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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Part of last night’s dream had me talking with a bedridden old woman who had an upright bicycle parked at the foot of her bed. Suddenly she rolled toward me, forcefully trying to fall out of bed but I resisted.
This may have been a dream where my soul (the anima or female in a man’s dream) was declaring the need to get up and out of her psychic slumber and walk forward. The bike was both a symbol of a motivating force, an image of going forward, and a mandala for finding your bigger self-i.e., the wheels.
The following poem came to me as I reflected on the meanings of this dream.
Stuck in victim mode
I see only my lowest self
A loathsome self
Paralyzed and blame ridden
Lashing outside myself
Not knowing who to blame
Who to call for help
Putting others or the gods down for my
Pain my loss my failure
Stuck as victim to myself
Where is it that I say enough
And roll out of my lethargic self-loathing slumber
We find the fact that there is cannibalism in the world ugly even though rare and recoil when ever it raises its ugly head. Cannibalism is the same species eating of the body for its own sustenance but what about the eating of the soul when we beat someone down, kick the dog, torture an animal, oppress a people, commit war upon them, or suck the energy from a room or a relationship is that not a form of cannibalism?
Some people thrive on the eating of another’s energy for they have little to none of their own having had it eaten earlier in life or the continuous presence of the loss of energy due to how they are treating themselves or are being treated by others.
Some people eat another’s energy such as what many politicians and their followers are currently doing to others. That same energy is also consumed through psychological or physical means and then this type of metaphorical vampire uses it to further its own goals.
How does one spot an energy vampire or cannibal? One way is to note who has just walked into the room when the energy level changes or decreases. In a discussion with someone do you feel lifted or deflated, valued, or devalued. Another way is to notice after someone has talked or made a speech how you are feeling e.g., inflated, empowered, encouraged, or deflated, disempowered, and discouraged. Energy cannibals bring hate, anger, and fear into a room. They thrive on the negativity because they’re trying to shed it from themselves by placing it on or sucking it from others. They are destroyers of cooperation and unity. They also will never take accountability for their actions either by placing it on others or by just lying about it, and will always one-up others who challenge or disagree with them. You can always tell what an emotional vampire is up to by what he or she accuses others of. They will also use your good nature against you and create all kinds of drama around themselves.
Some politicians thrive on sucking on the energy of their challengers and creating havoc for their own aggrandizement.
Energy vampires/cannibals will always seek to place blame for their failures on something or someone else. After being around them do you feel better or worse about yourself, better or worse about life?
Watch your dreams are they depicting bleeding or vampires or dark figures menacing? If so, perhaps you are experiencing an emotional energy drainer in your life. But remember the quote from the comic character Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us” for we may be playing the role of our own vampire/cannibal by how we judge and treat ourselves or in how we are judging and treating others. Dreams of shooting or being shot, threatened, and chased might also be indicators of some kind of conflict both inner and outer in your life. Feelings of being trapped, restrained, or trying to escape in your dreams might also be indicators of a vampire/cannibal in your life.
I did not grow up in the Christian church or any church for that matter. The first time I ever heard of the Psalms was while attending a field service in Vietnam for a friend who had died two days earlier. He was a friend who had taken my place on the night crew, for I was going out on a mission the following day. If he hadn’t, things might have been different in both our lives. I was feeling very disconnected, confused, and holding a little guilt.
The Psalm read that day during the service was called the 23rd Psalm.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
As I listened to the words, I found myself crying and Marines NEVER cry. Suddenly I found myself lifted and all my fear, anger, and sadness, the turbulent waters of my mind and heart “stilled.” For a moment, I knew that as I walked through this “valley” with death all around me, I was not alone. This gave me the strength to carry on.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized the grace given to me on that day, even though I was experiencing the dark night of the soul (aka depression) and felt I wasn’t worthy of anything good. That day was the beginning of my journey toward spiritual maturity, and that day was the day I awakened to something that I later called soul. Spiritual awakenings can happen at any moment in life. They can be spontaneous, triggered by major life changes, illnesses, tragedies, and traumas such as life-threatening illnesses, accidents, divorces, midlife crises, war, and so much more. They can happen during meditation or while taking a walk around the neighborhood.
There are also those times when all seems hopeless and emotionally overwhelming, what some call The Dark Night of the Soul. If you’re highly sensitive to the suffering of others and are a deep thinker by nature, it is possible that you have gone through, or are currently going through, this dark night.
The Dark Night of the Soul is a period in life when you feel completely cut off from the Divine. The more _aware_ you become of your disconnection from the Divine, the more chances you have of experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul.
In my experience, going through this encounter with the dark night is profoundly entwined with the process of spiritual awakening, i.e., before spiritually awakening, we often “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4); that prepares our minds and hearts for it.
From the perspective of an Alchemist and Jungian analyst the Dark Night could represent the nigredo which means ‘blackness’ or putrefaction or decomposition. Many alchemists believed the nigredo was a first step in the pathway to the philosopher’s stone or wholeness.
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.
The Dark Knight of the Soul 