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September, 2015
3 8 9 23 27 30Scene One - Something about people I know needing to find another rental place. These are mostly young men, college age, I think. They are interested in one of five rooming houses owned by a certain landlord. I advise against it, saying I had stayed in one of them before and the places were not at all conducive of privacy, that the owners would come into the rooms whenever they felt like, as would other tenants, and needed repairs were not done, despite more than one complaint. Best to keep looking. They are few, but one might luck out and find a good, cheaper place to live, with real privacy, if a person is patient, holds out for what is wanted, and checks often on the available options.
Scene Two - Am with my extended (birth) family or some of these relatives as we are getting ready for Christmas and gift exchanges. Am somehow involved in a collection of brightly colored, wrapped gifts that will be stored till time to be distributed, evidently on Christmas Day. I get some labeled in Horace's neat concise handwriting. They are for Charley (one of his sons) and a couple others.
[The number one can be about unity, integration. Five for me often represents creativity and waiting. There is a sense of being in a learning setting. Jung men. Houses may be about the larger Self. The landlord might represent my higher power. Privacy issues can be concerns over introversion vs. extroversion, matters of how energy is used and restored, or protection of the ego or of the young, creative self, my inner child. Christ-mas can be about martyrdom or nurturance, generous giving and sharing. A couple (two) suggests dawning awareness of the insights/issues concerned in the dream. In contrast to the situation in the second scene, in the first there is anxiety, uncertainty, isolation, and a lack of real kinship, companionship, or integration among members of the Self. The next scene, though, involves closer, more loving relationships. In certain ways, my life also has drab, colorless, isolated aspects while in other ways it is full, filled with brightness, and has closer ties. Yet in the second scene as well there are us vs. them kind of issues, for Horace is clear about seeing his own marital family as superior to others outside this "tribe." Of him, I'd say he is a good father, conventional, yet tending to feel superior toward others, one of the angry white men who support folks like Rush Limbaugh and others of the right wing and fundamentalist type of politics or religion . So, this is a male shadow character having these characteristics, a mix of positive, neutral, and negative.]
9/8/15 - Title: "I Need That Like a Hole in the Head"
I have some concern as a doctor is about to use a drill bit and power drill to make a hole in my head. (My recollection is simultaneously that...) It is to be drilled into my face next to my nose, about 3 inches deep, the drill about 1/2 inch wide, and also it is to go into and through my head from the back. The drilling commences and is soon over. I think someone asks me how I feel, and I am sort of numb, not really feeling any pain yet (anesthesia?), maybe in shock or disoriented, but kind of surprised to still be alive and conscious.
[A 3-inch long drill bit suggests transformation. 1 suggests unity and integration. 2 indicates dawning awareness of the insights or issues involved in this dream. In fact, though, I do not currently understand this one. However, immediately on writing that, the slang phrase "it was drilled into me" comes to mind...maybe there is something I am getting as a repeated lesson, perhaps Alanon program issues? The current Alanon stage is Step 8, a preliminary to Step 9, making amends, in this case to myself. The main concerns here are how to avoid judging and putting myself down, beating myself up, so to speak, plus how do I genuinely nurture myself instead? As have been focused on this matter now for a few weeks, there is a sense that I do know intellectually what is appropriate, yet it has not sunk in so much emotionally or in how I actually behave. I hole in the head implies a possible deficiency in my rational, logical side or maybe in my ego.]
9/9/15 - Title: "More to Fear Than Fear Itself"
Scene One - There are several of us (men and women) together in an isolated old-fashioned style log cabin. There's been a snowstorm. The snow is at least 6 inches deep outside the cabin. Singly or in small groups we start to leave. A log bridge is across a portion of the snow-covered path or road. The snow has begun to thaw, and now there is a lot of flow of water close to the surface. It is very easy to lose one's footing and fall down, and a number of people do. So far, I have not fallen, but the footing plus pull of the flowing water make walking out here treacherous. For now, I go back to the cabin. It should be better to try later, either once the snow has all thawed and the water receded or once the temperature has fallen, and the water has turned to ice. Some people who have fallen may be lost, drowned.
Scene Two - A similar setting except a big bear is on the scene. People are trying to flee the bear. It gets inside the cabin. I wonder if I can succeed in evading it. It is very scary, swiping at folks or trying to bite them.
[6 in the I Ching suggests a lot of reason for caution, with likely obstruction or opposition ahead, things might go well. Snow suggests unfelt or frozen emotions. A subsequent big thaw suggests lots of emotional expression or feelings. The bear suggests a large drop in the stock market, issues about my mother, or both. Either way, a scary bear indicates plenty of negative feelings.]
9/23/15 - Title: "You Can't Get There From Here"
Scene one - I have temporarily been working at an old-fashioned corner grocery type place (of the family-owned sort I might have found in San Francisco neighborhoods in the 1960s), expecting to then get on more permanently, even if just part-time once school would start up again in the next few days, to help provide money for my expenses while a university student (or in similar formal studies). The work agrees with me, and I think I do it well, both restocking and waiting on customers/ringing up their purchases, and I've been here for several weeks before school starts.
Today, though, when I arrive I'm told there's nothing for me to do, and I see that another man, taller than me, is doing what I had been doing. I ask the woman who helps run the place about the change and if I can still work there some of the time. She says there's not that much work, but she stops short of telling me I'm fired. She says I might ask the man (her husband, who owns the place and runs it with her). However, after I wait quite awhile to see him and customers are coming and going and being waited on by the woman or the taller man, it is clear he's let me go and just does not want to be direct about it. I wonder if I had been too chatty on the job, not applied myself as conscientiously as they'd like, or if there's some other reason I've been terminated. Evidently I'll not find out from them.
I leave, figuring waiting further is a lost cause, feeling rejected plus a little anxious about how to make up the lost earnings.
Scene two - I am in a large building, perhaps an auditorium or a gymnasium in a university, converted today, with a podium and rows of chairs facing the podium, into a place for a formal assembly or ceremony. I am vaguely interested in getting work or seeing about classes or some such. However, apparently due to the official gathering set-up, I am not permitted through a big back exit, the more direct route to where I want to go. The other main exit, giving access to my desired route, is way on the other side of the assemblage and chairs, with no guarantee it will not be closed as well. I look for another way to leave. Apparently I'll have to go back out the way I had come in, then walk a farther distance and go all the way around this large building. It feels frustrating, and I am a little anxious that, even once I take the longer way around, there might be some new, unexpected obstacle barring my path.
9/27/15 - Title: "Awe and Love of a Proud Adoptive Papa"
I have been given, into my care, an infant who is a newborn, barely old enough to go home from the hospital. I am astonished with wonder at this, feel protective, and have a deep love, caring, and sense of responsibility for him or her.
A nice young woman is here and solicitous too. I worry that she is wanting to keep me from having the baby or to tell me what to do, how to care for it. It seems she is a social worker, though. Evidently she simply wants to be sure everything is done properly, that the right forms are completed, and that I know how to be a good parent. She understands that I have the child legally but that this is all new to me. Apparently she is both interpreting and facilitating the situation. She tells me now I need not be lonely but might call on her for how to be a good father and to be sure everything has been/is being done correctly to formally adopt the child, since it has no other home. I must be there for him or her. (I do not yet even know the baby's gender. He or she is in swaddling garments, as though just from a hospital nursery.)
9/30/15 - Title: "Next Employment"
(Just something about:) I have left one job and now am starting another.
[Believe that both the 9/27 dream and this one have to do with my beginning amends to myself, recently having completed Al-Anon's Step 8 and now starting Step 9. This is the second time I have gone through the Al-Anon steps. The first time, I concentrated in Step 9 on making amends to others whom I felt I had harmed. This time, I am focused, instead, on being more nurturing, loving, non-judgmental, and protective toward myself, in particular toward my infant and Little Phil aspects, for I had harmed this precious young part of myself over a lifetime of directing harsh messages and expectations toward myself in ways learned from parents through adapting as best I could to dysfunctional circumstances in childhood.]