On Dreams

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend. For all ego-consciousness is isolated: because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only what can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reach to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. " - Carl Jung, 1964

Recorded sometime between 2009-2012 on a scrap piece of paper. Rarely do I record dreams unless they are recurring or powerful in some way. This one was bizarre and by the last paragraph I can still recall my shock and fear of this entity and the calm and peace with which this strange infusion resulted.

This dream began with a film I was watching. It was a science fiction movie with Sigourney Weaver if you can imagine. She had been taken over by an alien force that  wasted away and eroded her and the crew; dissolved them and anything organic. I could only recall Sigourney screaming in agony aboard her spaceship bound for earth.

The alien spawned again when the ship eventually crash landed on earth. The dream became more of a vision of a reality than myself viewing a film at this point. The thing reconstituted itself. Part flesh from the accumulated bodies of the ship crew and part armor from the crashed plating of the ship it had arrived in. It wielded a jagged shard of the ship as a blade. It stood about 10x the size of a human. Armies of men ran at it with swords in hand and they were easily slain. The creature piled their bodies and blew them apart spewing gore, blood and body parts. Absorbing them into it's mass more readily this way.

I remember sensing it as unbridled violence made manifest. Absolute chaotic death that is possibly one of my most deep-seeded concerns about man's own inhumanity. Somehow I understood it was searching for a host. Someone to take it into him or herself. I hid from it.

It is possible it continued it's rampage but the only thing I remembered next was being brought to it. It was at bay in some kind of warehouse facility and rendered stationary of it's own will, as if waiting while throngs of scientists and technicians milled cautiously around it. Studying it but also anxious to allow it to leave earth as it desired. It needed a form to which it could attach itself to return home. So I was chosen or reluctantly volunteered to be it's host. The reason was unclear other than I was quite possibly the only one who could do this successfully for the abomination.

Once it left it's flesh and ship hull armor and came into me I immediately felt different. Not the violence and rage I had witnessed in it's arrival and quest for a host. Instead I felt peace and a sense of empowered clarity and purpose. I had feared my mind would become it's, but I only felt a pure, unbridled energy. As if all of that rage, all of that violence needed only a guiding spirit or mind. I sensed it's desire to only be a passenger to the one who would take it home, to it's place of rest. Wherever that might be. As we climbed into another ship, the spirit and I to be launched towards some distant and unknown destination, I thought of the Hebraic prophet Elijah and his fiery chariot.  My afterburners full force as I launched into space, strangely whole and profoundly affected enough to remember and record this dream.

I would say I have my own ideas about this one and you could draw some of your own as well. Dreams are dreams. An amalgam of wish fulfillment, memory and imagination at work or play. I would say they tap into the desires and ancient wisdom latent in an old soul as well. The trick is not to mine them for cause-effect relationships, but understand as a whole how they affect or communicate with the dreamer in question. Joseph Campbell highlights the lack of a subject-object relationship in dreams and it's direct relationship to our conscious ego and the unconscious.

The secret of dreams is that subject and object are the same The object is self-luminous, fluent in form, multivalent in its meanings. It's your dream, the manifestation of your will, and yet you are surprised by it. This is the relationship of ego-consciousness to the unconscious. Ego-consciousness has to learn about the unconscious, and dreams are the vocabulary of the unconscious speaking to the conscious mind. Yet, in dreams and in visions, subject and object are the same. (Campbell, 1991)

Dreamwork is used in psychotherapy and indigineous shamanistic practices. In either approach we find that the healer/helper and the one to be healed/helped hold that healing within themselves. Through intuition as well as proven methods of helping others change their own thoughts and behaviors. Thereby increasing good feelings, good relationships and hopefully new or redefined sets of values and resolve to follow them. Quite a few illnesses and their prevention are connected directly to psychological and physical wellness, intuitively and scientifically. Maladies of the psyche and the body benefit from this inner 'medicine' we all carry within. Awareness is the tap that strikes at that reservoir of healing. The administer of the healing has the task of attempting to share of their own and tap into the inner reservoir of another so this inner medicine can be released and begin to work within the individual; cultivating the capacity for awareness spiritually and psychologically. Many ancient religious traditions held that the ails of the spirit and mind were enacted in the flesh. For contemporary folks, it is a 'psychosomatic complaint'.

Let me explicate this is a laymen's summation of the approach of Native American shamans and medicine men among their similarities to the practices of other cultures. Elaborate and refined cultural rituals and practices, such as substance ingestion, dance, herbs/medicines, trance, song and chant were in part intended to elicit this spiritual medicine from the afflicted in their tribes and to get deeper at the meaning of life. Through their stories that conceptualized why it might have been worth living. For myself, being grounded this way in myth and benefiting from the legacy of wisdom of such cultures I have found can inform my perspective on the ails of mankind as well as my own practice. My walk. It doesn't hurt that dreams are fascinating portals to this inner world as well. When charged with enough substance to bring back into consciousness, they are vehicles of delivery for potential inner wisdom and growth.

One more. Recorded June 2010

I saw a a new day cresting over an oceanic expanse. The sun poised to breach the horizon. A magnificent display of color. My muse, her palette of memories and imagination both conscious and unconscious had been busy this slumber. I called to my mother and sister who were standing further down the beach, “Do you see the moon?”

“Yes, it's so big and close,” my mother replied.

I looked to the left and saw the moon did appear. It was very close and was not hidden by the rising sun. I looked back to the moon again and the celestial body I had seen in the sky was now a new earth. In truth, two earths we beheld there in the sky. I did not know upon which reflection of earth we stood, or perhaps somewhere in between, upon whose sandy and beautiful shore to behold such a vision.

I watched as one earth was breaking apart unto itself as if a singularity had begun to consume it from it's core. And the other was borne and manifested before our eyes. Hope and joy alighted in my heart.

Am I to witness a sunrise such as this? A symbolic dawn where a new earth is coming into being and the old is collapsing in upon itself. Truthfully, I believe this spirit to be alive and well if not dormant in an entire generation of Americans. As roots awaiting spring. We see this all around the world right now. When we mature into this newfound connectedness we share in our age it will be a good day. ...Or perhaps this vision was seeded years ago as I stood upon another familiar shore one clear night. A memory or a dream in itself. There on Kailua's shores where lunar energies emanated from a bright, full moon amidst the illuminated heavens. A moment in time bound to eternal memory. The blossoms of which even today I can only marvel and ponder at their shape, color and substance. To allow the experience of the dream or a theatrical memory to draw me deeper into understanding and contemplation of it's occurrence. As well as the reality to which I inevitably awake.

Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams? 

~Gustave Flaubert

What do your dreams share with you?