[This is a revised version of ED13(10) resent on 10-13-06 which includes the
World Dreams Peace Bridge review]
E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
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E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Volume #13 Issue #10
October 2006
ISSN# 1089 4284
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Electric Dreams:
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
Cover:
http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
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C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
Richard Wilkerson
++ Global Dreaming News
Harry Bosma
++ Cover “Secret Hand”
~and~ Nightmares Fuel My Art
by J. Myztico Campo
++ Column: An Excerpt from the Lucid Dream Exchange
Lucy Gillis – Editor
Arthur Gillard interviews author Robert Augustus Masters.
++ Article: The New Age of Pisces
Linda Lane Magallón
++ Column: The View – World Dreams Peace Bridge
Month’s summary
Kathy Turner
++ Dreams: “Moving On”
~and~
“Red Potato Woman”
Stan Kulikowski II
SPECIAL NIGHTMARE SECTION FOR HALLOWEEN
++ Column: The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
DreamRePlay with David Jenkins, PhD
++ INFO: Nightmares: an Introduction
Richard Wilkerson
++ Article : Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of Dreaming
Richard Wilkerson
++ DREAM SECTION: Kat Peters-Midland
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D E A D L I N E :
Send articles and news in by Oct 20th, 06 for the Nov issue
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Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to
Harry Bosma <
ed-news@...>
Send Articles, news and other items to:
Richard Wilkerson: <
rcwilk@...>
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Editor's Notes
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Welcome to the October 2006 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams
and dreamwork online. (revised 10-13-06)
If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, there are a few e-lists where
Electric Dreams people seems to congregate that might interest you. One is
dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe by going here and registering
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamchatters/
.. and another is the IASD bulletin board. Please, no dreams interpreted
here, just discussion of dreaming and dreamwork topics.
http://www.asdreams.org/subidxdiscussionsbboard.htm
In this issue:
Global Dreaming News editor Harry Bosma, brings you dream news and events
from around the world, online and offline. If you have dream news you want
to get out, please send those to Harry for next month’s publication at
ed-news@...
Lucid Dream Exchange (LDE) editor, Lucy Gillis, regularly shares gems from
her publication with Electric Dreams. In this month’s Excerpt, An Interview
With Robert Augustus Masters By Arthur Gillard Responses (c) Robert Augustus
Masters. From psychedelic nightmares to “psychoemotional theater fleshed out
and broadcast by the mind, constellated around and expressive of certain
feelings, urges, intentions, pulls” this interview will get you ready for
Hallo-ween and all other doors BE-tween.
From the World Dreams Peace Bridge. This month’s View, from Kathy Turner,
review traces just some of the major rhizomic connections the Bridge has
been making: the war on Lebanon and continued destruction of Iraq; weeds and
flowers; dealing with awareness of the sadnesses of others; dreams and peace
events.
Not all is dark on Halloween. Linda Lane Magallón offers some light from the
pumpkin’s eyes in “The New Age of Pisces” where she will free you from the
bewitchment of modern life and show you what the Aquarian Age is really
going to offer.
As the Dream Section is a bit smaller this month, so I’m including two
dreams from Stan Kulikowski II, “Moving On” below ~and~ “Red Potato Woman”
at the end of the Dream Section. Stan often contributes selections from his
unique dream journal. If you have dreams you would like published, please
enter them in the form at
http://dreamgate.com/forms/dream_flow.htm
Our SPECIAL NIGHTMARE area (Halloween tradition at ED) has some resources
for beginners, and challenges for advanced dreamers. See the Nightmares: An
Introduction for resources. Thanks to David Jenkins, PhD., the director of
Berkeley based DreamRePlay for his article on “Nightmare: Getting Beyond the
Climax.”
Besides the basics, I'm including a re-run of "Becoming Nightmare, the
Rhizomatics of Dreaming." This is NOT for beginners, and YOU MUST BE THIS
HIGH to RIDE. This article that looks into the possibility of actually
conjuring nightmares as part of a larger Transgressive Dreamwork project.
Booo!
Dream Section with Kat Peters-Midland: This month’s dream section is short,
but it has some very interesting dreams of a black bird biting, hearing
voices on a haunted pager, digging for gold, and a yellow rattle snake
following…
If you have dreams to share, use the dreamflow form at
www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Janet Garrett archives past issues so you can search out specific articles
and authors in an easy-to-access format. These articles contain a wide range
of information for dreamers and dreamworkers. You can see her work progress
and view hundreds of article on dreams at:
http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Cover by Myztico -
http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
Which includes an article Nightmares Fuel My Art and Bio.
--------------------
For those of you who are new to dreamwork,
be sure to stop by one of the many resources:
http://dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
http://dreamgate.com/dream/library
http://dreamunit.net/news-en/
Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo)
http://electric.dreamofpeace.net/
--------------------
From Planet Dream,
-Richard Wilkerson
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G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S
October 2006
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Email all dream news to Harry Bosma at his special
ed-news@...
address.
Online:
- Premonition Web
- Sawlogs Dreams Now Have Images
- Real Life Log 'Field of Shattered Dreams'
Physical world:
- New York: Latin American Fine Art Exhibition
- California: IASD Call for Presentations
- Berkeley: Dreams and Islam
- Kickoff Event for IASD Bay Area Lecture Series
- Santa Fe: Workshops by Victoria Rabinowe
Reminders:
- Various calenders
- Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog
- Ritual DaFuMu for Peace
* * * ONLINE * * *
---
- Premonition Web
---
Register your dream's and premonitions, visions, without having to go to a
bank. Premonition Web is a dream registry designed to help precognitive
dreamers to monitor what they see and when they see it.
If you want to register your dreams there is yearly fee of £6.00 to pay for
the site, the paperwork (a receipt will be sent to you via post or Email)
and lastly the safe filing of your dreams, which will be kept within the
limits of the Data Protection act 1998. Once you've paid this fee, you can
update your dreams six times throughout the year.
There are also discussion papers offering explanations for premonition
dreaming.
www.premonitionweb.com
---
- Sawlogs Dreams Now Have Images
---
Sawlogs now displays an image next to each dream described at Sawlogs. Along
with a complete site redesign, these images offer a visual component to a
(typically) text-driven experience.
Sawlogs still offers dreamers content analysis statistics based on the
Hall/Van de Castle scales. Describe a dream today and see what happens.
www.sawlogs.net
---
- Real Life Log 'Field of Shattered Dreams'
---
My site basically is a detailing of all of my strange dreams, and also
speculation on what the dreams might mean for me, etc. Eventually I want to
expand the website to include articles on dream interpretation, the meaning
of dreams for our lives, how dreams impact our lives and psychology, and
assorted other topics.
The URL of my site is this:
http://www.reallifelog.com/lostintokyo/
Peter Kaufman
* * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * *
---
- New York: Latin American Fine Art Exhibition
---
Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th St., New York.
Running from October 21 to November 10, 2006
www.Agora-Gallery.com
The upcoming Latin American Fine Art Exhibition will showcase artists
inspired by dreams - Mauricio Toulumsis and Raul Martinez. Reception takes
place on Thursday, October 26th, 6-8 PM.
* Mauricio Toulumsis *
Replete with religious and symbolic significance, Mauricio Toulumsis' images
are inspired by the deeply felt emotion accompanying the exultant belief in
eternal life. Toulumsis' distinctive, stylized portraiture generally depicts
the female as the central figure in the process of life, as the stewardess
of birth and creation. Groups of heavenly matrons, often surrealistic in
semblance, are the proud, powerful and uncannily numinous sovereigns of
Toulumsis' works. The result of 30 years of self-exploration, Toulumsis'
paintings delve into the philosophical search for meaning in life, meaning
in death, and truths about the corporeal and spiritual human. Born in Mexico
City, Toulumsis developed his technical rendering skills while studying
architecture. He has exhibited his work both in Mexico and the United
States.
www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistInvite/Mauricio_Toulumsis.aspx
* Raul Martinez *
In Raul Martinez’s painting, “Self Portrait,” the artist’s hands, turned
inward, are tranquil yet melancholy in their stillness and isolation. The
artist does not show his face, but reveals so much more by sinking his arms
into a milky light. This, Martinez is telling us, is where his art is
created, and where he reveals himself. This palpable mood is also conveyed
in Martinez’s black and white studies of women portrayed within a painterly
environment of light, shadow and motion. Like the artist in his ironically
titled self-portrait, his subjects are physically vulnerable and turned
away, yet we know intuitively the complex emotional landscape of these
women, for Martinez has made it the substance of their surroundings. When he
works in color, sunlight is key to Martinez’s work. Whether contemplating a
dozing figure or capturing the kaleidoscopic impressions of a streetscape,
Martinez uses light as a tool for an exuberant investigation of the isolated
moment. Raul Martinez !
has shown his powerful oil painting throughout Puerto Rico and has recently
been invited to participate in international shows in Valladolid, Spain and
The Hague, Holland.
www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistInvite/Raul_Martinez.aspx
---
- California: IASD Call for Presentations
---
24th Annual Conference
International Association for the Study of Dreams
29 June to 3 July 2007
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California
DEADLINE for submissions — 15December 2006
High quality proposals are invited that explore the conference theme, The
Spirit of the Dream. These may reflect on how the dream offers a source of
wisdom, guidance, information, energy, or creative inspiration to the
dreamer or to the community; and how the relationship with dreams can be
cultivated so that we live lives that are deeper, more creative, and more
meaningful.
http://asdreams.org/2007/
---
- Berkeley: Dreams and Islam
---
I have exciting news regarding the Open Forum in Dream Studies, which will
meet twice this Fall, on Monday September 18 and Monday October 16,
7:30-9:30 pm at the Dream Institute (1672 University Ave., Berkeley,
510-845-1767).
The gatherings will involve a two-part presentation on Dreams and Islam,
facilitated by Malek Yamani. Malek's work centers on the interaction of
Muslim spirituality and Jungian psychology, with a focus on the powerful
dream teachings of the two traditions. In a world that seems to be tearing
itself apart over different religious visions of the divine (you know what
day this is), Malek's perspective offers a refreshing and hope-inspiring
vision of cultural respect and mutual understanding through dreams.
A native of Morocco, a graduate of Sonoma State's Depth Psychology Program,
and currently a student at California Institute of Integral Studies (in
addition to being a globe-trotting Microsoft executive and father of four),
Malek will lead a discussion on topics that I think everyone who works with
dreams in the contemporary world should be part of. Please tell your
friends, colleagues, and students, and I hope to see you there.
Best regards, Kelly
---
- Santa Fe: Workshops by Victoria Rabinowe
---
Offering Workshops in Santa Fe and elsewhere. Weekly Studio classes, every
Tuesday from 1:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Victoria’s Santa Fe Learning Center.
Custom designed courses of study, workshops and retreats for groups,
conferences and professional trainings. Internet “remote” workshop projects
for individuals and groups.
Here are workshops coming up in October. Also visit the website
http://victoriadreams.com/
* THE DREAM AS THE BOOK OF LIFE *
October 3
Remembrance and forgiveness
In Honor of Yom Kippur
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
* MONASTERY DAY; HARVEST / SUKKOT *
OCTOBER 10
Tuesday 10-6:00
Pecos Benedictine Abbey
Call for reservations and directions 505 988-1086
$50. donation to Sister Miriam
For over ten years, Sister Miriam has hosted our dream group in a day of
sculpting our dreams from nature by the beautiful pecos river.
The Festival of Sukkot is intended for all of mankind. It is quite a drastic
transition from the most solemn holidays in our year to the most joyous. It
is a harvest festival and a general thanksgiving for the bounty of our
dreams in the year that has passed.
* THE DREAM IS A CIRCLE THAT NEVER ENDS *
October 17
In honor of Simchat Torah
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
Come, come whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving;
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, come
even if you have broken your vows a thousand times
come - come yet again, come.
-Rumi
* THE NIGHT OF POWER *
October 24
In Honor of Lailatul Qadr
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
The Quran is peace by itself.
The night in which this Divine Book is sent down gives a spiritual luster to
our dreaming hearts and souls.
* WITCHES BREW *
October 31
In Honor of Halloween
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
Fill dream books and journals with spells, incantations and hexes. Call the
wild, dark, hidden side to emerge.
* * * REMINDERS * * *
---
- Various calenders
---
Robert Moss (USA):
http://mossdreams.com/xcalendar.htm
Jeremy Taylor (California):
www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/schedule.html
Nicole Gratton (Canada):
http://www.nicole-gratton.com/calendrier_01.htm
---
- Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog
---
By following Strephon's podcasts you will be engaging in a consciousness
course by experiencing the meaning of the dreams Strephon talks about as he
developed their themes and wisdom aspects.
Strephon Kaplan-Williams is an international expert on dreams and the new
dreamwork, as reflected in his many books over the years. His best seller in
America and other countries has been his The Dream Cards. However, his
dreamwork manuals are the respected classics in the field used in college
and university classes as well as by the general public.
Now in retirement age Strephon gives his podcasts and continues to write new
books.
http://strephonsays.com/
---
- Ritual DaFuMu for Peace
---
The World Dreams Peace Bridge, on the 15th of each month, is holding a
monthly DaFuMu - a collective dream of good fortune - to support peace.
For more information go to:
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly.htm
To join the World Dreams Peace Bridge discussion group, just send an e-mail
to
worlddreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
END NEWS ================================================
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Cover: "Secret Hand"
~and~
Nightmares Fuel My Art
by J. Myztico Campo
http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
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The dream world of nightmares has been fascinating me since I was a child of
five. Some of my earliest recollections of these nightmares were a recurring
dream of being in a very exotic lost land with some of the most magnificent
plants I had ever seen. I would wander this land and witness incredible
natural beauty. But then it would turn dark and I would be chased by man
eating prehistoric creatures most notably a T-Rex. I would run for dear life
until suddenly I would find myself at the very edge of a cliff and I had to
decide my fate quickly. Would I prefer to take a chance at survival and jump
off the cliff or face being eaten alive by a very hungry T-Rex. I would
always choose to jump off the cliff always waking up or shifting into
another dream before I hit the ground. These childhood dreams inspired me to
draw T-rex and other nightmarish creatures on blackboards at school.
Fast forward to my adult years as nightmares became more of a source of
constant inspiration artistically. They serve as portals into the
imagination of fear, shining a light onto the dark corners of the psyche.
Exposing parts of oneself that one may need to confront during their waking
lives. We are living during a time in history that governments and the media
collectively use to exploit the sense of “FEAR” to project onto the masses a
sense of insecurity. To give us the illusion that the only way that we as a
society can be safe from all of the “evil” surrounding us is by allowing
governments to continue eroding our rights and pry deeper into our private
affairs. When in effect in my humble opinion I instinctly sense that these
governmental entities are not only staging many of the events that are
sensationalized in screaming headlines but are reaping the rewards that come
with more control of the masses. This to me is like a recurring nightmare
that we as humanity must be aware of and ultimately wake up to, otherwise
the nightmare will progressively get more sinister and we as sentient beings
will only become institutionalized numbers and chattel for the wealthy to do
with as they see fit.
On the cover of this months issue of “Electric Dreams” my painting “Secret
Hand” is based on a recent nightmare of a secret society of bankers and
militaristic men hell bent on governing the world with their influx of debit
based currency and death dealing devices creating their nightmarish agenda
upon humanity to only benefit their secret society. The hand is symbolic of
behind the scenes deal making, pacts with the devil selling out their souls
for temporary earthly gain of wealth, power and control. I am currently
working on a series of hand gesture art that will help me manifest
humanities need to openly communicate in a more productive and creative way
to help benefit all and not just a few….We can all evolve quicker and more
effectively without these secret societies obstructing the intellectual and
spiritual evolution of humankind. Let us all end this “NIGHTMARE”…
About the Artist; J. Myztico Campo is a Cuban born, NYC raised self taught
Visionary Surrealist whose work has been displayed in various galleries in
the U.S. He has a variety of creative passions besides painting that
involves music/filmmaking/murals/poetry & photography. To see and hear more
of Myztico’s work visit his website:
http://myztico.mosaicglobe.com
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An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange
By Lucy Gillis
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********************************
An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis
This month, Arthur Gillard interviews author Robert Augustus Masters.
An Interview With Robert Augustus Masters By Arthur Gillard Responses (c)
Robert Augustus Masters
Robert Augustus Masters lives and works near Vancouver, British Columbia. He
specializes in cutting-edge integral psychotherapy, counseling, spiritual
deepening, and awakening work. Robert describes himself as increasingly
finding freedom less through transcendence than through intimacy with all
that is, a perspective which illuminates his deeply transformative workshops
and therapy sessions. Some of his recent books include Darkness Shining
Wild: An Odyssey to the Heart of Hell and Beyond: Meditations on Sanity,
Suffering, Spirituality, & Liberation, Divine Dynamite: Entering Awakening's
Heartland, Freedom Doesn't Mind Its Chains: Revisioning Sex, Body, Emotion,
& Spirituality, and The Anatomy & Evolution of Anger: An Integral
Exploration.
For more information, please see his bio at Integral Naked -
http://in.integralinstitute.org/contributor.aspx?id=120 where you can also
listen to an informative and entertaining audio dialog (to listen to the
dialog you simply need to join free for one month). Integral Naked also
hosts a Question and Answer thread with Robert which continues to cover a
lot of territory including dreaming and lucid dreaming:
http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/1910.aspx
Robert's website includes essays, poetry, a free online newsletter and
descriptions of his workshops, therapy and apprenticeship programs:
http://www.robertmasters.com/ Of particular interest is his essay on "An
Integral Approach to Healing" -
http://www.robertmasters.com/Work_Section/integral_part.htm
--------
Arthur: Do you remember your first lucid dream? How old were you?
Robert: I don't remember what was probably my first lucid dream -- in large
part because in my early years I had trouble separating waking state and
dreaming state phenomena -- but I do remember becoming lucid during two
types of dreams that started when I was about 5 or 6. In the first, I would
find myself at the top of a tree or standing at the edge of a cliff....I'd
leap off, feeling ecstatic, totally unafraid of hitting the ground below
(which invariably received me the way that a pillow receives a weary head).
The other type of dream in which I'd become lucid was far from pleasant: In
it, I'd be in my bed, tucked under the covers, feeling a strange chill in
the air (and here I would become lucid), a grey-lit iciness that was very
familiar -- for I had this dream hundreds of times -- and into the room
would come my mother, initially looking like herself, but soon mutating into
a hideous, malevolent creature bearing down on me, trying to tear the covers
from me, at which point I, in heart-thumping terror, would wake up. The fact
that I was lucid did not seem to make any difference; I felt consistently
powerless. Not until I was 8 or 9 did I free myself from this lucid
nightmare: One night, as my monster-mother drew near me, I got up and
attacked her; she fought back, but I persisted, and she faded into the
background. It was the last time I had the dream.
Arthur: Has the nature of your dreams changed over time?
Robert: My dreams have changed as I have changed, and I have changed as my
dreams have changed. My dreaming self and my waking state self have been,
and are, inseparable. Looking at, into, and through what's arising with
undreaming eyes, whether waking or asleep, continues to be both grace and a
discipline; the actual process of selfing (that is, of animating, occupying,
and reconstituting "me") has been and is an object of awareness, however
infrequently, both in dreaming and waking states.
During times of intense dream exploration, I have had an abundance of deep
and amazing dreams. When I became interested in lucid dreaming as a young
adult (23 or so), such dreams arrived quite often; for a while, I'd exploit
their possibilities, but eventually I tired of such adventuring, and more
often than not simply let them go their own course. Sometimes dreams have
arrived that have dramatically altered my life course. For example, when I
was 22, unhappily immersed in a doctoral program that didn't really interest
me, I had a dream of drowning -- a deeply surrendered, blissful drowning --
that led me to, in a matter of just a few hours, to leave my doctoral
studies for good.
Mirror dreams come to mind... As a child, I had a recurring dream of looking
into a mirror and seeing my reflection slide and eddy into freakish
contortions. The face I'd see looked terrified, its horror eloquently
expressed with bizarre flourishes borrowed from whatever had most recently
frightened me, be it an ad for a Frankenstein movie or the witch scene from
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". I knew what was going to happen before I
stared into the mirror, and yet I always looked. The mirror, usually
outlined with a compelling brilliance, dominated whatever room in which I
found it. Only in these dreams did I truly face my fear; in the daytime I
did whatever I could to avoid it.
I had no such dreams (as far as I can recall) as an adolescent, but had
further variations of them arise once I got a bit older. When I was 22, I
had the following dream: I'm at a party, moving from room to room,
socializing. Someone offers me some LSD; without any hesitation, I take it.
Soon the party is blazing with hypervivid colour, crawling with archetypes,
seemingly bursting with untranslatable significance. The walls melt and
writhe. An acid trip. Finally, I move or am moved toward the bathroom. The
ten-foot journey is as hilarious as it's weird; before I complete it, I
realize that I am dreaming. My experiencing seems to be concentric rather
than sequential. The bathroom. As I close the door, I feel very excited and
almost painfully alert. There's a mirror on the wall. I immediately recall
my childhood dreams of looking into a mirror. The mirror beckons, widening.
Looking into it, I see my wide-eyed reflection. Its features wriggle and
shift into a series of faces, some of them incredibly hideous and far from
human. But I'm not afraid, for I know that these visions are LSD-induced. I
continue looking, as my ancient fears parade by, showing their faces. I
relax, settling more and more deeply into my seeing.
Three years later, I had another mirror dream: I'm in a dimly lit house,
feeling very uncomfortable. The mood is both sluggish and sinister. I go
into my room, and lock the door, then enter its bathroom, and look into the
mirror over the sink. My eyes seem to be extraordinarily close together; in
fact, there's no gap between them. I realize that I am dreaming. In the
mirror there is one large eye, between and slightly above the place where my
eyes ordinarily are. Dread and fascination fill me. The eye is a glowing
blue, unblinking, unwavering, and of immense though unexplainable
significance to me. I feel as though I'm drowning in its gaze, which I very
dimly intuit is my gaze. I force myself to look below the eye, at the smooth
pink flesh where my everyday eyes ought to be. For a while I see only skin.
Then, as if through a poorly focused lens, I see my two eyes. They are
firmly and tightly closed. I leave the bathroom. My room is too small. I
decide to leave the dream, and it immediately shatters.
It took me a while to understand why my lucidity in the dream had not
lightened or freed me. Though I'd become aware of the overall dream, I had
been utterly unaware that the self ("me") of the dream was also part of the
dream. My identification with that fearful, isolated "I" kept me feeling
afraid and isolated. My lucidity in the dream had been like a vast moat,
surrounding but not touching the role I had assumed in the dream. The mirror
gave me an opportunity to see what I was doing; the eye in the mirror was an
"I" that saw through me. When I finally noticed my two "regular" eyes in the
mirror, I saw only skin-deep, not seeing that I was asleep to my situation.
Here's another mirror dream, from when I was 48: Becoming aware that I'm
dreaming, I leap up to fly, but fall back, twice. Then I surrender, inwardly
asking to be taken where I most need to go. I'm in the air, a few feet above
some pavement. Suddenly I'm pulled backward and downward at a tremendous
speed, my body almost totally vanishing during my "flight." I land in an
underground, poorly lit room. Its walls are all floor-to-ceiling mirrors,
all equally sized and all bizarrely distorting my reflection. Though fairly
large, the room feels quite compressed. I'm in the middle, afraid but not
panicked.
Slowly, I walk toward one wall, seeing all sorts of mirrored "fragments" of
myself. A dark, eerie, heavy feeling saturates the room. Everything is
sickeningly greyish. I gaze into my reflection's eyes, seeing less of the
hallucinatory than I expected. Then I walk into and through the mirror,
finding myself in an even more compressive space. It's extremely
uncomfortable; if I wasn't still aware that it was a dream, I would surely
escape as quickly as possible.
No exit in sight, though - just claustrophobic greys, amorphous and
hideously alive. I keep moving, as if through jelly - fatly quivering, ever
denser protoplasm - existing both as a dreambody and a disembodied observer.
Finally, I can barely move.
In despair and helplessness, I drop down on my knees, crying and wordlessly
praying, aching for release. As the observer, I see my eyes turned up, my
hands in prayer position in front of my chest, my face deathly pale.
Surrender. Suddenly, I am vaulted into another world, vaguely sensing that I
am in a hospital, watching a group of doctors tending a covered-up patient.
A series of events transpire [which I cannot recall], ending in joy.
In many lucid dreams, I have moved or have been pulled toward places of
luminosity, often dissolving in their radiance. Sometimes, though, I have
gone in the "opposite" direction, going deep into the Earth, into mineral
and dense dark. In the preceding dream, I'm being pulled below the surface.
Let's permit the image of being in the grey, underground room to unfold
itself, to "speak":
When underground, I don't appear to myself as I usually am. When I see
myself reflected all around, I don't appear to be myself.
Wherever I look, I see my reflection, so long as I remain in the centre of
the room. Though there is a lack of illumination when I am underground
looking at myself, there is enough light to see. The ceiling and floor are
the same; above and below are the same underground. I am mirrored from all
around when I am below the surface.
My surface appearance is broken into many components when I am below the
surface. When I remain in the middle, I can see, but am distant from what I
see. Wherever I turn, there I am.
When I leave the middle, thereby decentralizing the space, I can more
clearly see particular reflections. When I no longer occupy the centre, I
can pass through what I am looking at. Stepping through one self-image puts
me behind them all, and this happens when I am below the surface, and am
willing to "face" myself, however unpleasant that might be. When I remain in
the centre, when I am the centre, I am encircled by what I fear.
[Note: I have no explanatory summary for all of the above - its insights are
intrinsic to its totality as an image. It speaks not of one meaning for me,
but of many, from prenatal to transpersonal, each of which could be mined
for more significance.]
Once "I" am through the mirror, things get worse - but did I not ask to be
taken where I most needed to go? Only when I am "decentralized," down on my
knees, no longer fighting my helplessness, does "release" occur. I haven't
so much given up - submission being but a kind of collapse - as surrendered
(surrender being more expansion than collapse), opening to a sacrifice of
self that's anathema to the usual me.
Arthur: What do you see as the nature of dreams - are they models of reality
constructed by a brain unconstrained by sensory input and interaction with
the environment? Are they visits to a subtle energy realm or astral plane?
What do you think of the view, held by some spiritual traditions, that the
dreaming process is similar to what we experience when we die?
Robert: What a question! To me, dreams are the mind's contents made visible
through three-dimensional story-like formats while the body sleeps.
Psychoemotional theater fleshed out and broadcast by the mind, constellated
around and expressive of certain feelings, urges, intentions, pulls.
Self-made, self-starring, self-revealing private motion pictures. The
original home movies, usually forgotten before they're really seen.
Like movies, dreams range from the banal to the sublime. Some films can open
us to unsuspected or dormant dimensions of ourselves; so too with some
dreams. There are movies that can make us look deeply at ourselves while we
watch (and also indirectly participate in) them, just as there are dreams
that serve the same awakening function. Dreams may just be internal noise
(like most of the thoughts we have, or that have us, while "awake"), and
they may also be profoundly relevant harbingers of needed changes. Dreams
can simply be hangovers from the previous day's activities (both outer and
inner), no more meaningful than the random thoughts creating mini-logjams
behind your forehead on a busy day, and they can also be doorways into
unimaginable vistas of being, portals to and from What-Really-Matters.
Dreams don't so much tell us about ourselves, as they are our selves (our
multi-selved selfhood), all dressed-up for the part; various aspects,
dimensions, qualities, elements, and action tendencies that constitute us
intersect and interact with each other, as if they are in fact discrete
entities/things independent of each other. We ordinarily identify with one
of these, dreaming that we are indeed that. This is true not only of
everyday dreams, but also of most lucid dreams.
Prior to truly awakening, we are simply dreaming (including dreaming that we
are not dreaming), whether physically awake or not. This, however, does not
mean that dreams are not real; they are just as real as the self-sense about
which they are arranged. A dream is a real mirage, just like us. The more
real things get, the more dreamlike they seem.
A dream is a story (ranging from simple cartoon to complex myth) that we are
telling ourselves, a story through which we are constructed and
reconstituted. Becoming aware of the actual story doesn't necessarily end
it, but rather simply allows us to participate in it in the best possible
way.
Let's now go into more detail regarding body, self-sense, and dreaming. The
sense of literally being inside our physicality can be extremely convincing.
Not surprisingly, our dreams generally display much of the same sense of
"within-ness." In dreams, our waking-state body is perhaps most commonly
represented - besides as itself - through the metaphors of dwelling-places
and vehicles, with the dream's "I" (or what we might call the dream-ego)
usually appearing more or less as a replica of our waking-state "I,"
ordinarily located inside somewhere, whether in a long-ago living room or
behind the wheel of a suddenly brakeless car.
In our dreams, our body is a perceptual convention, a bit of theater, as
much a prop as anything else in the dreamscape. We could, while dreaming,
view our dream-body as a metaphor, a choice, a creation, but instead we
usually just identify with it in the very same way that we identify with our
physical body in the so-called waking state.
"I," now taking stage as the dream-ego, is still preoccupied with being at
the helm of the body, while at the same time being lost in the dramatics of
the dream, taking everything therein as real. While dreaming, we may engage
in activities that would be impossible or extremely unlikely in the waking
state, yet we - while dreaming - rarely see anything unusual in this. We
look, but usually don't look inside our looking.
As in the waking state, all that will usually alert us - or snap us out of
our trance - is some sort of crisis, a not-to-be-denied intensity of
perceived danger, as perhaps best demonstrated by full-blown nightmares. We
may awaken for a few moments within a nightmare, but ordinarily not so as to
explore and make good use of it - rather, our common intention then is still
to flee, to escape, to get back to sleep or at least into a more comfortable
or secure circumstance.
Even in lucid dreaming we still generally take ourselves to be the "I" of
the dream, regardless of "our" apparent freedom of choice. Much of the
appeal of dream lucidity lies in the possibility of having more power and
control in our dreams. Such power or control can be very useful when
"fleshing out" the intention to turn around to face a dream adversary or
difficult situation we have been fleeing, but not so useful when it merely
reinforces the dream-ego.
In fact, the very desire to be lucid during a dream, to be a somebody who
can lucid-dream, creates the same difficulties as the desire to be awake
during the so-called waking state, to be a somebody who can meditate or be
aware.
The "I" who stars in or centres a lucid dream is actually just part of the
dream, no more than a convincing personification (and embodiment) of the
witnessing or self-reflective dimension of the dream. However, when the
dreamer becomes the object of awareness in the midst of his or her dream,
then the dream itself, at least in my experience, usually can no longer hold
its form, and all its contents dissolve into unmappable, space-transcending
Luminosity.
Short of such dissolution, there is usually some sense of embodiment in
lucid dreaming (although there sometimes may be a sense of being a self
without any body, existing as a point of attention in the dreamscape, a
point that may or may not be personified).
For many years, I experimented with intentionality in lucid dreaming:
jumping from great heights; flying far and wide; dissolving my body;
suffering lethal injuries; traversing space instantaneously; diving deep
into solid earth; passing through walls; letting my body be as malleable as
plastic; meeting various spiritual teachers; having archetypal encounters;
facing adversaries with violence, love, shapeshifting suddenness.
Nevertheless, however unusual or thrilling my lucid dream-doings were, they
were still mostly centered by the very same sense of self around which my
daily activities were generally organized.
After a while, it became more interesting to leave the dream alone, to
simply abide in the midst of it, and see where it took me. Dreaming or
waking, lucid or not, ecstatic or depressed, the work was basically the
same, to simply be as present as possible, uncommitted to - and unidentified
with - the intentions of any particular "I." And what did this do to my
dreambody? Freed it, at least to some extent, from what I "normally" took it
to be, thereby permitting it to more fully be a medium for simply
maintaining relationship with my environment.
Arthur: Do you see consciousness as continuing in some form in deep,
dreamless sleep? Have you ever experienced lucidity in that state, and if
so, what was it like?
Robert: Consciousness continues in deep, dreamless sleep, but without any
form. No objects, no appearances, no self. In this state, we are almost
always unconscious of being conscious. Nevertheless, we can be awake during
deep, dreamless sleep, as various sages have taught. I've had direct
experience of this, though it was not the "I" of everyday discourse. The
phenomenology of this is without sensation, feeling, cognition, or any
temporal or spatial sense, bearing no discernible characteristic other than
that of unbound, featureless, effortlessly sentient presence. No-thing-ness.
Here is what I have experienced as the state of deep, dreamless sleep
spontaneously metamorphosed into the state of dreaming sleep: First, out of
nowhere and nothing, there arose colour and movement, without any
discernible shape. Then vague forms began appearing, diaphanous and softly
swirling, taking on a bit more solidity. When I - in the form of alert,
undivided attention - "entered" this nebular fluxing of colour and
shape-making, it almost immediately became more densely three-dimensional
and vividly real in a conventionally sensory manner, literally taking on
substance all around me, including as a dream-body closely resembling my
physical body.
Arthur: What role have lucid dreams played in your spiritual life, or your
life in general? Have you, for example, had insights or spiritual
breakthroughs in dreams? Has a lucid dream ever anticipated developments in
your consciousness or understanding which occurred later in your waking
life? Have you had shifts in perspective or values as a result of lucid
dreaming?
Robert: Lucid dreams have played a big role in my life. Being in them and
experimenting in them taught me firsthand that I am more than my body, more
than my mind, and more than my sense of self. Facing difficulties and
challenges while lucid dreaming has deepened and stabilized my ability to
face difficulties and challenges while in the waking state. Deep insights
and realizations have often arisen during lucid dreaming. I remember a dream
I had when I was 34: I'm lucid and flying to meet a spiritual teacher I
love. I am being knowingly propelled by my desire to see him, my movement
being so fast that I cannot see any scenery. A few seconds later I find
myself sitting in a room in the upper floor of an unknown stone building. I
am waiting, but without any tension. There's a window in the room, and the
air is very fresh, and the colours remarkably bright. I feel something
touching my lower torso, and look down. To my surprise, I see a baby body,
no more than a month or two old. I am holding him, cradling him, already in
love with him. He meets my eyes, and I leave the dreaming state in ecstasy.
The next morning, I told my partner at that time that I'd met our son; prior
to this, we'd had no desire whatsoever to have children, but within days had
mutually and easily arrived at the decision to conceive him. A few months
later, she was pregnant. Six months into her pregnancy, I had the following
lucid dream: I'm in a unknown yet very familiar room. A boy, perhaps six
month old, is sitting on the floor gazing at me. As I look into his eyes, I
say, "Hi, Dama." Before this we had not considered any name for our
baby-to-be, and nor did we know that that little one would be a boy. Three
months later Dama arrived. He did not cry once during his delivery and
arrival; a short time later, he was in my arms, gazing at me as he had in my
dreams.
Arthur: Could you tell us how you incorporate dreamwork into your therapy
sessions or workshops? How does your approach relate to the various schools
of therapy (gestalt, Jungian, etc.?) Are there any examples you'd like to
share?
Robert: I frequently incorporate dreamwork into my session and groupwork,
using a number of approaches. I may use Gestalt, having you act out the
relationship between various parts of your dream; I may use psychodrama,
having you act out a part of your dream; I may use bodywork, having you
deeply experience and openly express different emotions and states that
arose in your dream; and I may use all of these, and more, in working with
one dream at one time, making room for you to really "get" your dream, and
not necessarily in just one way.
An example: A woman in a group for women with cancer describes a dream in
which she is being pursued by a very large bear. She is clearly frightened
by it, and awakens before it reaches her. I talk with her a bit about her
dream -- she is nice to the extreme, meek-voiced and energetically small --
then ask her to get on all fours and act like she's the bear. She is
embarrassed, but goes ahead. Move around, I say, and let some sounds emerge.
Again, more discomfort, but she does as I ask. She continues this for a bit,
then I ask her, as the bear, to immediately speak to the frightened woman
(her) in the dream. Without hesitation, she says, "Don't run away from me, "
and says it with considerable emotion. I ask her to say it again, and she
starts to cry. Now, I say, imagine you are that frightened woman, and
respond to the bear. She does, and goes back and forth for a while between
the two positions. Finally, she doesn't need to move anymore, for both
positions are now coexisting easily within her, and she, on her own, is
starting to realize what the bear actually is -- an expression of her own
disowned power, enlarged by her fear of embodying such power. Her voice is
fuller now, her presence much stronger. As she reclaims her "bear" energy,
she fills out more, laughingly saying that she wants to give all the women
in the room big bear hugs.
Another example: A young man (in a group session) is describing a dream in
which he is prone, seemingly limbless, struggling to move forward. Limbs do
eventually materialize, but only as flimsy, stick-like things viewed as from
a distance. His voice is low and monotonous, tinged with a remote sadness.
He sits as though defeated. I listen closely, noticing no intention in
myself to speak. We gaze at each other in a not-uncomfortable silence.
Breathing in, breathing out. There's a subtly increasing warmth in my belly
and chest, then a sudden image of a terrified baby.
His eyes are a bit more open now, still distant but seeming to call from
somewhere behind the distance. There's increasing movement in me now,
amorphous but gathering momentum. I don't feel any desire to talk about the
dream nor to "interview" him - something far more compelling is inviting me
to act. My breath is a little fuller now, my belly looser; the feeling of
presence in the room is getting stronger.
Now the waiting-time is over.
I ask him to lie face-down on the carpet, and to attempt to move forward
without using his limbs. He struggles in silence, and cannot move forward.
Breathe more deeply, I whisper in his ear, and let your struggling have a
sound, a sound that expresses the actual feeling of it. He groans and
writhes with great intensity, looking as though he's pinned to the spot. Or
stuck. His back appears rigid yet oddly soft, his spine like a suffocating
serpent. My own back is subtly writhing, my hands tingling. My intuition to
touch him suddenly intensifies, and I begin to massage his back, loosening
the muscles on either side of his spine.
Soon he is crying very hard, his sounds both adult and baby-like. I have him
reach out in front of himself, but he still cannot move forward. Then I ask
the group, all of whom are very moved, to make a kind of tunnel over him,
everyone on hands and knees, alternatingly positioned (shoulders next to
neighbor's hips), pressing down on him, but not so heavily that movement is
impossible. Everyone knows what to do; there's an unspoken link between all
of us, centreed by an obvious caring for him.
He starts to panic. I have him exaggerate his sounds for ten or fifteen
seconds, then tell him to move forward, using his legs, his arms, everything
he's got. For a minute or so, he struggles, moving ahead very slightly,
wailing like a newborn, and then suddenly he explodes with strength, lifting
up the bodies curled over him, screaming very loudly. Adrenaline races
through me, not in fear, but in readiness.
I make a triangle-shaped opening with my hands and press it against the top
of his head, encouraging him to keep coming. He pushes mightily, still
screaming, moving forward, pushing and surging, his movements serpentine,
his body feeling to me more like cascading rapids than solid flesh. Another
minute or so, and through he bursts, spilling into my arms. I hold him
close, while he cries uncontrollably. At this moment, I am both mother and
father. And the newborn I am holding is not only him, but all of us,
including me. My interpretations of what has happened pale beside the raw
presence of his pain, his need, his sheer bareness of feeling, and - when he
at last opens his eyes - his love.
He didn't move; he was movement. Birthing-movement, ancient and yet so
nakedly now, messily precise, eventually unclouded by amniotic or
psychosocial shrouding, eloquently transparent to Being. Nothing special in
all this - just a few trembling petals of the everfresh,
hyperbole-demolishing Wonder of being here.
Arthur: In many of your books you mention dreams in the context of the
spiritual path of awakening. What do you see as the connection between our
experience of dreaming and lucid dreaming, and our experience of life while
physically awake? Or our experience of death, for that matter?
Robert: Our dream-life reflects our physical waking life, and our physical
waking life reflects our dream-life; the two realities may seem very
different, but in fact they are remarkably similar, and share considerable
overlap. The mind I have while dreaming is basically the same mind I have
while physically awake. The bodies in the two states may seem to be very
different, but at the level of body-image -- where we spend a lot of our
mental time -- they are very similar. The "I" at the centre of our dreams is
pretty much the same "I" that's at the centre of our physical waking
experience. Dreaming is what the mind tends to do when it's disembodied --
daydreams while "awake" and sleep-dreams while, well, asleep.
At death and after death, no longer anchored to the body at all, the mind --
and this is just my intuition -- doesn't do much else other than dream, and
it's not the kind of dreaming we can pinch ourselves out of, for there's no
body to which to return; what's called for is real lucidity, the capacity to
recognize that what's happening is dreaming, on whatever scale. The content
doesn't really matter; a dream is a dream. Given that what happens after
death is what is happening right now, we might as well stop flirting with
awakening practices, and really get into them, regardless of the state we're
in, doing whatever work is necessary so that such practices can take deep
root in us. Lucid dreaming, lucid waking, lucid living, lucid being...
Arthur: In Darkness Shining Wild you describe the following dream as taking
place shortly after the 5-Meo-DMT experience in which you almost died:
"I spent most of that first post-5-Meo night sitting up in bed (Nancy slept
on and off beside me), helplessly absorbed in extremely gripping,
three-dimensional replays of the horror I had experienced, now and then
trying to comfort myself with the thought that this wouldn't, couldn't, last
for more than a few nights. The waves of remembrance did not come gently. I
was throbbing, shaking, struggling to find some semblance of calm in the
psychospiritual riptides that were tossing me about like a piece of
shore-bereft driftwood. A hellride minus an offramp.
Hour after hour I endured, feeling as though I would never return from the
madness that was infiltrating me. Finally, just before dawn, I fell asleep
and very soon found myself in a lucid dream.
I had often had such dreams, frequently using them as portals for all kinds
of adventure and experimentation. As such, they were normally quite pleasing
to be in; I would know that the body I "had" in the dream was not my actual
physical body, and so could then freely engage in activities that would mean
disaster or even Death in the "waking" state. If I was afraid in a regular
dream and then became lucid during it, I could usually face the fear,
interacting with it's dream-form until some kind of resolution or
integration occurred.
But not now. Yes, I knew I was dreaming, but I could not work with the fear
therein. The dream was saturated with an enormous, otherworldly terror which
was coupled with savagely hallucinatory disorientation. In the midst of this
I stood, my dreambody but a ghostly sieve for its surroundings. I knew that
if I left the dream, I would still be in the very same state.
At last, I let myself go fully into the dream, despite my conviction that I
very likely would not return. Now I was completely inside it, utterly lost,
immersed in an edgeless domain of look-alike, spike-headed waveforms, each
one sentient and subtly scaly, moving protoplasmically in endless procession
in all directions. Just like my 5-Meo setting, but without the speed.
Suddenly, I was overcome by a completely unexpected, rapidly expanding
compassion. All fear vanished. A few moments later, I somehow cut - or
intended - a kind of porthole in the bizarre universe that enclosed me, as
cleanly round as the shrinking aperture of my consciousness at the onset of
my 5-Meo journey.
Through this opening the countless alien forms spontaneously came streaming,
immediately metamorphosing into flowers, birds, trees, humans: Earthly life
in all its wonder and heartbreaking fecundity. Then the dream faded, and I
lay radiantly awake, deeply moved, feeling as though the hardest part was
now over.
It had, however, just begun."
- Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, pp.22-24
When I first read this dream, I felt puzzled as to why this didn't resolve
the crisis for you. Upon further consideration, it seemed that in a way it
reflected in miniature form your course through the dark night described in
that book. Would you agree with that? How do you see this dream as fitting
into your Darkness Shining Wild experience, and did dreams play any role in
your healing process?
Robert: I would agree. This dream also foreshadowed my eventual emergence
from my crisis roughly nine months later (on my birthday). I had many lucid
dreams during those nine months, and none of them liberated me from my
crisis. Did this mean that they were not helpful? No. They helped me to stay
wakeful during that hellish time. In one, for example, my compassion for my
agony (in the form of a man going insane) arose, supporting and paralleling
my fledgling compassion for my agony during waking times. In hindsight, I
recognize that it would not have served me to have had an exit from my
suffering before my nine months were up; I needed to stay with it until I
was no longer capable of resurrecting who I'd been before my 5-MeO-DMT
hellride.
Arthur: You have some familiarity with entheogens/psychedelics and much
experience with the naturally occurring "altered" states of dreaming and
lucid dreaming, as well as vast experience with states of consciousness
reached through meditative and other spiritual practice. How would you
compare lucid dreaming with entheogens and meditative experiences as tools
for exploring consciousness or to promote growth or awakening?
Robert: Where entheogens tend to dynamite the gates, lucid dreaming and
meditative practice help open them, the key being in our hands. Once we're
through the gates, we're usually presented with an abundance of experiential
possibilities, ranging from the merely sensory to the ineffably revelatory.
With entheogens, we're mostly just awe-filled spectators, however intimately
connected we are to what's going on, at an impossibly rich banquet of
sights, sounds, feelings, and perspectives; with lucid dreaming, we're much
more likely to be participants in what is unfolding, seeing it alter in
accord with what we are doing; with meditative practice, especially deep,
stable meditative practice, we are neither spectators of nor participants in
what is happening, but rather clearings of consciousness at once apart from
and profoundly intimate with what is occurring. Such meditative practice may
also occur, albeit rarely, during lucid dreaming (you might, for example,
try closing your dream eyes during a lucid dream and letting yourself rest
in Being) and entheogenic intoxication. There's no substitute for meditative
practice and meditativeness, which can be accessed during any state or
experiential possibility, even if we dream otherwise. Entheogens may
catalyze some degree of awakening, and lucid dreaming may give it a stage,
but meditativeness gives it the ground it needs to truly take root.
Arthur: In a Q&A thread on the Integral Naked forum, you mention an upcoming
book on "dreams, dreaming and the dreamer." Could you elaborate a bit on
what subject areas you'll cover? Are you planning to include exercises for
the reader?
Robert: That book is some years away, and so I haven't made any plans
regarding its subjects areas, other than the very general topics of dreams,
dreaming, and the dreamer.
Arthur: Thank you for a fascinating interview, Robert. Do you have any
parting words of advice for those pursuing lucid dreaming in the context of
personal or spiritual growth?
Robert: Experiment. Take risks while you are lucid. Pay attention to the
role or roles you are playing in the dream; notice what hooks or attracts
you, but don't forget to examine the you who is feeling hooked or attracted.
Remain aware of the dreamer as much as you can, whatever state you are in.
Experiment some more. Move from lucid dreaming to lucid being, letting
awakening's alchemy get so far under your skin that you have no choice but
to fully participate in it.
********************************
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The New Age of Pisces
© 2006 Linda Lane Magallón
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Bewitched by a 2-millennium spell, we sleep. But the inky black night is not
forever. Unbeknownst to us, the earth continues to rotate and the nighttime
thrall gradually loosens its hypnotic hold. We start to stir. In the dim
light of the approaching day, we are roused to consciousness. When full
awareness returns, the enchantment of slumber is broken. We wake to a whole
new perspective of our previous preoccupation. We were dreaming! For two
thousand years, we were dreaming.
There's a quiet revolution lying dormant in the land of sleep. As earth
progresses along the path of the Vernal Equinox through the astrological
cosmos, the Age of Pisces rolls over in bed and turns to face the dawning of
the Age of Aquarius. Dozing obliviously, we may not know we're due for a
wake-up call from Uranus, the revolutionary ruler of Aquarius. The light is
beginning to glow, as the earth turns ever onward. There are already signs
of the coming day, should we care to raise our heads out of the covers and
look. But when sleep paralysis remains an impediment, we're likely to
misconstrue a false awakening for the real thing. As we struggle towards
lucidity, we will still have to traverse the era of the false dawn.
Is the Age of Aquarius going to be a Utopian fantasy or an Apocalyptic
horror? How about neither? The first idea is wrought with rosy Piscean
idealism; the second is a projection washed with the black and blue of
Piscean pessimism. The Apocalypse was John the Evangelist's biblical vision
of the End of Days. It occurred at the beginning of the Age of Pisces, as a
fixed prophecy of a fated future, and has been haunting us ever since. It's
an old repeating nightmare designed to panic us into submission to a
dictatorship of fear. Only now are we wakening to the testable fact that
such stress mongering is neither just nor healthy.
During the Christian era, the world has been dominated by a god with
Piscean qualities and values: sacrifice, denial of the physical and
denigration of the flesh. A hallowed saint could raise nightmarish suffering
to an ecstatic art, where the only dream of worth was communion with that
god. But the average person had to trade the bleak possibility of big dreams
for the hope of bliss in the afterlife. In the meantime, her normative dream
was yet more confirmation that life is a battle between good and evil. There
was nothing to do but lie down and take it, then stumble to her feet to
relate tales of sleep time trauma turned folklore and myth.
Pisces, the fish, is an apt symbol for the age. The constellation consists
of two fish, tied at their tails (their tales?) and pulling in different
directions. The path of the Vernal Equinox first traversed the fish looking
backwards and Pisces has truly been fixated on the past. The Equinox is
currently positioned below the belly of the second fish. Since Pisces #2 is
pointing forward, in the direction of Aquarius, we are beginning to feel his
pull, right down to our guts. Yes, there's a new fisherman above the waves,
luring us in his direction, but we're still very much living below the
surface. This about-face in fishy orientation is what we call the "New Age."
But it's not the Age of Aquarius yet. It's actually a new phase of the
Piscean Age a stage I call the Neptunian Transformation.
For the most part, the "New Age" is a long way from being truly Aquarian,
except in subtle influence and developing structure. Most of the ideas and
activities are still very much Piscean. They may seem new to us, because
they've been hiding in the murky deep for so long and we're just uncovering
or re-discovering them. All over our watery globe, the liberating energy of
Aquarius is bringing traditional ideas to the surface. The detection of the
historical and mythical past of dreams, the disclosure of the secrets of the
occult, the revelation of new religious views, the realization that there's
an entire world of many diverse dream cultures these are the lights that
are starting to illuminate the dawn. But this still-hazy dream recall is
only a review of the previous dark night, an overview of where we've been.
The more innovative Piscean notions are a result of a revolution instigated
by Uranus, whose eccentric orbit revealed the existence of the planet
Neptune. Previously, Pisces had been "ruled" by Jupiter (a stand-in for
Jehovah and other patriarchal gods). But with the discovery of Neptune,
Pisces was reassigned this new ruler, and Pisces took to it like a duck to
water. You might say that, in terms of dreams at least, Pisces finally found
her footing. She's beginning to stand up and reveal what she's been hiding
for more than half the age. The Neptunian Transformation allows her to
display more of her real self than ever before. And *this* is the amazing
renovation-in-progress that Pisces feels in the depths of her soul. When
Pisces is energized by Neptune, dreams are no longer idolized or ignored. We
recognize that they live within us, swimming below the surface of our daily
awareness.
Neptune, the god of the sea, is a much better match with the fish. When
Sigmund Freud proclaimed dreams the royal road to the unconscious, dreams
became linked with the undercurrents of human psychology. Carl Jung
metaphorically linked it with the sea. Suddenly, the idea of the great sea
of unconscious was born into our social awareness. There's resonance with
mythic stories, folk tales like "The Little Mermaid" and poetry like
"Winkin, Blinkin and Nod" in which the nocturnal sailors go trolling for
dream fish. The notion that dreams are linked with story, myth and art is
very Piscean, as is the idea that a dream has a "meaning" that can be fished
out of the unconscious sea.
Ironically, the tools for this fishing expedition provided by Jung, Freud
and their contemporaries aren't dream tools at all. Pisces is slippery,
fragile and allergic to analysis, so she tends to keep it at fin's length.
Thus, Freud and Jung had to provide waking tools, like free association and
amplification, which depend on the exercise of non-sleeping imagination.
This post-dream work occurs when the dream is already done. It really
doesn't have anything to do with the process of dreaming but rather prods
and expands and analyzes dream "reports". That is, it relies on verbal
memories and written records of dreams long after the original event has
happened. It's a very "hands-off" approach that keeps the dreaming at a safe
distance (in the past, of course) and keeps our waking egos in our "comfort
zone." Supposedly we need this witness inhibition to deal securely with our
unconscious demons. We aren't encouraged to take a first-hand view and get
into the action, for that is contrary to the passive Piscean perspective.
Neither are we encouraged to develop a first-hand relationship with the
dream. Rather, we treat it as a "thing" that's supposed to come to our aid.
This attitude is in for a big modification when Aquarius rises above the
horizon.
The Aquarian revolution is about a switch in values, from a dominator
paradigm to a partnership paradigm. No more can Pisces be a passive follower
with her head stuck in story; now she's being called to be an active, voting
member of the Aquarian community council. An effective council member needs
to know what's actually happening in both the physical world and the world
of dream. Suddenly, the link between the dreaming and the waking life of the
dreamer becomes crucial, as is the link between dreams and the link between
dreamers.
In the meantime, during the Neptunian Transformation, we sleep as fish
floating dreamily beneath the surface of the sea of unconscious. Round and
round in mandala circles we drift in the current, washed wherever the
undertow takes us. We only seem to stir from our liquid lethargy to flee the
monsters of the id.
As Piscean fishermen and fisherwomen, we gaze back from the waking world
into the mysterious murk, looking for omens and signs in the dim remembrance
of slumber. "What does this mean?" we question, hoping to catch sight of an
animated jewel slipping between the waves.
And so we weave our dreamwork nets with the warp of theory and the woof of
technique and cast them into the ocean, dredging up day residue and fish
fragments. Taking symbol snapshots, we freeze them in a perpetual moment of
time. Former living creatures transform into memory clips and written
recordings. In our ignorance, we call them "dreams." As dead objects, we can
work on them as we please. We slice and dice them, seeking understanding in
their skeletal remains. How strangely colorless they appear, here in the
glare of daytime bias. Greedy for mystical meaning, truly needy for
nutritional narrative, we pick over the remnants and quickly, intuitively
decide it isn't enough. It's not okay for these sorts of "dreams" to just
lay there, raw, staring at us out of dead eyes.
When these fillets don't fulfill our needs, we must expand the menu. And so
we dress up the Piscean pieces with the produce grown on the dry land of
waking imagination. We garnish them with mushroom myths and lemon wedge
legends. We drown them in the sauce of free association, archetypal
amplification and Oedipal illusion. And should we invite other diners to the
feast, the opinion onions and potluck prejudice of their after-words simply
adds weight to the groaning table.
What can we call the concoction created at this banquet?
Waking-work-on-dream-reports, perhaps. This sort of "dreamwork" assumes that
"dreams" are mere afterthoughts about the event and not the events while
they are happening. Likewise, a "dreamer" is the person who reacts to the
incident in the waking state, not the one who acts within the dream world.
"Dreaming" isn't in-dream activity but the imaginative embellishment of a
poorly remembered and poorly recorded sleep time event. Or maybe it's *just*
waking imagination, no sleeping dreams need apply.
There's an old saying that goes, "Whoever discovered water, it wasn't a
fish." I think we've yet to discover our dreams! We'll have to stop swimming
in self-absorbed circles *in the waking state* to realize that dreams aren't
what's left after we embellish them with waking imagination.
Or maybe they are, and we should just leave them be. Then call what goes on
before and during sleep something else entirely. A new Aquarian term without
the old Piscean baggage. A term to indicate what we do ahead of time and
during the dream to keep us aquatic creatures active and alive, rather than
apathetic and oblivious.
This way, we find significance not in symbol fragments washed up on the
shore. We don't ask, "What does this mean?" at arm's length. Meaning is
enmeshed in the very sea life that surrounds us. We live life in sleep as we
act life in the waking state. And in the acting, in the living, we don't
have to talk endlessly about meaning. We actually experience it, first-hand.
The Aquarian waking is not going to be easy for Pisces, and she knows it.
It's far easier to continue to slumber than to get out of bed. At the
moment, she identifies with being a sensitive soul who requires gentle
handling. Her hope is that she can rouse herself to the situation without
dashing hopes or diminishing ideals, but I'm afraid this delusion is a pipe
dream if Pisces thinks she can continue to swim in the tsunamis of old
beliefs. It's not that hopes and ideals will disappear, just dependence on
the old tales and myths.
Out in the fresh air, we can see clearly that we don't "have" dreams, like
having a common cold, nor do we "own" dreams to manipulate as we please, nor
do dreams "serve" us like slaves to our waking passions. The dream isn't a
personal tidal pool or merely an oceanic feeling. It is a vibrant reality of
distinct, yet networked individual entities. It is an ongoing story we
continue to live from the inside-out, a virtual adventure while we sleep.
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights)
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World Dreams Peace Bridge
August – September View from the Bridge
A month and a bit
Kathy Turner
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Dreams seem to be naturally rhizomic. A hat becomes a person becomes a sky
becomes a light. Image links to image in fast memory connections. An endless
dance.
On the Bridge our central interests are peace and dreams. All of our ideas
flow into and through these two principles. But what we link up to these
concerns is sometimes truly amazing.
This month and a bit review traces just some of the major rhizomic
connections we have been making: the war on Lebanon and continued
destruction of Iraq; weeds and flowers; dealing with awareness of the
sadnesses of others; dreams and peace events.
Of the invasion of Lebanon and continued destruction in Iraq
The barbarous and senseless Israeli invasion of Lebanon shocked many of us
on the Bridge. The worst moment was the massacre in Qana. Thirty seven young
children and some elderly people killed as they tried to shelter from the
Israeli bombing of their village: too afraid to leave as others had been
killed doing just that. But it was not just Qana that shocked: it was the
merciless Israeli bombing of ambulances; of citizens, of attacks on
hospitals and on the bombing of the capital of Beirut; it was the 1 million
refugees (1/4 of the country’s population); it was the disastrous
environmental destruction as Israel bombed a power plant and flooded the
Mediterranean with oil; it was the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure
of roads and airports and water and electricity; it was the silence or even
active support given to Israel by particularly the US and the UK.
The invasion tested us on the Bridge too. Some were horrified, sending
message after message of information; some remained silent; some expressed
afterwards that it took them some time to realize that the horror expressed
in email after email was not anti-semitic – just horror at war and what the
Israeli government was doing.
In the midst of this we found out that the young Iraqi woman raped and
murdered along with her family by US soldiers was Abeer Qasim Hamza. She was
just 14 years old. Ilkin said her name is “Fehriye” in Turkish and added
with such sadness: “meaning "honorary". But they took her honour by the
worst way”.
Ilkin asked that this month’s DaFuMu be for “Lebanon Children/ Civilians and
Peace".
And Kotaro from Japan (gently remembering and older war, and an older
destruction: unconditional surrender in World War II in August of 1945)
reached into his heart of compassion at the horror of Qana in Lebanon now
and found a blue dragon. He wrote:
“The bombing at Quana damaged my heart so much. Last night, all the way in
the train to my home, I was chanting the Heart Sutra in my mind as I could
sit down on. Then, suddenly an odd image appeared clearly in my heart. It
was a horrible darkness, at the bottom were the fires, and I could see a
blue transparent pipe was climbing up to the dark sky. This image was
fullfilled with my heart sutra chant. I could not recognize what it was but
as it was so clear”.
And Anna replied reminding us again how it is balance that is needed:
“Yes, the Blue Dragon -Water IN Fire- not just after.
I keep thinking & feeling that we NEED the Fire- it is not to eliminate it,
but to use it well -and that can only be done when it is balance. Our human
way -to always try to go to extremes, not respecting the natural balance of
all things...we try to draw a straight line renting the spiral of life, and
it damages. We in the US seem to want all for ourselves at time (I write
with shame and confusion) -not seeing how, as in the yin/yang image, that
leads right to nothing for us or anyone. where if we'd only surrender to
balance- some for all -ALL (us too) might prosper more...
I can’t see images sent to the list -I can well imagine the Blue Dragon,
though, the Beast of Fire in Water, our ally”.
And Victoria, our archivist, finds one of her earlier dreams of a dragon. It
too has the dragon in a place of respect, though fear accompanies the dream:
“During some of this dream I had a sense of fear; of being out on a limb
without obvious support from anyone. I was in very dark woods and something
with a big dragon's eye that sometimes looked like a cat's eye or the eye of
another animal as looking at me. This thing was tremendously powerful and
worthy of respect. When I made myself look beyond my fear I could see that
it wasn't trying to attack me; that perhaps it was new. Just because
something seems big, doesn't mean it can't feel shy too”.
Our dreams and images of balance meet up with the growing instability in the
Middle East. Ilkin reports the terror she feels at the escalation in
violence in Turkey as the PKK (Kurdish “terrorist” group) uses the summer
tourist season to attack Turkey and as the Turkish government discusses both
sending Turkish troops to Lebanon (as part of the UN “peace” keeping force)
and as it prepares to enter northern Iraq to attack PKK camps.
The occupation in Iraq and the instability in the Middle East was increasing
Ilkin begs us to try to understand what is happening. She writes: “I was
telling about my worries for a long time (I was telling about the gathering
of troops at the border)...I can only repeat what I wrote to Jean and some
other friends several times, again and again; "please, please follow what is
happening at this area of the world closely"...
Today as I write this month’s review, Mary sent in the latest news from
Turkey of a bomb blast in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish-majority city in
Turkey's southeast, with 7 of the dead being children.
Of dreams
Of course some of our dreams link directly to the terrors we hear about
daily. One dream was from Mary: “It was something about terrorists trying to
blow up something (I hear an explosion and see smokey-cloudy-gray color all
around me) at the Michigan and Canadian border”..
Is it a precognitive dream? For Mary it was very specific and had a clear
link to previous dream “my guess is this is coming from my last dream about
seeing the red Canadian logo on the plane that "almost" crashed into a very
high-tall mall”.
Joy was our dreamer for the DaFuMu this month – and a very appropriate
dreamer too as she is from Lebanese background. Her first dream is stark:
“I dreamed a child took me by the hand to show me something that he had
found disturbing. It was indeed terribly disturbing: an animated diagram of
a child who had been playing alone in the tall grass outside his town,
smashed by a helicopter's circle of destruction so that only his upper half
remained. I wished I hadn't seen it and I was glad it was a line drawing
rather than a graphically realistic horrifying bloody image. But there was
no escaping it. It was on the Internet; it was on a bag of bread. It was a
reminder of what really happens to the children of war and the imagination
can do the rest.
Later as I woke, that anonymous dream-voice that speaks sometimes on waking
said cynically, if I remember right now: "There are one thousand one hundred
eleven of them - but the one doesn't matter." I thought the point must be
that of 1,111 every one is ONE and every one matters”.
Another dream from Joy:
“When I hoped to dream something more healing post-DaFuMu, the most vivid
dream I had was that someone had picked the two green lemons that I'd been
watching slowly grow on my little lemon tree. I recognized them immediately
- one almost full-grown, one small, both still very green -and I was so
angry. Why would someone do this? Couldn't they see these were nowhere near
ripe yet, and now they'd never ripen?”
Joy comments: “I always wanted a lemon tree especially for flavoring
Lebanese food -almost every meal has a lemon in it - and just this year
finally got a dwarf lemon tree that I can move indoors in my
non-Mediterranean winter. Pulling my cherished first new lemons from the
tree before they have a chance to grow and ripen is surely an overly-gentle
symbol for killing the children of Lebanon. Where does the healing come in?”
Which Joy answers immediately herself with the memory of a book called “The
Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East” by Sandy
Tolan. The book concludes with an “account of how Jewish and Arab children
have together planted seeds salvaged from one desiccated lemon tree planted
long ago behind one stone house.” Here is a review of the book:
http://www.bookpage.com/0605bp/nonfiction/lemon_tree.html
Sonia gives us her first dream: a very appropriate one. The memory of her
German ancestors; their involvement in the holocaust helping where they
could; their dream state now (opening to happiness):
“In the first dream I was in a big mansion as the other dreamer stated she
was however, my time period was the present except in the attic of the
house. I have been in this mansion in previous dreams, but the attic was
always old and had no life to it. This time I went upstairs and I heard lots
of talking and laughing behind the door. I opened the door and the first
thing that came to my mind that these were people that had lived in Germany
during the holocaust. There clothing matched the time period and both my
grandparents (that are now deceased and Germans) were there. Everyone looked
nice and healthy and were gathering for a big meal. Besides my grandparents
I had never seen any of these people before.
The second dream I am not sure was even a dream because it happened so fast.
The shape of Christ (made with pure white light) appeared with a black
background. It was hard for me to see, but I had no doubt who the shape
represented. The shape moved closer and closer and then disappeared and I
woke up”.
And Rita sends us a chapter of her book detailing her own “dreams and
experiences of healing [her] ancestral war wounds”. The book is beautifully
titled: Following my dreamlines - living from the inside out
Of weeds
Where does our discussion of weeds begin? It is hard to say. “Seeds” as a
symbol of peace (and conflict) weave throughout our discussions. Jean
reminded us that one of the very first dreams was from Jody: “The New Age
Seed Company”.
But weeds specifically: where did the discussion start? Probably
unconsciously we made a link to an article that Jennifer sent us from
Starhawk (environmentalists and peace keeper) in which she links the idea of
exterminating weeds to the use of force in war as a means of stopping
something we don’t like. Interestingly, that unconscious link came through
in a conscious request from Kathy to our two great flower photo senders
(Kotaro and Jennifer) for some pictures of weeds.
We received beautiful images of weeds from Japan from Kotaro and wonderful
native flowers from Joy in the US. More, we entered a whole discussion where
the question of weeds and invasion wove together.
Joy sent us her thoughts in which she weaves her love of native American
plants with stories of hollyhocks in China and Tibet and a mediation on how
to roam and not be invasive.
“People tip the balance to where Mother Nature, who has to work with what
she's got, takes it from there. To name examples near my home, people
scarcely know what the hills of coastal California used to look like before
oat grass arrived (with cattle, in the historic past); and much of eastern
Nevada will never be sagebrush again since cheatgrass took over (all within
about the last 5 years).
I don't want to take the analogy TOO far as there are things I'll do to a
plant or plant community that I'd never advocate for a human or human
community! - but it goes back to what I remarked about the world scene a
week or two ago: we have to start where we are. If we apply more awareness
and a different set of values, we may be able to influence future change to
be less catastrophic and devastating.... in whatever realm we can influence.
I'm pretty dedicated to defending an all-native flower garden. Almost
all-native. I might plant some hollyhocks.
Now this is important to me: I don't want anyone to run with my analogy and
say that people who go where they're not native become weeds. People are
people; we belong to the whole world; we wander and people new places; it's
our nature. We also cling tenaciously to ancestral homelands. We also, alas,
invade and conquer. The extraordinary thing about people is our capacity as
individuals to choose to behave like cheatgrass or hollyhocks.
Cheatgrass cheats by getting a head start: it sprouts in the fall while the
native plants are dormant, so by spring it's robbed their water and
nutrients. By summer lightning season, it's dropped its seeds and dried to a
fine tinder. Flash! - a fire rages across the landscape, killing everything.
Next spring, the cheatgrass seeds germinate unharmed – and miles and miles
of sagebrush country (with all its native wildflowers and birds and lizards
and voles) have been converted forever into rolling golden hills of
beautiful waving cheatgrass growing so densely that nothing else can ever
again take hold. That's called a cheatgrass invasion.
Hollyhocks were my dad's favorite flower; I used to plant them for him. They
grow as well here in the high desert as they do in an English country
garden. When I went to China this summer I was delighted to see them
flourishing among brown rock walls in the mountain villages of Sichuan. When
I tell people back home, they wonder, "How did they get there from England?"
- before it occurs to them that it might have been the other way around! So
far my searching turns up equally-authoritative claims that they're native
to China and they're native to the Middle East. Trade between China and the
Middle East is ancient indeed. This woman of Middle Eastern descent and her
partner of Chinese descent rode a bus onto the Tibetan plateau marvelling at
all the hollyhocks along the way without knowing which of our ancestors
first carried a pocketful of seeds which way along the Silk Road.
I've never heard of a hollyhock invasion. I choose to be a hollyhock, big
and adaptable and colorful and slightly goofy-looking. I'd like to thrive
and be loved anywhere, gently without crowding anyone, and make a few seeds
of brightness that the future can take or leave”.
And Diana takes the point to a longing: “I wish life was as elegant as our
ideals. But it always gets so complicated”.
Of relating to the sadnesses of others
This month Sonia asked a question that must arise for anyone who
deliberately opens his/her mind to the pain of others. She asked: “How do
you deal with the pain of knowing how others are suffering? The more that I
try to do for peace and make an effort to help others the more intense the
pain seems to get. I become aware. By pain I mean like an emotional sadness.
A sense of helplessness”.
Joy found her answer in the Buddhist practice of Tonglen quoting from Pema
Chodron’s book:
"The essence of tonglen practice is that on the in-breath you are willing to
feel pain; you're willing to acknowledge the suffering of the world. …."The
essence of the out-breath is the other part of the human condition. With
every out-breath, you open. You connect with the feeling of joy, well-being,
satisfaction, tender heartedness, anything that feels fresh and clean,
wholesome and good. That's the aspect of the human condition that we wish
were the whole show.... You connect with that and you breathe it out so that
it can be experienced by everyone.”
Olivia (just spinning in) has her own methods that are remarkably similar.
She wrote: “How do I deal with the feelings? I just let them wash through
me, go and blow my nose if I must, and if it's something that makes me feel
angry and helpless I send up a prayer, often in the form of light enveloping
the victim, if it's related to pain, or death”.
Rita has gentle methods too for dealing with our awareness of pain: “I allow
whatever I feel to move through me, whether it is pain, sorrow, joy or
happiness. It is rather simple in a way if I don't get my head in the way
labelling it or doing something with it”.
Kotaro sent a “small opinion” making the difference between understanding
and “feeling” the pain of others: “To understand the pains of others is
completely different from to "feel" them or at least to try feeling them. So
in this meaning, our imagination and creative efforts will be needed at
first”.
Of dancing and action
And finally, one last rhizome. Some of those on the Bridge have been
involved in peace activities this month:
Sonia organized An EarthDance International Festival, held on Saturday,
September 16 (
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/peacemonthevents.htm ).
Some of the proceeds are to be donated to the World Dreams Peace Bridge
project: Aid for Traumatized Children
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/aidforchildren.htm Jean and Stephen
were there, adding to the fund raising by distributing soft toys (a gift
from Mary) to children for a small donation.
Jean and others are working on the Tidewater Peace Alliance Celebration of
UN International Day of Peace on September 21st.
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/peacemonthevents.htm
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Dream: Moving On
Stan Kulikowski II
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DATE : 6 oct 2006 07:50
DREAM : moving on
=( yesterday was a thursday. in the morning i had to get mother up early
for a doctor's appointment at the hospital. she did some psych tests of
memory but the doctor refused to allow me to sit with her.
it seemed he wanted to inquire about my relationship in case i was taking
advantage of her obviously weakened condition, but he said that he was
satisfied that i was keeping her in good stead. he said that i ought to get
her out of the house as often as i could and perhaps should get a pet for
her to keep, but neither is something she ever wants to do. it seems doctor
examinations are never ending now which mother always dislikes them sucking
large chunks of money from insurance and doing nothing that really helps
her. i can see her point but feel that i should get her medical status
confirmed so she will have a local family doctor with the facts of her
health and care. my laptop computer finally returned from repair of the
lightning strike last month so i could at last start digitizing my dvd video
project for the fourth time. i got to bed around midnight as usual. )=
the paddle wheel steamboat moves quietly on the surface of the river much
like the morning mist that lifts off the water. the constant slush slush of
the paddles as they churn the river is just about all that is heard at this
early hour of the day. the pilot in the steering house up on the top layer
makes certain to find where the final sand bars have settled before leaving
the deep current and making for the docks of the city on the shore.
mary temple is a proper lady with her hair all tucked up under her hat,
wearing thin leather gloves with a small ivory button under the wrist. she
is one of the upper society of the merchant families, not really old money
of aristocrats but comparing herself favorably to their kind. she is
emancipated enough that she never wore a whale bone corsette, but retained
the several layers slips and petticoats beneath her proper wool dress and
vest. she was definitely not one of those young women who called themselves
flappers and smoked tobacco openly whenever licensenous saxophone music
played.
mary waited while the passengers disembarked for the city then the cargo
being offloaded was towed from where it had been strapped to the open deck.
she was not going ashore. she never did while the river boat made its stops
in the various cities along the journey.
mary had no interest in the tourist promenades of the town. she had a more
serious purpose for her travel and would just wait aboard until the journey
continued upriver.
since the riverboat was a side wheeler, there was a small open deck on the
stern that faced out into the water. there she would while away a few hours
with another passenger she had met. he was a little older than her, and
seemingly from a century earlier, dressed in stiff starched collars and
heavy wool fabrics. they had got on well when she confessed to an interest
in fishing although she had not any experience with the modern poles and
tackles since her father had taught her with nothing but cane poles. she
enjoyed the splash of the bobber and the way it settled itself into its
place on the water when casting it out. they never seemed to catch any fish
who were wise to avoid their bait just off the docks, but mary did not mind
as the pleasure in fishing for her came from the waiting on the water, not
the scurry of landing an unfortunate creature.
before lunch the captain of the boat came to shoo them off the deck and put
an end to their fishing reveries. it was time for the new cargo to be
loaded and so they must retire to their suites to endure the hot part of the
day, napping in light linen. on her way to her room, mary saw the thin
children along the halls with their dark hollow eyes. they were sick and so
never seemed to go ashore, not strong enough to stand in the light so they
kept to shadows along the walls much like mice. it did not bother mary that
no one else ever seemed to notice these children and went about their
business as if they were not there. she saw them and felt a little sympathy
toward them, but she had never been a mother and lacked some of the more
tender tendencies that more experienced women had toward the young.
by evening her male companion returned for her and they went to large gaming
room where passengers normally spent their idle nights.
today, being ashore, the attendance was small but an orchestra from the town
had been commissioned to fill the hall with music. this was one of the main
intentions of her journey, to study classical music as she had always wanted
to direct an orchestra in performance, but this was a profession that
accepted no women. so she studied from the side, behind the curtains waving
her ivory baton in imitation of the actual director in front of the
musicians. her companion waited with her patiently, but they were joined by
an older man who seemed from an even earlier century with wild hair that
stuck outward from his head like it wanted to abandon his scalp. this man
had been a successful conductor and though he held his baton in an old
fashioned style and never moved his head toward the active sections
producing the music in the modern way, mary was still grateful for his
tutelage. so the three of them waited out of sight behind the curtains
while the music swelled and swayed. tonight was beethoven and a fine
rendition it proved to be.
when the evening of music had ended and the muscians were packing up their
instruments with little discussion, i went ashore with the few patrons for a
final nightcap upon the town, leaving mary and her companions backstage as
they usually spent their time. also as my custom, i drank too much and
spent too much effort trying to talk with strangers who had no interest in
the things i had to say. the ride back in a small service bus was
uneventful except that the driver drove way too fast for safety, but he
seemed well familiar with the road. he deliberately drove over a swell in
the pavement so the rear wheels left the pavement at one point and gave a
satisfying double thump when bouncing back. i was glad to get back to the
riverboat in one piece if not a little scattered from my entertainments.
mary seemed to wandering the boat approaching a state of disarrangement. as
she went to the end of the bar with its array of liquor bottles, her
clothing seemed to tatter and disintegrate into small scattered pieces as
she approached the doorway that lead to the galley. reaching to door with
her hand, it felt surprisingly hot to the touch so she opened it. the other
side was ablaze with flames that paused with the breath of fresh air she had
admitted by opening the door, then from the center a ball of fire swelled up
and rushed upon her startled face. the ends of her hair and the edges of
her clothing caught fire rapidly as the wave of flame approached her.
they say you can never remember the moment of your death because you are not
really there to experience it. how many times this riverboat explodes when
its boilers catch from the galley fire is something no one will ever know.
the next morning, as usual, the boat is ready to disembark and continue its
perpetual journey up river. not as usual, mary is dressed in her travelling
clothes with bags packed to finally leave.
her siamese cat is meowing from its box cage.
"i am ready to move on." she announces to her male companion, the one just
slightly older than herself. since i have seen her plight and the manner of
her death, she is finally ready to acknowledge it.
this is a major change in her status and she thinks that she is able to
understand part of it at least.
"i am staying to continue." the nameless man tells her. he has no reason
not to resume the familiar passage ahead. mary nods her head to him
politely and turns to walk off into the mysterious light that exceeds the
sun.
=( awake at 07:35. the woman aboard this ghost ship is totally unknown to
me. the name 'mary temple' is no one i have ever known, indeed everyone
comes from a time of my grandparents and before. i had the feeling that
they had not all died in the same incident that i saw which killed mary, but
had collected from various river craft over a longer period of time before.
certainly the plague ridden children in the shadows were unlikely to be
passengers aboard a gambling boat. i wonder that someone as prim and proper
as mary seemed to be would be there except for her desire to take part in
concert entertainment. this dream is mostly third party style observation
except for my brief appearance in the one episode of evening drinking
ashore, but i manage to return in order to view the rerun of mary's sudden
death by fire. what deeper meaning such a dream could have for me, of
course, i have not the slightest notion, but it did seem to be a picturesque
experience and i can be glad at least for that. a dream peopled mainly by
ghosts and suffering death does not seem on the surface to be an aspect of
health or good prospects. )=
--
. i lift my glass to the awful truth
=== that you can't reveal to the ears of youth
| | -- l cohen (1972) closing time
---
stankuli@...
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DreamRePlay
David Jenkins, PhD
The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
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The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
Almost everyone has them.
You know it was not ''real.'' It was ''only a dream.'' But nightmares are
powerful experiences of our fears. Shaking them off can be tough.
During a nightmare, we lose our ability to think and act clearly. Courage
abandons us and, instead, a sense of fear, often laced with guilt and shame,
overpowers us. We are attacked, humiliated, betrayed, and emotionally
tortured. In a nightmare, we have no weapons; friends become enemies; the
world is unmanageable, revealing our vulnerabilities at every turn.
How do you get rid of nightmares?
If you compare your nightmare to a story or movie, you'll see that the dream
stops at the climax the scene when the hero is in the most vulnerable
situation, where the audience gasps in horror sure that the hero will die.
Your task is to transform that climax into a resolution, by finishing the
scene and allowing your dreamer, the hero of your dream life, to triumph
over adversity.
One of the easiest ways to "fix" a nightmare is to use the Movie Method:
Wanda's dream
Two men are chasing me. I know that they will kill me if they catch me. I
manage to run away but then I'm trapped on a balcony. I look down to a
courtyard but it's too far away I'm certain that the jump would kill me. I
am helpless.
This nightmare had plagued Wanda since she was a teenager. Creating her own
movie script, Wanda imagined Susan Sarandon playing her. Wanda decided that,
at the climax, Tim Robbins would come in. He'd climb halfway up to the
balcony and hold her hand so that she could jump without hurting herself.
It made her laugh to imagine herself being courted from a balcony. What
began as a nightmare was already turning into a romantic comedy.
Her nightmare disappeared in a single session.
Jack's nightmare
I dream I am back at my old job. They have overwhelmed me with work. The
cash register is broken and I am dropping things all over the floor in front
of the customers.
Jack had worked as a checker in a very understaffed supermarket and this had
happened to him more than once in waking life.
To fix this nightmare, the dreamer asserted himself in the situation. In his
imagination, Jack went back into the dream situation and told his managers
exactly what they were doing wrong. He told them what staff they needed on
his shift. Then he went to each customer and explained that due to unusual
circumstances he would not be able to serve them.
The key for Jack was to replay the dream to the climax and then continue it
to a resolution.
This twenty year nightmare subsided in the next dream, was uneventful in the
third dream and hasn't been seen since January 2006, five months ago.
Summary
The point, with nightmares, is make them stop. They ruin your sleep and they
disturb your daytime abilities.
With Dream RePlay, you can expect dramatic improvements in your dream life:
instead of foes and fears you can experience friends and fun. Your
nightmares will decrease and even stop after one effort when you move the
story of your dream beyond the climax.
DREAM ANALYSIS BY TELEPHONE
David is available for dream consultations by phone. The current cost is
$100 per hour. A typical dream analysis might consist of a 30-45 minute
discussion of the dream and a follow up after the next dream.
David's hours for telephone consultations are Monday through Friday, 10 am
to 7 pm, Pacific Time. To make an appointment, please email him with two or
three times when you are available and your phone number. He will e-mail you
back with an appointment time, payment information and request a
confirmation. David's e-mail address is
davidj@...
This is a great way to begin your exploration of dream work. It is also
perfect when you don t have the time to attend a regular class but want to
discuss a particular dream.
SHARE DREAM OF THE WEEK
If you enjoy reading Dream of the Week, please tell your friends about it.
They can read back issues and subscribe (free) at DreamOfTheWeek.com.
Best wishes
David Jenkins
Dream RePlay
email:
davidj@...
phone: (510) 644 2369
web:
http://dreamreplay.com
DREAM ANALYSIS BY TELEPHONE
A phone consultation is a great way to begin your exploration of dream work.
It is also perfect when you don’t have the time to attend a regular class
but want to discuss a particular dream.
David is available for dream consultations by phone. The current cost is $50
per hour. A typical dream analysis might consist of a 30-45 minute
discussion of the dream and a follow up after the next dream.
David’s hours for telephone consultations are Monday through Friday, 10 am
to 7 pm, Pacific Time. To make an appointment, please email him with two or
three times when you are available and your phone number. He will e-mail you
back with an appointment time, payment information and request a
confirmation. David’s e-mail address is
davidj@...
SHARE DREAM OF THE WEEK
If you enjoy reading Dream of the Week, please tell your friends about it.
They can read back issues and subscribe (free) at DreamOfTheWeek.com.
David Jenkins
Dream RePlay
email:
davidj@...
web:
http://dreamreplay.com
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Nightmares - An Introduction
Richard Wilkerson
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Updated from Electric Dreams 5(10).
There are a wide range of events during sleep and wake that are often
referred to as "nightmares" and it is wise to learn to distinguish between
them. Most of what we call nightmares are simply extreme reactions and fear
that accompany uncomfortable dreams that occur from time to time in most
everyone, usually towards the end of the sleep cycle. Often we are awakened
by a nightmare and there can be strong feelings of sadness, anger or guilt,
but usually fear and anxiety. Often we are being chased, and it's not
unlikely for children to be chased by animals and fantasy figures, while
adults are often chased by male adults.
Night Terror vs. Nightmare
Night terrors usually occur during the first hour or two of sleep. Screaming
and thrashing about are common. The sleeper is hard to awaken and usually
remembers no more than an overwhelming feeling or a single scene, if
anything. Children who have night terrors also may have a tendency to
sleepwalk and/or urinate in bed. The causes of night terrors are not well
understood, though it appears that night terrors are from a distinctly
different stage of sleep. Children usually stop having them by puberty. They
may be associated with stress in adults. A consultation with a physician may
be useful if the night terrors are frequent or especially disturbing.
Why do we have nightmares?
Nightmares may have several causes, including drugs, medication, illness,
trauma or they may have no related cause and be spontaneous. Often they
occur when there is stress in one's waking life, and when major life changes
are occurring.
What can be done about nightmares?
The International Association for the Study of Dreams notes that "It really
depends on the source of the nightmare. To rule out drugs, medications or
illness as a cause, discussion with a physician is recommended. It is useful
to encourage young children to discuss their nightmares with their parents
or other adults, but they generally do not need treatment. If a child is
suffering from recurrent or very disturbing nightmares, the aid of a
therapist may be required. The therapist may have the child draw the
nightmare, talk with the frightening characters, or fantasize changes in the
nightmare, in order help the child feel safer and less frightened ."
Nightmares also offer the same opportunity that other dreams do, to
investigate the symbols and imagery for life enhancement. The challenge in
the last few decades for the dreamwork movement has been to teach a variety
of methods that replace the old phase "It was just a dream." In American
schools, people like Jill Gregory and Ann Wiseman teach children coping
mechanisms that allow the child to come into relationship with the dream
monsters and fears in a novel and related manner. Alan Siegel, PhD, Kelly
Bulkeley, PhD and others teach parents how to handle their children's
nightmares.
Ernest Hartmann and other researchers are finding that those who have "thin"
personalities, or sensitive, receptive individuals, are more likely to have
nightmares than "thick" personalities. Pioneers like Linda Magallón, Stephen
Laberge and Jayne Gackenbach are teaching people to take control of their
dreams and have the outcomes they wish rather than becoming the dream's
victim.
CyberDreamwork offers a Nightmare Response Line
Nightmare Response: 1-866-DRMS911
This is not therapy, but a qualified person will get back to you.
The International Association for the Study of Dreams offers a Nightmare
Resources page. Here you will find among its members the top researchers in
the field.
http://asdreams.org/nightmare/index.htm
NIGHTMARE BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY IASD
Special Issue of Dream Time, with many researchers articles on Nightmares
and Children. Much of the work is applicable to adults. Volume 15 numbers
1&2 Winter/Spring 1998 Available via ISD www.asdreams.org
Garfield, Patricia (online)
http://www.patriciagarfield.com/idx_library_childs.htm
Nightmares and what to do about them.
Wiseman, Ann Sayre (1986, 1989). Nightmare help. A guide for adults and
children. Ten Speed Press.
Krakow, Barry, and Neidhardt, Joseph (1992). Conquering bad dreams and
nightmares. Berkeley Books.
Hartmann, Ernest (1984).The Nightmare: The Psychology and Biology of
Terrifying Dreams. Basic books.
Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory on the Origin and Meaning of Dreams. A
new book by Ernest Hartmann, M.D. is now available for ordering through
Plenum Publishers.
Siegel, Alan; Bulkeley, Kelly (1998). Dreamcatching: Every parent's guide to
exploring and understanding children's dreams and nightmares. Three Rivers
Press.
MORE ON NIGHTMARES
Cushway, Delia, and Sewell, Robyn (1992) Counseling with dreams and
nightmares.Sage publications.
Kellerman, Henry (Ed.) (1987). The Nightmare: Psychological and Biological
Foundations. Columbia University Press.
Titanic Nightmares Scream Warnings About Real Damage
Linda Lane Magallón
Electric Dreams 10(10), 203.
Dreamgate.com/ed
Lazar, Moshe (Ed) (1983). The Anxious Subject: Nightmares and Daymares in
Literature and Film.Undena.
Downing, J., and Marmorstein, E. (Eds.) Dreams and Nightmares: A Book of
Gestalt Therapy Sessions. New York: Harper and Row, 1973
Ok, that was the basic stuff. Now for very advanced players, and article on
cultivating the personality that can handle nightmares….
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Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of Dreaming
Richard Wilkerson
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This article was originally published (2000 Oct).Electric Dreams 7(10) as a
kind of preliminary exercise in the exploration of horror and developed
later in Transgressive Dreamwork (see
http://dreamgate.com/pomo/ ) but I
feel that it begins to create alternatives to fleeing from nightmares, or
abolishing them. In this sense, it's more in the tradition of Jungian Shadow
work, but with some postmodern twists.
There is a lot of jargon in this file that may be cleared up if you read my
article on Deleuze and Guattari's postmodern philosophy,
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/articles_rcw/deleuze98.htm
I.
Signs and Subject, all well greased and in place. All social/familial taboos
in operation. All tasks of production and consumption completed and finally
Brian goes to sleep. Some time later that night Brian awakes, too frightened
to scream, heart pounding and he is on some kind of roller coaster ride in a
land without gravity. Brian just had a nightmare.
There has been a break in the flow and the insertion of a nightmare machine
in the factory of the unconscious. It shreds its way through signification
(what is what) and subjectification (who is who). The usual codes have
unraveled, and the flow of de-coded signs circulate in things that are only
themselves. Brian' ears are red and buzzing, and he wonders why they are on
his foot. He hears a old voice of a therapist asking what he thinks the ear
on the foot represents, and now he knows the therapist must be mad, speaking
about what the falling mast might mean symbolically as another wave pushes
his ship under the swell. Both a breakthrough and a breakdown of a world
that revolves around the subject. Now the subject is whirled around. Around
may not be the right word, as around implies a center and there is no center
here.
Standard wisdom dictates that we move away from offensive and frightening
scenes. These reactions keep us out of trouble, keep our hands from being
burned by the stove, keep germs off our food, keep our bones from being
broken by cars and cliffs. However, this aversion reaction also keeps us in
line and in alignment with early training that may no longer be valid.
Taboos may be said to function in the same way. There are boundaries we are
taught not to transgress, or there will be Hell to pay. But were these
boundaries put into place by a perfect parent, guardian or teacher?
Unlikely. And in a society whose parameters and values change at an
unparalleled pace, one's value programs need to be upgraded more than once a
generation.
In fact, this is the classic definition of the neurotic. The neurotic is a
person who encounters offensive, frightening scenes and backs away. But they
keep backing away until there is no further back to go, becoming deeply
compressed within themselves, and no longer venturing out the front door, no
longer touching anything without washing their hands, no longer peering over
steep cliffs.
Societies too become neurotic, become paranoid, and then begin trying to
control everything, the media, the way children are raised, what we eat and
drink, who we talk to. Modern societies have tried to do away with these
tyrannical systems, but in doing so have not replaced them with anything,
and so our values have become confused, conflicted, fickle. One group tries
to save trees, and tries to save the jobs so they can feed their family. The
higher, synthetic truth that will bring together opposites is harder and
harder to find. When people don't have an inner value to call on, they look
around, see what the neighbors are doing, and follow suite. There is no real
inner status, so outward signs of status become important.
Dreamworkers have always been aware of this condition of the retreating
self/society and the machines that keep it in place. Spiritual dreamwork
discusses these issues in terms of enlightenment and salvation. That is,
there is a veil of illusion we call our lives, and the paths that allow us
to transcend these illusions. Psychological dreamwork discusses these
illusions in terms of neurosis and psychosis, and the appropriate level of
challenges and supports are set up to allow the individual to make choices
from places other than overwhelming affective/emotional states. Postmodern
dreamwork addresses these illusions more as social constructs and looks for
ways to subvert repressive forces and open up creative lines of escape. In
this view, the nightmare is not something for the subject to escape from,
but a path to escape the neurotic subject.
II.
What are those gaps in the dream, those shifting scenes of the dream?
The self passes through various states as it (they) rolls around the body
without organs. Some of these states are quite discontinuous. Freud and Jung
both addressed this discontinuity. They knew it was more than a lapse in
brain activation.
Interestingly, recently, the REM theory of dreaming collapsed. In 1953,
Aserinsky, a grad student of Nathaniel Kleitmann, found that when you waken
a person whose eyes were moving rapidly during sleep, they tended to recall
dreams. Eventually the REM cycle was found to be fairly regular and that it
activated parts of the neo-cortex through fairly random neural bursts. Since
then, Alan Hobson and his friends have insisted that dreaming is simply the
sleepy mind dealing with these random firings and gaps are times when there
are pauses in this activation.
Over the last few years, a whole new picture began to emerge from the
studies of a neurosurgeon who followed the dreams of patients with brain
damage. Mark Solms noted that the activation sequences that the brain needed
to dream (or more accurately, to recall dreams) was *independent* of the REM
activation. Oh, REM brain stem activation got this new Dream-On sequence
going at times ( a spiral like activation that cycles through our motivation
centers, our spacio-temporal-imaginal centers, our higher visual centers)
but so did other things, and once activated, it follows its own independent
activation.
But all these notions seemed dated, or limited, when considered within a
Deleuzio-guattarian engagement. Molar aggregates scrape and fight about
territory all the time, and when this occurs over millions of years, brain
structures get pushed to the limit and turn into revolutions.
Dream discontinuity here becomes more a matter of intersecting lines
disrupting the subject of the conjunctive synthesis. At least from the point
of view of the body without organs.
The body without organs. Imagine a body that has not been organized into
brains, hearts, genitals, legs, arms, skin. A body like this has no real
interior, there are just flows, almost a perverse polymorphic distribution
of intensities that offer a smooth surface around which the dynamics of the
subjects, the objects, the affects, the cognitions, the forces of production
and consumption travel, not in paths where the end is known, but in partial
paths, in trajectories. An egg, crisscrossed by forces, dynamics, vectors.
As we approach the surface of this egg, the intensity drops to zero and
everything begins to slide.
In waking life, the ego uses narrative bridges to compensate for this
discontinuity. Even when we wake up, the technique for learning dream recall
is journalling.
But when sleeping, the access to the neurotransmitters that allow identity
structures to rigidly hold together and produce grids, thereby
reterritorializing dominate cultural axiomatics, disappear. That is, the
dream state is full of narratives and subjects, feelings and thoughts,
repressions and productions, and these work in a way that is unfamiliar to
the subject, who upon waking may recall a "dream" but in fact is only
recalling the last slice, the one it can identify as a story.
Disjunctions appear as gaps between dreams because the subject relates to
them from its experiential story-frame. Deterritorializations may be
experienced as apocalyptic or may be seen as loss of consciousness. Each
dream story, while it is being produced, is like a child playing on a train
track, and a track at the intersection of an infinite vortices. The subject
consumes the dream as narrative, but can only rarely use that narrative
structure to reterritorialize its identity. Again, probably due on the
bio-chemical level to the dissolving or wavy grid of control that occurs
during dreaming. (Interestingly activated first by the very spot that
leucotomies -earlier called lobotomies - are performed, ie dopamine,
active-producing, connecting, interest-producing, action-producing, desiring
centers).
Gaps in the Dream. Freud saw them as a cover-up, but one in which a sharp
mind could follow back by association, to a source. Oedipus gouging out his
eyes, then retracing his steps of the crime. Whether one goes for the theory
of being able to recover authorial intention or not, the process, free
association, did emerge as a skill by which the subject could begin to
produce his/her own streams and lines of escape.
Jung, in his charming Hegelian way, saw the gap as a portal being held open
by two unreconcilable opposites, two things that the ego just could not let
go of, yet could not have, two horrors, two beasts in eternal struggle for
one reality they could never both inhabit. Through this portal held by the
struggle emerged the uncanny transcendent.
OK, perhaps its just another tyrant awakening in the desert and slinking off
to Bethlehem, but when the dream becomes one of many sites where the
intolerable may first occur to us, where the molar limit produces molecular
cracks and bleeds the brood of the night, then here is a factory that
produces the un-containable rupture across which the nomad may skate.
III.
Like desire (and madness) dreams seem to be the most powerful when they
bring us into contact with radical otherness. Daniel brings Nebruchanezer
into contact with a dream that transforms the religions of Babylon. Joseph
brings Pharaoh into contact with a dream that alters the state of Egypt. Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is written after a Robert Lewis Stevenson encounters his
own Hyde in a dream. Freud and Jung encounter desire and madness in dreams
and create and alter the course of psychotherapy.
This radical otherness is better characterized as a continual process of
becoming other, which begins in the desire to escape bodily limitations.
These limitations can be both cultural as well as natural. To regress back
to representations for a moment, in dreams we often find ourselves up
against our own cultural and psychophysical limit-expectations. We stop at
red lights in our car in a dream. We open dream doors. We walk upstairs and
eat meals. Yet in other dreams we fly, we breath water, we walk through
walls, men become women, we can be several identities at once, we become
animals and crooks, we have sex with taboo people and inanimate objects.
And perhaps most radically, we stop being we. I am not the center of my
dream, but just one trajectory intersecting the dream.
*zzzzz* Desire as productive, creating breaks in the flow and connecting one
desiring machine to another.
*zzzzz* Dreams/nightmares as productive, and what they are producing and how
does this work? Careful, does each dream produce a singularity, or can we
abstract and generalize since we have all been caught in the same habits of
western culture?
*zzzzz* Dreams/nightmares in their different phases of deterritorialization
of subjective space, their territorialization of brain space, the
teterritorialization of ?
*zzzzz* If you must remain psychoanlaytic, how about a slight shift? Instead
of seeing nightmares as a failure of the censor, what happens if we posit
that the nightmare is a deflection of something so ungraspable that it can
only be said to be a successful censoring of that experience.
*zzzzz* Dreams/Nightmares as ruptures between the binary thinking of
conscious/unconscious, wake/sleep, aware/not aware, here/not here?
*zzzzz* What might have young Felix or Gilles have thought to themselves
when they first had to tackle Descartes Dream problem about reality and
knowing?
*zzzzz* How might the dream/nightmare be seen as a co-patriot of
disfamiliarization?
In ancient Delphi, people would sleep on the steps of the temple of Apollo,
seeking (incubating) the dream that would allow them access to the oracle
inside. Mythically, this access to the truth was a later imposition of
Apollo on a pre-Greek people who practiced dance and rites that were
assigned by the Greeks to Dionysos. Pan is one of his entourage and was said
to have taught Apollo dream work at Delphi. In the Dionysian groups, the
questions or problems, if that is what they really were, were danced along
the hillsides and meadows and involved transformations in ecstasy. This
moving-into may be distinguished from Apollo's seeing-from afar. With the
dominance of Apollo, the dramas were all contained in the amphitheater and
the ecstasies relocated to the dream (and the one oracle, who was imprisoned
in the center of the temple and surrounded by the priests who did all the
interpreting of visions and dreams). This same set-up was found in the cult
of Asklepios (Aesculapius in Latin). At these popular dream healing
sanctuaries the amphitheater was ever near the spa. The patients would be
cured when they encountered Asklepios or one of his family or animals in a
dream. The becoming other, so to speak, was limited to particular containing
vessels. Still, Dionysos is seen as Apollo's dark brother and has his own
months where he is still the god at Delphi.
Like Dionysos, the nightmare remains nomadic subject, the free autonomous
subject which exists momentarily in an ever shifting array of possibilities
as desiring machines distribute flows across the body without organs.
------------------
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From the Dream Section editor Kat Peters-Midland :
This month’s dream section is short, but it has some very interesting dreams
of a black bird biting, hearing voices on a haunted pager, digging for gold,
and a yellow rattle snake following…
Dream title: The Repetitive Car Ride
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: Dream-Keeper
Dream text: I am riding in a van going through city and states with no real
destination in mind. I am not driving but my mother is. My father never
seems to be there. We then decide that we want to go fishing and head off
down the road to a pond of some sort. But then we change our minds and
decide to go somewhere else. We set off on this road that feels so familiar.
As we drive I notice that the bridge that we are crossing runs out. And we
have to jump the water to get to the shore or the road at the end of the
water. But yet we aren't shocked that the road runs out but it feels like
it's just another route. But as we cross I get jumpy and we always barely
make it. And then the dream stops there.
Dream comments: I have had this dream several times and most of the time as
I am coming out of the dream I tend to feel as if I am falling and I hit the
ground in the dream I wake up and the strong pull is gone.
Dream title: bitten by a black bird with red markings on it
Dream date: 10-01-2006
Dreamer name: precious2god
Dream text: I dreamed I was upstairs in an abandoned house. It was a house
that I was interested in buying. There was a hole in the roof and I saw a
black and red colored bird fly in. I put my hands up to cover my face and
it bit me on my finger.
Dream comments: My older sister passed away 9-30-2006 - we were not close.
I wonder if it had anything to do with her
Dream title: haunted pager
Dream date: 9/29/06
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have a haunted Nextel that had voices I knew from work. They
said very unpleasant things and scary things too .
Dream comments: It kind creeped me out a little
Dream title: Shark
Dream date: 8/1/06
Dreamer name: Sadgirl
Dream text: I see myself in the ocean and I am in a black scuba diving
outfit. I see this old ship sunken at the bottom and I am trying to get to
it. The water is clear and I can see the bubbles of my scuba tank. All of
a sudden I see this great white shark and I am afraid. I am frozen and as it
is about to eat me I wake up.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: Snake
Dream date: 5/15/06
Dreamer name: Sadgirl
Dream text: I see this yellow rattle snake, where the rattle is black and
has the numbers 1,2,3 on the rattle. I am not afraid of it, but I do not
want to be around it, I keep trying to move but it won't let me leave it
keeps following me, and then I wake up.
Dream comments: no comments
Dream title: torn and confused
Dream date: 9/14/06
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was in this house, in one room there was an ex of mine. My ex
kissed me and I told him I didn't want to do anything with him. In another
room was another ex of mine who I had slept with. Afterwards, I looked out
of the window of the room to see the ocean and a whale that had beached
itself. A baby whale was also on the beach dead. I then leave the room to
go downstairs only to run into the man I'm currently dating. He tries to hug
and kiss me and I push him away.
Dream comments: I was told that fish mean pregnancy. I don't understand why
my ex’s were in my dream and why I pushed my current boyfriend away.
Dream title: Digging for gold
Dream date: 9-22-06
Dreamer name: nighttime13
Dream text: I’m in a hotel pool outdoors. The bottom of the pool is sand
instead of cement. Scattered throughout within the sand is many pieces of
jewelry that people have lost. I'm finding many, many pieces and lay claim
to it. I find rings with beautiful gems. I find pearl earrings. I couldn't
believe all the money I'd make cashing it all in. Then I awake.
Dream comments: none
--
Stan Kulikowski II
DATE : 11 sep 2006 04:58
DREAM : red potato woman
=( yesterday was a sunday. i mowed the front yard and worked in the flower
beds, cutting out thick roots that had sprouted oak and other tall shoots.
mother spent the evening watching reruns. we avoided most of the 9-11
commemoratives on the major channels. i am tired of all of the dreary
politics of death that surround the substitution of shallow reactive
security for our dwindling few liberties. we do not honor our catastrophic
dead by throwing more lives of our soldiers at oil rich countries who did
not attack us and have come to hate us even more for such heavy handed and
misguided arrogance. staying the course in this politic means repeating a
wrong until it becomes right. a dreary night for me indeed. i got to sleep
around 01:00.
)=
the neurologist has his hard rubber hammer and is thumping me on both knees
and tickling the soles of my feet to see my legs jerk and twitch.
apparently he is happy to see how my reflexes respond. he thumps me a few
more places and tells me that i am recovering fine, better than expected.
this makes me feel that i have accomplished something grand.
i get up and look around as he confers with my personal therapist.
she is a good sized, meaty girl rather like one of the women from r crumb
comics with powerful long thighs but a well formed face of some beauty. she
brushes back a stray lock of her short blonde hair as she considers
something the doctor has said to her. their sense of secrecy in talking
where i can not hear them makes me a little concerned.
eventually my therapist comes over to me and says that we can go now.
i am ready to leave, but as i start to walk away after her, my legs ache and
the front half of both of my feet downright hurt with every step i take. i
figure the exercise will do them good and might work out some of the pain,
so i continue on. it is her job after all to see that i do what is
necessary for my condition to improve.
i follow her through an open street market where various women merchants
have their wares spread out. my therapist fingers some of the jewelry as we
pass but does not stop to buy anything. i would like to get her something
expensive but i find that i have no money in the pockets of my jeans.
soon we come to the end of the street with the market and there is an open
air public restroom constructed of flat plywood panels that have been
painted in white and red. she pulls open the privacy door and steps inside
to take a piss as i wait outside.
when she is done, the privacy panel swings open. she is just pulling up her
tight pants so i can see a flash of her pink underwear. before the therapist
can turn around to flush the toilet, a smaller girl scoots up on her knees
to pull the flush handle for her and takes out a toilet bowl brush with a
canister of powdered cleanser. the young girl begins to shake and brush up
the bowl to a sparkling white.
"you can never be too clean or too right." she sings to herself as she
works.
i recognize that phrase. this cleaning girl is a trainee of the red potato
woman. i have read something about this in comic books but i never expected
any of it to be real. the red potato woman is something of a mystic who
addresses gatherings of women on the edge of town. she imparts wisdom to
them and helps them accessorize their fashions in a consistent but oddly
ornate style. this girl has sparkling huge ear rings with a matching
bracelet that clinks on the toilet bowl as she vigorously brushes around and
around with the foaming cleanser.
there is a mirror on the back side of the open privacy panel and in it i see
my reflection. i have a bit of a shock. it is not my face that is looking
back at me, but some other man a little younger than me. he has black hair
and a swarthy look. the front of my face is clean shaven, but down the
cheeks and under the jaw is a short fuzzy dark beard. i do not like the
look of this and resolve to shave it off at the first opportunity. just
now, i need to figure out why i am in the body of some one than other
myself. i think i was relatively handsome compared to this rather seedy
appearance, but i guess that i have to make do with it for now at least.
there is a train track that runs back along the edge of the town which is
little more than the single street with the market sales and a few
buildings. i limp over a waiting flatbed car that is only starting to move
and leap on board for a ride. my therapist comes along and the trainee girl
scoots over moving on knuckles and knees like cripples in india who never
heard of wheelchairs. i suspect that she is not impaired in any way, just
adopting this posture as part of her penance.
my therapist takes firm hold of my legs below the knees and does some
inspection with a slight massage. as she slowly works her way up my thighs
and onto my hip bones, she rocks my body back on some sort of pivot so my
spine straightens out horizontal on the flatbed. it feels better to stretch
out like this. she then lays her long firm body over on
(Message over 64k, truncated.)
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