Home
Previous
Next
August, 2018
16 18 19 30I'm living in a kind of rooming house, yet one in which there is little genuine privacy or convenience. My accommodations are meager and minimal. Instead of a complete room, I am in a partial one, this part on a second floor and separated from another by a ceiling to floor screen or transparent curtain with a door in it. If I want bathroom or kitchen facilities, I must go through one or another door and others' "rooms" to communal food or toilet arrangements. Others can go through my "room" to get to or from theirs and may do so at any time. I am tired and want to rest, yet find it difficult to go to sleep in such communal circumstances. Also, I need to pee, yet to do so must bother others or be subject to their intrusions at any time. It feels like an untenable way of living. At the moment, I must put up with it. Still, before anything else, I must, private or not, go to the bathroom. (I wake up, needing to pee.)
[In the external reality, there are issues about feeling a need to take care about how I express myself, lest I be resented or criticized for what I genuinely believe or think, and so have a co-dependent concern with how and what I say, both among family members and with my Alanon sponsor or my walking (and sometimes lunch) buddy. There is not a sense of having unconditional acceptance, so I take care to speak (or write my e-mails) in a way that is diplomatic or politically correct. Since peeing in dreams can have to do with self-expression, this evidently reflects a frustration with feeling I must not sincerely express myself. In addition, due to how much I feel I must share with people who are not fully accepting, for instance with family members, my sponsor, or others in the Alanon program, in both instances at times subjecting myself to criticism or even condemnation, there is a desire for greater privacy than I have. That there is a second floor suggests there are two themes or stories going on in my life currently. As mentioned here, there are at least issues about both relations with my family and with certain Alanon members, so perhaps these are the two "stories" involved.
In the context of simply the dream realm, there are, as characters, first the ego, with which I identify and that feels concern about these issues of curtailed privacy and expression, but also anima and shadow aspects of myself that I sense as limiting the ego's will or preferences in certain ways. It is not merely that in the outer, actual world these issues come into play, but I myself get on my own case if I do not live up to certain expectations, and the ego is never free from "their" scrutiny or potential criticisms and so never feels he has sufficient separation from others' view of him or limitations on his expression. In short, within the dream realm too, and perhaps even more so than in the real world, there is a lack of unconditional positive regard, and I feel under critical scrutiny more or less all the time. Even in sleep, I cannot relax about this, for I can be gossiped about and looked down on, or my needs be infringed, there too and have no place that is just emotionally safe.]
8/18/18 - Title: "Frozen Feelings, Our Panic, and a Three-Story Self"
It's winter, with snow on the ground. I'm in a three-story house, not mine, with a little boy and his mom, and they're Hispanic, I think, and desperate because of something about the authorities, and at first because their little dog is missing. I help it get home and it is as though the dog has also really needed to pee, and I help it go to where it can relieve itself near the door on the 1st floor. Other pets are their (there) in their little dog houses, but this little guy, smallest of all, has no dog house of his own. He comes back inside after doing his business, and we look for where the little boy is sleeping, so the dog can be there.
8/19/18 - Title: "Polite Tyranny"
There is a large group, like a whole town or city, and amid this assemblage there are those whose self-appointed role it is to enforce conformity. Here (in the dream) I have a father (different from my real father) who is kind, smart, and wanting to assure the good of our little family group within the tribal social forces. I had earlier tried to have us leave, arguing that things could get a lot worse and we should go while we still could. Mild-mannered and practical, as he saw it at the time, my father had overruled this, and so my mother, a brother, myself, and my father (all not my real relatives) had stayed. Yet incrementally the coercion toward uniform attire, behavior, thought, etc., had become more and more complete. By now, the self-appointed enforcers were far more brazen, and the penalties for individualistic tendencies far more severe, mere ostracism or criticism giving way to public punishments and even death, and it was also too late to safely try to leave. A "well wisher" visited us and suggested for our own good that we all change our attire to the proscribed (wrong term, as actually meant prescribed, correct, indicated) black formal wear that was expected of both men and women, with the clear understanding among us that we must give in, and even pretend to think this was a good and proper way to be and to dress, or one or more of us probably would be publicly hurt or worse. My father and the rest of us went along and acted as though we genuinely agreed and acquiesced, adapting and saying we'd become more like the rest and put aside our bad ego-directed individual natures. But to us privately my father said softly "I was wrong."
8/30/18 - Title: "Black Bear Breakfast"
Scene One - It is a snow-covered landscape in a rural area. There are one or more shelters, but without doors. There is no electricity or running water. One or more big black bears are being adjusted to, ideally trained, to be part of a joint venture. One huge bear in particular is in an enclosure or shelter where I am. I am trying to assure that the bear is OK, that we humans are OK too, and that we can, more and more, adjust to each other in a way beneficial to both species. It feels hazardous, yet is working.
Scene Two - I am in a large, complicated commercial kitchen, and a big black bear is helping prepare coffee or other parts of a breakfast to be served. An adult woman is helping to manage the preparations and breakfast serving. The bear and I have a good bond. Something major could go wrong at any time, but for now it is all working. I am still worried that one misjudgment or confusing moment in handling the bear could result in massive destruction, injuries, possibly death among humans or for the bear.
[I cannot help thinking this is at least partly about concerns that our long bull (stock) market may soon turn into a big, ugly, black bear, with dire consequences. There is even the detail of a joint venture and a good bond, mirrored in reality by my managing our nest egg so that it is basically in two parts, equities and safer bond assets or reserves. Yet there is concern that the good bond allocation may not be sufficient to offset the severity of the coming bear. At the same time, though it is clear this bull market cannot last forever, it might go on for another year or so, and if so then too large a percentage in relatively safer investments could significantly dampen the returns of the total assets. It is best, probably, to simply maintain a set allocation, for instance 33% in bonds or reserves plus 67% in equities, and then rebalance annually.]