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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.

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Animals in Dreams: The dark and light sides of the Wolf

          The Wolf Moon

At 10:54 PST on the 25th of January the full moon, known as the Wolf Moon by the ancients because the wolves would howl at it during this time, filled our skies with its eerie glow.

Animals in dreams generally speak to ones drives and feelings about events and people when the usual social controls are lifted. Frequently they reflect one’s attitudes about them i.e., whether one loves or fears them. Animals can also reflect our soul and its condition.

The wolf has been a mysterious and savage beast of the forest showing up in fairy tales, cult mythology, and dark legends. Men have been turned into werewolves transformed with every full moon. Legends go all the way back to the story of Gilgamesh in 1800 BCE where a woman turns her cheating lover into a werewolf.

Werewolves can also suggest the need for or announce the oncoming of a transformation in one’s life or that one’s personality is cycling between affable and prickly.

In Greek mythology the Wolf-God was Apollo and to the Romans the wolf was sacred to Mars, the god of war. It was during these ancient times that gods and monsters roamed the earth. One of the most fearsome of the wolf monster tales was the Norse myth of Fenrir who was so powerful that he threatened all the earth and had to be bound up by the gods.

As a power symbol they can reflect one’s own power and the need to use it or use it less.

Wolves also show up in our dreams and not just as nightmares, though they can speak to our darker natures. The wolf can represent our wildness and represent freedom and independence. They can represent loyalty and be guardians and even spirit animals i.e., a messenger, guide, or teacher that comes to us in times of need. To the Native American Zuni of the Southwest the wolf is a pathfinder and trailblazer. 

The image of a wolf in a dream can also suggest the need to work together as a team. As a teacher animal in a dream look to see what it is doing. Is there a lesson to be learned or some lesson that needs to be taught? As teachers they can open one to their inner nature and intuitive sense. They can be messengers of one’s need to pay attention to this intuitive sense and be more conscious of one’s environment and what’s going on around them. 

Though wolves are pack animals and thus represent family they can also be loners as in a “lone wolf” or reflect the need to be more social or inclusive of others.

When interpreting, consider phrases like “The wolf at your door” (financial issues); Cry wolf (A false alarm, making up stories for attention); keep the wolves at bay (Fight against trouble or someone attacking you); Wolf whistle (rude and unwanted attention); Big bad wolf (evil/trying to eat the good or create havoc). 

________________

*Dream meanings come from the book Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting

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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.

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The Dream: Trapped in my stifling negative inner dialog

Trapped in my stifling negative inner dialog unable to breathe, move, or escape I force myself to wake.

I do myself great harm with this unrelenting waking narrative of self-criticism and thus cut myself off from the sacredness of my soul.

The wisdom of “Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” is fundamentally a directive to do no harm to the sacredness of life, including oneself. I spend far too much time chewing on my shortcomings and insufficiencies and too little with my strengths and resourcefulness. “I am sufficient”, though I don’t yet fully agree with that statement, I do know that at my core I am whole. However, my expectations for how to realize the fact of my wholeness gets in the way of my acting sufficient.

So I feel trapped, trapped in my own judgments and self-criticisms, feeling as in the dream paralyzed, breathless, and unable to move or escape the negative narrative.

The dream is also saying to me “How do I transmute these leaden thoughts into the golden core of my real self”? In the dream I see what I have sunk into and I pull myself out and awaken to my real self, my real life. “Be mindful” says the dream.

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I want to go home

from flickriver.com

Last night I had one of what I call a “lonely dream.” No images or story are remembered just the feeling of loneliness. Frequently I don’t bother to write this dream down for what is there to say about it? But I also get the same feeling while wide awake. It’s a haunting feeling and I have got to ask what is this about?

Recently I learned  that the South Africans have a saying when greeting each other. When one says “Sawubona” they are saying “We see you. We see you as you really are” with the response being, “Sikhona” meaning “I am here to be seen”. For me this greeting speaks to what I long for, to be truly seen and accepted for who I am and to see you and accept you for who you truly are. No trying to look good or at least not look bad. No trying to be other than who you really are. This kind of authentic interaction is in my experience rare and can be an extremely intimate way of greeting one another. When this greeting is truly and sincerely given, it requires the gift of immense vulnerability. 

Most people I’ve met cannot give me that gift nor have I been able to always give it from myself. But I want to, I long to, I ache to give it. Once in a while the captive energy of the need to connect at a deep level becomes too much and I share a vulnerability and then after being ignored or shied from I become embarrassed and promise myself to never again open myself up to people in this fashion. But then the need to be seen grows too strong in me and I do it again.

Sometimes in the dark of night or in the darkness of despair at any time of day I find myself crying out, “I want to go home!” It is often said as though coming from the deep down child in me. It usually follows the feeling of loneliness that has sometimes shown up in my darker dreams or while just driving down the road to do some shopping.

I’ve often uttered these words almost as a prayer but what does it mean?

Home for me is a safe place, a place where who I am is known, a place where I am wanted, where I am seen, cared for and about, and loved. It’s a place where everything is okay, where nothing can hurt me, where I am fully accepted for who I am and who I am being, though such a place has never existed for me in its entirety. It lives within me more as a fantasy, a wish, a place half remembered from a place before my time, a place I was born from, and not into. I call out to this place when I am feeling lost and alone. It’s a place that my soul seems to know, and it is from there that the cry comes from.

When said into the light of day the darkness seems to lighten somewhat.

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An Anxiety Dream

Young student in front of blackboard istock photo

The Dream: In a classroom having missed a test I was told to solve the problem written on the board. Try as I would, I could not solve the problem. In fact, I didn’t even understand the problem or how to break it down into its simplest form. It was as though I had no understanding of the math involved, too stupid to even get started. Finally, embarrassed, and greatly saddened, I admitted before everyone and the teacher that I didn’t know how. I knew that by admitting this I had failed and my career as a student would end. I awoke depressed anxious, and agitated, a failure and loser. The teacher consoled me with “that’s alright”.

Comments on the dream: Oh my! I thought, “I hope this dream was not confirming my constant worry that I am stupid and everyone around me knows it”.

I then remembered an earlier blog article* that I wrote on the purpose of life. When I write on such things, I always worry that these explorations of life are sophomoric and reveal my ignorant and immature nature (my apologies to college Sophomores a period of my life that I enjoyed immensely and seem in many ways to have never grown out of).

In the article I packed it all under the rubric of “Mystery” that basically I love a mystery because I don’t have to have the answer or be able to parse the meaning. I can just enjoy my ignorance and play the Fool even if others think me stupid. By aligning myself with the great mystery that is life I can’t really be wrong. As the dream says I am not a student of answers but of questions and mystery. And the dream also reveals that admitting my lack before everyone is the first step in the acceptance of self. The teacher in me says that that’s just fine. 

_______

*2-27-23 The Book of Dreams blog

Why? What’s the purpose?
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Soul Crying: Dreams have your six*

One can hardly miss the craziness of our “leaders” and the number of deaths and shootings, police beatings and shootings, extreme weather damage, and unprovoked wars inundating us from the media. I’ve tried to moderate the amount of craziness by what I read or watch on TV but it’s all so pervasive that it’s almost impossible to screen out.

The craziness, mayhem, and fear also show up in my dreams or when I’m just watching a show.

Sometimes it just gets to be too much, and I find myself having a grieving response, a shoulder shaking response with no tears and no sound coming forth through my wide-open mouth, but real grief, nonetheless. Sometimes I’m bent over in grief unable to stand upright before it. Sometimes it all feels so helpless and hopeless.

But sometimes a witnessed act of love and kindness will trigger the grief response and I’m made to realize how much I long for kindness and love in a world that seems to have so little of it to go around.

However, when any of these grief responses want release from what I normally try to control, my dreams often suggest that I just let go and let the grief flow. I know that my dreams always have my back, my six as they say, my well-being. My dreams often recommend that I let my grief just fall out of me back into the ocean of tears that can be the world sometimes. For some it’s letting those cries for help fall into the open arms of God.

When awake I know that when this soul urging comes that it’s not what I’m reading or watching that is causing the need but that psychically I’m being touched by the event and that this moves me strongly. By letting go of the control and letting the feelings flow and knowing that it’s safe to do so, and that I’ll come back when it’s done, I find it releasing and cathartic, sort of like the old “primal therapy” technique of screaming and punching the pillow type of coping and healing. For some, doing this with a trusted friend or therapist can be very useful.

And that is what happens when I let go, when I let my soul speak for me, it heals or begins the healing of the psychic damage that life through ego-self humanity is causing. It loosens all that scar tissue that has built up over the years.

I’ve always known it; dreams can be about healing and well-being but listening to them now is even more important in order to deal more effectively with the self-serving human chaos spreading across the world.

Opening up to a good cry if that is what the soul is urging and then do your part to heal others through your enhanced listening and help to make room for love to come through is often the meta message of my dreams and perhaps to the dreams of millions more if they were to look more closely.

_______

*This post can also be seen on https://thebookofdreamsblog.wordpress.com

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A drowning dream brings relief

“By virtue of our ancient roots, we are all instinctively disposed to respond immediately to threatening and fearful stimuli. We do this in both our waking lives and in our dreams, often through the intervention of nightmares. In a very real way, nightmares tell us that all is not well in our outer or inner worlds.” (Cole, RJ, Pg. 543) *

Along with recurring dreams that seem to show up when there is something going on that may be critical to our well-being, nightmares seem to be an evolutionary and instinctive adaptation to peripheral threats and should not be ignored.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing a dream that incorporates both recurrency and nightmarish qualities.

In this dream which showed up across three nights I puncture a large cube-like container that starts gushing water.  I try to stop it and get sucked in feet first but get stuck moving forward as I try to pull myself out. I struggle mightily but eventually give up and let it suck me into the cube in hopes of overcoming it and then swim my way out. As I find myself underwater with little chance of escape, I begin to panic and frantically thrash toward the entry hole letting the water that’s escaping through the hole suck me back out into the air.

Whew!

Water overwhelming and threatening to drown. As a metaphor for strong or overwhelming emotions that were threatening my well-being this cry for help dream definitely caught my attention. So, the question is, what’s going on right now that is overwhelming me emotionally? What I noticed upon reflection and not going into details was that I had for several days been experiencing a general background malaise, anxiety, and despondency that had been spoiling my ability to enjoy the good things that had been going on and making me feel ill and listless, sort of ‘Bah, humbug’ if you will. I had also fallen into the cynical “everything is meaningless” trap that was making every color turn gray. Given the current circumstances in the world and in the country where I live this attitude had become my defense against the fear, violence, and hate i.e., it can’t hurt me if I render everything as meaningless. 

But it robs me of the joy in life, the love, and compassion because if I render it all meaningless then they too are taken away. As in the dream I’ve let the malaise take me over in hopes that by stopping my resistance to it that it will let me go. Dealing with it is not, however a passive act, it requires an active participation.

This post as well as a number of other activities (such as watching corny Hallmark and Netflix movies) is my way of swimming up toward the hole and escaping the overwhelm.

*Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting

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A Dream Metaphor for Death

The Dream: I’m in a room crushed against many people waiting for my number to be called. Some people with numbers behind me are being called. “That’s not fair!” I complain in my mind.

The Interpretation: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all those family and friends who have died, some were younger than me.

I really hate this whole death thing and usually avoid thinking about it but once in a while a dream will come along and insist that I pay it some attention. It’s as though my soul wants to say something and uses the medium of the dream to express itself. It’s funny what happens when I let go of my resistance to the awful thought of personal death and allow myself to sink down into it and to feel its pull.

the fear,

the grief,

the anger,

the loss,

the sadness,

the unknown,

the not knowing,

the mystery,

the wonder,

the curiosity,

the what’s next?

And down here it doesn’t seem so awful.

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Psyche’s Dream: A Dragon’s Tale

  • Psyche’s Dream: A dragon’s Tale (ISBN-10: ‎1663227276; ISBN-13: ‎978-1663227270)

As a Jungian trained psychologist and after working with children in a variety of mental health programs and venues e.g., in schools and day treatment programs I learned a great deal working with their dreams. It was through these dreams that the staff and I often had great insights into their inner life and how that played out in their social environments and families.

The story is of a young man who meets an ancient wizard who teaches him the mysteries of real magic, not the magic of wands, spells, and mystical creatures but the mysteries of the inner self and the great power it can wield when one learns to harness it.

The story tells of the great magic that lies all about and within each of us. Young Adam the protagonist undergoes a number of alchemical transmutations and witnesses a number of strange and frightening visions as he undergoes his own process of transformation. Along the way the young man confronts his own inner demons, heals those places within him where life has injured him, and learns to open himself to the magical alchemical powers of the psyche that for most are beyond our imagining. 

This is my fourth book on the mysteries of dreams.