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Another Pandemic Dream

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In a recent post I talked about the vivid dreams people seem to be having during the Coronavirus lockdown. Several people have shared their dreams and experiences during the lock down and I thought I’d share an example of what many people are experiencing along with my response to them.

The dream:

 Hi , thank you for reading this! Last night I had 2 very distinct dreams: 1st dream: I watched 3 tornados form in my back field (NE), and a bolt of lightening nearly struck my 7 year old, standing on the back porch. I was able to get my son and 2 dogs into our safe spot. We were fine. 2nd dream : Real life -I have 5 cats (we live on 10 acres). My cats are inside/outside . I fear that I will loose them but I also know they are willing to take the risk and are very happy. Dream: I watched 3 large coyotes move in and surround The house/the back porch once again; where the cats love to hang out. I made eye contact with the largest coyote and held its gaze, walk past all of the coyotes and was able to have all the kitties come into the garage and lock it down. No harm came to anyone. I know there was a 3rd and I can’t recall it. I know it’s there though. Honestly it was odd feeling when I woke up, curious and not fearful or worried. In an odd way it was very reassuring that I will be able to keep my loved ones safe. I do believe there will be 3 waves of the virus. Recently I have been connecting on a spiritual side with Gaia and embracing those beliefs. We have started celebrating pagan holidays as well. Thoughts?

Interpretation: I use the image suggestions from the book Morpheus Speaks to assist in the interpretation.

These all seem to be anxiety type dreams and probably reflect the inner emotional turmoil that you are experiencing right now. Bad weather dreams often reflect the state of ones emotions. Children often reflect the ambitions or future aspirations of the mother and in the dream this has been attacked (by the lightning). Note also that lightning can symbolize an inspiration or insight as well. The “safe spot’ could be your subconscious dealing with the ‘troubled waters’/situation/circumstances you see yourself in at the moment and your need to stay safe in order to protect your family.

The kittens can be about vulnerability, yours and your sons, to the wildness of the circumstances you are having to face down (the coyotes). Overall the dream is suggesting that you can face up to the threats you are encountering. The coyotes could also reflect your animal nature, your instinctual feelings. They can also come to us in our dreams as spirit guides and speak to our inner power and their symbolic energies (which yours does). You have it within you to face down whatever threatens you at this time.

Note also that in Native American lore the coyote is a trickster come to stir things up in one’s life and to test one’s mettle and to challenge one’s traditional way of looking at things (this is why some theologians think of Jesus as a trickster symbol). Consider also that the coyote may reflect an aspect of your own personality such as being clever and resourceful (the raven is also one of these animals).

Dreamer’s response (partially edited for privacy):

I felt it was a message that we would be safe, to trust myself and my instincts. I am capable of navigating and caring for my family during these times.  My son’s health is compromised and life for all of us in a bit challenging right now.

I didn’t pick up on my internal struggle until this weekend.  I see it clearly now, in the dreams about the tornados and in my most recent.   I have been on the fence about some very personal beliefs and how to accept the changes that I have undergone and the impact they may have on my relationships.  Yet I saw this weekend that I will become stagnant and unhealthy if I do not move forward. Plus, to trust my instinct regardless of how they materialize within the world at large.

Comments:

This dream is full of very vivid images that mostly relate to the dreamer’s emotional state and they reflect what is going on with them during their day. Note also that with most dreams there is new material or insights that one may not have focused on during the waking hours. The unconscious mind from whence dreams come picks up on what’s happening while the conscious mind is busy trying to survive and during the download process of dreaming can provide a wealth of information that the waking mind may not have noticed. This dream had the potential to create powerful change through new insight. Most dreams if not all come in the service of our health and well-being.

There were also archetypal symbols such as the coyote/trickster in this dream that have somewhat universal meanings beyond the unique meaning that the dreamer brings into the dream.

 

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Is reality just a soap opera we’ve made up?

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What we see of reality is often just a conditioned response and not reality.

 

Today I posted an article on the Book of Dreams Blog on Becoming Real and wanted to expand on that idea. The thought then struck me that in the Dark Knight blog I often speak to the hidden parts of ourselves and the how and why that material gets hidden in the first place. This blog posting is then an answer to those thoughts.

Most of my writings have been about reality and my relationship to it. When younger I thought that reality was pretty much created by something outside my self and that I was pretty much at the effect of it versus being at cause with it and God forbid I should be responsible for any of it.

The truth was my reality was conditioned by those around me i.e. I pretty much went for acknowledgment of any kind, negative or positive. Why? Because in a state of being separate from others, an individual entity, my only chance of feeling connected i.e. related was to seek and get acknowledgment, or approval. I would therefor do those things that achieved the goal. What I learned to do was to behave in those ways that insured approval i.e. I became something other than myself. This is called behavioral conditioning.

This is where we all begin to develop a mask because often being who we are beneath the mask is often not enough to secure the needed approval. So we fashion a mask that seems to be what people want us to be in order to give us the acknowledgment that we so crave. Note that the people we are seeking acknowledgment from are doing the same thing. So neither of us is being real, we’re all being what we think the other mask wants us to be with each desperately wanting to feel connected. But connection can only happen between real people, not their masks, so there’s no real satisfaction in the relationship.

The problem with this kind of relationship is that we never really get the approval we seek because what we get is for the fake us, not the real us. Most of us then decide that there must be something wrong with us because being ourselves isn’t enough. And the bottom line to this farce is that one cannot truly experience a joyful, happy relationship with anything or anyone because even if we’re loved it is only the mask, the “not me” that is loved. And out of that reality is created, the threat of being found out.

So here we are trying to avoid the pain of being separated by creating an avatar of ourselves so as to feel connected but by definition this isn’t the real us so we still aren’t in relationship, we still don’t feel connected and still don’t feel acknowledged. Can you see how this can become neurotic? We cannot win in this state, nor can anyone else. The masks we wear actually sustain the disconnect we’re hoping to overcome.

But what would happen if we were to support each other in being ourselves, with all the blemishes, habits, doubts and fears that make up a human being? What would happen if we could be like our much younger selves before we learned how not to be ourselves?

What would happen if we stopped enabling each other’s masks? What if we stopped using each other to support our soap operas?

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Youtube: Morpheus Speaks

 

This book opens the reader to the world of the unconscious, the deeper psyche with both its lighter and darker aspects. With sections on universal dream symbols, fantasy creatures, shadow aspects, and nightmares this book provides insights to ones dreams beyond the everyday. It is an encyclopedia of over 5000 dream symbols collected from over 3500 dreamers across 140+ countries and cultures. Though it cannot cover all possible meanings it can direct both the beginner and journeyman dream interpreter to a broader insight into their unconscious mind and then lead them through the process of applying this information to their everyday life.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

As Above, So Below

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As above, so below is a maxim in ancient Hermeticism and modern Wicca. For me it is a reminder that I reside between two worlds, the unconscious and the conscious both reflections of the one world. It is also a statement that the spirit is not something separate from myself i.e. something “out there” but something that is within and without and not something that I necessarily need to go looking for because I already have it.

I’ve always been fascinated by images of trees and the mythological images of Trees of Life or what Carl Jung called the “Philosophical Tree” in that they have their heads in heaven and their roots in the Earth thus metaphorically representing the binding of the higher and lower aspects of the human psyche i.e. the spiritual and the mundane or the body and the soul. Many of these trees have visited my dreams over the years.

This image has taught me that there is psychic and spiritual nourishment to be gained from both.

But not all of these “Heaven and Earth” symbols come in the form of trees. I once had a dream where a “Blue Lady” visited me while angels walked up and down stairs from sky to Earth much like the image seen by Jacob in his prophetic dream related in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.

This staircase represented my own struggle with my polarities– those aspects of myself that I accept and those that I reject.

In the dream that I labeled “The Blue Fresco” the female figure was inviting me to leave the everyday comfort of the known world and to take a road less traveled that lead into the mountains. The invitation was to integrate the lower plains with the lofty mountain tops- a journey that must be taken in order to achieve wholeness.

And it was no accident that it was a feminine image inviting me on this journey because it’s the masculine and feminine traits in all of us that need balance as well. It is the above-ground sky action of the masculine that is energized, no, powered by, the feminine from the below-ground Earth that will move us toward our wholeness.

This dream was also encouraging me to accept both the basal aspects, the dark side of myself, as well as those aspects that I find acceptable.

The tree and the staircase, the plains and the mountains, and the roots and crown of the tree suggest that I need to live in and/or seek the center– I need to live my life as though bound to both. And bound I am for the Earth and I are connected, the soul of both the Earth and myself are inextricably linked.

How do I know this? I did not find it in some book and no pulpit would have uttered such magic, for meaning is not found in the studying and memorizing and trying to figure out what somebody else is trying to say from some great books. Meaning cannot be found in things, meaning comes from encountering ones self both in the dream and in the awakened state.

I know when I’ve touched my inner self, that space between Heaven and Earth, when the reality around me changes for I’ve learned that the world that I see is a reflection of the development of my own psyche, as it shifts, the world I experience shifts.

_________________

Picture found on– https://samissomarspace.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/as-above-so-below-6/

 

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The Alchemy of Dreams: My mythopoetic self

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Mythopoetic Symbols of my Psyche

There is a place, a realm, a fancy, a state of mind, sense, country, and experience that exists within the imaginal spaces within my being.

It is a soulful place where reality is nurtured and the mysterious grows dense and tangled as an aggressive vine weaving its branches into every corner of my consciousness.

It’s a place where time is measured in experience not finite number. It’s the place where the dream of my conscious and unconscious selves meet and share what is real.

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Death and the Dead in Dreams

 

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Death images in dreams are probably the most frequent of all the dreams I receive, making up easily 30%. Some are simply an image of a dead person, or a visit from a beloved family member, a killing or being killed but some dreams are much more complex and speak to a much broader spectrum of issues dealing with death. Such is the dream I share below.

The following is a dream sent to me with names and places redacted. For flow, I’ve also made some grammatical changes.

The Dream:

Hi Bob, let’s just get straight to the Dream…I had this dream that my eldest Daughter (31 yrs) died. I was working in some kind of huge factory type job and anytime something big happened that ends-up on the front page of the newspaper, my job showed it on a very large screen, it showed my daughters name in French, then slowly the picture came of my daughter, a side view picture of her, dead. Her hair was tied up in a bun and she was wearing a blue denim jacket. She wasn’t lying down in the picture but kind of propped-up and entangled in ropes, no cuts or bruises, nothing, and her eyes were closed. She seemed to be in a container of some sort with a glass front lid, and either my other daughter ____________ or her own daughter _______ was with her but I couldn’t see them, I just knew that she wasn’t alone. There was no talking at all in this dream either. I saw her being lifted up out of the water in this container and could see the water pouring down over her face even though she was in this container, then someone’s voice which sounded strong and demanding said to me ”_________ never under-estimate the power of your Psychic abilities”. End of dream…I woke myself up from the dream by my own screaming and crying-out for my Daughter at 6:19am Friday morning last. When I tried to go back to sleep later-on the same dream just started off again same as before, I stayed awake, didn’t want to sleep then.  Most of that day I felt really distressed about it all and cried a lot.  I really felt in some way that I should have been mourning!!! Even though this was just a dream. I felt drained all day and real upset. My Daughter lives in __________. we talk often on the phone. I phoned her that Friday night and she was fine. In the past I have been known to dream of events that have actually happened to non-family and family members in real life!!!!  My relationship with my Partner is strained, he almost died 2 years ago, and was in hospital for 3 months, I looked after him 24/7, he is 58 yrs old, and seems happy he never has to work again in his life, he has no zest for life at all… four months before this,  my Sister died in hospital, and the 8 years before that again was a very difficult time too with deaths and cancer in my family. My Daughter __________ (25 yrs old) is talking about leaving to live in ___________, she works hard in a tough job. That’s it Bob, please fill me in on it all, I await eagerly.

The Interpretation:

You have certainly experienced a number of deaths over time! Death of those close to us is very traumatic and often forces us to confront the reality of death head on, especially our own. Death tends to focus the mind as does anything associated with it.

Parents tend to worry a lot about their children and their safety regardless of their age (I have a daughter who is 47 and I still worry). When recent death is still being worked through in the psyche, the fear associated with it can get attached to events and people in the waking world.

There is also a sense of loss, great loss, or potential loss, and/or huge change associated with death, so it can also represent the loss of someone, especially if they are moving far away from us. Death can also represent a traumatic change in circumstances or relationship, or an ending.

Essentially, I’m detecting great emotions of fear and anxiety in this dream, fear of endings, of being out of control over what happens based upon recent and past events. I think that you are probably still working through and dealing with the death of your loved ones, even the severe trauma experienced by your boyfriend and the toll that sickness always takes on the caretaker (which is immense because you have to give up so much of yourself to give to them).

Because people in dreams are most often representative of the dreamer themselves, it is possible that there are aspects of your daughters (or their lives) that you recognize in yourself, or wish you had for yourself. Being in a box could be a metaphor for feeling ‘boxed in’ with some relationship or circumstance, while entangled in ropes could also be a metaphor for being ‘all tied up’, or entangled (trapped).

I am not a believer (but not a hard and fast disbeliever as well) in precognition (it kind of turns the whole concept of cause and effect on its head), though I do believe that the subconscious sees a lot that our conscious mind does not and as it puts two and two together during the dreaming process it can “see” what the waking mind cannot. Some people are very good at this. Your quote, ”_________ never under-estimate the power of your Psychic abilities” may be saying what it says, but it could also be telling you to trust in your feelings, or trust in your intuitive sense. The dream itself is of the Psyche (from which the word psychic comes), which includes the larger unconscious part of the Psyche and thus the quote can be an enjoinder to trust in this part of your self as well.