Further Pondering of the Dream 2-19-2024

A few days after the dream of February 29, I woke up at 6 a.m. and lay in bed until 6:30 either thinking about or listening to an explanation of the dream. Jenny and Frank had encouraged me to look at it from a symbolic viewpoint, but I never studied Jungian interpretations of dreams. Frank had asked about the symbolism of the alligator, and Jenny did a quick internet search for me. So this inspired me, and the following is a second interpretation of the dream which is more personal.

Background: I have had what I consider two traumatic incidents in my life that deeply impacted my ego and the persona I present to others. One was a horrific hospitalization when I was five-years old, and the second was a divorce after twenty years of marriage when I was forty-two.

Shortly after the divorce I began a spiritual quest with lots of questions and began obsessively searching for answers: Who am I? Why am I here? Why does the universe exist? Who created it? When? How? What happens when I die? …to mention a few.

First Explanation of dream 2-19-2024

Recently I have been focused on the concept of the Life Force, Unconditional Love and Skillful Means. Then along came the dream of February 19 which confused me, so I’m still looking at its symbolism and meaning, but I have no idea what the broom, rushes and alligator represent.

For the first time in many years I feel on firmer ground with my view of…well…everything, although I’m not ready to write the book titled The World According to Charles. One piece of the puzzle that remains has to do with loving a Creator, but I’m always perplexed by what the Creator is. If it’s consciousness, Ain Sof, or the Wheel of Life which turns because of karma and ignorance, how is one supposed to love that? If form is emptiness and emptiness is form…or the All That It Is is everything and nothing, what is there to love?

So, in the dream the aunt, niece and nephew suddenly have faith in God when they receive a vision from Him somehow telling them everyone is safe and protected. In my mental world I see this as subject-object consciousness because an objective God is outside of them and His word reassures them that all is well.

Another interesting middle-of-the-night dream

February 19, 2024

It’s 2:19 a.m. and I just had another dream I have to remember. I awakened from the dream and needed to use the bathroom, but as I lay in bed I realized I was still watching the dream unfold. So, I stayed, watched, and listened as long as I could.

Somehow I knew the woman in the dream was an aunt, but not a very good one although I didn’t know those details, and she was on her way to visit her young niece and nephew. When she arrived at their house the children were outside on the sidewalk and there was a huge alligator approaching them. The aunt leaped out of the car, grabbed both of the children in her arms, somehow opened the door and put them inside. There was a broom on the porch which she picked up instantly. Then without fear she approached the alligator and swept it off the walk into the grass. It scurried away. Although she wasn’t religious, she immediately thanked the Lord.

Next she ran back into the house looking for the children but they weren’t there. Thinking they had gone out the back door, she ran through the house and out into the field. In the dream she used the word “rushes” which I understood to be tall weeds in which other alligators could be hiding. She was so scared as she ran frantically calling the children when, suddenly, she looked up at the house and could see them standing at the window watching her.

There are no ‘others’

Last night I woke up in the middle of a dream. I don’t know where I was or what was happening except that someone was writing on a blackboard: “either move consciousness forward or get lost in the mire”. I wasn’t even sure of the definition of “mire” so I looked it up this morning and it means “wet, soggy ground”.

After this dream fragment in the middle of the night I sat up in bed, turned on the lamp, and began writing on the tablet which I now keep beside me for just these incidents. I wrote, “Consciousness ‘looks’ for ways to continue its journey back to itself. When it’s blocked, it’s like water held up by a dam. It’s always looking for openings, anything that will move the process forward. When its forms reach a certain level of development they expand horizontally until that level exhausts itself in ‘variations on a theme’ or transforms into the next higher level.”

I turned off the light and went back to bed. A minute later I was up again and writing. “As long as something remains an ‘other’ it is an object that can be poked, prodded, measured and quantified. Consciousness looks for ways to integrate everything so there are no ‘others’.”

Back to bed, up again: “Dr. J and Michael Jordan took sports to new levels of achievement; the Dalai Lama takes religion and morality to a new level; Picasso took art to a new level; Mozart took music; Roger Banister with his 4-minute mile is a perfect example. Before him no one had ever run a mile in less than four minutes and now high school runners break that barrier.

“Horizontal development: different versions of the same thing like varieties of the same item in a grocery store. Someone developed the first salad dressing and now there are fifty choices. Someone developed the potato chip and now the choices fill an aisle in a grocery store. These are examples of horizontal development. Then something new comes along and it starts again.

“Consciousness is ready to move forward, up or out. When a level exhausts itself it either perishes or transforms. Right now mankind is backing up the flow at the dam. We will be either the form that destroys or integrates the present forms of consciousness. I suppose the purposeful flow is toward integration so there are no ‘others’.”

And then, almost miraculously, even with all that thought, I turned off the light, went back to bed and fell asleep instantly.

After writing this entry I opened the book “The Phenomenon of Man” and read these first sentences in the section on “Survival”:

“When man has realized that he carries the world’s fortune in himself and that a limitless future stretches before him in which he cannot founder, his first reflex often leads him along the dangerous course of seeking fulfillment in isolation.

“In one example of this—flattering to our private egotism—some innate instinct, justified by reflection, inclines us to think that to give ourselves full scope we must break away as far as possible from the crowd of others.” (The Phenomenon of Man p 237)

Tomorrow I’m leaving the lake house for the first time in three months so both the blog and I will be gone for at least a week.