regretted in relation to Ralph.
- It is an answer from my higher power to my Alanon Step 9 work re Ralph, that this work is finished and has been done well.
- To toast is also to take the rough characteristics of things and make them smoother, to age them in a way, and so perhaps to give them a perspective of greater maturity, making them more mellow.
- A toasted sandwich is a type of nurturing that integrates different aspects into one whole.
- It is also about being spontaneous, fun loving, able to laugh easily and infectiously.
- There is too, however, the idea of "apartment" or being painfully apart vs. a joyous reunion within.
- Plus it is about being OK with who we are, not necessarily stressed out trying (and inevitably failing) to be perfect.
- It is about forgiveness and finding within ourselves first the empathy to see and accept others just as they are.
- It is a dream dealing with not being abrasive but really there for the other person or other part of oneself, in ways that are integrative, healing, redemptive.
- It is thus in a way about the outlook not of the "small mind" but the "big mind."
2/11/11 - Title: "Beginning Alanon Step 9 Amends Work On Myself"
I am one of several patients, the others three (I believe) young women, all of us newly diagnosed with brain cancer. I am at a medical commune, hospital, or community for treatment. In my case, there apparently are four lesions that must be removed by one treatment means or another.
This commune/community/hospital is very nice. There are rooms like cabins in the woods, accessible via a stretch of bright green grass in an otherwise rather muddy field. We go to and from the cabins/rooms along the grassy path to reach the hospital. It is a circular building about 2-4 stories high. I believe there are 1-2 of these levels underground, hard to tell exactly because the hospital is build (built) into the side of a small hill in the woods.
Inside, the circular floors have rooms off the spacious center. We meet first with a medical team at the center on one of the main floors (which is actually probably the 3rd or 4th floor but roughly at ground level on one side of the hospital).
The medical team is very nice, and they even have a disarming sense of humor. The head doctor of this head doctor team is very charming, competent, empathetic, and upbeat. He seems to have all the time in the world for answering our questions and concerns. There is no issue about money, insurance, or forms. We are simply each in one-on-one or group-on-one relationship with the team members, especially the head (or chief) head doctor (neurologist or neurosurgeon). It is understood we patients shall each have the very best care available.
There are risks, and we may be different after our treatments, but the outcomes will be the best ones possible. We may not survive the cancer and treatments, but the team is so charming, upbeat, and competent, it is impossible not to trust it to do the very best it can to assure us each a good outcome.
During one of the breaks, I had also talked with the other patients. We are all nervous yet hopeful. Being in the same boat, we felt a very close rapport with and wish to support and comfort one another. It was as though we loved each other, even though we have just met and learned of our common situations.
The head doctor, a tall, brilliant man, personally talks with me at the hospital center about what will happen, then escorts me to the stretch of green grass through which I'll go back and forth between my cabin and the hospital. Though treatment will begin soon, nothing will be done immediately, and I start across the grass toward my cabin alone. It is a little cool out, but a bright, sunny day.
[My friend Janet says she thinks this a positive and spiritual dream which has to do with a need to change my thinking and that this change will probably occur soon and in a community setting. In Alanon tonight, I was the chairperson, and we discussed joy and tools we can use to increase it in our lives. So perhaps the dream is about this. Also, this weekend I am in a meditation workshop. One typical effect of such sessions is to undergo a mellowing process.]
2/16/11 - Title: "A Bad Kill"
I am face to face with a large female pet cat, like a half grown lion or tiger, that I have raised from a kitten. It trusts me but is becoming too big to handle, dangerous and not at all in my control, very strong and already at least as massive as I am. I take a sharp thin spear, about 3 feet long (reminds me of an undersea spear-gun spear, yet without the gun) and shove it into the lower part of the big cat's chest. Because of the cat's posture, partly on my lap and lying facing me, the spear does not go into any vital organs. It also does not enter the cat's body easily. I must push really hard to force it slowly in. Most of the spear's length thus winds up in the cat's abdomen instead of its chest. Nonetheless, the cat has not reacted to keep me from pushing it in as far as I can. It is badly injured, almost certainly mortally so, but its death will be slow and agonizingly painful. I feel very badly that I have botched the killing, having expected it to be quick.
[A remarkable and shocking thing about this dream is that I am violating the trust of a major anima part of myself, symbolized by this cat that I have raised, and not only mortally harming it but having done so in a way that will cause it extreme pain. I think it likely this, like other recent dreaming, has to do with my Alanon steps program. I am currently working on amends for harm I have done to myself, Step 9. However, I cannot understand the meaning of the dream, and it just seems quite alarming. It makes a kind of sense as a representation of what I have already done, in much of my life before Alanon, trying to kill off the emotional aspect of myself. Why I would have this dream now, though, when I am attempting to do the opposite, is puzzling.]