DESTINY IN DREAMS -- Part II

Thirty-five years ago I started recording my dreams. It seemed like the right thing to do: to follow the path of curiosity down into the labyrinth of images, find out what was there and get to the bottom of things -- if there was a bottom. Over the years, however, a strange thing began to happen: I realized that whatever “truth” I was pursuing through those tunnels was also, in a manner of speaking, pursuing me.

When I say “pursue,” I don’t mean it was out to get me. Rather, it
seemed that some living factor -- sometimes a figure within a dream, sometimes the entire dream itself or even something larger than the dream --was seeking to engage me in a process that required my conscious participation, as if for the purpose of bringing forth certain potentials. Occasionally a dream would come along that seemed to sweep my entire life into a basket and hold it there, as if I consisted of a jumble of contents -- energies, qualities, experiences, aptitudes, dimensions -- that were somehow contained and expressed in a few mystifying images. A hand held the basket and shook it now and then, tumbling me and all of my “contents” into a new configuration. The process was often disconcerting, to be sure, but it also gave me a greater sense of solidity.

All I could do was hang on, pay attention, try to remember what I had witnessed and, by any means possible, do my best to participate -- actively -- in the weaving together, the realization, of some mysterious pattern. Increasingly, the source of that pattern seemed to lie beyond the dreams themselves even as it gave form to them.

In short, I had to find ways to live my life in accord with the deeper images that constituted the fundamental determinants of my being. Another way of saying this is that I had discovered a living, mythic intelligence woven through a long series of dreams, which in turn were connected to crucial events of my life.

I gradually realized that this patterning force was shaping and directing the course of my life. It did this partly by imposing life-tasks, in dreams. The trick, of course, was to discern the tasks implicit in the dreams, and the destiny implicit in the tasks. As if that were not difficult enough, I then had to find the courage to carry out the tasks and live the destiny. Easier said than done.

Destiny -- a word so often misused in our over-marketed culture, where carelessness toward language is epidemic. [For a fascinating study of words and their relation to psyche see Russell Lockhart’s
book Words As Eggs.] When I speak of destiny, I do not mean “where we end up” (the destination of a trip), or “where we start” (our given lot in life). Nor am I referring to the fortune teller’s use of the term to predict events along the way: destiny as predetermination.

I think of destiny as an overarching pattern, a mosaic of multiple meanings, irrational in its deepest essence, that gives shape and coherence to one’s life and personality. When one catches a glimpse of this pattern in dreams, it is like a revelation of the goal or purpose for which one was created. Meister Eckhart came close to this definition in the fourteenth century when he said that “Every creature is a word of God.” Jung implied much the same thing when he said: “Become the person you have always been.”

Although solitary experience brought me to this sense of the destiny in dreams, the years during which I actively practiced as a Jungian Therapist only strengthened my conviction: Dreams in general, but destiny dreams in particular, reveal the existence of an active, organizing intelligence -- a cosmic intelligence, for all I can tell, since I surely do not know where it begins or ends. It seems as manifestly pervasive in the depths of the psyche as in the depths of the cosmos. I only know that my life unfolds within the grip of something greater than I, which has the power to sustain or put an end to my life, and that my well-being is highly contingent upon its well-being.

For this reason I take the actions that I do in the world, for better or for worse, within the limited scope of my abilities or the extent of my influence. And at the end of my life, the question of whether I have satisfied the expectations of others will ultimately pale beside the question of whether I have fulfilled the pattern demanded of me by my dreams.

THE GORILLA DREAM

When I was a child I had a chronic dream about a gorilla chasing me through underground tunnels. The dream closely resembled a corny television series I had seen about explorers in pith helmets and jodphurs and little black pistol holsters, roaming through the ruins of a lost city. Occasionally they would encounter a “gorilla” (actually, a man in a gorilla costume) skulking through simulated underground corridors on a TV stage set. Each episode ended with a “cliff-hanger” -- for example, someone dangling by a shrub or a root attached to the sheer walls of a deep canyon. The next episode began with a re-play of the crucial moment, followed by rescues and escapes which always left the explorers safe and sound.

My dream was different. I could see the tunnels from a distance, in cross-section, like an ant colony in a terrarium (even at a young age dreams can give us a perspective on our lives). And the network of tunnels shuttled back and forth, not through the contrived materials of a sound stage, but through a solid bed of black coal. From my perspective in the dream I could see the gorilla chasing me through the dark labyrinth, hot on my heels. But strangely, for all his superior power, he never caught me and he never hurt me. Even so, I regarded the dream as a nightmare simply because it scared me. (It never occurred to me at the time to wonder how it could be that “I” was watching “myself.” Were there two of me -- one that acted and another that observed?)

Eventually I stopped having that dream. Years later, when I finally began my intensive study of Jung and dreams, the gorilla came back to mind for good, more vital than ever. I saw him in a new light because I realized that, since he lived in those coal tunnels, he therefore knew his way around. If only I could stop being frightened and make friends with him, he could actually guide me through the underworld: A knowledgeable, animal-spirit guide through the unconscious realm of transformative energies and images -- the stored sunlight and fire implicit in “coal.”

The more time I spent recording and musing on dreams, the more evident it became that I was naturally suited to the process. The gorilla dream loomed in importance, and I realized that, by its chronic insistence during childhood, it was telling me that “I could run but I couldn’t hide,” that is, sooner or later I would have to descend into those tunnels, only consciously this time. Some prescience was manifest in my child’s psyche, a knowing in advance, showing me the possibility of a certain direction in life, and then insisting on it again and again. All I could to at the time was to wake up groaning, “Oh, no, not the gorilla dream again.” Little did I know what a gift that dream was, and how it would eventually lead me deeper and teach me more than I ever could have learned by simply following the herd.

I do not mean to imply that the path of destiny is not fraught with peril. To take up the challenge of one’s individuality -- which is ultimately the essence of destiny, and the basis of all genuine “activism” -- is not for the faint of heart. Sooner or later one will encounter deep conflicts that challenge the whole person. Amazingly, the imaginative genius of dreams seems to encompass every possible situation, every possible conflict and every possible solution. It creates thousands upon thousands of images and parades them before us every night, as if to say, “This shall be your task: To find yourself among these images, then to place your whole personality in the balance, in the realization that you too are an off-spring of the stars, a living spark of the universe, darkness itself come to light.”