Sometimes my responses to your comments are so packed with new information that I wish I’d saved them for another blog post so readers who don’t subscribe to my comments won’t miss them. This happened when I stayed up very late the other night to reply to Therese’s comments about the dream in my last post, A Solitary Dance. So I’ve decided to share my reply here instead. She wrote as if this were her dream and these were her symbols, which is how the members of my dream groups respond to each others’ dreams. I’ve writtten this in the form of a dialogue because I want you to see the value of working on your dreams with another person or group.
Therese: I just want to mention that I was curious about the difference between the feeling in the dream (“comforting, I wonder, I am impressed… grateful…”) and the emotional pain evoked reflecting and associating while conscious (bone-deep, abiding pain…burden, responsibility, lonely, misunderstandings, critical, bored, solitary.”)
Me: Great insight! I hadn’t noticed the stark contrast between the feelings of my dreaming and waking selves! A waking life event had left me feeling hurt and misunderstood the day before I had this dream, and when I wrote it down the next day the same feelings arose again. The fact that my dream ego feels sorry for the gray man’s pain is a hint that I’m feeling sorry for myself (the gray man symbolizes the Scholar/Writer aspect of my animus); however my dream ego also feels curious, grateful, and comforted by the presence of these inner characters in whom she places complete trust.
This is an example of how dreams compensate for waking life attitudes by presenting other perspectives. This dream was reminding me that beneath my temporary emotional reactions to day-to-day events there is a rock-bottom layer of unswerving support, comfort and trust. This is Dream Mother’s way of pointing me to a healing alternative: I can choose to release my self-pity and move back into that place of gratitude and trust.
Therese: The setting of my living room seems significant, as does the gray robed man’s extreme stiffness. Pain has been associated with his condition. What else could this stiffness and pain be a symptom (symbol) for, in me?
Me: Yes, the living room setting suggests this was where I was living (psychologically) when I had the dream. And you’ve triggered the insight that the gray man’s stiffness speaks to a mental attitude I had adopted toward someone who had caused me distress.
Therese: And the pulling from his robes of a long pen, which he seemingly uses as a brace/reinforcement. Could it also be an instrument to draw our attention (point) to an area of malaise, kidneys perhaps? something serving the function of filtering? or do I need to stretch? my backbone? structural support? (Wow, I’ve just noticed MY lower back has begun to ache…) My dream ego “feels sorry for” while my blonde animus feels “compassion and understanding.” You dream an understanding of, “He knows.” What is it that “he knows”?
Me: You’re so good at noticing dream references to the physical body. This rarely occurs to me. I do get lower back pain and stiffness in my neck and shoulders sometimes. My chiropractor says they’re the result of a misalignment of the atlas, the top bone of the spine, which he corrects with gentle pressure on a spot behind my ear. I wish it were as easy to correct my stiff-necked attitudes! No kidney problems I know of, but the idea of strengthening my psychological filters resonates. And yes, I sit way too long at my computer and should get up and stretch more often. My dream ego feels sorry for the gray man just as my waking ego sometimes feels sorry for myself. The blonde man knows how the gray man feels without having to ask. He’s deeply intuitive because he’s suffered himself and knows how it looks and feels. This knowing is where his compassion comes from.
Therese: At the end of your associations you mention “he and I are not alone.” What is it to be “not alone?”
Me: Two things: In the big picture I’m not alone because there’s a rapidly expanding mass of people, including yourself, Therese, whose search for self-knowledge is changing their ideas about religion as it connects them with the “kingdom of God” within. I’m also not alone as an individual because I have the company of a cast of inner archetypal characters I’ve met in my dreams whose energies are very real and present to me. Spending time with them in dreamwork, active imagination and writing feels like coming home. So when I’m lost in anxiety, sorrow, or loneliness, recognizing these feelings reminds me who they’re coming from and takes me back “home.”
If Therese hadn’t responded to my dream with her associations I would have missed many of its nuances. Thank you, Therese, for carrying this dream around with you all day! Your comments have made me dig deeper and provided promising new areas for exploration. And now to sleep, perchance to dream!
Photograph: Circle of Dreamers (Olmec Room, Mexico City National Anthropological Museum)
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Living and Learning To Love
February 27, 2024
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After writing two posts a week for years, then one post a week, and now even less, the time has come to give more time
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That’s great, Jeanie. I miss being in a group with you – there really is nothing like being in the actual energetic field of others who create a supportive, encouraging container.
You know I experience the collective in a much different way now that I’ve moved. The notion of “traditional” holds much less significance here in the Northwest. Maybe because it has relatively less history than other parts of the country, maybe all the rain, I’m not sure. I’m impressed with just how much our environment affects us. I remember that feeling you speak of – that wounding of catching someone’s shadow projection. Struggling with it IS a sacrifice, and I acknowledge how deeply painful it can be. It is reinforcing to have a cadre of inner (and outer!) support staff to hold us up. Thank you for reminding me of this, and for doing such a great job of illuminating the symbols and associations of your inner life.
And thank you for your thought-provoking associations and comments. Your observation that you experience the collective much differently in the Northwest is a particularly fascinating one. We are, indeed, products of our environments — social as well as geographical—but that can be difficult to see and to free yourself from when you’ve spent most of your life in one that is steeped in strong traditions that are very resistant to change. That would, at least in part, account for the differences between the themes and writing styles of, say, Eudora Welty, Margaret Atwood, and Gertrude Stein! I wonder what I’d be writing about if I’d spent my whole life in Paris! Thanks again for your support over the years.