Wedding dreams mark transitions between outworn stages of growth and more mature ones. Essentially, they are metaphors about the dreamer’s readiness for greater internal unity and the birth of new psycho-spiritual life.
We’re in Bangkok on the first leg of our trip. Twelve of us are traveling with a guide, a native Thailander from a village near the river Kwai. He tells us it’s winter, but it’s hot, in the upper 80’s. Luckily, the little bus we travel in is air-conditioned.
If you are reading this post on the day of its publication, two days before Thanksgiving, I am on a plane headed for Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia, sites of some of the most horrendous killing fields on the planet where vast numbers of human beings suffered and died in ways I cannot imagine or bear to think about. What was left for them to be grateful for in their last moments?
Recurring dreams can be especially effective teachers. They describe important inner truths that require your attention. Once you recognize these aspects of your unknown self and can see their impact on your waking life, recurring dreams lose their value and disappear.
The dream “Nude Descending Stairs” demonstrated how full of myself I was feeling for having bared a “naked” truth. That same night I had a second dream depicting the other side of the tightrope. Prepare yourself. It’s kind of gross.
Beginning with “Gated Religions” I’ve been far more outspoken about social issues than is normal for me. One night three weeks into the series of posts about injustice I had two dreams depicting my feelings about the new direction my blog is taking. I’d like to share the first one here, partly because it contains one of the commonest dream themes of all — being naked in public — and partly because it helps me illustrate the point I made in “Under the Big Top” about what it’s like for me to try to stay conscious.
No religion, nation, or era has ever been free of the influence of the shadow or ever will. The shadow is our unconscious psychological underbelly which continually thwarts our every effort to purge ourselves of all hardness and heaviness, all uncaring and mean-spiritedness, all selfishness, immorality, prejudice, hatred, and unforgiveness.
I first heard the term “loving wastefully” in a speech by John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop who sees this kind of love as an attribute of God. Like Jesus, this spiritual pioneer who has long been an outspoken proponent of feminism, gay rights, and racial equality has severely upset the applecarts of many traditional believers by actually practicing what he preaches.
The greedy and cruel abuse the innocent and helpless.The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We lose our jobs. Accidents happen. Politicians lie. Ads lie. Big business lies. Religious authorities lie. Friends and lovers lie. How are we to handle the injustices of life?
The scariest thing of all is that this gleeful, blatant, conscienceless lying and fear-mongering is beginning to seem normal. And our children and grandchildren are exposed to this toxic unkindness every day. I can tell you from long experience that the massive, invasive, unrelenting presence of irresponsible journalism, advertising, and political campaigning is neither normal nor healthy. This is very bad news for our souls, for America, and for the world.
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