DREAM: Formative Relationships/ Competition Ended..march 29, 2010(edited 7/17/2011)

I am a teacher in Meredosia, IL. I am in the science wing area of the High School. D.H. is there also. The wing is two large classrooms with an area between that has a sunlit terrarium and an office. Superintendent R. H. is also there to support the beginning school year. It seems there is a money crunch and they have had to sell out much of the furniture and equipment. The floor has a very dark, nearly black, surface to it. The three of us are standing in the terrarium area between the classrooms. Touching the wall where an office had been but now was closed off, I said jokingly , "Well D. and I won't have to fight over the office will we?"

Then I was in a circle with some new students. It seems we were off to a good start. I felt rapport with them and they seemed eager to learn science, even though our materials were limited. One boy who was potentially a trouble maker seemed especially eager to learn.

Meredosia-Chambersburg High School

REFLECTION: The dream source seems to go out of its way to stress the importance of those people who were positive figures in my young adult life. D.H., who represents school teacher collegiality and church friendship keeps coming back in my dreams. R.H. was the superintendent that Bev and I worked under with much respect in two different school systems over a 25 year period. He always expressed similar respect for us.

I think it is reminding me of how valuable and necessary these relationships were in my development. How impossible that I could arrive where I am in my attitudes and beliefs without experiencing such formative people. It reminds me of how totally trusting and appreciative I was of many such people. And how they proved the accuracy of that trust. In those days I had no idea that my theology would change so drastically and would place a significant tension on similar relationships. I don't think I am called here to contact such people but to certainly be open to receive any connection with them that should happen in the ordinary course life. I am to never allow any sense of superiority to occupy my attitude toward any person who has had a role in my daily life and work along the way. I actually remember more clearly the people in those early work years 68-74 at Meredosia than I do  many others in later jobs I had.  I was then freshly getting my first attitude toward colleagues and bosses. I am right, the dream says, to acknowledge that those were just as good and healthy experiences as they seemed to be at the time. Yet, I was quite unconscious and naive in so many ways but such people were giving my unconscious opportunity to project some of the values that are timeless and always to be approved....friendship, fellowship, collegiality, good relations with authority figures and superiors. I experienced all that in these and similar relationships. My guess is that what they experienced as one of my strongest attributes was my sincerity. It is also right for me to recognize that quality in myself. It is especially good to see some sense of humor coming from me in this dream.

Finally, I see myself relating well to students, even ones who are potentially trouble makers.(I've had many dreams where this is not the case but where the class is totally out of control. I've worked hard to see the meaning of those horror dreams) The dream teaches me that a 'desire to learn' is one the highest and most needed attributes among humans. This is an attitude of curiosity about what is real and true whether it be in nature, science, philosophy, religion or one's inner life. I think my 'desire to learn' was much greater than I consciously was aware at that time. And I was totally unconscious that my desire to learn would eventually focus on inner reality and its connection to religion and psychology/spirituality. Now my latest and maybe last kind of semi-formal learning activity is a completely self chosen , mostly private, attempt to listen carefully to the voice of the unconscious through my dreams. Somehow the early adult work years that this dream highlights were a prerequisite to such a final focus, as was the other work to follow and each of my family relationships. The dream says for me to greatly honor and respect the foundation and formations of my life and the human and Sacred influences that made my development not just possible but literally forced it out of me. The motivation for this blog is to share such things.

Another attitude the dream source is underscoring is that I cease any sense of being in competition with anyone who has been formative in my life. D.H. surely was a mutual friend, teacher colleague and church co-worker who taught me the meaning of fair and developmental competition. The dream says there is literally nothing that deserves to be considered an issue that is any longer worth 'fighting about'. There is no 'wall of separation', if there ever really were in such relationships. The 'collective unconscious' seems to always have the power to 'tear down walls of separation" and reunite that which has been separated by ego consciousness and rational thought. There are only walls of support and areas of light(the terrarium) regarding these formative relationships. Such relationships and their impact has exactly served their positive purpose. That is far more valuable than any differences in religion or politics that may still exist between me and such friends of the past.

I think it was necessary that I was able at some point to risk continuing such valuable relationships on the alter of a 'greater consciousness' in order for me to truly have them in the end. The hard words of Jesus that we can 'love God more than family, friends and ego-self' is still the actual truth(It is just extremely important what our image of God is.) It is also true that by a  sacrifice of the smaller ego-will to our larger personality, the Self and  the demands of the collective unconscious, we actually lay a much fuller claim to such high values of life and love. Carl Jung went to great length to show that this is the attempted central spiritual meaning of the ancient Eucharist, especially as expressed beautifully in the Catholic Mass.

This actual learning area depicted  in the dream had an excellent quality about it, vibrant and lighted . More so than the dream shows it to be. Maybe the darkness and black floors  refers more to my low level of consciousness of life and love at that time and to my very average skills and intelligence. Underneath the 'black surface' of the floor I think I recall was a nearly permanent hard and bright terrazzo stone floor?  I would guess it is much the same now as it was when it was new and when I was one of the first teachers to walk on it. We were all proud of our new school facility.

I think I knew these things before this dream but I would not have made such a prominent issue of them as the dream source insists. This, unlike many dreams, is an 'easy' dream to think about and stirs only gratitude. Jim (edited July 17,2011)