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December, 2009

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I am living in a house with an inner covered court, where there is a small shallow pond plus surrounding gravel of decorative smooth, round river rocks. It is early afternoon, I believe. Our dog, Puff, normally housebroken and trained to do her business in the backyard, just walks over near the pond, squats down on the gravel, and poops there. I angrily scold her and make her go out back, but it is a little late for that. Now I must clean up her shit.

[Puff is our six-year-old, but still in many ways puppy-like, wire haired fox terrier. She is cute, funny, creative (in ways to get us to play with her), perverse, demanding of our attention, extremely playful, strong, active, affectionate yet independent, aggressive about her "territory," and as prone to tantrums when not getting her way as to enthusiastic interaction with us when she is (as she naturally prefers) the center of our focus.

While I suspect Puff here again represents one of my conceptions of a higher power, since "dog" is "god" spelled backwards, I am at a loss to figure what a HP is doing shitting in our nice inner courtyard, and am thus not "getting" this metaphor.

The pond, I assume, is contained emotion, unconscious material, or intuition.

On further reflection and with some amusing input from Fran on this dream, I note that "gravel" contains the word "grave," and the dream's title backwards is not just "God" but "God Dab!," which of course could apply to each of the wet turds just deposited by this HP on the grave-l. A close friend of ours has quite recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Maybe I am feeling it appropriate to scold my HP and be angry toward him/her/it for this grave infraction. Now Fran and I are going to visit our dying friend and in other ways trying to help her and her husband deal with this crisis (like attempting to clean up God's shit?).

Fran points out that a dog might have trouble making a distinction between an inner court, that has much of the look and feel of the outdoors, and her backyard, but in the dream she did know better and just did it anyway.

On still more reflection, I see that a courtyard may be a place of judgment. Our friend has been "judged" and given a death sentence, likely to be carried out all too soon.

If the dream is a metaphor for my own inner (court) dynamics, though, I do not see what it is showing. When not being shit on, the inner court of the dream is a quiet, harmonic place, central to our house, and so suggests spirituality, balance, and/or integration, here disrupted though by my dog's or HP's misbehavior.]

12/8/09 - Title: "Awaiting the Judgment"

First scene - I have a trapped, pet squirrel whom I have just remembered. It is in a bad way in its wire mesh cage, emaciated, nearly crazy, and looking like it has been eating some of its own flesh while having had no extra food or water in about 3 days. I begin to feed it and only then remember I had not even given it any water. Miraculously, it had not died under this neglect and responds well when I have given it water and food.

Second scene - I am in a courtroom. There is a big, loud-voiced, keen-eyed, smart judge (old, male, white, and southern) sitting at the front and facing the large witness gallery. He sees through everyone's lies as if even before they begin to tell falsehoods. He is trying to get to the bottom of some matter. He has heard several witnesses already and has many more to hear. I am sitting in about the 3rd or 4th row back from the front of witness seats or chairs, but only the last one or two these rows are occupied, so of the occupied, I am in the first or second row back.

I am sitting next to an older man (on my left) who is quite anxious. He is terribly disabled, like with a progressive neurological impairment. He has me promise to give him a cyanide pill or two and help him get them down. He is too physically weak now to do it himself when the time comes. Court is temporarily adjourned. It seems my left side neighbor is to be the next witness. Now is the time. I put the cyanide into a hole in the front of his throat (not sure if is a tracheotomy hole vs. an esophageal feeding tube hole, but assume it must be the latter), and push it in and down a little with my finger. I realize that way there is not enough liquid to let it have its effect. Besides, part of a pill has gotten lodged there and another part has fallen out. I retrieve that part and stick it back into the hole into his throat. I then turn him or shake him a little so some of his inside fluids will reach the pills and that way they can kill him quickly.

But somehow this is interrupted, not completed. He has left the courtroom (dead or alive?) and (for some reason) I am left with a bottle of liquid - like a clear soda pop bottle with cyanide dissolved in it. What am I going to do with this? Drink it myself? I also wonder if the police or judge can tell I helped the other man kill himself or try to, but decide they cannot. For some reason, nobody else saw a thing.

Next Scene - In the courtroom or in another setting in which there are many rows of seats and seated people waiting, Leila, Horace, and Keith are there. We all seem to like each other. Leila suggests I take Keith under my wing and teach him how to be a successful rancher or build something major with him. We have to wait for the court case to be over. Keith and I are eager to start on our project together though.

[After waking up from an afternoon nap, I thought, before even remembering the dream, about my question just before sleeping: "What is my higher power's message for me today?" and immediately the answer was to get more sleep and exercise, reduce my weight, do more meditation, and use my time in a more organized, efficient, effective way. However, I do not know if this was just my ego or my HP's waking assessment. Only a few minutes after this did I keep remembering and then jotting down the dream scenes. I presume they are related to my question as well, but do not understand what they are saying about my HP's current message.

From the numbers involved, I assume there is unity or integration plus dawning awareness, transformation, and manifestation in reality involved in or potential from this dream.

Also assume there has not been enough accessing of the unconscious, intuition, and feelings lately (not enough liquid, per scenes one and two).

Also there must not have been enough nutrition/nurturing for the "squirrelly" shadow part of me for awhile, amazing it has survived.

I assume the judge in the first scene is another conception of my HP, as described. Some assessment is not yet complete, and so the verdict and sentence have not yet been rendered. There appears to be no jury in this "trial." Maybe the 12-steps must be competed before the judgment is rendered, or maybe all of my life must be reviewed and what is false (illusions, ego, delusions?) be replaced with truth.

There is something significant about rows, presumably having to do with resentments, bickering, or altercations, external and internal ones. Also perhaps it is partly about a row going on now between members of my Alanon group.

Do not know what to make of the euthanasia episode, involving my left side disabled neighbor, the suicidal ideation, or the proposal that Keith and I be involved in a big ranch or building project.

In reality, Horace and Leila would never permit the real Keith to be under my wing and that involved with me, as they are very territorial about their kids and do not like them to be much under anyone else's influence who is not, like each of them, a right-wing, conservative, fundamentalist Christian.

Horace is my fifth sibling and about age 52. He is a very good father, with five great kids, but they also tend to be conservative and cliquish. Horace is very into his own family first, even being willing to be very rude and abusive toward members of his birth family, bullying in other words, and feeling self-righteous about it since he feels the upbringing he had did him wrong and it is only by his own superiority and with God's help that he has overcome this hated background. He is very smart but not a very nice guy in some ways, while yet quite pleasant if one is part of his inner circle. It is all about us vs. them, like a tribal thing. It is unusual in this dream that we are getting along well and he is in an amicable, supportive relationship with me.

The same is true about actual relations between me and Horace's wife, Leila. This change may show some integration has occurred. Leila is smart, though probably not on a par with Horace's intellect, very creative and dramatic, prone to picking verbal fights, blaming others for the resulting strife, and then making a big self-righteous deal about who is currently on her shit list vs. on her best of buddies list, manipulating in this way. However, in her role as a Mom, she is as good at her parenting as Horace is in his.

Keith is one of their several great kids, their youngest. He is bright, happy, funny, a good dancer, actor, singer, tennis player, golfer, helper of his mom or dad around the house, active and popular church member, does great in school, etc. Everybody likes him. He's just a really neat kid and is about 15 now.]

12/12/09 - Title: "?"

Scene 1 - It is night. I am outside. There is a thin layer of fresh snow over the ground or roads in all directions. There are buildings nearby. I sense I am in a large city. Most everyone else is apparently asleep.

Scene 2 - I am younger than my real age and in a warm land of mostly poor, uneducated, 3rd world people, along with Barack Obama and his family or staff. He is President here too, but in more intimate connection with the culture than is possible in the U.S. I hope to be noticed by him and to contribute something to our mutual successes here. An attractive younger American woman, maybe in her 20s or 30s, gets to talking with me and wants to know what I do, how I am contributing here. She noticed I had just been hanging out and having a good time with one or two boys here (about age 10). I do not really have a vocation in this place. Yet, on the spur of the moment and hoping to impress her, I say, and then mean it, I hope to teach the children here to read. She is impressed. This motivates me to make my reading program a real success (perhaps spreading the reading skills by having some of my first students teach yet others and so on, till it is a little grass roots literacy movement).

Scene 3 - Same cultural setting, but there has been a minor earthquake and some earthen collapse (has occurred). No permanent damage (has been done), but the dirt has been shifted in places. Obama notices I was helping afterward. There is something too about old machinery that (would be useful but) is locked. I think I can find a key.

Scene 4 - Same cultural setting. I am trying to get some ancient pump machinery to operate. It belongs to a man in traditional garb, a small turban and a shift or robe. In trying to "fix" it, I mess it up. He is anxious about and angry with my intervention. However, after some trouble I get it back the way I had found it.

12/13/09 - My friend, Janet, reviewed my 12/8 dream, "Awaiting the Judgment." Highlights:

• There's something squirrelly that is trapped, that I just thought about. (Squirrels are about pointless things, but feeding a squirrel is about doing some hard work.)

• This thing hasn't received any emotion or nurturance, and Janet thinks this all may involve some transformation. So, the bottom line in the first part is I am working really hard and diligently on something.

• I am in a place of judgment. Is the judge my version of God or my father? He's either a shadow or some form of a higher power, one who knows everything.

• There are different aspects of my larger self who are providing evidence (or give witness to something), and 3 or 4 is transformation plus manifestation in reality. My ego is occupied in the process, and so are others, but this mainly involves a transformation of the ego.

• I have this older shadow who is nervous about his level of deterioration or the imminent changes or just in general. He is disabled, with an impairment also in the way he thinks.

• Cyanide will kill him (which is good). He's too weak to help me have an ego death. The judgment is suspended, and a part of me that is in my unconscious (this weak shadow) is next.

• The part about helping the shadow get cyanide into his throat hole is likely about having to metaphorically swallow something, in order for this part to die. But to swallow something represented by the cyanide, I have to have some emotion with it, and that I don't have (no liquid, or not enough).

• Hole could be "whole," and it could be about voice and sticking this thing where his voice is or ought to be. In any event, I have tried again. But somehow this is interrupted, not completed.

• I am not sure whether that shadow is dead or alive. I am left with a bottle of liquid, like a clear soda pop bottle with cyanide dissolved in it. This probably has to do with my father (Pop). So there is something clear: "so...(duh)...pop," and that's what dissolves the (bitter?)pill that needs to be swallowed.

• Now the question is what to do? Do I admit to killing off this shadow part of myself? Or maybe it is the father part of me that at least I tried to kill off.

• There are many rows of seats and seated people waiting, and Leila, Horace, and Keith are there. So these are the parts I had mentioned before. Because now I am on the same team, part of the family so to speak, they will help me the way they help their children. And while there is much that is negative about Horace and Leila, this kind of situation, nurturing their young, is their strength.

• So when I get the judgment, then I can begin building something important.

• Alternatively, either I am framing something as a judgment, I have some important judgment to make, or I feel I am being judged.

• My higher power has a message to me: "You think I'm here to make some big important judgment about you in this process. You think I'm like you're father, where I'm going to judge you all the time. That's crazy thinking or a neurological impairment. I'm not here to judge you at all. I'm here to help you. So get on with your major project of healing. That's what I'm here for, to help and support you in that work.

• There is also the business about several rows, which has to do with frictions between me, as the ego, and other aspects of my larger inner self and/or that are going on in my external environment, likely in my family or in family-like settings, such as groups to which I belong.

Then today, at dream group, we discussed among others my 12/12 dream (untitled). Points that came out included:

• Overall, this dream is about emotions that are frozen, cold, and unexpressed, that then have the possibility of flowing in a healthy way again, being felt, and having expression.

• It is also about mistaken notions of what is right or correct vs. what is wrong or broken.

• And about my taking on responsibility for things that are not really up to me, like whether or not our Alanon group is always harmonious.

• 20s or 30s suggest "amped up" dawning awareness vs. transformation. 10 in the I Ching represents treading on the tail of a tiger which does not bite him, and it suggests progress and success. The situation is one with the means to step safely amid disorder and peril.

• At one time, most everyone in the recent Alanon group setting (in which we considered closing with the Lord's Prayer vs. a less controversial prayer or another more neutral quote) and in my larger inner self appears to be asleep at the wheel with respect to the key issues involved. There are, however, many areas of growth (buildings), so many that I am in a large city of them.

• I am or have recently been at a kind of crossroads but one with cold emotion.

• In subsequent scenes of that dream, I am younger and so at an earlier stage in my life. It is a warmer environment, but still there is inadequate water on the surface, though machinery is available for bringing the flow of emotion up, and I have access to the key to making this machinery function again. This is thus a very positive dream.

• This was from a youthful time, when I was very idealistic, perhaps seriously considering a career in teaching and yet was uneducated in the ways of the world. Later, my experiences and reactions would lead to my being fairly cynical, but in this dream time I was still looking for a meaningful way to make a difference, and this was encouraged by my anima.

• I am in fact looking forward to soon spending some time, hanging out, or playing with a lad of 10, my nephew, Fran's sister's boy, up in WI.

• 10 is likely also "amped up" 1 or unity, a way of saying and/or seeing the whole.

• Barack Obama in this dream likely represents a positive shadow part of myself that is very smart, a natural leader, gets along well with many different kinds of people, is easily able to establish an intimate connection with others, and can say and do things that have a very positive influence on the overall environments, like in Alanon, dream group, other groups I am in, etc., in which he finds himself or chooses to play this kind of active role. And it is positive that I as the ego want to have a close relationship, sort of like a student or intern, with this quite positive Barack Obama shadow.

• There has been a recent shaking of my foundations that leaves me feeling as though I needed to bluff my way through things, pretending to more confidence and calm than I was really feeling. But I might have done better to simply admit my concerns or distress and talk them over with others in my group(s), which might have helped me find reassurance that I did nothing wrong and, in fact, had an influence that was beneficial.

12/21/09 - Title: "Climbing the Rails When the Stairs are Right There"

I am in a 2-3 story high combined warehouse and office building. For some reason, instead of using the stairs (steps?) here, I do a lot of climbing up or over or down the rails. It is a much more complicated and risky way of getting up and down than just walking on the stairs or steps.

Before doing that, I have introduced myself on the ground floor to one of the men as... only I forgot, while doing so, my title and so resorted to a kind of awkward description of what I do, an inspector and analyzer who makes reports (or some such), I said, then tried again, since that did not seem exactly right. But the worker or manager I was talking with got quickly tired of listening to this weirdness and went in search of the boss or supervisor.

They were not yet back when I started climbing up on the staircase rails. They were made of hand-hold width welded horizontal and vertical hollow "pipes," ending in a horizontal one on top, each set of rail "pipes" 3-4 feet high and affixed onto the sides of a wide set of stairs that went upward in a series of 90-degree angles around a central stairwell opening.

By awkwardly climbing up and over the rails, I got up to close to the 2nd or 3rd story offices, but was still on the rails when an office worker woman, whom I found interesting and attractive and wanted to speak to, came out of one of the glass walled and glass door offices and then down a short hallway toward these stairs, to go down. She saw me and engaged with me in conversation. She was interested in me too, apparently found me attractive as well, and tried to climb on or over the rails to where I was, but her skirt made these (this) even more difficult than the trouble I was having. Going just directly down the stairs would have been so much easier for both of us. On the rails like that, we were both in a precarious position and liable to be seen or caught be anyone from below or above. The climbing on the rail pipes was hiking her skirt up, and this exposed her thighs as well as the skirt getting caught some on the rails, so her climbing on them or over them was more challenging (a little like if a woman in a tight skirt were trying to ride a man's bicycle). There was also a little risk one or both of us might lose her or his grip and accidentally fall down the open, inner stair well (stairwell).

[I think it significant that the woman who engaged with me in conversation was similar in appearance to my sponsor, with whom I met yesterday, and that my focus in the Alanon program was on Step 2 then but is to be on Step 3 when we meet again next month.

There is also the possibility the 2-3 referred to as the number of stories in the dream refers to stories I have to tell or that are relevant in my life and/or to dawning awareness vs. transformation. The 3-4 foot high rails suggest transformation vs. manifestation in reality.

The stairs would appear to be related to Alanon steps but also to a way of seeing (stairs = stares]. The emphasis on rails does not make much sense to me now, since in fact very little complaining (railing) was going on by me in our meeting yesterday, though I had, early on, asked about her situation and she vented some about her overly anxious and controlling boss. Then we got into some of the dynamics of our Alanon group revealed by the last three (in a row) Group Conscience meetings, right after the regular meetings. So, I suppose it would be fair to say we spent a good third or so of our sponsorship time together exploring more her difficult work situation or mutual reactions to an uncomfortable Group Conscience process rather than focusing on my movement on or through the Alanon 12-step program. That does kind of seem like the way it was depicted in the dream. However, in reality we did then spend the rest of the time on Step 2. The fact is, though, that our being engaged was at least as interesting as what we were engaged in. Perhaps the idea of our possibly being at risk or caught comes from a concern that the Alanon steps process might play second fiddle to our being more involved as a man and a woman, who do not find each other unattractive, not that there was an obvious or conscious sexual component to it, but that the engagement itself with one another emotionally, or simply getting to know one another well, was in a way "exciting." This seems confirmed by the reference to my anima's skirt hiking up, exposing her thighs as she was climbing over the rails toward me.

The lack of ability to remember my title, what I was called and doing there in the warehouse is curious. It suggests possible confusion about my intentions or role in this sponsor-sponsee situation. I think it is reassuring that the dream implies a warning or raises a kind of caution flag in suggesting we might fall (fail?) or be caught when on the rails like that rather than the stairs.

In the earlier part of the dream's sequence, I wonder if the boss or supervisor whom the worker or manager (I'd been talking to earlier) had gone to get might be a conception of my higher power and that it was his/her/its imminent arrival at the bottom of the stairwell I had in mind when thinking we might be caught on the rails.

The awkward description of my duties, as inspector or analyzer or report writer, seems kind of like my journal entries after my sponsor meetings plus dream reports and analyses, to try to get a handle (hand-hold rails?) on the Alanon steps process, my current inner Self vs. ego situations, and a better interaction with my higher power. Awkward in this case possibly because some feelings of "excitement" are getting mixed up with the intended Alanon steps work.

Meanwhile, I am to find a male sponsor and have a couple ideas for candidates, one from my initial Alanon group and so far one from my new, all men Alanon group as well. But I shall be away most of the next couple weeks and then not well enough acquainted with any of the men as yet to ask one to be a sponsor or co-sponsor. So, that could likely take another month or so at least.]

12/22/09 - Title: "Bummer"

Scene One - I am at some family gathering. Evidently people are getting ready for a trip and making arrangements. Lots of folks are in this big one-story house. In one of several rooms in this place, I'm playing cards around a table with Ernie, on my right, and another man, a real expert card player, across from me. I think there is a fourth player, across from Ernie.

We are starting to play hearts. I thought I knew how to play the game, but this way to play is foreign to me, and I quickly discover I am in over my head. I get about 5 cards passed to me, doubling what's in my hand. I do not know how to begin. I fan the cards out to look at them, figuring maybe I'll remember or figure out the rules of this more complicated hearts game, but am still in the dark when I see the man across from me smirking. When I look toward where he was looking, over my right shoulder, I see that Ernie has gotten over sort of behind me so he can see all my cards. I know he is already a good player. I lay my cards down, get up, and leave, saying "It doesn't matter. I don't know how to play anyway."

Scene Two - Same overall setting as for scene one. A Mexican American man is eating lunch. I see my nephew, Jim, in one of the rooms. He is glad to see me and asks if, like before, he'll be rooming with me, which is how we both want it. I say "Sure!" He is obviously pleased. Then later I see his mother, Mary, and realize maybe she would want to be asked, so I check with her. Instead of just agreeing, she gets this serious, worried look, as though by asking this I have disrupted the way she intended or wants things to be, introducing something unanticipated, which she does not like. She says she will have to think about that. She leaves, I guess to go talk with Jim, and I realize he'll be very disappointed if, by asking Mary, I have spoiled his good time hopes for this visit. I'll be very disappointed too if we can't room together. Bummer.

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