1. I was continuously encouraged to plait or weave three long strands of hair on a human unknown and ancient head. Of course this strikes me as so strange and so 'other,' which is a main reason modern people reject their dreams outright. They do not realize that for the dream to serve its purpose of broadening personal consciousness it must move against the conscious ego's attitudes and ideas. I did finally begin to do this three strand weave and the dream subsided.
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| The Bible is generally critical of 'braided hair.' |
2. I had taken some kind of public transportation to my friend Barry W.'s home and office. I was aware that one of my brothers was also present but not active in the dream. Barry W. in the dream is a middle age dentist.(this happens to be what my brother, Barry Hibbett's, situation was when he died 15 years ago. Barry W. is a pharmacist in actual life.) I was there to get a tooth filled and then he and I were going to some social event together. Before he began his work on me I looked at him very close face to face and I said, 'The thing for us to do at this point is to be..." and Barry completed my sentence, " the best dentists we are capable of being." We seem to both know how central this understanding was to our lives being successful. Then, in a most real experience, I let him do the tooth filling work on me. I could smell the chemicals in the room and I could feel the details in my mouth as he worked. I needed to swallow and he encouraged me to let his assistant suction my mouth instead and that worked fine. Finishing, he asked me to not bite down on the filling for a short while. We then immediately put our jackets on and headed out on our trip together.
REFLECTION: As I live with these images I feel I’m being drawn back to my personal and also cultural/religious roots. I guess this is to have me not forget things and images that should be kept alive in my heart. The first dream is more collective. The human head was not any person I knew but of 'humans' in general. The head was ancient and so collective. I’m to create a three-fold or Trinitarian weave on the head of humans in general. This reminds me that the idea of 'Trinity' is rooted deeply in the collective 'mind' or 'head' of Western human beings. The early Christian leaders were the recipients of a raised consciousness regarding the embedded archetype and it became perhaps the most central dogmatic expression of historic Christianity. All Christian thinkers have acknowledged this idea is not something that was found by only objective thought or one that is central to the Christian scripture. This indicates that it came from a 'source beyond' ego consciousness and in ways deeper than scripture. It shows that a natural kind of revelation was active during these early centuries of the Christian Church.
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| Assumption Of Mary To Heaven.. 1666 |
Jung saw this same kind of revelatory process happening when in the early fifties the Catholic Church certified the dogma that was practically long-time present in Catholic thought of the 'Assumption of Mary.' The painting here was early 17th century. The earliest existing written description of 'Mary's Assumption To Heaven' entitled The Book Of Mary's Repose dates to the third century nearly paralleling the origin date of the Trinity dogma itself. This is an example of how our concept of time is nearly meaningless in the world of the Collective Unconscious. This dogma in effect , for Catholics, placed a 'fourth' in the Godhead. That fourth is female, fleshy and earthy. This archetype becoming in our day the 'Assumption of Mary', thus of the feminine, earth, and the dark was in church paintings and writings centuries before it became an outer concrete dogma. It also shows how the Collective Unconscious somehow, without totally destroying our sense of human will, contains the 'future' of the world. Though Jung argues that such a Quarternity is pushing itself to be a more whole description of the Godhead for post modern times, still the idea of Trinity remains active in the processes of inner and outer human life. Many have observed that the 19th century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel's central theory of 'thesis, antithesis, and synthesis' is an intellectual trinitarian view of reality and describes many of the changes in human affairs; whether it be social change, economics , government or the path to greater personal and collective human consciousness. The Trinity concept has been extremely important in nearly every aspect of human learning as well as a central dogma of the religion that has fueled Western Civilization more than any. The Christian Trinity no doubt paved the way for the objective, scientific view of reality that began to flower in the Renaissance and came to full bloom in the Age of Reason. Thus this dream has me weave a Trinity that comes right out of the collective human head, where it lay dormant all along in the Collective Unconscious. This dream is a good summary of where we are culturally and religiously in the West and how we got here.
The second dream takes me to my personal past by playing with the names of a best youthful friend and my next oldest brother. It also plays with the profession of dentistry which is what I first chose to be my life's work. After one quarter of work in dental school I was subject to what remains to me a very irrational force which led me to toward the professions as science teacher and Christian counselor and pastor. My friend and I strongly agree on the timeless wisdom:... 'whatever your hand takes up do it with all your might' or 'whatever you do in word or deed , do it all in the name of the Lord' or 'whatever you are doing, give it your best.' These are all ways of saying what my friend and I were convinced of in the dream. This is a central command of human living. Yielding my mouth to my friend’s professionally trained hands is an example that, in the end, we humans must place a huge trust into each others' hands. In a very real way the trust that we have in the heart and efforts of humans, wherein lies the image of God, is parallel to the clearest trust that we may rightfully have in God. Humans and God are not at all 'other and separate'
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| Trusting The Dentist |
but are opposite sides of the same reality. This being a call to reflect on my roots is shown that I was aware that one of my six bothers, each of whom I have adored from childhood on, is present.(With the addition of an older step brother, James David, when I was 13 years old there came to be 'eight' brothers in all. Eight is a very fine number of wholeness.) That my good friend and I are on a mutual trip to some kind of gathering of others is an image to remind me that whatever personal journey and path I have been placed on to faithfully follow , I am also marching in some unseen step with my human brothers and sisters of all times and places. Perhaps my friend and I are headed to a grand celebration of the 'Quarternity of The Sacred' which the writings and paintings of orthodox Christianity indicate we have been moving toward for at least seventeen centuries. This reminds me that we all do live this life in the presence and support of a 'great cloud of witnesses.'
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