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June, 2008

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6/3/08 - Title: "Colored Kite Balloons, Like Overhead Dead, Still and Silent, Witness from Aloft"

There are pale or pastel colored kites or balloons aloft (overhead). I notice we are outside. The balloons' faceless and featureless forms are roughly the size and shape of human heads. They are not moving (are still). The balloons are light pink or blue (and probably other colors too, but that's all I remember).

[The balloons or balloon-shaped kites make me think of the dead, silently watching or witnessing from above.]

6/5/08 - On 6/4, the DG discussed, along with others, my 6/3 dream, "Colored Kite Balloons, Like Overhead Dead, Still and Silent, Witness from Aloft." Highlights:

  • The DG had trouble focusing on the themes here at first, but eventually their suggestions, plus new insights of my own, caused a meaningful picture to emerge from the dream's symbolism. It appears that primary ideas here include a keen sense of being an outsider (from "I notice we are outside.") or outcast, with in addition aspects of my makeup that are like witnesses or observers, detached, uninvolved, or aloof (from "aloft"), with little or no affect, yet with this emotionless presentation masking deep unfulfilled yearnings, sorrows, or disappointments (such as a child may have on losing her or his first magical, lighter-than-air balloon, because of not knowing to hold on tight to the string, so that it soon is soaring high and away).

  • In addition to being children's toys, both kites and balloons normally would indicate lightness, playfulness, or joy, with even a spiritual dimension, since they rise toward the heavens. But here, by ironic contrast, they are seen as almost sinister: ghostly, indicative of the dead, faceless, and still or unmoved. There is even a sense that, from their lofty perspective, my to and fro activities in the realm of the living may be pointless and meaningless.

  • Interestingly, there are a couple meat (flesh or fish) eating birds in the dream: kites and loons. Loons have a plaintive, sorrowful sounding call. And one (seldom used) meaning of kite is a scream, perhaps deriving from the call of this type of hawk.

  • The dream is reminiscent of The Kite Runner, a remarkably downbeat novel, and of the Tom Hanks movie of a few years ago in which he is marooned on an island but projects much emotion onto an essentially featureless ball whom he comes to "befriend" while there, as one way to keep up his spirits and maintain sanity though utterly alone.

  • In the dream, the kites, balloons, or kite balloons are pale as well as pastel, suggesting both pals and stories or telling of the past (pas-tel).

  • They are light blue (mild sadness or depression) and light red (mild anger). Balloons blow up (or are blown up) and pop, suggesting a tendency toward emotional outbursts.

  • There are no living characters in the dream other than the observing ego dreamer. So, no shadow or anima characters are here with which to integrate or from which to learn.

  • The situation seems rather lonely, a despairing "no exit" circumstance.

  • One DG leader suggested it is a positive dream, for the symbols of anger and depression here are also associated with being dead, i.e. things of which one could speak from the past (pas-tel).

  • What is over head, or over the head, i.e. above the mind, may be one's Highest Self, or the divine, emphasizing again the spiritual potential in the dream.

  • Overhead also has a business connotation, as does kite. That is, respectively, the costs or extra baggage of an enterprise and a bad check, used to obtain something temporarily with false or worthless credit.

  • As the ego or dreamer, I greatly wish for feelings from the kites or balloons, as if they were alive, but instead they seem forever emotionally distant.

  • One thing that came out in the DG discussion was that the balloons or kites seem still at about 30 (3 x 10) feet up, which suggests transformation is occurring.

  • Oddly enough, as it happened, David, who had blown up at me for little or no legitimate reason the last night I attended the Wednesday night DG (and toward whom I have a lot of residual antipathy, wishing that he would simply not be there) sat next to me this time. And he reported, after the discussion of my dream in this DG meeting, that for the first time ever he had experienced what it was like to nearly faint, having he felt to abruptly go get something to drink from the kitchen lest he lose consciousness completely.

6/6/08 - Title: "Coffee, Tea, or Me?"

I'm nude and sitting down, in company of about 3 others who are clothed. I have a hard-on. One of the others, a middle-aged, matronly woman in a dress who knows me (the hostess), sees my excitation and, as though this is as normal as offering someone tea or coffee, after first quickly placing a silk or silk-like tube of cloth over my penis, lifts her dress, sits down in my lap, her back to me, and carefully fits her vagina onto my now properly "clothed" penis, rocking gently as she does so to assure a good fit in our current relative positions, after which I pump enthusiastically until having come into the silk or silk-like "purse." Wearing the "silk stocking" has kept this from being "sex." Instead, it is simply a social nicety between this woman, as our hostess, and myself as one of her guests. Afterward, she gets up, wipes my member off with a quick swipe of the now wet and sticky "silk stocking," and returns to her other hostess duties, with nobody remarking on the way she has just relieved some of the tension in the room, given herself and me some added pleasure, and provided as well the others with a bit of vicarious entertainment.

Title: "Happy to Be (a) Coupl(e)ing Again!"

[In another scene] An attractive young woman with nice breasts and I are both nude and sitting facing one another (apparently on a bed), she astride my penis, and with her legs open wide and extending around and somewhat behind me, as we enthusiastically fuck, both smiling or laughing, having a great time.

6/7/08 - Title: "Wake-up Alarm"

[I had needed a nap but also wanted to be somewhere later, so I had set an alarm to get me up in plenty of time to keep my appointment.]

The alarm goes off, waking me with its insistent, repeated, high frequency tone.

[However, once awakened, I no longer heard the "alarm" and, looking at the clock, I saw it had gone off after only about 15 minutes, more than an hour early. I realized I had been dreaming the alarm and so lay down again for more rest.]

6/8/08 - Title: "Not Quite Alone"

As things clear and settle after a dust storm, I am there with (something else - a robot? an alien?). For miles in all directions on the rusty brown surface of this foreign world, we are the only things or beings present.

Title: "Tender Mercies"

I'm talking to a young girl (reminds me of my niece in WI, Violet).

6/9/08 - Title: "Holiday Meeting"

I'm younger, single, and taller and am chatting up a short, attractive, nice lady in her 30s with whom I work and whom I happen to run into, out with her parents and her young daughter, at a fancy department store decorated for Christmas.

It is evidently a few days before Christmas and wintry, like it might be in Chicago or New York. People are wearing upscale warm clothes. I ask if she's finished her Christmas shopping yet, then realize that was dumb and so, stooping down so I have good eye contact, I tell her I realize that was a stupid question, since I don't even know if she celebrates Christmas, and I would guess that she is Jewish. She is Jewish, it turns out, but she also buys gifts this time of year.

She doesn't quite know what to make of my attentions while she is out with her family, but is not put off by them, maybe even interested.

(In another scene) She is Japanese American, single again, and is there in the department store with her non-English speaking Japanese parents and her children or just one child. Somehow we wind up at her housing compound and I am helping look after and carry her little girl, who is about two and surprisingly well behaved and content to have a tall, male stranger hold her. I wonder if she will wet on me while I'm carrying her, but she does not.

I realize I could see a lot more of the child's mother and that I would like to.

Yesterday, the DG discussed, along with others, my 6/8 dreams, "Not Quite Alone" and "Tender Mercies." Highlights:

  • In the first of these dreams, things are becoming both mentally and emotionally clear after a period of passionate storms fittingly occurring on a barren, Mars-like planet, a world whose name implies battles, war, anger, rage, or conflict. But circumstances are now becoming more settled.

  • The only thing between me and total isolation (and despair?) is a being of such immense, yet mechanistic, clinical, and cold intelligence that it seems alien, robotic, or computer-like to me. One DG member thought this being must represent my wife, Frances, though my impression was that this intelligence is even far removed from and beyond Fran's. As Fran is a specialist in and has a facility for the taxonomy of things, this intelligence is so off the charts it is more like the force behind the creation of an order that she helps to classify, or that assures our bodies, biology as a whole, or even the universe in general work and interrelate the way they do.

  • Nonetheless, implied in this focus on a particular kind of (linear) intelligence is no doubt a concern with or effort to better understand where someone like Fran, whose understandings are also more logical, is "coming from." It would be akin, but to a much lesser degree, to seeking to grasp the way an autistic person or someone with Asperger's disorder thinks, and then hopefully relate more completely to or with them based on that greater insight.

  • My father, the lady I almost married in the late 1970's (Betty), and Fran all shared or share some characteristics. These do not mean any of the three is at all the same as the other two. They are (or were) each unique individuals, likely with more differences than similarities. Nonetheless, they have or had some traits in common. It appears that, for better or worse, in my choices of at least two women with whom to develop significant relationships I was also seeking to complement my own personality in certain ways reflective of my relationship with my father. In this regard, Betty, my on-and-off intimate friend in the 1970s, while I was in graduate school, was much the less stable of these two women. And speaking of them plus Dad, happily Frances has by a wide margin the more compatible personality to my own.

  • There is nothing "wrong" or "right" with having the type traits that these three, Dad, Betty, and Frances, had or have in common. Rather, their functionality, practicality, efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of blending with other personalities around them depend more or less on the particular social, vocational, educational, or other environmental contexts, plus their own greater or lesser capacities and inclination for exploring and working with their own natures.

  • But more so than for some others, individuals with such traits tend not to be in the business of change. It is debatable how much any of us are open and ready to alter ourselves, but, more than most, the make-ups of people more like Dad, Betty, and Fran are rather set.

  • The situation of my and my wife's complementary personalities, coexisting in one dyad, presents for each of us a "Saturnine shadow" circumstance, that at once defines and limits our relationship, like the rings of Saturn (uniquely visible as such in our solar system) define and limit that planet, at least in our experience of it.

  • So, while it is important to be assertive, not to simply give in to a significant other who can come across as especially bossy or striving for dominance, who sees things as more in black and white terms than with shades of gray, or who has little interest in compromise or cooperation for the sake of greater harmony, one ought not fool herself or himself that the basics of the relationship are going with time to be much different, if that assumes first that a person with these qualities will become somehow another type person. It is not going to happen. Or, if it does at all, it is probably going to be noticeable only on the scale of decades, not of years, months, weeks, or days.

  • It is better to come to terms with this, if one has a personality that complements such traits, than to fight its realities, resent them, obsess over them, try to evade or escape them, etc.

  • Once one does so come to terms, though, it is possible for the emotional storms to settle out and clear at times and for one to appreciate the beauty that is at least there on occasion. Sunsets are the more beautiful for the lingering dust in the atmosphere. It helps to filter the light in sometimes stunning ways. Then, when one is recalling the good times of a long-term relationship, reminiscing together, looking through photo albums that show good experiences, etc., one may find that there is much to appreciate even in what might have felt like a particularly challenging involvement at the time. Nor is all of such a relationship onerous or hard to deal with! There are plenty of pros to go with the cons.

  • It was thought that the lines in the dream about the sun setting and the sky being gorgeous, at the end of the first dream, may refer not merely to a calmer phase after emotional storms but to the last years or decades of my life, ones in which I might have the possibility of taking things more as they come and then enjoying them in the here and now, just as they are, all examples of existence's perfection. It is what it is, and as such it can be no other way. It is completely interdependent. It is holographic. One cannot change one part without everything being different. And just as it is possible to focus on any one aspect and see its ordinariness or its gem-like quality, so one might see the entire, as well, as at once nothing special and yet exquisitely just so.

  • One of the DG leaders felt that both the first and second of the 6/8 dreams represent ways I have been considering dealing with the way things are or That Which Is, what might be termed common sense reality, on the one hand, or spirituality, at least from an existentialist perspective, on the other.

  • The immense intelligence of the first dream is as implacable and awesome in its overarching power as if it were an impersonal god. Yet, in the second dream, I am dealing with this reality and spirituality on a far more personal level, with warmth and friendly interaction, seeing and feeling the perfection and tenderness of the moment.

  • Another DG member suggested, and this seemed to resonate for me, that in the two dreams I am meditating on themes such as were essential to the book and movie, The Wizard of Oz. The robotic or alien creature was like the tin man who needed a heart. My young girl I'm talking to, who seemed like my niece, Violet, has plenty of heart but feels that things are incomplete where she is and hopes that she may have them different, for instance, so that her Aunt Fran (like Auntie Em) and Uncle Phil and our Toto-like dog, Puff, may be around more of the time, as if, like Dorothy, she wants a way "home," where all such things are made right, which may have an existential or spiritual meaning. Possibly, without stretching the images of the dream too much to suit this concept, we may find other aspects of that great book/movie here as well: an ego, for example, that, like the lion, seems to need more self-confidence or courage or that, like the scarecrow, also thinks he lacks a real brain.

  • Qualities of Violet, the niece with whom I am talking in the "Tender Mercies" dream, include that she is smart, emotionally engaged, competitive, soft-spoken but firm in her resistance to another's bossiness or tendencies to be domineering, able to deal handily with others' at times seemingly stronger challenges (as when she easily defeats boys her age in wrestling matches), sensitive and empathic (as when she initiated and carried out Mother's Day gift drawings for her mom) and quite interested in the experiencing of science, math, and nature, less so in the classifying or naming of it. The DG felt such traits were excellent ones for the female side of my self, or my anima, ones which, not entirely by coincidence, would effectively complement Fran's animus or masculine energy.

  • Interestingly, my Violet anima is six+ years old. The DG suggested something significant may have occurred in my life about that long ago. Sure enough, six and a half years ago I retired and have been in an often difficult period and process of adjustment to that new situation ever since.

6/10/08 - Title: "My Still Pending Civilian Service"

The subject of my draft status has come up. I explain that I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, but this was after I had already joined the National Guard, so my application for C.O. status was rejected. I had then found a sympathetic psychiatrist who signed a letter I used to get an honorable discharge from the Nat'l. Guard and then a "1-Y" (disabled except for national emergency service) draft status. "So you never actually served time as a C.O.?" someone asks. "No. I never did the civilian service I had applied for," I answer (though I did later work for [four] years as a safety specialist for the Dept. of the Army). "Well, maybe it is time you completed your C.O. duties," someone says. "Maybe so." I reply.

Title: Recurrent "Awakened by an Alarm at the Wrong Time" Dream

I am awakened by a radio alarm (with loud radio music suddenly blaring). It has been set off at the wrong time and had also been set to a wrong station. Frances and I had been taking a nap (in dream and reality). Now the alarm is going off. I'm afraid Fran will be awakened early too. It is going off in two places, in the walls of both the room I am in (on the sofa in the front room, where I'm using the ceiling fan) and in the nearby computer room. I assume I had earlier set it wrong, as Fran would not set an alarm in those places. I hurriedly get up and go to the nearest wall (from which loud radio music is still blaring) and try to turn the alarm off. But there is just a tiny metal projection there and I cannot even grasp it, much less adjust it to "off." While I'm still messing with it, Fran has awakened and gets up (in dream and reality), and I wake up (in reality) too.

[Actually, there is no radio alarm in either of those rooms. A few days ago, I had another alarm going off early dream, this time a regular clock alarm.]

6/11/08 - Title: "Our Routine Second Wedding"

Frances and I are getting married this afternoon, in the large auditorium of a big city high school or community college where we are both students. Till just before the principles (principals) (that is, the wedding party) are to get ready, I had forgotten it was our wedding day. I notice nobody else is gathering as yet and worry others may have forgotten too. I wonder if I should make a school wide P.A. announcement, but figure the administration won't like it. Maybe only a few from each class would be attending.

I recall why we decided to marry again: to have a religious ceremony this time. (I think it was Fran's idea.)

At our first wedding, I had been rather nervous that all would go well and to be saying our vows in front of a bunch of friends and relatives. This time, it should just be pretty routine, almost like any other day.

I notice people are starting to gather, now arriving in great numbers! Barack Obama shows up. He is tall, well dressed, smiling all around, being typically political, and trying to show he is a man of the people. Folks are eating it up. He is to have one of the front row seats. I hear students in a big hallway next to the auditorium doing pep rally type cheers, musically and in unison lengthening and shouting Barack Obama's first and last names. I realize our wedding is going to be huge, with key parts of it televised on the worldwide news. I am nervous and excited.

Frances shows up. She is glowing from head to toe and dressed in a white wedding gown. She looks beautiful and happy.

6/12/08 - Yesterday, the DG discussed, along with others, my ironically titled 6/11 dream, "Our Routine Second Wedding." Highlights:

  • This is likely another integration dream. Wedding dreams can be about death as well, but, as I have now through a period of many months had well over a dozen dreams of marrying Fran again without fatal mishap, the latter interpretation does not seem to fit.

  • It is probably also about being a grown up and accepting things, not keeping life on hold while "demanding" that circumstances conform to one's expectations. There are only a few options: we may be troubled for decades about things not being as we, in our great wisdom and insight, want or "need" them to be; alternatively, we can change some of them; on the other hand, sometimes it is best to simply deal with them the way they are.

  • The universe does not either require or care that we have this or that, whatever it is: a better house; a fatter bank account; an easier job; a nicer vacation; a more comfortable climate; an accommodating spouse; fame; meaning; a longer life; respect; brilliance; well adjusted children; less stress; doting grandkids; greater health; loads of friends; etc. Usually a significant problem develops only when we in our own minds project such requirements onto reality.

  • The dream occurs in a large school, and so is partly about learning (in the dream work academy?). It is interesting that both I, the ego, and Frances, my anima, are students here.

  • There are quite a variety of pro or con qualities that either my anima and/or the shadow in this dream, Barack Obama, have and which I then have the option to "own" within myself: brilliance; arrogance; having rather rough edges at times, and so not always being easy to get along with; greatly possessed of "geek-ish" talents, skills, and pastimes; popular with others of similar specialized interests; funny and with often a good sense of humor for others' jokes; politically astute and so able to get along well with persons of different outlooks and backgrounds; charismatic; shrewd; exceptionally well organized; able to inspire many others to one's causes and interests; a natural leader; and being the best available hope among viable alternatives.

  • It is interesting also that "Barack," who figures prominently in the dream, means "blessed."

  • Barack Obama contains within himself, in his life story, the idea of unity blended from among influences of disparate cultural heritage. This theme of the dream is also emphasized in the pep rally cheering, done musically and in unison.

  • That this is to be a religious wedding, beyond the secular one we had before, suggests spiritual aspects to the dream's message.

  • That it is in some ways a recurrent dream shows there is significant emphasis or stress on its teachings of unity, integration, spirituality, accepting things as they are, owning divergent and sometimes hidden qualities, and attending to the (dream, meditation practice, or journalizing insight) lessons being received.

  • There is so much integration occurring or demonstrated that there are to be hundreds or even thousands (of my various sub-selves) involved in or watching the wedding ceremonies, and potentially billions more via worldwide television coverage!

  • The television reference suggests that there is intellectual understanding of the dream's message, i.e. that I "get the picture," although as yet I may not have accepted its import emotionally.

  • The unity implied by my shadow's (Obama's) dramatic, first row seat involvement and the great enthusiasm among others for his presence, plus the extensive media coverage, so transforms the situation that for neither the ego (me) nor the anima (Fran) can it be a routine or business as usual service.

  • Instead, I am excited and nervous about the vows we are so famously and significantly now to exchange, and Frances is made over: aglow, beautiful, and happy!

  • Combining the positive emotions and qualities of myself, Fran, and Barack Obama, the three dream principals (whether or not they are regarded as so important that they also stand as lasting "principles") at the dream's conclusion, this must be considered a powerfully positive dream: charismatic; happy; glowing; spiritual; take charge man of the people; best hope; smiling all around; musical; unifier; exceptionally talented; beautiful; smart; pep (energy, enthusiasm) inspirer; and blessed!

  • No wonder there is a wedding party.

  • It was noted that Fran and I had already had a pretty good marriage of over 15 years prior to our retirement (which meant spending more time in each other's company). This latter period requires new adjustments, which Fran seems to have been making more quickly and easily than I have, though I am coming to terms with the altered situation as well.

  • As this ceremony today is recognized even in the dream as our second wedding, it suggests dawning awareness.

  • That it is to occur at, and that Fran and I are students in, a high school or community college implies lessons of a higher order as well as further emphasis on integration (with training in - or a sense of - inner community).

  • Interestingly, David, who had attacked me irrationally about a month ago during a DG meeting, was again, by default (having come in late and finding few remaining seats) sitting near me, but shifted about quite restlessly for awhile and then, roughly 25 minutes into the meeting, got up and abruptly left, saying he was feeling too badly to remain.

  • As there were numerous dreams to discuss that evening and my turn came last (in the final few minutes of the meeting), had he not felt it necessary to depart early, but instead - as usual for him - had sought dream feedback close to the beginning of the meeting, there would have been no time for mine. So far, each time I have gone since his attack, he has either left early or been so bothered as to feel he was losing consciousness.

  • I certainly do not think I am the cause of his predicament, but find I am just vindictive enough that I do not mind it that my unapologetic former attacker now appears to be experiencing considerable personal difficulties.

6/15/08 - Title: "A Friendlier Ego"

I am returning a long distance on foot after being away. The social and political situation is in flux. As I am jogging along toward home but still have a ways to go yet, in a big gesture of friendship I hail and embrace a couple young Black men, part of a neighborhood security watch or militia, though previously this would not have been like me at all.

Word of my new friendliness precedes me, so that, by the time I get home, the young men of the security/militia force there are hailing me with warm smiles as well.

Title: "Getting Cocky"

Carl is sitting across a long narrow (picnic?) table from me. It is evening. We are outside. I say some bold things in our small group (maybe 3-5 people). This leads to positive developments and a new direction opening up for the group.

He sees me again the next day and asks me if that had just been a fluke or joke last night, or if my confident words and my help in leading things in another direction had been deliberate and so likely to continue.

"It was deliberate," I say. "If I see a need for change, I want to honor that."

6/17/08 - Title: "A Loving Look and Goodbye Hug"

I have my small repaired car and am ready to leave a vast, sprawling repair place, but their (there) are complications...

I see a young couple passionately yet tenderly making love on a blanket, right out in the open, in an open-air area to one side of the auto repair shop.

An attractive, friendly, affectionate, dark-haired woman (about 30-40) on the repair place staff would like to help, but she has her duties there. She gives me a hug and a kiss though. Her eyes are loving, but she looks concerned for me.

Title: "Waiting Outside in the Rain"

I'm at a huge, chaotic, helter-skelter car repair place way out in the booddocks (boondocks). The place is like a huge broken car warehouse, broken cars everywhere. It is quite late and already dark. My car is not going anywhere (will not be usable). The repair staff are mostly curt and want nothing more to do with me. One or two of them are somewhat helpful and allow me to call someone from the big, complicated, old repair shop phone. I lack paper and pen and am having trouble remembering the phone number I need to call or the address here. I keep asking and the repair workers are getting impatient (when I can get them to respond at all) with giving me the information I need for the call.

I am calling my mother. Luckily, she had been here once before. It is raining. I finally reach Mom by phone and ask if she can come get me. I tell her the address, but for some reason she's having trouble with that. I ask if she remembers how to go to the place, from when she had come here before. I am afraid, since it is out in the middle of nowhere, she will have forgotten or be unable to find it again and will just get lost on the way. But she assures me she can come and remembers how to get there. I am relieved over that. I wonder how long I'll be standing in the dark and rain till she hopefully gets there. "Long as it takes," I tell myself.

6/20/08 - Title: "An Egghead's Fate"

I am a servant or aide to Hitler. He and his main fighting general are having a briefing or meeting in Hitler's suite or house. I am serving dark coffee or tea for the other two men, using an old style, good quality china service of cups, saucers, and pitchers.

I overhear Hitler commanding this most senior general to contact (conduct) a looming battle in a specific, decisive way. But the military man objects or starts to, wanting to inform Hitler of the actual facts, that do not fit with Hitler's unrealistic demands.

Hitler flies into an immediate rage at the general's disputing him. He is holding a kitchen device, normally used to break open breakfast eggs, and he smashes it into the general's tiny, egg-shaped head, which promptly is shattered and disappears, killing the general instantly.

Hitler remains broodingly furious.

"What will we do now!?" I wonder. I feel shocked, anxious, defeated, and sad.

6/23/08 - Title: "Eagle Calm Before the Storm of Battle"

A combat situation. I am one of the lower ranking soldiers or officers. One of the war's battles, at least our part, is now in the area. Several of us, men and women, are in uniform. I could have evaded combat but have not. Now it is too late even if I had wanted to. The sense of imminent, life-threatening conflict is keen. We are on or in a steep hillside that may at any moment come under direct attack. A full-bird colonel with whom I have been speaking, whose eagle insignia I see on his uniform, remains calm and is a good model of how to be in this otherwise tense time. And he seems to appreciate that I made the courageous, committed choice to be a part of this, though I might earlier have opted out.

Then we have on backpacks, and it is time to move into an exposed area where the fighting may soon be fierce. I am anxious, but also hopeful I shall survive.

Yesterday, the DG discussed, along with others, my 6/20 dream, "An Egghead's Fate." Highlights:

  • The dream seems to be about an inner schism between a brainier or more intellectual, thinking, but emotionally reserved side (the egghead shadow) and a more passionate but negatively expressive, emotionally unreserved side (the Hitler shadow).

  • The ego, whom I identify with in the dream, is a servant. He(I) seeks (I seek) to serve both of these conflicting shadow sides.

  • I also identify more with the egghead than with the Hitler shadow figure. When I was growing up, in fact, I sometimes had the nickname "professor."

  • In this dream scenario, the emotional side expresses mainly destructive rage. The egghead side is totally at the mercy of the enraged Hitler side, just as, in reality, if I become quite angry then the qualities of the egghead side are completely lost to me.

  • There is value in the expression of even negative emotion at times, of course, short bouts of anger, for instance, giving the energetic means to cut out what is no longer meeting one's needs, or the means to defend oneself assertively against those who love playing the "gotcha" game or the "I'm OK, you're not... " transaction, cowardly people who like to bolster their insecure egos and "get off" by trying to be domineering, critical, disrespectful, or even cynically contemptuous of those whom they figure are easier prey.

  • There is here in the dream perhaps some prediction of further conflicts with those with whom we are most in contact (or negative conduct). Yet, ironically, there is no real contact here. Literally and figuratively, we often do not touch one another except in a bickering way. Cooperation and coordination are hardly possible. Instead, competition regularly holds sway, or else we avoid intimacy and just go our separate ways. This is true not only for my actual domestic relationship but also for the internal dynamics.

  • The need here is finally to develop a blend or synthesis between the emotional and the more intellectual sides, the feeling and thinking aspects.

  • The designs on the Chinaware may be significant, but in the DG we did not discuss them. The red may symbolize both anger and spirituality. The gold rings near the brims of the cups might symbolize unity.

  • There are three men in this scene, perhaps indicating transformation. It seems likely this is a rehash of an old issue and that the transformation occurring will not present a final resolution of the conflict, but maybe a better or higher perspective on it.

  • The phrase "Hitler's suite" is ironic, perhaps, playing with the idea of one of the greatest of history's monsters having a sweet side.

  • When fury or rage take over or we are hooked into the negative button-pushing of some significant other, or in some different fashion go off on a "not OK" childish, lacking in empathy, emotional tirade, so that the thinking, intellectual, "adult," or egghead side is necessarily killed off, or at least effectively destroyed for the time being, it can be nothing but catastrophic for the overall good that I as the ego am trying to meaningfully and positively serve.

  • The phrase "all white" may refer to a spiritual presence, being, or inner vision.

  • The Hitler side of my shadow is never negotiating or working with someone else on an equal footing. Rather, he is commanding and demanding, sort of insane, extremely needy, and yet giving little or nothing back to others. It is as though there is a gravity well, black hole, or a bottomless well or pit, and no matter how much effort or kindness, or good will we "throw" into it, like good money after bad, it is never felt to be enough by this needful, immature, forever not OK entity, which has its representations both in the outer reality and in the dream realm (or the underlying depths of my psyche).

  • In the end, with this "no exit" cast of real or inner characters, I am left to wonder in apparent despair what we do now, since at best they are usually working at cross purposes to one another, while at worst there is simply complete conflict, with one side or the other entirely out of the picture, lives in parallel ruts, and quiet detached vs. emotionally noisy desperation, leaving me feeling anew shocked, anxious, defeated, and sad, to realize how dysfunctional the overall situation is.

  • Like it or not, though, this is the reality, two or more quite disparate individuals or sides of myself working against one another, and so stewing in their own negative juices, when they might, instead, be using the same energy to make each other fulfilled and happy.

  • But, to paraphrase Koko Beck, life does not care whether two people (or inner entities) get along well and create a calm and happy space together or get along miserably and get "charged up" by being so against one another and undermining each other's contentment at frequent intervals. Either way, it can "use" the channel created by that energy, and we may use it in our inner "practice."

6/25/08 - Title: "Soon Again I Heard a Tapping, Something Louder Than Before"

A tall young red-headed fellow, whom Fran says is Jeff, shows up at our building and breezes in when she opens the front door like he's known us both for years. He's acting in a sort of jazzy way. I gather the three of us are about to go somewhere together. He accepts when Fran asks if he needs to go to the (main floor) bathroom before we leave, and since I've just gotten up from a nap and feel the urge too, I go down to the bathroom in the basement.

A moment later, as I'm standing in there at the toilet, Jeff, tall enough to be seen through a window pane that forms the upper part of the outer wall of the WC, comes over to outside the (basement) bathroom door, like he wants to come in too (next) or else to simply talk with me there in a chatty, informal way while waiting for me to finish, though I've hardly even heard about him from Fran, much less met Jeff before.

While I'm trying to explain I'll be with him in just a minute, there's a loud tap from the window of a basement door (the office entrance) that opens onto a city alley or street (the basement being also on the street level on the left side of the building, if one were facing outward toward the front - we had a house like that when I was growing up, with a ground level door from the basement, but the front entrance on a level above, due to a steep rise between the back and the front). An old man (who looks like a derelict, yet also like Walt Whitman) is there, staring in hard, like he's either confused or else very serious about needing to be let in right away.

I ask Jeff to tell him we are closed and to go around to the front, but the man does not understand and still wants to be let in. He taps again, harder, with keys or something, on the door's upper glass panel.

I feel kind of harried, still not through in the bathroom while Jeff, the strange old man, and presumably also Fran, are all waiting for me to attend to them and/or be ready to leave.

6/26/08 - The DG discussed, among others, my 6/25/08 "Soon Again I Heard a Tapping, Something Louder Than Before" dream last night. Highlights:

  • It is a transformation dream on two levels: everyday or external experience living; and getting down to business, nitty-gritty, internal realm living.

  • Qualities to own, represented by various aspects of the dream, include: informal, chatty, jazzy, open, geeky, extroverted, struggling, impatient, angry, genuine, funny, iconoclastic, artistic, independent, poetic, sensitive, insightful, introverted, focused on the perfection of every experience, generously giving of oneself, celebrating of all (of others, self, physicality, carnality, love, pain, everything), supremely mystic, natural in leadership.

  • The anima is uncooperative with the ego, but the ego is almost always wrong. The anima and the actual Fran are not the same. Besides that, both in dream and in reality, Fran is mostly an upbeat, talented, energetic, helpful character. She offers right feeling, in the dream, being receptive, welcoming, upbeat, ready to go (get on with things), facilitating of an integrated transformative (three participants) experience, and encouraging of self-expression (Jeff going to the bathroom on the upper level) in everyday experience.

  • In the basement, the transformation is exclusively among the males, the ego plus the Jeff and Walt Whitman shadows.

  • There is also dawning awareness: a two-level building; two glass panels; two bathrooms; and two times Walt Whitman taps on the glass.

  • The glass panels one can look through imply intellectual (or head) understanding, without yet full appreciation of the dream message emotionally (with the heart).

  • There is great emphasis on self-expression, also on two levels, stressed by the title (a line from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"), the presence of one of the world's preeminent poets (Walt Whitman, famous for "Leaves of Grass"), and both Jeff and the ego using a bathroom, with the anima's encouragement, in Jeff's case.

  • The overall import is further emphasized by similar themes in other recent dreaming and by having just awakened (from a nap) in the dream.

  • One DG member suggested I should own my qualities as a smart, natural leader, one who is "getting it together," and one with much to offer others, spirituality (though not in a narrow, religious way), and a sense of humor.

  • The Walt Whitman shadow, insistent on being let in and having the keys (presumably to the needed transformation), is the most important aspect of the dream.

6/27/08 - Title: "STOP Telling Me How to Get Ready for Our Wedding!"

Frances and I are getting married, but complications have arisen in our preparations, so that I am not able to get ready and dressed as well as I would like.

A man I had depended on for help, or for access to his facilities, where my tux, etc. are, has let me down. It is as though he is drunk or something and cannot even understand my questions and complaints.

Something else will have to be done to allow me to be ready in a less ideal fashion and very soon. As I am trying to work this out, frenetically pursuing a backup plan, Fran keeps intervening, telling me how to go about it. She is the more adamant in doing so because she perceives my efforts till now to have clearly been a failure, in that I had depended on an unreliable guy.

I have asked her not to tell me what to do, saying her input is not wanted, but she seemingly cannot help herself and just goes on telling me, at each decision point, her take on what I ought to be doing. This has the effect of slowing me down because it is distracting, so I cannot focus well on what I must do next.

It is also really pissing me off. So I angrily shout at her to stop telling me what to do!

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