Home
Previous
Next
August, 2010
3 5 7 23 318/3/10 - Title: "Caring for the 'Retarded' HP Within"
(A series of scenes through the night, each a variation on one of these two.) Scene 1 - I am in a small part of a an older house. It is as though the house has been broken up into different apartments, one of which is mine, or, that is, is the one I am renting. So in this apartment the circumstances are close and intimate. In this first scene I am on a sofa-bed, like where I usually sleep at home now, with my dog, Puff, or a dog very similar to her. She is sleeping down toward the foot of the bed but lying between my right leg and the back of the sofa-bed. There is a sense of a companionably close connection between us, yet also that, though I am taking care of her in this relationship, yet she also cares for and is taking care of me.
Scene 2 - I am still in the apartment in a small part of the older house, but this time not with Puff but with a retarded man. (He reminds me of the lead in the movie "I Am Sam," played by Sean Penn.) He is sitting on a couch or sofa-bed that is to my left, and I am a few feet away in the same room. Again there is the sense that I am taking care of the other character in the dream, but also that in some odd way he is caring for and taking care of me.
[Puff is very playful, often demanding of my attention, and extremely emotional, whether this is positively or negatively expressed. She is not too bright, but can be quite engaging and fun. She needs my and my wife's nurturing, involvement, care for her security or physical well-being, and love. Yet there are ways too that she helps sustain us. We are, for instance, calmer when around her, easily amused by her antics, distracted from pettiness toward one another, encouraged (by her needs) to get more exercise ourselves, and healthily focused on something outside ourselves when interacting with her.
The Sean Penn character in "I Am Sam" is barely functional as a retarded man who works an entry level position at a coffee bar and who has been abandoned by his mate and the mother of his lovely daughter, Lucy, who is compassionate and much smarter than he is but loves him intensely, just as he does her. So, in a sense they are caring for each other as she is growing up. It is a twist, from a Jungian psychology point of view, for here the man is less the rational, practical one and more into his emotions, while his daughter, though emotional too, is of the two of them better at looking after things and her father in an expedient way.
Since "dog" is interchangeable with "god" in dream metaphor speak, since also this is occurring in a part of the older house, and I am just now starting Step 5, this is probably about the issues of a part of the overall Self, ones that have to do with spirituality, in this case with beginning the Alanon Fifth Step, in which I am to relate to my higher power (HP) the exact details of my shortcomings. Yet I feel unsure how to do this, as I have little real or well-defined conception of my HP. The dream suggests that I deal with my HP as being playful, emotional, and expectant of my attention and as if it is outside me, apart from me, perhaps in a way that involves my being loving, caring, and nurturing toward this HP. It also suggests the way to go is not intellectual but into my feelings, just as the Sean Penn character is not strong as a practical thinker but as a feeler.
The dream is also likely about intimacy and being more comfortable, both within myself and in the real world, with intimate relationships, and with a closer involvement with my HP, as well as about love, compassion, and empathy for the parts of myself that may be rather weak in some areas but strong in others.]
8/5/10 - Title: "A Time for Integration"
I was younger than my actual age. A lot of sexual content dreaming, feeling aroused and wanting very much to make love with each of a succession of beautiful women (none known in reality) whom I met at one place or another in a large multi-storied office building, mostly in hallways. Despite their interest in an intimate relationship, in each case I felt I must turn these women down, saying I was married.
[Based on the hallways, a time of transition, one involving seemingly imminent and much desired integration with my feminine energy aspect represented by each of these several beautiful and passionate animas, in contrast to my spouse to whom I was remaining loyal, who in reality is not so interested in intimacy or passion and is often away, doing her own thing rather than actively engaged in our marriage. From the multiple stories and offices in the large building, it seems there may be many stories of growth (building) here. Offices might be orifices for expression of sexual energy or integration or places in the larger Self within which to express many inner qualities or characteristics. I was also "Junger" (younger), i.e. more an expression of Jungian Psychology, perhaps than in reality.]
8/7/10 - Title: "Time to Go Outside"
The setting is a big sprawling place, kind of like my parents' home and ranch property in McGregor, TX, but not the same as that. There is some kind of family reunion going on. Besides me, my mom is there and is hosting it. It is her place, a large one-story building. My brother, Pete, and my brother, Allen, are there, among many others. There is a large amount of surrounding acreage, mostly open, undeveloped land, with lots of shrubs, a few small trees, some grasses, and plenty of hot dry bare earth. All of us in the dream seem adult but younger than our actual ages.
Scene one - It is morning, and my brother Pete is up and wanting us, or at least some of us, to be doing something interesting and/or fun together. He is not sure what we ought to do, but is sort of impatient with others just sitting around taking it easy. I'm feeling like doing something later, but it is early as yet. I do not feel fully awake yet and want just a slower start to the day.
Scene two - My brother Allen drives his truck (not his real white one, but one about half as big, more like a red Toyota compact size pick-up) into the house (do not know how, but he manages to get it in without crashing through any walls) and parks it in a den or front living room near or adjoining the large kitchen. Mom goes to investigate and is sort of curious, sort of amused by what he has done. George seems pleased with this reaction.
Scene three - I have gone outside in the early morning, against others' advice. There is not enough light to see clearly yet. I look around to avoid snakes, but have also somehow come out without my glasses, so it is not possible to be sure to avoid them and it seems just a matter of chance whether or not I shall get too close to a rattler, copperhead, or moccasin and be bitten. A couple others are with me (Pete? Allen?), not especially because they want to be here, but because it is not very safe, and they want to get me to go back into the house. Yet they are also kind of excited by the adventure of the situation.
[My mom is very much the extrovert, in the dream still young enough that she enjoys these big family get-togethers that she has arranged. She also tends to be controlling. On the other hand, she feels herself to be a victim, drinks too much, is frequently depressed, sometimes acts the martyr, feels like damaged goods from abuse, poverty, and abandonment (by her biological father) in her growing up years, and she is often co-dependent. She is my anima and there to show by example or counter-example right feeling. In this case, I may take as positive her extroversion, but need to resist the appeal of her kinds of reactions and attitudes in other respects. This anima's larger Self has but one story, in many ways a sad one. Nonetheless, some growth is going on (building).
Pete is a recovering alcoholic, also very extroverted, enjoys really getting going and doing things but is not too good in his judgment and so makes poor decisions about what he is doing, as a result having a varied and generally unstable string of jobs, relationships with women, and residences. In the last decade or so, he has been almost out of money or living on borrowed funds and unemployed as often as he has been working. He depends a lot on the kindness of family and friends, takes little responsibility himself when things go wrong, but is actually getting better about that as he has been in the AA 12-step program. Pete is in a way too male, driven by his need to be doing things plus his strong desire not to feel pain and so, in the past, has either used alcohol to deaden his feelings or, then and later, avoids responsibility, blaming others for his circumstances, poor choices, etc. Pete is of course one of my shadows and may reflect my own poor judgment when it comes to my masculine or doing energy, desires to avoid responsibility and emotional pain, etc. In this regard, it is at least heartening that he is doing better through the 12-step program.
Allen is fairly introverted, really smart but in a narrowly focused way, mostly in electronics and physics, and is successful in his defense contractor job, as a chief engineer working on the latest type military planes. Tends to be very co-dependent in his family life. Lets his wife get away with almost anything and just adjusts to her childlike, self-indulgent behavior. Despite his full-time job and her doing nothing but be a "homemaker," one who spends lots of their money on the computer, and then spends a few hours a week selling stuff at a flea market, he looks after their two young kids (ages 7 and 5) more than she does. He can never save anything for their retirement because she spends all of it (and usually more) stupidly and impulsively, and he lets her get away with that. The youngest child, a boy, takes after his mom in throwing temper tantrums when he does not get his way, and Allen is greatly bothered by this but does not know how to make the kid behave, so the lad keeps getting away with it. The boy's mother, far from supporting Allen in the parental discipline area, undermines him by siding with the kids and acting like a spoiled one herself. Allen probably very much could benefit from an Alanon program, but his anger comes out mostly in his frustration and in a whining kind of "Yes, but..." string of "reasons" he cannot do anything better or different than he is already doing. Here too is a shadow whose example is a cautionary tale for me. He is in some ways great with his kids, but, still parking his means of getting through life in his mama's house, in fact in her place of living, he does not know how to be strong, consistent, and in charge, either in his marriage or as a daddy.
I think Allen's red truck, driven into his mother's house and parked there, may represent a situation in which he is trying to be an adult, the only one in his actual family, but has a lot of anger and also finds his doing energy, his way of getting through life, still parked in mama's place, which she rewards with her amused and curious attention to his (otherwise strange) behavior.
The outside area with its many snakes suggests "dangerous" feelings I have that are not owned and that go unexpressed. When on my early morning outing, it feels kind of good to be out of the house (my mother's place) and also as though it is hazardous, and I am kind of walking blind, both due to the lack of enough light and being there without my needed glasses. So maybe, in a sense, I am venturing forth from the familiarity of being a mama's boy - out of my mother's house - and there is both excitement and fear involved in this development. In contrast to Pete, who is kind of too male, I as the ego have in a way been too female, into my feelings more than into the thinking mode, waiting for things to happen instead of making them happen. Since the dream involves an alcoholic mom, a recovering alcoholic Pete, a co-dependent Allen, and an ego who tends also to be co-dependent, if not so much so as Allen, it figures that it is partly about Alanon type issues. I am beginning to deal with Alanon's step 5, admitting my shortcomings to my HP, myself, and another human being. That we are all younger suggests this is a Jungian setting. Things are not all barren (bare earth) as there are some grasses, etc., suggesting spirituality and growth.]
8/23/10 - Title: "Time to Lick Your Wounds"
Scene 1 - I see a tall, strong man standing a few yards before me in a large room. He is not seeming to notice me, but is focused on his shoulder. He is naked. He has been injured. The injury is to his right shoulder, around the top of it. There is some blood, an open wound, and raw, swollen flesh, torn flesh. To my surprise, he seems to lick, then even chew the torn area and the pieces of flesh that are raised up higher than they ought normally to be. I wonder if he's trying to mix his dirty mouth saliva into the wound, perhaps because the bacteria ironically could help clean it or else toughen it up.
Scene 2 - I am standing and urinating into a urinal on the right side of a plain square room, maybe 10' x 10.' It is unadorned with white plaster-board walls and simply functional, clearly a restroom, in fact the Men's Room. A young boy, maybe aged 4 or 5, barges in before knocking, so I do not have a chance to tell him the room is occupied. He begins to enthusiastically tell me something, ignoring what I'm doing. I suggest he wait, that it's not OK to barge into a Men's Room or stay while someone else is using it. He goes but not before again telling me enthusiastically about something really neat he has just learned, as if there is something cool about to happen.
[Last night, as I was going to sleep, I repeated: "I want communication with my Higher Power," in the hope of getting a dream with an HP-related message.
I do not know the man or the boy in the dream.
I am in physical therapy and doing daily exercises now for an injury to my right shoulder that involves a possible partial rotator cuff tear as well as some capsulitis or partial frozen shoulder syndrome. There has been improvement due to the exercises, which I am doing properly and even more than as directed each day. The last time I saw my physical therapist, I asked for and received more exercises, wanting to increase the pace of healing and strengthening of the sore joint.
I am close to the end of Alanon Step 5, though it is taking longer than expected with one sponsor. She is conscientious and wants to be sure to help me do it right, though the other sponsor has helped me finish Step 5, from his standpoint, and says I am in fact almost ready for Step 8, having already been thinking for awhile about Step 6 and 7 issues. While I am a little frustrated not to be through Step 5 yet with my female sponsor, I do appreciate that she is being thorough and realize it is not a race to the finish line. Some things of value have been coming up during sessions with her that did not while more quickly going through confronting a detailed inventory of my qualities and shortcomings with the male sponsor.
I feel at times, though, that going over and over the Step 4-5 issues is like whining and complaining and that I ought to get over that, face things as they are, and get on with my life like a grown-up. Such an attitude reminds me of impatient, angry lectures, arguments, or abuse from my father. However, I think there is also some validity to this lesson, that it is time to be more of a grown-up and not dwell on issues from the past, time in other words to be a man and move on with simply living!
The young kid, I think, represents this energetic new growth approach, spontaneous, energetic, eager. It is not coincident that both the ego and the young boy are in the Men's Room, so there is evidently some identity shift with respect to gender-appropriate reactions/attitudes/behaviors.
After I had related the dream to my wife, she commented that werewolves lick their wounds and chew on their own injured flesh. There may be some significance to the idea that werewolves seem mild and relatively weak most of the time, but then show strength, toughness, and ferocity at others.
I believe the dream is partially about my suggestion as I was going to sleep and so is a message from my conception of a HP, a three-part message: first, I need to be strong, lick my wounds, and even chew away into real toughness the damaged tissue of these lifetime wounds that have kept me feeling like a victim; second, that self-expression (as in completing Step 5 well) is important too; but, third, that then it will be time to move on and be more real, spontaneous, and allowing of the natural, creative, and cool growth that can follow.
The 10 x 10 suggests strongly emphasized unity, integration, or wholeness: 10x 1. There are two 10s, hence dawning awareness. However, there is also a power of 10 greater, so this is a terrifically increased emphasis on unity and wholeness.
The I Ching also indicates 10 represents treading safely amid disorder and peril, hence progress and success.
The square room suggests four-sidedness or manisfestation in reality. That the boy is 4-5 also suggests this plus creativity and waiting. The I Ching indicates for 5 the ideas of good fortune if there is firmness, of advantage in crossing the great stream.]
8/31/10 - Title: "Almost Redundant"
Scene 1 - I am in a semi-managerial role but also am a semi-independent worker who goes from one to another location in the whole enterprise making sure things are going well and troubleshooting as needed. The setting is a house or business building with many rooms. A woman who apparently is in charge of one department, division, or operation asks me to stand in for her while she goes to lunch or otherwise takes a break. She says so-and-so is expected and will be bringing something.
While she is gone and I am on hand at her work station or location, a middle-aged woman arrives with a couple big paper bags of stuff to drop off. She wants something in return, not clear what. (Money? A receipt?) I think it is $12 - as occurs to me while I am typing this - that she is expecting. She tells me her name, as though I should know who she is or at least that her name should mean something to me, but it does not. Her name is Margie or Maggie, something like that. (She tells me her first and last name, but that's about all I remember, even in the dream.) There are lots of small children's playthings in the bags, for instance used blocks and small soft stuffed toys of animals, each about 3-4 inches long. These donation things are well organized in the bags and compactly fill about half of each. The woman whose place I had taken returns while the Maggie or Margie lady is still there, and I introduce her as Maggie, I think. The woman I was replacing knows immediately who this is and proceeds with the needed transaction and gratefully acknowledges and receives the lady's gifts/contributions (as though she is the manager of the donations department, for instance at Goodwill or the Salvation Army, etc.). The donating woman, who had been acting leery of me and like she doubted my authority or competence, is instantly relaxed and comfortable about the situation now that the other lady has returned. The two of them complete their transaction easily and in a mutually satisfactory and rewarding way.
Scene 2 - I am some kind of private security person or military police soldier in a mall or university or a government complex of buildings, departments, and offices. I am evidently to check-in at several locations and troubleshoot as needed to deal with problems that come up, and otherwise I just kind of randomly make my rounds.
I say to a middle-aged lady working apparently as a government clerk (evidently as a dispatcher, secretary, or administrative assistant) that I intend to go to... (and name three places - forgotten now - that are sort of arbitrarily selected by me at the time to be next on my rounds) and then to Operations. I am, in the dream, sort of making this up off the top of my head, wanting to appear to have an important job, but really not particularly doing anything all that useful. Also there is not really any significant order to my rounds.
"That all sounds good to me," a younger, more heavily muscled man than I, whom I had not noticed before, says, stepping in from the right side and from behind me. He explains that he has been attached to (military phrasing?) me (by someone at a higher level than either of us, evidently) for awhile to learn the ropes, since he will be taking on similar duties himself soon. So, I make his acquaintance and then we start out, but I am thinking: "Now I shall not only need to make it appear to others generally that I really have necessary things to do, but I shall also need to try and impress this new man, who will otherwise see much more closely just how arbitrary and up to me my duties in any given shift actually are." I get tied up for a few minutes with something, some minor matter that needs to be resolved and is then easily taken care of. When I am finished, I look for the man I am showing the ropes, and he has, on his own initiative, already gone up to a service window of some type and begun handling a type of business that needed to be taken care of. I am glad he is catching on so quickly, but see that I really have very little to teach him.
[The dream appears to reflect concerns that I can easily be replaced, that I am not really doing anything of significance. Thus, at least in the dream settings, I am not making an actual difference to or for anything or anyone. In the first scene, the ego is not able to properly replace a woman. (Not too regrettable since she does not share the ego's gender.) The anima she represents is able to easily handle her duties, but I cannot take them over well even for a short time.
In the second scene, a shadow, who seems more confident and masculine than I - as the ego - normally am, is ready to take over my duties, and he already could readily replace me, even showing more initiative, right from the start, than comes naturally for me.
There may be significance in that both "semi" and "half," in scene one, suggest not being altogether there, having something or some things missing. This may be reflected in what is forgotten as well.
As spelled, the donating lady's name may be important. "Maggie" is very like "Magi," the name given to the three wise men in the New Testament, who take special gifts for the baby Jesus. And this dream person's gifts too are for a baby or babies.
There is perhaps significance in the words "blocks" and "complex," suggesting impediments to growth and progress.
On the other hand, my shadow has been attached to me by a higher authority, which may be a euphemism for a higher power. Perhaps this Junger (younger), more masculine, possessed of greater initiative shadow form of me shall in due course take over from me and do my rounds even better than I. Rounds here might apply to time, which takes me through each day via hands making their rounds about the clock face, with the sun and moon making their rounds seemingly about the Earth, and the Earth, in turn, having a limited number of times 'round the sun left before I shall cease to be.
12 = 6 x 2, standing for flexibility as well as dawning awareness. 12 in the I Ching represents "the great gone and the little come." Hmm. The interpretation also includes that "the processes of growth are at an end." Hope that's wrong, but it is consistent with mention of a complex and of blocks.
The 12 may relate to the Alanon 12-step program. It may also be meaningful that I am now on Step 6, and, since I have 2 sponsors, I shall in a sense be doing it twice.
The 3-4 however, suggest transformation leading to manifestation in reality.
The end of the first scene reminds me exactly of how I have felt when doing as my dream group leader had asked and trying to stand in for her, feeling, that is, as though both I and the others doubted my authority or competence, but then all were relieved, and things flowed easily, once the real leader had returned.]