Warning: Sexually explicit dream images--Freud first observed that the unconscious frequently brings up sexual images. So much that Freud tended to sexualize the Unconscious and consider sex the central driving principle of human unconscious life. The Unconscious continues today to refer to sexuality indicating that we humans tend to repress or deny the importance of its place in human life. Any presentation of dreams would be very incomplete without including ones with obvious sexual image content. I would remind the reader that all Sacred texts carry the theme and images of human sexuality including the Bible. We just tend to not notice it or focus on it due to a common uneasiness. A dream insists we focus on what we need to focus on, which is not always what is comfortable or familiar to us. Much of the reason Jung broke with Freud is he believed the Unconscious was friendly and helpful, rather than only a repository of what is negative and wrong with human life. He believed that not just the negative and life destructive archetypes are present there but also the positive creative ones that hold the key to solutions problems facing a person or a culture. Also Jung saw sexuality as very important but only one aspect of the erotic psychic/spiritual energies that drive human inner development. I will share this very personal and I think important dream. If you have read my previous dreams on this blog you may be noticing that some images repeat themselves in different ways as though the dream source is helping me 'get' the importance of its message to me.
1. I was the appointed leader to help some youth prepare meals for seniors. This was to be a program. I was trying to take feedback from everyone as we planned a menu, set up preparations etc. They were enthusiastic but needed more structure than I was able to give. There was one pretty adult woman who seemed very capable and I was allowing her to take the lead with suggestions thinking she could be the primary leader. But suddenly she became less involved and I realized we were not making timely necessary decisions and there was no progress. Time was running out, the first meal was to be served soon. Seniors were even arriving. I was EXTREMELY frustrated and saw the whole project becoming a failure.
I was so bothered by this dream that on waking I asked for another dream that would help calm my inner turmoil and offer some encouragement. This is what came:
2. There were three thin crude looking heavy steel rods. Suddenly they began to move toward each other. They lined up parallel to each other then dramatically melded into each other forming one stronger and thicker rod. This rod then became an erect human phallus held by a human hand..
REFLECTION: Freud was at least correct that the unconscious very often speaks in sexual imagery. That should not surprise us that God would refer to sexuality so often since it is the way He chose to populate the species and to offer humans likely the single most ecstatic experience in their life. It is also likely the strongest psychological/spiritual force within a human being and the easiest to get misused and misdirected.
This dream must be primarily a Trinity dream. The formers of the Christian Trinity(There are many other trinities.) viewed the idea of 'three in one' as a dynamic of Sacred spiritual life, not just an irrational thing that people should confess they believe. These men were drawing from the philosophical thinking of their time, not primarily interpreting scripture. They also had pressure to show that Christianity was monotheistic even though it spoke of more than one God personality. The collective unconscious became very active with them in their reflections and they arrived at the dynamic symbol of the Trinity. They claimed that in the Trinity somehow the image of 'three being one' described the dynamics of creation and the continuing and sustaining of divine life., like the very heart of God. Both Paul Tillich , theologian , and Carl Jung,medical psychologist, emphasized how essential- thus theologically and psychologically 'true'- the Trinity is. That it was the exact symbol needed to balance human consciousness at the beginning of the the first millennium CE.
This dream affirms the Trinity as a spiritual reality by the way the three rods 'miraculously' and 'irrationally' come together to form one. The startling surprise then of the rods becoming a human phallus is driving home the point that the present day interpretation of the Trinity has become a thoroughly masculine experience and reality. So much so it can be represented by an engorged human penis. This is not a pretty or balanced image for a dynamic that is suppose to symbolize the full heart of reality of both physical and spiritual life. The dream is saying it is no longer a balancing symbol but a very one-sided and unbalanced view of the life of God and Human. The erect penis implies the masculine Trinity is searching and yearning to be completed by the female half of reality. This dream affirms what Jung wrote about the incompleteness of the Trinity and the push by the 'collective unconscious' to transform it into a Quarternity. The missing component would embrace what has been left out of the Trinity.... the female, the earth, matter, dampness and Eros to name the apparent primary ones. The Trinity has become so spiritualized it has lost touch with the earth and the female beginnings of all that is.
Remember the second dream came after I asked for help to relieve my terrible frustration as an appointed leader to help youth assist the elderly, two vulnerable parts of humanity. I've come to believe from MANY other dreams that when I am pictured as a frustrated teacher or leader , this is a reflection of the flaw or incompleteness in the Godhead, in the Sacred, the suffering in God. (This does not mean I am God, as it may sound out of context, but that the dream source is helping me see an aspect of God so that I might understand and be empathetic. So in the first dream it is not me personally that is a frustrated leader, though I have often been in that actual role; but that God, as now interpreted by our culture and as dream two shows represented by a Trinity, is an ineffective symbol of the Sacred for present day humanity. So when I asked for a more encouraging and 'successful' dream the unconscious brought forth a remarkable Trinity, not diminishing its reality and strength, but showing it as not adequate alone to guide humanity into the 21st century and beyond. And it makes clear that the single most essential element that must take its full and equal place in the Godhead is the feminine principle. The male principle is pictured as now too central and yearning and waiting for the female to be added to it.
The masculine principle that has driven Western Civilization is one that seeks control, objectifies the parts of the world above the whole, supports non-mutual relationships among humans and works from a 'me and mine' over ' you and yours.' These attitudes are dominant in most of our political, social, economic and religious systems and institutions. These when balanced with their opposites are not intrinsically bad but we have reached a very dangerous imbalance over the centuries. Encouragingly, our secular culture and to some extent the religions have been steadily pushing toward elevating the feminine principle, and actual women, for more than fifty years. But the dream is saying a new conscious symbol of God has still not been ushered in. Such a symbol, which can only come by our being open to the source of symbols, the Collective Unconscious, will be experienced as a Quarternity with the feminine mutually included. Also we are seeing outer evidence that more respect is being extended in ever so slight degrees, not only to the feminine, but the earth, matter in general(science has helped develop this area), and the Eros aspect of human/divine love. All of these would be a part of the '4th' in a Quarternity image of the Sacred.
The woman in the first dream is an anima figure. She shows how much she has to offer but she refuses to take over the work of my human ego consciousness or of the Sacred's need to become more conscious. She is truly a 'help-mete' and not a usurper of human consciousness or of the Godhead. Her role is to bring forth the new contents from the collective unconscious and make them available to human consciousness. Human consciousness must then be responsible for the work of integrating and applying this new symbolic information. Such work and increased consciousness by humans results in a growth and healing in the internal conflict of God. The erect phallus in the 'hands' of human consciousness again shows that this new understanding must be integrated and applied to all parts of human life by responsible human consciousness. Humanity now has the male like forceful strength 'in hand' to be a mutual co-creator with God in bringing in a 'new creation', an expanded consciousness of the human/sacred life and a Quarternity symbol for the Godhead. This is the kind of process and work I feel I have been guided to engaged in, with much frustration and little support or progress, for twenty five years.
These dreams make strong sense to me and they surely seem placed appropriately together. Later today as I was so aware of what seems like a kind of senseless suffering that I experience on several fronts that this may also be reflective of the suffering of God. Both human and Sacred must have periods where the suffering seems unbearable in its quality and duration. Sometimes whole communities of people experience such insane suffering( Such as when groups are victims of slavery, genocide, abuse, war, or other repressions and oppressions.) or it can be individual suffering. Such times are captured by the Christian symbol of the cross as creativity emerging from suffering. My religious heritage has taught me well to anticipate resurrection as the movement that must always follow such suffering. The erect human Phallus has been found across all cultures to symbolize creative 'resurrection' in its detailed physical formation from being 'soft and down.' to 'rigid and up.'
The dream places this in 'human hands.' So I take this as a collective dream applicable to my culture, not just me personally. This is a key reason I am motivated to share such seemingly very personal material after keeping it all private for so many years. I am to allow this dream to encourage me(which is what I asked for) for a brighter future, personally and for the culture and species I am a part of. I am more aware of this needed dynamic from Trinity to Quarternity as a result of this dream. It makes makes more personal sense to me than it did before. I think this dream is an experience of a Quarternity type archetypal symbol of the Godhead and the hope it seeks to engender in the human heart. You can see this dream is not centered on sexuality per se but uses the powerful dynamics of sexual energy to address the problem that is alive in our culture's dominant image of God.
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