In a recent nightmare everything is vanishing. I struggle to hold onto something, but the holding only increases the vanishing.
Why is the society that seemed to support the goodness in ourselves seem to be vanishing? How is it our society is becoming more and more self-centered?
At the core of the problem seems to be fear but not the fear that protects the body but the fear that protects the ego, that which makes us separate from everything else. The beliefs of the Ego-Self are what we use to protect us from this fear and whether they are fact or fiction based they separate us from our fears as well as from each other and the environment around us.
Beliefs are necessary to maintain the illusion of separateness. Without them the separateness dissolves and we become all things. The defense of our beliefs is the defense of our ego, our illusion of separateness. Without them the illusion disappears and we disappear as a thing, an entity separate from all other entities. We will defend our beliefs to the death of all those who threaten them as well as our own death for without our beliefs, what are we but the everything, the whole, the All? And as All we cease to exist as does everything else.
Letting go of our illusions is a form of Kenosis, an act of “self-emptying”. I’m reminded of the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the Christian Bible where a ladder ascends from the earth-bound illusion to the heavens i.e. from the mundane of things to the everything/nothing of the divine.
My ego is terrified for it translates as oblivion as in becoming nothing i.e., no thing. What’s the point?
It seems that our beliefs not only make us something but also give us a point for being.
This is not to say that one must be stuck in a belief for in a reality of infinite beliefs there’s a lot to experience and just maybe that’s the point.
*This article can also be found in The Book of Dreams blog
Over the last 40 years I have taken the MBTI personality inventory three times (with at least 10 years between them) as a means of ascertaining any life experience effects. Generally, the results have been relatively consistent with some small regression within the expected variation. Having recently celebrated my 80th year I’ve found myself reflecting a little more than usual on my life to this point and what internal points of view have motivated my movements through my life up to now. As I reflect on these internal factors and how they have played out across the years I’ve been most interested in how accurate the MBTI has been in my own journey. Personally, I have always viewed the traits revealed in this personality inventory as a means of defining how the soul is being expressed into my life.
So, what is this MBTI of which I’m writing?
As per the Google search for the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator):
The MBTI is based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, which was then developed into the assessment by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers in the 1940s. The test is designed to make Jung’s complex ideas more accessible by assessing a person’s preferences across four dichotomous domains: Extraversion/Introversion (energy), Sensing/Intuition (information intake), Thinking/Feeling (decision-making), and Judging/Perceiving (lifestyle). These preferences combine to form one of 16 possible personality types. Jung proposed that people experience the world through four principal functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking.
Jung also believed that people have dominant ways of using these functions and that variations in behavior are due to differing preferences. Since the advent of this personality indicator there have been extensive studies that show good reliability in some areas to limited support in others.
In a reading of studies that have looked at my personal personality result (ENFP/INFP) most of the interpretations seem to support my own self-reported experiences (this of course may be biased). The difference between my E (extravert energy) versus my I (introvert energy) scores suggest no dominance in this area (known as an Ambivert) and indicates high adaptability. This rings pretty true for me in that I’m willing to lead if needed or called upon and have been told that I do a relatively good job at it but prefer to remain in a supportive mode and a solitary mode. The context of a situation often dictates what personality is expressed.
Typically, people who fall into this category find themselves highly intuitive (N), feeling oriented (F) and approaching life with flexibility, spontaneity, and openness to new information and opportunities (P perceiving).
We also tend to be highly critical of ourselves and feel as though we don’t belong (a feeling versus a fact), finding it difficult to explain our inner self to others.
If you’re interested, you can find access to the MBTI at the following link:
After some time, when first hearing this from my daughter (see July 27th posting), it’s come to me that as an individuated soul, she’s right; it’s not about me; it’s about the soul. What I identify as me is just the vehicle. The ego-self (me) adds personalization where there may be none. Most of my upsets aren’t really about me, either. They belong to others trying to navigate their own lives. It’s about their ego interpretations and the daily events that they experience.
This reflexive need to occasionally interpret the actions of others as being about me can get a bit old, and sometimes, it can get in the way of compassionately responding to others’ experiences and how they are dealing with them.
All too often, I create my waking dream experience in a nightmarish way when there’s little that relates to me directly. Unresolved experiences of earlier similar events in my life still get triggered as though they are current and have little to do with what’s going on with the other person I am relating to at the moment.
As with a sleeping dream, when I can step back to gain another perspective on the events in my waking dream, I can better interpret their meaning and deal with them more appropriately.
It was a dreary, overcast morning when I entered the local coffee shop down the street. It was Saturday, so the usual bustle of people going in and out of the shop was reduced to almost nothing. This was the end of a long and painful walk I had taken that morning, having gotten up before the sun to take advantage of the early morning coolness.
“How are you doing today?” the barista asked as I ordered my coffee.
My mind was just finishing up with a poor-me-diatribe born of a bruised ego conversation I’d had with one of my daughters earlier in the week. What I wanted to say was…
“As my daughter keeps saying, any time there’s an upset, “This isn’t about you, Dad!” Never mind that I have feelings and thoughts; they’re irrelevant to what’s going on. But she’s probably right. I don’t feel very relevant these days, and wonder if I never was, but my ego was too busy to notice.
Another side to my irrelevant self says, “So what?” Who’s to care if it’s not about me?
I want to think I’ve lived my life with at least giving and taking in equal measure, if not a little more to the giving side. Still, I’m not the determiner of that because the ego nearly always tries to weigh its experience toward the self-interest positive end of the spectrum.
Others in the family will write the story of my life that will be handed down, and from what I hear, I’ve failed miserably to live up to their expectations. It also seems a universal opinion that I failed and made it too much about me. But so what? I can’t change it now; soon, my ego will be dead, and how relevant I was won’t make any difference; the damage was done. I’m also not sure that the soul cares one way or the other, either.
It’s starting to feel like I’ve wasted my once-only time here. But again, that’s the ego talking, and the soul doesn’t care; the ego did its job by giving the soul a vehicle for entering the world.”
But all I said was, “Fine, just fine. How’s yours been going?” And then I thanked him for my coffee and said, “Have a good one!” as my ‘irrelevant self’ walked out the door. It was no use wasting a perfectly good ‘poor me’ and spreading my “down-eristic” self on an innocent barista.
I have had these Dark Night experiences many times throughout my life. For many years, I used to run from them, which only got me mired and stuck, but now I periodically embrace them as a means of transcending them and moving through into the light.
Over 5000 dream descriptors with everyday dream images and image interpretations of the Zodiac and Tarot that show up in dreams. The book also includes a section on nightmares and current research and treatment for excessive nightmare dreams.
Learn the possible meanings of snakes, witches, and death in your dreams, kittens, wise old men/women, or angels. What might it mean if you’re being chased or shot at, drowning or trying to find a bathroom, or just standing out in the open naked?
There’s also a section on how to remember your dreams.
See the ordering picture link on the right-side column.
My nightmarish dreams of late seem to be ones of struggle, fear, turbulence, upheaval, escape, and are full of disappointment and limited solution and purposelessness. What’s the point of life I’ve wondered?
Over the years I’ve had these mind-blowing epiphanies, seemingly profound insights, spot on intuitions, dreams of the divine, imaginative stories, and magical moments. I’ve suffered, experienced joy, been hurt, soared with success, and fallen into the dark abyss of failure and loss. I’ve lived my life to the fullest I knew how. So what?
And try as I will, I can’t answer the ‘so what’ question. I guess I expected something to happen that never did, that there would be a profound understanding at the end. But nothing? I didn’t see that coming. Paul of the bible walks down a road and has an epiphany that not only changes the direction of his life but creates a whole new religion. I have an epiphany, several actually, and nothing, ho hum, just another day at the office.
What the hell!
I have what by accepted definition are profound life altering mystical experiences and what do I get? Nothing, nada, nichts. Everything’s the same as always only I no longer see the world in quite the same way, but the joy effect eventually wears off even if the change in perspective doesn’t. The only difference is I now don’t seem to fit in anywhere. And my so-called mystical experiences amount to what? I can’t even claim to be a mystic. Again, so what?
Here I am at the end of it all and all I’ve got is a big so what. I remember a Peggy Lee song where she sang, “Is that all there is?” wherein she exclaims, “Then let’s keep dancing.” Like for Peggy, I find myself disappointed but it’s a disappointment only because I thought there was some secret purpose to it all, but it seems that the dance of life has only one purpose and its not enlightenment, or to gain deep knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The purpose may just be to dance, and to experience it as I go for no other reason than to dance. Maybe this is all God wants me to do. Who knows why? But I spoil it when I try to make it something else.
So, what am I learning through these musings? Well, could it be to sing while I’m singing, cry when I’m crying, and dance when I’m dancing? Can it really be that simple?
Maybe we’re all just God having an experience that can only happen through a body and every experience acknowledged or not is what God wants from us and what it wants from itself. In this way how can I/we disappoint? How can any of it be disappointing?
Once again, it seems that it’s the ego-self that likes to overthink things and create a ground of being for disappointment, but even that too may be part of the purpose for our being. Hell, we/I can’t lose!
It appears that the ‘what’s so’ of my life is also the ‘so what’ and together they make up the whole of life.
Reading the Science section of the New York Times* this morning while sipping coffee I chanced upon an article detailing an astronomical observation of a supernova, a dying star that exploded and whose light and existence we are still witnessing one billion years later. Imagine that! We can look back through time and see something a billion years in the past right now in the present moment as though the star, its planets, and living things, if any, were still here with us. Imagine that!
Now I know that what we are seeing is the gross radiation of the star that in its own space and time no longer exists and the resolution is nowhere near what it would need to be to discern its planets and their life. However, this got me to thinking what if the resolution were powerful enough to see not only the star and its planets but the people on one of those planets and to be able to follow their emanations across their life cycle? We would be witnessing individuals who are living and being across a billion years of history as though they were still here. Beings a billion years old, Imagine that! Imagine someone from a galaxy millions and billions of years away with the technology to watch you live your life.
At some level we are all just data expressed as a living entity. But this data never ends when we end. The data from each of our lives outlives us by unimaginable time spans. A scientist would tell you that this data might not be cohesive enough to stretch that far across time and would become hopelessly corrupted to be almost unrecognizable. Even though the first law of thermodynamics suggests that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that according to the second law it will over time increase in its disorder, at the point of observation we may be witnessing what was so a billion years ago. A single life may be witnessed yet again a billion times over. Imagine that!
From the perspective of some imagined observer our actions whether they be good, evil, or stupid will live forever. Our hate, self-centeredness, self-righteousness, bigotry, ignorance, grief, joy, compassion, passion, and love will be projected outward into the universe for all time to see.
From the perspective of a creator of the universe, if there be one, our existence can live on indefinitely. I think we’d better shape up if we’re going to be around that long.
Philosophy and religion on the surface look like opposites where on one side one operates on faith and belief while the other critiques and challenges belief. One espouses the rational while the other embraces the irrational.
However, both are of one mind regarding death in that both welcome the mysteries of death because it speaks to the mysteries of life.
When life and death are seen as opposites separated at birth death becomes real. But when death is seen as the continued transition of the soul’s migration through reality the separation and opposition disappear into a mystical unity.
In Jungian philosophy a goal of life is the reunion of opposites called the coniunctio.
In this vision of life’s purpose death takes on a new meaning shifting from an ending to an element in the soul’s journey toward unity and becomes about change and transition from one way of being to another. This point of view is also reflected in one’s dreams where death can be a symbol for change, an end from one way of being to another. Thus, the image of death becomes an archetype for transition. To embrace it is to partially fulfill the purpose of life i.e., to bring all of life’s opposites (life/death, male/female, the conscious/unconscious) into unity.
After doing a little research on the meaning of death psychologically I put down my laptop and ambled down the hall to bed. During the night I had a dream where I sat before a desk with others standing around me and I placed a small beaker upon the desk and concentrated my focus upon it. When I did it correctly a transition from one place of being would become a new one i.e., we would all sort of “portal jump” from one place to another. I was elated with each successful transition.
Upon awakening the dream seemed significant though a mystery as to how. As I continued my research later that morning the dream’s meaning began to clear. The portal jump from one reality to another was an archetype of death. It’s a focus that I find I often think about these days as life gets closer and closer to this transition period. A shift in focus from an ‘ending’ of life, or place of being, to one of a ‘change’ of place of being seems important to me and gives me a new sense of purpose. As with my earlier life my purpose was to prepare myself through all of life’s transitions to live my life as fully as possible, I now can create another purpose that of preparing myself for this next transition. As a soul it’s all my life.
Tarot: The death card, a sign of spiritual transformation and great change and even fresh starts.
“Without death, life would be meaningless…limitation enables you to fulfill your being.” –C. Jung
Basically he’s saying that death is a condition for the meaning of life.
Death in Dreams (The symbolic meaning)Death often relates to the ending of something. But it can also suggest our relationship, or attitude towards death e.g. how do we feel about it? As an archetype it can show up as a sunset, crossing a river, twilight, a skeleton, gravestones, a cemetery, blackness, the grim reaper, an old man, or woman, a fallen mirror, a stopped clock, or an empty abyss.
Death often shows up in our dreams during times of transition Dead animals can also be metaphors for our own demise.
“These are the woods you love where the secret name of every death is life again” Associated with death is also rebirth and resurrection. -Mary Oliver (Skunk cabbage)
Shiva, Hindu god of untamed passion also known as the “destroyer.”
Such things as a cave, or an egg, Spring, dawn, the cross, a snake, a seed, a bird taking flight (though if it were to fly off into the sunset it might suggest death), a Phoenix, flame, a pearl, or the womb.The body itself is in a constant birth, death and renewal cycle in that individual cells need to die in order to be replaced and renewed without constant injury to the body’s cells, fresh cells could not revitalize. This is the idea of creating by destroying. The Hindu god Shiva is the destroyer of the world (actually the ego—the false identification with form, and the letting go of habits and attachments). Brahma then recreates what has been destroyed. In short, all that has a beginning must also have an end. The only thing that dies according to this concept is the illusion of individuality and separateness. In this way Shiva is the great purifier.
Caduceus Medical Icon/ also known as the staff of Asclepius
The ancient Greeks believed that a person’s well-being depended on the opposing forces of dissolution and creation. The Caduceus with its entwined snakes and being the symbol of the healer can be symbolically linked with Psyche interacting with matter and transforming both. This idea of the snake representing both death and renewal sheds its old skin to reveal something new and revitalized, thus dying so as to be reborn.
Dead people in Dreams:In most cases this is about the dreamer trying to deal with the passing of someone close. It’s all a process of letting go and of resurrecting the one you interacted with on a physical level into the memory of that same person. For some the deceased become eternally living within the memory of those left behind.
To see a dead person in a dream:This can represent some area in ones life that has “died” such as a feeling, a relationship, or situation. Sometimes anger repressed in your waking life can kill ones vitality and satisfaction. It can also represent a part of yourself that you would like to leave behind (to see that part, look at what aspect the dead person may represent).
To see your own death in a dream:This can suggest a transformation in the way you have been, in thought, in feeling, or in attitude. It can also suggest the transition of one phase of your life into a new one.
“Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean-the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” –Mary Oliver (the Summer Day)
The Dark Knight of the Soul 