1. I was in the passenger side of a yellow large open van. The driver was a young female with pigtails. We both heard something coming through the back door. It made a frightening sound. She looked back with a horror expression on her face but continued to drive.
2.Another image of a female with pigtails and dressed in a yellow dress. Someone was trying to claim someone else's experience of a person as their own. The female figure explained that each of us experience others in a very unique way. We should pay attention to our actual experience of other people, not what someone else may think of them.
3. I am walking up a beautifully constructed marble stair case. It winds back and forth as it moves up and there is no end in sight. It is not made of stairs but is rather a sloping spiraling pathway upward. I am alone but content, assured and expectant of a good journey.
4. An object the shape of a phallus with testicles is wrapped neatly in brown paper and is tied to the top of a new unused charcoal grill.
REFLECTION: These images came as I drifted back to sleep mid morning after being up and around for several hours. I watched a riveting movie on HBO until 1:30 AM last night. I seldom watch a movie. The title was The Secret Life Of Bees. I was deeply moved by it as it carried me through a wide range of emotions. I think these dreams may have been somewhat stimulated by that experience. The movie starred the teen Dakota Fanning and actress Queen Fatisha. It was about a young girl who had accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old and the effects of this trauma coupled with an enraged father. She ran away and lived with a family of black women who ran a successful honey farm in the South. This movie was a love story at several levels. I was touched that 'love' was shown in its several aspects well represented by the three primary Greek words for love. It demonstrated the earthiness and ecstatic passion of Erotic love, the faithfulness of Agape and the comfort and acceptance of Phileo. I was very aware of how these overlapped both in examples of couples loving and also the relationships among these women living together. There was deep personal tragedy being experienced as all were finding ways to 'know by experience' that they were capable of giving and receiving love in these manifold ways. With the movie, a cultural creation, being connected to this dream I would take this to be a dream designed not only to shape my personal consciousness but applicable to our American cultural situation.
 |
| Movie- Secret Life Of Bees |
I am very tired of these dream reports. But I think they are helping me through a difficult time. The adjustments to resigning from the three churches, then Bev's death have still been some threat to my emotional well being. I also have constant concern about how each of my children are doing with their loss. As unexciting as dream journaling can sometimes be it gives me an inner message to ponder each day. I still read the Bible but a dream is a far more personal experience and I would say, at my time of life, also a more challenging spiritual reflection than a Bible reading generally provides. I think the dreams I have captured these past six weeks or so have been inner experiences that help keep me grounded and calm and not drawn into more serious anxiety or depression. But my children may have no such a discipline to fall back on. I will comment on these dream images. At age 65, this dream series may be an important part of preparing me consciously for the next, maybe final, long stretch of my mortal life.
1. The female, taken as an anima presentation, is girlish. The anima's pigtails in both anima images are a reminder 'she' is timeless and does not grow old. She is expressing real fear but the picture is nearly like a cartoon, eyes bugged out and foot on the accelerator. So it is in a way being humorous about very real threats to life and well being. I have mentioned a few personal fears and threats above. There have been few times these past 26 years when there has not been something for me me to be frightened about. The dream acknowledges this reality of life and suggests to keep a sense of humor and to 'keep moving.' For 25 years at least yellow school buses have recurred in my dreams, sometimes a whole convoy of them. This has been a positive symbol of 'good things coming.' I have taught school for 12 years during my work career and was working often in a school context for another 11 years so school buses loader with children are a strong image for me. I have also walked by parked school buses in the same school lot for the past 30 years several times a week. A school bus symbolizes continuous learning and youthfulness of heart. Buses can carry a very large payload of any number of good and needed resources. It's most precious cargo is children. This yellow van has no positive cargo except the two riders. In fact it carries some frightening and threatening problems at the present. But notice they are not actually resident in the van so are only a threat.
2. The anima again is reminding and teaching me a foundational principle of living fully and responsibly. I must take my own experience seriously. I've had much unexpected inner and outer experiences this last quarter century. Some of it has been so unusual that I have shared it with very few people. I am tempted constantly to take the attitude that ,' It has all been a costly mistake. I have been deceived by forces other than good ones. I have experienced a serious pathology of the mind and spirit.' The anima is saying to beware of that trap. Yes, be self critical and question every new idea before embracing it but by all means Do Not Deny Or Belittle The Inner And Outer Experiences that are your life. It warns of not being overly influenced by how others think of an individual but make my own assessment based on true personal experience. Also, I think a key application of this is my experience of God. All cultural religious paths began with direct experience of the sacred. But most religion becomes over time only something that is 'passed down'. There is much that we can receive by it being passed to us from others but I think humans are designed to have our religion be anchored in first hand experience, not one where we are simply taught to believe. I always must return to the 'dream' as the primary place to expect a direct interaction with the Sacred, with God. All individuals have this individualized access to the Spirit but how few in our day take it seriously? What kind of culture enhancing and saving dreams would people in great power roles have if they were open to them? This dream is saying to take ones own inner and outer experiences seriously. For out of this are the ' issues of your life.' Personal truth is found no other or better place or way.
 |
| Winding Upward Marble Path |
3. The solid marble path is guiding me to newer heights. It has no steps so it is more of 'a way' than any rote steps or recipes or dogma. This image is a positive one depicting where I am. I am following ' a way'. It leads upward which means spiritual progress ,yet is anchored deeply into the rock of the earth. So I'm not apt to have my 'head in the clouds' but grounded in the practical meanings of life. Each of us is a creature of the spirit and of the earth. This image captures the importance of both. Marble is rock that has come from the earth and has been polished by techniques of human consciousness and technology. Our lives are earthy and need human consciousness in touch with the Spirit to render them works of art, beauty and wholeness. This same image is even more applicable to humanity as a whole than to any individual.
4. The source of dreams does like to startle from time to time. I've never had any such image quite like this in my dreams. The dream source loves to give you something that you know has to be kept secret. ..something embarrassing or risque. This at first seems to suggest some kind of male mutilation but that is only to get my attention. We have a male genital wrapped in brown paper on a new unused charcoal grill. Obviously the source of my dreams keeps saying in many ways that human sexuality is very important to the meaning and progress of living fully and consciously. What can the symbol be saying? For sure more than I can know right now but since it is given to me it should mean something. It is wrapped in 'brown paper.' This is earthy.
 |
| Religious Phallic Images Representing Good Health..@3000BCE |
Sexuality is an earthy experience and aspect of our humanity. It involves wetness with smells, tastes and total body sensations. It is quite the opposite of proper, programmed and controlled. But the dream insists it should never be considered as foreign, nasty or not fully a part of who we are. Sexuality has regrettably been split off from western people's practical definition of themselves. Many think of sexuality as something they do rather than primarily something they are. If this were clearly understood individuals would realize the great spiritual harm they do with negative judgments of the meaning of homosexuality. The fact that any of us would make judgments about the morality of something we admit we have zero personal understanding of demonstrates just how presumptuous and 'god almighty' we are capable of being. This is one of the misguided notions behind most homophobia. To many the male or female genitals are something disgusting, repulsive, without spiritual value, ungodly. It simply should not be so the dream says. Here male sexuality, not literally the genitals, needs to be 'cooked and warmed up.' It is presently considered far too 'raw' in our cultural consciousness. Human sexuality has never yet become the warm and ingested experience that it is capable of being. It has yet 'to be cooked' to make it fully human and thus fully 'digestible and delightful' as a part of the whole Self. The process of 'cooking' is a metaphor for making something more fully conscious. The dream shows the full meaning and high value of human sexuality still waits on a 'new grill' to be discovered and experienced by humans. This is the opposite of the meaning behind the phrase 'raw sex' which is precisely what the dream is saying needs to finally be transcended by humans. The opposite of 'raw' is 'cooked'. Sexuality is intended to be a wonderful feast where the Spirit and the Flesh come totally together as a unity. Their differences and oppositeness are transcended through the fullness o f love potentially experienced in human sexuality. The dream is desiring and predicting that male (And implied female. This is a man's dream.) human sexuality is now ready to enter a new dimension of human spiritual evolution. Something that is so close to us all , yet that also can seem so foreign and strange, has yet to come into its fullness. It has yet to be commonly known and experienced as the avenue through which the love of God and human is to be more fully realized than ever before and in ways that we have never imagined possible. It is 'tied down.' The forces determined to 'cook' the symbol of sexuality are determined that it happen. It is as if to say, ' is not getting away this time around', as perhaps it has at other times in human developmental history. Jim Hibbett
No comments:
Post a Comment