Some years ago, a very successful and talented friend of mine began to experience a crisis of meaning. As he became more receptive to his inner life he found himself drawn to Jungian psychology and dreamwork. One night he had the following dream.Last night I had a dream. I feel the need to share it with you today because it illustrates the main point I’ve been trying
The title of this post is inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem, Still I Rise. Deborah, a dear friend and poetess from England, sent it to
The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible
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The bear itself is a very symbolic creature; the mother bear was said to give form to her offspring by licking them into shape.
Yes, indeed, Viv. Thanks for this association. So one way of thinking about the combination of the bear and the unknown woman could suggest some kind of maturing development in his psyche involving the nurturing aspects of the feminine unconscious.
The dream says he could neither see the bear nor hit it … which reminds me of a story told by Heinrich von Kleist, about a bear who never moved when the feints of his would-be attacker were not meant in earnest, and moved so intuitively when attacked that it was impossible to hit him. You can find it here, towards the end of the narrative: http://thingsthatquickentheheart.blogspot.de/2011/11/on-puppet-theater.html
What struck me as weird in the dream is that the dreamer actually thought he could fight a very large bear with a broken razorblade mounted on a thin stick. 😉 How effective would that be in a real fight? Especially when the bear is “very close by”, how much time would the dreamer have to look for a small piece of metal on the ground and join it to his stick? (Freudians would probably see a lot of phallic symbolism here. 😉 )
It seems to me he feels overwhelmed by some force he cannot really see – which might turn out to be an ally rather than a menace, maybe symbolizing his own strength that he has not yet owned – and the weapons that are at his command are painfully inadequate to deal with the challenge. But then the miracle happens and he turns into a woman. To me this would suggest that he thinks he has to meet the challenge with traditional “male” resources – weapons and fighting. But the weapon is useless against an opponent much larger and stronger than himself, whom he cannot even see properly – much less hit -, so the more “feminine” arts of magic and shapeshifting seem to be better suited to deal with the situation.
One way to do dreamwork with this dream would be to shapeshift into the bear to see what he is actually after, and also the woman, whose role I feel is rather ambiguous.
I’d love to know what happened after he had the dream, if you are at liberty to tell …
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Hi Zarah,
Your many observations are a perfect example of how to approach a dream: playing with associations, no answers, lots of questions, noticing your intuitions, and always coming back to the imagery of the dream. Dreams are one of Nature’s most eloquent ways of speaking to Spirit, and our (ego’s) role is to mediate in this dialogue without making premature judgments.
Thank you also for providing the link to the marvelous von Kleist story of the puppets, the boy and the bear. The thing these all have in common is that they all celebrate the awakening process (which Jung called individuation and the alchemists called the ‘magnum opus’) and the end state of “returning to the place where you began and knowing it for the first time” to paraphrase T.S. Eliot: i.e. from the pure Nature/animal/instinctual being to the fully conscious being who then understands the grace and gift of being a natural/animal/instinctual being and finds a way to balance Nature and Spirit!
At some level, all dreams portray characteristics and phases of this universal process: examples from this dream include the struggle to tame one’s instincts and the need to integrate one’s contrasexual opposites, etc. And yes, at the beginning of a new phase, one often “feels overwhelmed by some force he cannot really see”, which may indeed “turn out to be an ally rather than a menace.”
I love your suggestion about roleplaying the bear and the woman. This is not only a very helpful way to gain more information, but also a great example of the value of getting the body involved in the work (a direction which is, in fact, suggested by the dream imagery) instead of limiting dreamwork to mental activity only.
I can tell you that when the dreamer told me this dream he was in therapy. In subsequent years he made several life changes which required a great deal of courage and continued to serve the expanding of his consciousness. At the moment he is enjoying a peaceful retirement.
Thank you for sharing your thought-provoking associations.
Jeanie
I found the dream fascinating, your discussion of possible meanings in the dream enriching, and your dialogue in the comments section meaningful. Thinking about all this I wonder if one can say dreams are our ‘second’ life, or ‘echo,’ or twin. The idea of going into the dream, from different perspectives, is something like non-linear storytelling isn’t it? The imagination being integral to perceiving… What a free gift these dreams are and most people (thinking of myself here) take them very much for granted.
Thank you very much, Steven. Your question about dreams being our second life or echo is a very insightful one. I would slightly rephrase my answer to say that dreams are images of, and messages from, our unconscious self, which may indeed be seen as the twin of our conscious self. As an interesting aside, I titled an earlier version of my newest book The Soul’s Twins. For me, there are many levels of collaborative twinship within the psyche: conscious and unconscious, ego and shadow, masculine and feminine, soul and spirit are the main ones.
I love your comparison of this approach to dreamwork to non-linear storytelling. Yes!! Our left brain’s linear thinking and story-telling and our right brain’s perceptions and imagination are always carrying on a dialogue in the “nous,” that middle place between the opposites, and this becomes very easy to see when we take our dreams seriously.
Dreams are indeed a free gift and it truly is unfortunate that so few of us invite that dialogue into our waking lives. To use the language of alchemy, facilitating a conscious interaction between our inner and outer opposites is how we find the “philosopher’s stone” and achieve our “magnum opus.”
Thank you for this reply. What a great follow-up to your original post. A wealth of knowledge to contemplate! I have read it twice and will do so again!