poetry – The Dark Knight of the Soul

Posted on July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 by The Book of Dreams blog

Fear in dreams

In the last two postings of the Book of Dreams Blog*, I’ve examined fear and anger in dreams and in our waking lives. Today’s Dark Knight of the Soul post extends these themes.

The dream (a mild nightmare): A woman is crawling on the ground in obvious distress. In the dream, several different females are in distress.

Interpretation: is this an attack on the soul? Soul stress? On the individuated soul/anima Mundi?

There is a general dysphoria that has gripped the societies of the world. Though this nightmare-like dream may be idiopathic, i.e., not caused by a specific trauma, it may reflect a more global and profound trauma being experienced daily. We are awash in fear-generated news almost 24/7, placing us in nearly constant fight/flight/freeze mode. This affects society’s cohesion, creating an atmosphere of everyone for themselves type of action. Not realizing this fear is internal, we seek ways to mitigate the feelings by attaching ourselves to like-minded people and blaming others outside ourselves and the group we’ve attached to.

Not knowing where these feelings of fear come from, we conjure wild conspiracy scenarios to create an object of our fears that we can then attack or defend against. But it is us who are the enemy. Wherever we run, wherever we turn, there we are. We flail at ghosts and that which is not us. We try to mitigate what threatens us but always miss the actual perpetrator. Meanwhile, the soul is hung out to dry with its purpose and value-driven existence, drowning in fear and draining its energy as it thrashes about.

*see https://thebookofdreamsblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/21/fear-and-anger-two-sides-of-the-manipulation-coin/

And

Fear and Anger Part II

Posted on July 8, 2024 by The Book of Dreams blog

“Throw a line into the darkness”

The other day while watching a rather intriguing detective series on PBS titled Anika I became aware of the background music and its rather haunting lyrics. The theme song “Bringing Murder to the Land” by Newcome and Allison spoke to me in another way than perhaps it was intended as a theme song for a murder drama.

“Throw a line into the darkness

Oh, we are shadows, blaze inside

This light will shine unbroken tonight

Shine inside

And this light, it can blind us

Torch the shadows for all time

And you can color in my dark nights

Paint your promise over me

This light will shine unbroken tonight

Shine inside

Shine tonight

Burn

Burn”

The first line, “Throw a line into the darkness,” reminds me of what the mind is doing through a nightmare. It’s also reminiscent of “fishing,” a metaphor for bringing up something from the spiritual and the deep so that one can deal with it in the light. While trying to bring this darkness into the light of consciousness, “Oh, we are shadows, blaze inside. This light will shine unbroken tonight; shine inside. And this light, it can blind us, torch the shadows for all time” these lines suggest to me that we can be overwhelmed and blinded by the darkness of our shadow self as it grows in brightness, entering our awareness. Bringing the dark into the light can add color to our darker natures, and by looking more closely at the nightmare, it can hold much promise for bringing light into our future nights and “burn” away our fears.

Perhaps it was the mysterious and haunting way the music was sung and the slight reverb in its presentation that wormed its way into my soul, or maybe it was the cryptic lyrics. Still, it struck me as the perfect theme for the nightmare dreaming and interpreting genre.

Murder in a dream can conjure the need for change or the effects change can have on one’s status quo. It can also be about ending some vexing issues, habits, or behavior.

Bright lights can symbolize spiritual awakening from the darkness of the ego coming through the hidden aspects of the unconscious, which can be quite shocking at first when one sees a different reality than the one they have been living.

The ‘’burn, burn, burn…” in a dream can be about something that you can’t just ignore. This may be true of any occasional nightmare. If one is human, There is repressed material in the unconscious mind that can affect everything done in the conscious world. Nightmares bring light to that hidden material, especially when it causes problems that must be addressed.

Posted on May 13, 2024 by The Book of Dreams blog

More on the Dark Night of the Soul

There are many ancient myths of those who entered the underworld to save a loved one e.g. The Sumerian myth of Queen Inanna-Ishtar who went to save her sister, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice who wanted to bring back his wife from the realm of the dead, and Adonis who was sent to Hades by his mother who then recanted and had to make a deal with Persephone of the underworld to retrieve him.

These myths are examples of the dark night-of-the-soul activity that is archetypal of all humans where we descend into the darkest parts of the psyche to retrieve disowned or lost parts of oneself. In a way, this descent into the darkness and process of resurfacing is represented in the death and resurrection of Jesus that Christians celebrate during Easter named after the Proto-Germanic Spring Goddess Eostre who brought the world out of the cold death that is winter.

One’s nightmares also serve this function: they come from the dark unconscious mind seeking the light of consciousness.

The dark night of the soul refers to a painful period in one’s life, a sinking into the darkness i.e., depression. Depression can often bring nightmares to one’s dreams. However, as with most dreams, they come in the service of one’s health and well-being. When one takes on or confronts one’s nightmare there can be resolution and healing which is why I use the play on the words ‘Knight’ instead of ‘night’ in the title of this blog.

The process of individuation that Carl Jung saw as the process of self-realization and discovery of life’s purpose on the way to knowing and living who we really are is often forged during these dark-night ventures in both our waking and sleeping lives. Though I don’t usually experience nightmares, when I do I try to engage rather than flee from them to get an idea of what they are trying to bring to consciousness so that I can deal with the issue(s).

Occasional Nightmares can offer renewal or even the ‘rebirth’ of your core self and sometimes a spiritual rebirth through introspection and reflection. Note that one’s descent into this darkness can be quite scary and should not be taken lightly especially if one is experiencing frequent nightmares. If having two or three or more nightmares per week over many weeks one might seek professional help to assess meaning and develop a healing strategy.

Posted on July 27, 2023 by The Book of Dreams blog

Time has a sound.

Time has a sound.

I can hear the passing of it in the silence of the forest,

In the quiet after the music stops,

At the end of a sigh,

And when mind chatter is briefly hushed.

I can hear time when the wind curls through the branches of a tree,

In the laughter of a child at play, the infinite sounds of love,

a baby suckling at her mother’s breast, and in a song well delivered.

I hear it in my mind and in the deepest parts of my body and soul.

It is what the soul comes into the world to hear.

Posted on July 27, 2022July 27, 2022 by The Book of Dreams blog

In the brightest dark of this deepest wood.

“Go to the forest,” said the voice in the dream.

Cross the valley, ford the river, climb the mountain

walk the meadow to the far side

and enter the dark wood.

“Go to the forest,” said the voice yet again.

Standing at the edge of the meadow Layers of forest lie before me.

One step and each course pulls me deeper and deeper

Into the darkness of myself.

Magical forces hidden amongst the branches,

Otherworldly forces filling the air, thick, and heavy with the smell of decay,

Mystical forces coming up from the earth,

giving way to the darkness that is the only light in this deep, deep place.

Enchanted, strange, sorcerous, irrational

Layer upon layer passed as deeper trespasses.

The I Am breaks free the further I push through the copse of my hidden self

yet nothing seems the same in this oddly familiar place.

A crack of twig under foot. Someone waits ahead. Who is this I wonder?

The farther I travel the more I become what I am traveling into. What seemed so scary

before I started feels so much more like me than the person who first entered.

Who is it who waits ahead?

I am more myself than I was before this journey

but have gained nothing more than I’ve been already.

The forest is dark, but here my eyes shine brighter the darker I tread.

Soon, I meet myself in a small clearing, we hug in the brightest dark of this deepest wood.

Posted on December 14, 2020 by The Book of Dreams blog

With a slight shift and the world seems right again

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”

–William Butler Yeats

“On my meditation walks I am often moved by the life going on about me– boys with hockey sticks battling in the streets at dusk, flocks of screeching Crows nesting in trees, the smile of the crescent moon with the brightly seductive Venus off her bow. And on a warm night there’s crickets and barking dogs, but on a cold and crisp one there’s nothing but silence and the sound of my own footsteps. Sometimes a breeze whips through the branches and rustles the leaves and I hear the raucous laughter of a dinner party just seen through the picture window of the house across the street.

And the world seems right.

But on other nights my mind is disturbed with its thoughts that whirl like a demented vortex and I hear nothing but my own voice. It’s a boring voice droning on and on about inane this’s and that’s and burying the peace of the night in rubble.

And nothing in the world seems right.

I long for the magic I’ve so often felt on so many earlier sojourns through the dark, but on this night it’s not to be. This is when I cry out to the dark denizens of the otherworld, “Come oh magic creatures of the imaginal and entertain me. Bring to me your mystery, your awe, your wonder, and your hidden treasure– make it better than it is.”

That night’s dreams brought me headstones and skulls, darkness and gray empty fields– a reflection of the mood carried back from the earlier journey. And then I ran across the poem by Yeats and I thought, ‘It’s not the fairies of the land he is calling to, but those of the inner soul who are entreated to crawl out from the rubbish and dance with me once again’. And I remember yet again that it is I, it is I who can summon the magic from within.

And the world seems right again.”

Posted on August 18, 2020 by The Book of Dreams blog

Coffee shop meditation: A Waking Dream

When there is no agenda

When I sink into the silence

Quiet, peaceful, one with each

Part of myself

All resonating at the same frequency

Frozen in time, no forward, no backward

Just here and now in the silent knowing.

I love a good meditation! And by ‘good’ I mean where I let go of any expectation thus freeing the soul to come out and play. Down deep in the caves of my being there is only mystery– nothing to figure out, no problems to solve, no worries to chew on. I love it when I can just hand myself over to the dream and the presence of the spirit. The more I can let go of the ego as the here and now definition of myself the more I can align with my soul’s larger being.

Such was the gift handed me one spring day at a coffee shop at the corner of yesterday and tomorrow when these words gilt my caffein charged musings– a waking dream meditation.

Posted on February 26, 2020 by The Book of Dreams blog

A Dream of Shadows

I stepped into the night–a lonely, frigid blackness with glowing lanterns here and there. I sighed and my breath rose into the sky and a part of me became one with the stars.

Animals came out of the inky dark to greet me–raccoon, rat, and owl.

They whispered some ancient wisdom, sharing from a place that only they could bear, dancing to a rhythm that only they could hear.

I pulled the night around my shoulders like a robe to comfort me against its emptiness.

Owl, rat, raccoon, and I walking through the night, walking toward the light of home.

Posted on September 2, 2019 by The Book of Dreams blog

Hope

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Why am I lying here trying to convince myself that there’s no hope left? Well you see if it’s gone, then it won’t hang around and taunt me. And it’s always taunting, hiding, promising, and just out of reach.

Hope is like a smoldering cinder that never takes flame but lurks in the burned out fires of my soul driving me onward in search of something to ignite and burst once again into the conflagration that was my youth. But hope hurts especially when its object never comes to pass.

So what is this little glimmer that still burns at the bottom of my soul?

Maybe it’s the magic I’ve so craved and so needed, maybe it will be right around the next corner.

Maybe the awe will return. Maybe it’ll all come into focus and then I’ll know there WAS some purpose.

I hope so.

Posted on August 19, 2019 by The Book of Dreams blog

The Alchemy of Dreams: Hello darkness my internal light

The Black Sun from the Splendor Solis (1535) representing the nigredo or the beginning of the alchemical work i.e., the first step on the path to the philosopher’s stone from chaos to enlightenment.

Pushing, pushing ever harder, transcending belief and going beyond the known I discover another me, not the me of the sunlight world with all its fears but the hidden me of the darkness that fears nothing.

The light above mirrored by the dark below and I find that I am but a dream and do not just live in the light but am lived by the darkness.

In that darkness all becomes clear and as I yield great strength comes to me and for one brief moment I glimpse eternity. Aye and for one brief moment there is only one.

And what say you to that?