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Nightmares as answers to what’s troubling you

Being attacked by self, events, and/or others can leave us feeling helpless, angry or depressed.

A sea urchin with no spines is attacked by an ugly toad intent on the urchin’s destruction. But the seemingly defenseless urchin sends out tentacles from beneath and wraps them around the toad’s neck. I am appalled and grossed out as I watch this aggressive dream.

“What is going on?” I wonder as I awake from this nightmarish scene.

As I review this dream trying to gain some insight to its meaning aggression and conflict seem to be the main theme. I am both the urchin and toad, the attacker and the attacked, the aggressor and the victim. The usual suspect comes to the fore i.e., my penchant for self-punishment. But it’s more than this same old, same old story. 

As I watch helplessly the political realities of certain egos plotting to dominate the government with little or no regard for people’s lives, countries making invasion plans for no other reason than to dominate and make themselves important, random mass shootings for the same reason, and in my own tiny corner of the world a violent incident that has pitted well-meaning people against each other I am feeling overwhelmed with things that I can do nothing about but watch.

Add to all that my own self-criticism for not living up to my own standard for being and I create the inner turmoil that this dream represents. The dream brings to the fore what I try to ignore, the feeling of helplessness and depression that keeps me angry at the world and at myself.

For some reason facing this anger helps me to settle, for the truth is I have a right to be fearful and angry but need and want to also face the fact that am not totally helpless in that I can change what I do with that fear and anger. I can resist the tendency for my emotions to take me over and still do what is right to do with what is in front of me. In short, I need to be gentle with myself in all things and not give evil for evil.

As I finish up this blog, I am reminded of the poem by Max Ehrmann, the Desiderata.

Desiderata

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

By Max Ehrmann © 1927
Original text

I hope that you can keep peace in your soul,

Bob

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A week of dark night dreams

•Racing around town on a self-propelled scooter at breakneck speed and weaving and dodging.

•Men jumping without looking into deep holes, crevasses into the underground.

•I’m walking into a room. It’s greyish and dark, dank, cold, and empty. It feels lonely and abandoned. I see no windows with the room feeling small but unending.

•Someone is attempting to stab me in the stomach and then shoots me with a rifle.

Lots of internal conflict and warnings about being too reckless. An overall malaise seems to have enveloped both my waking and sleeping dreams. A sense of being attacked by others and by myself permeates these dreams.

I have not spent enough time exploring what’s going on with me, so my dreams take over to focus my attention. I’ve been too harsh on myself lately as well. This has created an unsafe place and empty void within me. I need to let up on the self-attack and focus on what I’m doing.


“Being kind to yourself is one of the greatest kindnesses”.

–Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the mole,

the fox and the Horse

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Insight from a disturbing dream

A scene from the movie, Matrix, we are all a digitally coded reality.

The night before’s dream centered around a vision of a “heart,” more an experience than a physical image. It is a life-altering experience that appears to have a physical form but is not material in essence. The heart experience seems real, but it is not; it appears present, but it is not. I can get it for someone but can’t guarantee that it will work for them. There’s a sense that it brings profound connection and dispels the feeling of separation. I reach into the ether to pull one into existence.

My interpretation of this dream appears to be as cryptic as the dream but reflects something I’ve been psycho-emotionally wrestling with for quite some time. As time has moved on, I’ve developed more and more clarity regarding the thoughts and feelings that have plagued me.

Are we but avatars of One being? Not actual, not separate, with the experience of separateness being illusory born of a system designed to create the illusion built over time.

I wonder if stories of Jesus being sent to earth so that God can experience the human condition are but a human projection or metaphor that reveals a much deeper reality of life?

The creation stories of many cultures also seem to suggest that the “we” we see ourselves as is, but an illusion created by the One.

The reality of death may be part of that illusion because if we are only avatars or expressions, then we were never really born. We are not separate because we were never apart. We are only the illusion of individual beings. As avatars, we may be “experiencers,” aka the “heart of God” or the One. We are both black and white, illumined and dark, gold and lead, wise and foolish, believers or non-believers, loving and hateful, holograms of the One’s expression into the world.

With this view that everything, including what we call “we,” are but God expressions, I seem to have moved from a monotheistic view of God to a pantheistic one. In this view, God, whatever it is, acts as a prism diffracting itself into a myriad of colors (The “we” I’m referring to) but, in essence, is only the One all-encompassing color. The “heart” of my dream is the One we call God.

Shades of the movie Matrix!

Once seen, it changes my relationship with everything I’ve been calling and believing to be “other.”

The strange thing for me is that if this were a true reflection of reality, what would I do with it? In other words, so what? I don’t have an answer for that, yet I somehow feel more at ease with these thoughts than with the belief in separateness. Separateness brings with it fear, helplessness, and vulnerability.

This point of view also seems to answer in part my age-old question of what is my purpose? My purpose in this scenario is just to be, do what I do, experience what I experience, strive for what I strive, feel what I feel, change when I think I need to, and think what I think whenever I think it. That may seem too easy to some, but for me, it’s always been a struggle and probably, to some extent, will remain the same. So, to my list, I’ll add “struggle” with what I struggle with.

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It’s the season of change, endings, and the harvesting of what you’ve sowed. 

During this time of year our dreams can be the portal to other realms of knowledge and awareness. Wakeup!

These images from our deeper psyches are often found in the the mythologies of many cultures and represent pretty much what they do to all societies. After all, where do our myths come from if not from the dark caves of our hidden selves?

Dreams of…

Jack-o-lanterns: childhood dreams and memories. A reminder of a changing of something or the end of something.

Witches: The negative feminine or one’s fear of being manipulated (bewitched). Old feelings associated with one’s mother. If a witch of the west she could symbolize endings and dark events or feelings. They can represent unlikeable parts of ourselves or others. Has someone cast a ‘spell’ on you? She may also symbolize something magic in your life, something positive and yet unexplainable. Note that witches in a dream can be either nurturing or overpowering or both if reflecting a conflicted state or relationship.

Magic: Don’t believe everything that you see or hear. Are you trying to solve a problem through wishes and hopes i.e., through magical thinking? Are you being influenced or perhaps controlled by something that you can’t see? If a magician (or wizard) shows up, he or she may represent your inner wisdom or your desire to control and dominate. They can also represent illusion. Are you or is someone trying to fool someone or yourself? Are you hoping to change something or looking for transformation? Do you need to transcend something in your life? 

Ghosts: Is something from your past haunting you? Is your subconscious trying to make you aware of something? Do you have guilty feelings about someone or some event? Perhaps you are feeling insubstantial, like you don’t belong. Have you “ghosted” someone i.e., where you have cut off communication with someone without explanation or are being ignored? A violent ghost (or poltergeist) could reflect an inner conflict or some violent part of your own nature.

Is someone or you being too transparent or not transparent enough? Is there some unfinished business from the past?

Phantoms: These can represent fears and/or repressed memories e.g., things that go bump in the night. Do you need to face your fears? They can also represent illusions, delusions, and self-deception. Are you misapprehending something or someone? Are you or is someone misrepresenting something?

Graveyards: This is a place of endings, a place where memories or fears are buried and hopefully put to rest. Traditionally this is a place where the dead and the living come together especially during Samhain (Halloween) when the division between the dead and living thins and becomes more porous. Ancient Celtics and modern pagans celebrate this time of year with feasts and bonfires. The souls of dead relatives are thought to revisit and seek hospitality. They could be appeased by special food and drink, but watch out if ignored (Trick or treat).

Zombies: Where the dead rise from their graves. Where memories refuse to stay buried or refuse to die. They can also represent aspects of the self that refuse to go away. A zombie can represent yourself when you feel controlled by some basal emotion such as fear, envy, haste, or greed or jealousy. Has something died in you e.g., an emotion, ambition, hope, dream, or idea?

Death: This can symbolize and end to something or a killing off some part of you or the death of a relationship.

Werewolves (or any dark creature): This could represent repressed instincts or your animal nature rising and overwhelming you. It could be your ‘shadow self’ a part of you that you’ve tried to reject but that still influences your feelings, thoughts, or actions from time to time.

The Angel of Death or Grim Reaper: This can be a messenger from your unconscious mind where all your dreams come from. The image can symbolize an end to something (see also death above). Something or someone may be attacking you or may represent impending change. They can symbolize criticism, but the reaper may also represent self-criticism i.e., self-attack.

Skeleton or skulls: Something dead to you or skeletons in your closet where memories of events are hidden. They can also represent aspects of yourself that you are trying to kill off or thought you killed off but still haunt you. Note what your dream skeleton is doing and what you are feeling when observing or interacting with them. Skeletons can represent and end to something e.g., some idea, or relationship, hope, ability, behavior, or memory. If just a skull it can symbolize your state of mental health. They can also represent something that is not fully developed or in the beginning stages. If the skeleton represents you, are you just a a skeleton of your old self?

Mad Scientist: Don you feel like you are going crazy or somebody is acting crazy or irrationally? Are you or is someone having trouble controlling behavior? Is something or someone threatening you? Are you feeling a loss of control?

All the above dream images can come under the rubric of phantasmagoria and may reflect your unconscious biases. Are you having illusions of reality that may be affecting your ability to see what is real and right in front of you? All these images can have nightmarish qualities and be a wake up call from your unconscious trying to prod you into awareness.

*These possible image interpretations come from Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting.

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Awakening from a dream we all share

A young man begins to awaken from a dream and finds himself at the door of a strangers house. He knocks and is confronted with the strangest dream of all and up until then what had been an ordinary life became very unordinary indeed.

Originally titled The Twelve Laws of Magic follows an unwitting student through his alchemical transformation into a world most people have never thought existed. It changes him but how and how it will change the reader is for you to find out.

For more on this story check out the following link: www.psychesdream.com

Or if really anxious to get started, go to Amazon and begin one of the most magical journeys you’ve ever been on.

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A nightmare dream mirroring my fears and despair

A dream was given to me after reading about how the military chiefs of the US planned to stop a coup planned by our ex-president. A dream that grew out of the black muck of a new Nazi party that had taken hold of half the nation, half its senators, and most of its governors and legislators. It is a Reichstag moment where anti-democracy forces burned the seat of the German government and took over the country. I used to believe that it couldn’t happen here, and yet here we are.

I want to believe that every dream comes to us in the service of our health and well-being. Still, this one seems to be both a clarion call to fight the evil growing in the heartland, to fix that which is broken but also as a harbinger of death to a nation and a way of life, a pandemic of false fears promulgated by the righteous right hand as it deals a death blow to the left leaving the country handicapped and less than the whole.

The dream visited as I chewed on this most disturbing news.

The dream:

“I’m in a pool, and the tiles on the bottom are all broken up and scattered. The very foundation of the pool has been destroyed.” This is a dream of shadow and soul work as is I believe the waking world projection in the political world.

Our world, our country, our democratic principles, and a great experiment in democracy are stressed and in some places breaking up, and its foundational tiles of the free press, separation of powers, freedom of speech, and right to vote are all being shattered and cast aside. Soon the great pool of wonder that is, or was, the United States that was once as Abraham Lincoln once said, the world’s “last best hope” will begin to leak and will soon be empty of the waters of hope, the waters of life, the baptismal font of freedom, and that symbol which represents the Holy Spirit to Christians everywhere will be no more. 

We are doing this to ourselves out of fear, lies, political greed, and our self-righteous need to kill figuratively and practically what we see as different from ourselves, a caveman skill that we have yet to grow out of.

I’m not sure we can stop it, and like environmental warming, the degradation may be too vast and all-encompassing that there’s no turning it back at least not in the short term. However, we must put up the good fight for our self-respect, but I’m no longer sure we can win. Different from the last great war for freedom, there will be no United States to come to our rescue, for as Pogo once said, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.” All we have is ourselves, those of compassion, love, truth, goodwill, and reason regardless of political or religious point of view to call upon to save us. Let us hope and pray that it’s enough.

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Psyche’s Nightmares

I’ve had dreams where creatures have suddenly appeared and threatened. They would come from some hidden place, a place where all nightmare creatures hide until when we least suspect it, they jump out and scare us awake. The human psyche can be an excellent reservoir for hidden demons just waiting for us to let our guard down. The following excerpt is from Psyche’s Dream: A Dragon’s Tale, due out in late 2021 or early 2022.

“There are many hidden artifacts and meanings within the fabric of older houses such as this. They are often ritually concealed by long-dead owners to protect or pay homage to the spirit of the house. Sometimes without warning, they can reveal themselves to us. They can come through its walls, cellars, attics, and fireplaces. This house is notorious for doing that.” There was an ominous tone in the old man’s words.

It was then that Adam noticed a sparkle that seemed to rise from below as though from a dark, hidden well beneath the floorboards. He couldn’t tell whether it climbed through the floor, from the abyss, or from the primeval chaos within him. He had seen this once before when it seemed to herald an impending change in awareness. The spark settled above the hearth, where the dragon carving suddenly became animated and uncoiled itself. 

As it grew rapidly in size, it reared its scaly and heavily muscled body and rose high into the rafters, snorting a stream of fire. Bending its terrifying head downward, it opened its fearsome jaws, and with teeth-gnashing and nostrils flaring, it let out the most frightening, bloodcurdling scream as it dived downward toward the cowering boy.

Its head was covered in small hissing and writhing snakelets like a medusa’s crown, and Adam could feel the beast’s hot, wet breath searing the back of his neck and soaking his clothes. Its long-outstretched tongue, which preceded its downward thrust, lashed across his face, leaving a nasty welt. Though crouching and barely able to keep his feet, he mustered enough resolve to turn and face his tormentor and confront it openly. It was as though the waking world universe was forcing him to own up to and face his demons and turn them into daemons.”

The transformation from an obstructive demon to a constructive daemon is always preceded by the protagonist facing their inner dragons and bringing them into a relationship. This action strips the demon of its power, the power of the dark that is destroyed when confronted by the light. That which we suppress and hide from grows within us and gains power over us. As with Adam in the story, our fearful nightmares come to us in the interest of our health and well-being. They present us with a chance to face what we fear or what disgusts us about ourselves and to confront it head-on.

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The alchemy of the soul: Who we really are.

The alchemy of the soul: Who we really are

Within each of us resides a dichotomy that of the masculine and that of the feminine. Fundamentally at our essence we are androgenous. It is our gender and response to culture that tends to pull the persona towards being of one way or the other.

The psychiatrist Carl Jung suggested that in the dreams of a woman the image of a man represented her animus, her masculine aspect while in a man’s dream the image of a female is his anima or feminine aspect.

Basically these aspects are there to bring balance to the imbalance that culture and the persona have created. It is presumed that when out of balance humans are much less of what they could be if they were to embrace both aspects of themselves.

This idea is nothing new for one doesn’t have to look too far to see that the deities Shiva and Shakti within the Hindu religion one of the world’s oldest represented the masculine and feminine aspects that when joined brought wholeness and oneness. In Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies both goddess and god needed to work in harmony or it meant trouble for humans.

Actually there are many stories where the feminine and masculine come together to create wholeness. Most fairy tales and fantasy stories include the coming together of males and females to bring about success in some endeavor. It’s the extraordinary power of relatedness and the bringing together of our personal and collective unconsciousness’s that often drive our actions e.g., the hard working narrow focus of the seven dwarves having their lives expanded by the compassionate beauty of Snow White or the wisdom shared by Dorothy of OZ with her three male companions which leads them to embracing their true selves. There’s also the necessary male and female joining in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series that made it possible to overcome the evil of Voldemort and save the magical world from his terror, that was to bring balance to their world.

On a more current level and what could be called the waking dream one might say that a new leadership of male and female relationship in the United States will bring back balance and harmony in the way the U.S. does its business. The former leadership was so psychically skewed that it created a destructive imbalance that drastically weakened the power of the whole.

The masculine and feminine non gender influenced aspects of our archetypal selves transcend our individual psyches and if we are open to them can provide us with a way of becoming whole and complete and much more effective in our lives. 

These aspects are reflections of our soul and it has been said by many that the soul of a man is feminine while the soul of a woman is masculine. So when they show up in your dreams, that road to the soul, pay close attention to what they are saying or doing for they may be there to show you the way to who you really are.

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All things spooky

Note that this image can be seen in two different ways i.e., that “consciousness” is internal and stretches outward or is outward and stretches inward.

“There is an Indian fable of three beings who drank from a river: one was a god, and he drank ambrosia; one was a man, and he drank water; and one was a demon, and he drank filth. What you get is a function of your own consciousness.” 



 –Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light,”The Jiva’s Journey,” p. 46

Of what do psychologists and philosophers speak when they invoke the word “Consciousness?”

At a fundamental psychological level some define it as “awareness” or more specifically, ”Self Awareness” that is further defined as knowledge gained through personal perception, the recognition of something felt—that is ‘sensed.’

In the above quote from Joseph Campbell there seems to be another layer implied e.g. something residing between what is perceived and what is processed. In short, something is acting upon the information coming into the individual that affects the processing of it—a filter if you will.  We all have these filters–they are our judgments, expectations, beliefs, philosophies, experiences and memories. These things affect our level of consciousness, our level of alertness to reality if you will. So the quote seems to speak to the type of filter, or the clarity of the filter, being employed.

At a deeper, and more spiritual, or philosophical, level consciousness has been defined as the “Knower” or the “Observer”–something that observes itself, the ground-state of our being. It is, some say, what you experience when you have quieted the mind from its incessant chatter. Others say it is what the chatter is being directed toward e.g. what is listening when you talk to yourself.

At first glance this consciousness, this knower, appears to be located somewhere alongside our mind, the mind that is the ego-thing that’s doing all the chattering. But is it alongside, or even local for that matter? How do we explain the phenomena of distance viewing, or distant communication as when you’re thinking of cousin Harry whom you’ve not heard from in ages and the phone rings? Coincidence or synchronicity?

There’s a great deal of research that’s been done (some funded through DARPA, the federal department of all things spooky that can be used militarily) looking into the reality of distant viewing and finding it to be real under certain conditions. Some people can instantly ‘see’ things that are happening miles away (The Russians just love this stuff!).

Some physicists (e.g. Fred Allan Wolfe, David Hawkins, and Gary Zukav) have played around with the ground-state, or ‘universal field’, idea of consciousness as well as the concept of remote connectedness that is implied by remote viewing and have made some tentative conclusions that consciousness is independent of the sentient creatures it seems to inhabit–so much so that it exists eternally, or at least since the Big Bang. Perhaps we are no more than receivers for signals from outside ourselves, like a radio, cellphone, or TV.

It seems that to the degree to which a person can cleanse their perception filters and thus get a clearer perception of reality this also affects their ability to connect with this level of consciousness. It may even be this consciousness that makes it possible to see things beyond ones temporal location. 

We are definitely more than we see or seem.

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Blessed are the Peacemakers: Be the change you want.

 

internal_conflict_by_rattiferd_II.jpg
From Deviantart.com

I had a very restless night recently. There was lots of conflict and judgment, demeaning putdowns and threats that had me waking up every couple of hours. Definitely my soul was not at peace this night and it continued into my next meeting of the morning.

“Blessed are the Peacemakers.” What is Peace? Is it something without conflict? Is it something outside ourselves that can be attained if certain actions are taken? Can you be an effective Peacemaker if you yourself are not at peace? Can there be any peace within you if you are without forgiveness? If you are conflicted with parts of yourself warring with each other, can you be at peace? Do you need to be at peace with all parts of yourself in order to be a Peace Maker?

These are pretty heady questions and came up during a recent men’s group discussing the Beatitudes of the Christian New Testament. I think that the consensus was that the degree to which one could be at peace with their own shadows, their own demons and struggles–the degree to which one has been able to reconcile with ones inner conflicts–is the degree to which one can be an effective Peace-maker.

To protest with a placard, stump for money and believe in the goal of Peace-making does not alone a Peace Maker make. One needs to work on their own shadow nature, their own inner animal.This is not to say that one cannot be a Peace Maker until they’ve handled all their issues, we wouldn’t have anybody working toward peace if that were true. It is just so much easier when we don’t have ourselves as an obstacle to peace i.e., when we are able to identify in ourselves that which keeps conflict stuck in the world.

One of the advantages of the dreamtime is that it will present our hidden shadows without protection, just the raw demon in all its scales and warts. Once one has committed to dealing honestly with these parts of themselves in a compassionate way it is surprising how their negative energy that worked against them can be integrated toward a greater personality less run by fear and more through true free-will.

My wife and I have worked with elementary school children in conflict resolution i.e., how to deal with bullies on the playgrounds of life but we don’t work with the children on how to deal with their inner bully. Failure, off-handed parental negatives, and mean comments on the playground all take their toll and help to create an inner bully that can wreak havoc on a child’s self-image.

We try to build up a child’s self-image but all children notice when one child is favored over another or that some children appear to be gifted with one talent or another. We want to reward the child who does well but doesn’t this also reinforce comparison i.e. “look at what you are not” or “You could be like Johnny or Sarah if you just worked hard enough”. But the child knows that’s not always true and another chink is gouged out of their esteem.

And what about the lie that all of us can be anything we want to be? What happens when we discover that we aren’t good enough or don’t have the requisite talents to be what we want to be and what about those who don’t live in the right neighborhood?

It’s inevitable that life will chip away at our esteem and help create an inner image of self that is less than our ideal or doesn’t stand up to the promise that society presents us. These failure images eventually take on a darkness that is hard to shine a light on so most of us won’t bother and relegate these shadows to the hidden reaches of our minds. But although hidden that doesn’t mean that they don’t continue to affect our lives.

Now I’m not suggesting that we open these cans of worms with young children but teaching them how to handle their own fears and anger and inner right and wrong conflicts, and personal failures and negatives might help them to be more at peace with themselves and perhaps be more peaceful adults. To have peace in the world requires that we work on ourselves that is, to work on where peace really resides.

A true Peace Maker I believe needs to work on being peaceful within themselves as well as doing what they can outside themselves to create a more peaceful world. This adds more meaning to the phrase, “Be the change you want”.