Dream.. Oriental Scene
I was present and welcomed into the
private life of an oriental extended family. I was aware I was a
stranger to this situation and was careful to not offer opinion
regarding the ritual-like behaviors they were participating in. I
made an effort to be supportive to the patriarchal leader of the
group. At the end of the dream a beautiful anima figure dressed in a
fitted purple dress appeared and took a back seat in the area. She
was softly smiling and seemed very pleased with how I was handling
myself. That meant a lot to me.
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| Oriental Anima Figure |
Dream..Church Group Urinal
I was a part of a church group on a bus
trip. We stopped at a very nice store and restaurant. I went to the
restroom. While standing at a urinal a female came in and I was
somewhat startled. She said, " It's OK. This is a gender neutral restroom." Then she took a seat on a toilet behind a screen but
very near me. I felt comfortable and glad that men and women could
be so objective and practical to use the same facilities. Obviously
neither of us was experiencing or choosing to allow this to be a
'sexually' stimulating event. It was the farthest thing from my mind.
It struck me as a strong step in cultural sexual maturity and a
much needed kind of respect between the sexes. Her(probably an anima
figure) assuring me that it was 'OK' set me at ease and expressed a
confidence she had in me about my capacity to be responsible and
respectful, the opposite of voyeuristic. And I was especially
pleased that the church people I was with were comfortable with this
and sort of 'leading the way' in this reasonable social change.
REFLECTION: I
do not think the second dream is predicting some great move for
such shared restroom facilities or giving that as some essential ethical goal. It is far deeper than that. It reflects an attitude that is more mature and spiritually/psychologically advanced than many people are ready for or comfortable
with. I see the dream more importantly pointing toward a greater maturity between the
sexes. The recent steps of making men and women, gays, straights, transgendered and
lesbians able to serve side by side in our armed forces reflect a
real world present change of the type the dream is highlighting. A recent survey says that over 50% of Illinoisans are supportive of equality of marriage, up more than 10 % from two years ago. Along with many other 'anima' dreams I've had, I think these dreams
are pointing to a collective change for which our culture is overly
pregnant and ready to give birth. I will attempt to explain below.
The
female anima figure, so common in modern dreams including my own,
is giving approval to what is going on in both dreams. This is very
important to me and I think to our culture. The anima, according to
Jung and also confirmed in my repeated dream experience of 'her', is a
connection of the human ego consciousness to the world of the
Collective Unconscious. 'She' represents the voice of the world of
the Spirit, of God. 'She' shows herself in many ways and with many
faces. She can never be fully comprehended anymore than, with a little
thought, we would positively know an omniscient God remains always beyond the
grasp of our human ego and intelligence. No mortal ever holds God in
his hands. It is a great illusion to think if we have a word for something we must also have an understanding of it.
In
the first dream 'her' dress and shapeliness is a reminder of the the
importance of sensory instinct and pleasure. 'She' would be quick
to warn of getting caught up into sensuous pleasure at the cost of
the responsibilities demanded of human living, but for humans to to
deny or oppress any natural instinct( as we do continuously) is to
cut off the source of life and passion, in short to cut off the path
to fuller human spiritual/psychological development. In the second
dream 'her' presence reminds that the conflicts and the
misunderstandings between the masculine and feminine (also between East and
West pictured in the first dream) principles of life is something
that is still in the process of being resolved at both inner and
outer levels of human life. Any philosophy or religion which thinks
these opposites have ever been properly balanced in recorded human
history fools themselves. There is a way the world can be that has
not yet been reached but is now near at hand. The union of feminine and masculine life principles, yin and yang, has always been pointed to as a highest goal of conscious
human life, but never has the goal been reached and experienced by men
or women in general, as a way of being in such harmony, in any culture.
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| 'One Flesh' Modern Sculpture |
I
think of how Genesis invokes the possibility of ' man and woman'
potentially truly becoming 'one flesh' and the apostle's
pronouncement that 'in Christ there is no male or female.' These
were statements of light in very dark places. Such statements came
from the pens and mouths of people who were living in cultures that
did not well reflect such realities at all, whether the patriarchal Hebrew
society or the male-dominated churches of the apostle Paul. But they
came as revelations pointing to a new day and time when such goals
could actually become the common human experience. We tread
closely to that time now. And it is just in time before we humans
self destruct in one of many possible ways too horrible to imagine.
Modern
dreams such as this one are saying, with no less authority than the
'anima' , that humanity is on the threshold of a major leap toward a
union of the 'male and female' as foundational life principles
resulting in expressions and experiences in the actual mutual love
life experience of real human men and women. This would be
nothing less than a breakthrough in the quality of love in the
world. The dreams predict that what will be saving humanity, in all
its present polarizations animosities, is a rise in the level of the
collective ego consciousness where such religious goals of
humankind as genuinely 'loving each other' will be realized as never
before possible.
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