"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Recently I dreamed:
I am in a very large public space the size of a domed football stadium, possibly larger. In spite of its great size, the space is encompassed by an even larger structure -- an enormous rotating drum.
The drum resembles a “ball-mill,” a crushing and grinding machine used to pulverize ores and other materials. In the case of this particular drum the material to be pulverized is a white, earthen material.
Not only will the drum reduce the material to a powder, but it will also perform a transformative operation, turning the white powder into something else and giving it a new shape in the process.
I observe this scene from a second floor balcony. On the ground level there are groups of people going about their business, which consists mostly in recreation and entertainment. One group is playing ping-pong.
The “drum” is so large, and is turning so slowly, that most people are unaware of it.
Reaching over the balcony, I crush a portion of white material in my hand and let it fall to the ground below. In this way I add material to the overall “mix” of what the drum is processing.
Some of the lumps in my hand are resistant to crushing. I am concerned they might interfere with the process, but decide the drum is large enough that the small lumps will be pulverized. I let them go.
Apparently the drum has completed a preliminary phase, for it ejects a large mass of prepared material, flopping it onto the ground like a gigantic batch of bread dough. Immediately a second, smaller batch of gold or yellow material -- similarly mixed -- is added to the white. Both the white and the yellow earthy materials will be thoroughly intermixed before proceeding to the next stage.
Whenever it is ready, the material will either be (1) formed into a new mold to receive and give shape to a completely different material (as in bronze-casting), or (2) given shape itself by an as-yet unseen form or container, the way an amorphous mass of bread dough is given shape by its baking pan. [End of dream.]
The transpersonal perspective of this dream was so striking to me that I felt it belonged in the series of dreams I am presenting in this column as examples of “Wisdom in Dreams.” Whenever we see our lives from a higher, wider perspective, we are probably being gifted with wisdom.
ASSOCIATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
1. The “rotating drum” depicts a structure and process larger than most human enterprises. As such, it suggests a collective phenomenon affecting individuals, groups and the institutions by which they feel contained. The drum, in other words, contains our containers. I take the drum, therefore, as an expression of an archetypal, “macrophase” psychological process to which we are all subject. It reminds me of Longfellow’s poem quoted above, in which he refers to the “Mills of God.”
2. The drum is visible, but only in a peripheral or subliminal way. To see it requires an unusual type of vision. Because most people focus on what they are doing and do not pay attention to the periphery of their awareness, they cannot see the drum and hence do not know it is there. Nevertheless, even if they are not consciously adding their own material to the process -- their own “white earth” -- their lives are inexorably subject to the grinding and pulverizing action of the drum.
3. No one really knows what the final shape or outcome of the milling process will be. As Jung said, “The great problem of our time is that we don’t know what is happening to the world.”
4. “White earth” resembles the white plaster material I used for many years as a bronzecaster, as I formed molds in the “investment” method of lost-wax art bronze-casting. The psychological and alchemical properties of bronze-casting were quite evident to me during those years. Following are some correlations between bronze-casting, alchemy and the dream:
-- The mold has to be strong enough to withstand tremendous heat, yet sensitive and delicate enough to retain impressions of the wax within. This hints at the way structures of consciousness must be refractory enough to withstand the “heat” of intense emotions, conflict, stress, disappointment, etc., while still retaining the insights, the valuable impressions, received along the way.
-- In order to release the fresh casting from the mold, the mold must be broken. The spent material is then crushed, pulverized and added to the fresh mix for a new mold. Worn out attitudes and forms -- the old molds into which we once poured our experience -- must be willingly sacrificed if there is to be any re-birth, any re-vitalization of life. The dream suggests that the renewal process is actually taking place.
-- Alchemically, “white earth” refers to what remains of the prima materia after it has undergone the nigredo, also known as the “dark night of the soul.” Associated with silver, the moon, and the albedo, white earth announces a new light after darkness, a capacity for reflection and heightened psychic sensitivity.
-- The yellow-gold earth, in contrast, hints at something inherently luminous, e.g., “the sun” or “gold.” Because the yellow mass is smaller than the white, it suggests to me the product of a refinement, an extract or precipitate, in the same way that tons of ore must be processed to extract a few ounces of precious metal.
-- Implicit in the two materials are pairs of opposites: silver and gold, moon and sun, passive and active, reflection and radiance. The combination and mixing of the two colors pre-figure the possibility of balancing solar and lunar potentials. Although the black phase, the nigredo, was not explicitly mentioned in the dream, it is implicit in the “fire” -- and therefore “death” -- the material had to undergo in order to reach the albedo phase. Thus a tentative alchemical sequence of symbolic colors is suggested: from black to white to yellow.
5. I take the “substances” in the dream, and the processes with which they resonate, to be metaphors for the development of personality and soul. When one has gone through the fire and endured -- a process of conscious suffering -- then a state of whitened reflectivity is possible. Thus we are all potential contributors to the larger collective psychic process that is shaping our common future, even though we cannot yet see clearly what form that future will take.
6. In Aion, Jung pointed out that the historical phase now coming to an end -- astrologically, the Age of Pisces -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the “separatio.” Thus we have seen two thousand years of the development of consciousness based on the separation of opposites: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, etc. The coming aeon -- astrologically, the Age of Aquarius -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the coniunctio oppositorum, or the conjunction of opposites. (For more on the communal aspects of the Age of Aquarius see Russell Lockhart’s Psyche Speaks.)
Because of the correlation of historical processes with alchemical symbolism, I anticipate that a confrontation with the opposites, with a view to their eventual integration, will increasingly predominate in human affairs. Everywhere we turn we will be faced with an implicit task, to find ways of integrating what seems to be opposed.
7. Edward Edinger’s prophetic vision of the “Coming of the Self” (cf. his book The Archetype of the Apocalypse) portends a planetary psychological crisis of enormous proportions. Whether humanity rises to the occasion will depend on whether enough people meet the challenge head-on, consciously, or whether the passion for unconsciousness prevails.
8. The Rotating Drum dream suggests that the larger process of synthesizing consciousness on a new level may yet take precedence over the indifference of the people playing “ping-pong.” The outcome, however, is by no means assured. A shared responsibility is implied.
9. The mechanical metaphor of the Rotating Drum does not exactly qualify as an image of God. But I see no reason why the drum and its operations cannot be regarded as a direct metaphorical parallel to Longfellow’s “Mills of God.” Of course, we no longer imagine our world in such poetic terms, but dreams are not bound by our conscious limitations. Nor should our imaginative responses to dreams be limited by those same intellectual fashions. When I imagine the drum, therefore, I also see a vast hand turning it -- what we used to call the Hand of God. This great hand, imparting movement to events and shaping them at the same time, acts most forcefully upon our world in a time of crisis and change.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Dreaming of Re-Birth
There is a Latin saying I’ve always enjoyed: Canis panem somniat, piscator pisces. A dog dreams of bread, a fisherman, fish. The idea is that one’s dreams follow the lines of one’s waking pursuits. Thus we imagine cats in their dreams searching for mice and warm places, or dogs chasing after cats and sticks. And because of my long years’ experience as a bronzecaster I still occasionally dream of kilns and molds, crucibles and furnaces.
But dreams will not be limited by clever Latin riffs, or any other attempt we make to encompass them. On the contrary, they encompass us, subsume us, just as our breath is subsumed by the atmosphere through which we move, which nevertheless forms part of our most intimate substance.
In taking up the vast question of re-birth in dreams, then, I am aware that the subject is way over my head. Yet because re-birth dreams have occasionally visited me, thereby forcing me to think about the question, I therefore feel justified in my audacity. I may seem like an ant trying to scale the Matterhorn, but so be it.
Two dreams in particular dropped the question of re-birth into my lap. Spaced a couple of years apart, they both took the form of verbal equations, as if I was dreaming an algebra of the soul. The dreams resonate closely with one another, the way paired strings vibrate sympathetically on a musical instrument. I’ll recount them separately, but hopefully some of their resonant tonalities will be audible.
Re-Bath
The first dream depicted a woman in a bathtub and carried the caption: Re-birth = re-bath.
Short and sweet. The image of the woman in the bathtub seemed like a visual portrayal of the formula’s solution: “re-bath.” At the same time, paradoxically, it was as if the “real image” of the dream was the formula itself and the picture of the woman in the tub was the explanatory caption -- a fox-and-hound relationship between the verbal and visual elements, like a fugue.
But for me the crucial point, the axis on which the dream turned, lay in the little prefix “re” -- again. All the thoughts and associations that have accrued to this dream gather around that simple part of speech. It suggests to me that the cleansing, re-ordering process -- the bath -- is repeatable, and therefore can happen at any moment: an ever-present potential. When Dylan Thomas referred to “the moon that is always rising,” he simultaneously evoked “the sun born over and over.”
This is good news. After all, if we were only allotted one re-birth per lifetime, we would all most likely end up in a pitiful heap. Periodic renewal is necessary for physical and psychological health and vitality, just as the body continuously sloughs off dead cells as it creates new ones. One could probably say that we all live in a constant state of actual and potential re-birth, if only we knew it.
The woman in the dream was an unknown figure. As such, she qualifies as an image of the soul -- in Jungian terms an “anima figure.” But the impersonal character of the dream tempts me to elevate her beyond the level of my personal anima. She seemed more like a general principle or an over-riding presence, along the lines of the Anima Mundi of centuries past. The fact that she was depicted not as a marble statue or elegant engraving -- the naked-yet-modest goddess standing atop the globe -- but simply as a woman in a bathtub, suggests to me that the grandeur of the Anima Mundi is to be found, not just in philosophy, but in our everyday lives: the transpersonal and transcendent vision glimmering right before our eyes.
The ramifications of this dream extend well beyond these brief observations, but this, at least, is a start.
A New Logos
The second dream was more complex: “Re-birth = re-interpretation in the light of a new Logos.”
This far-reaching statement is enough to set the teeth of philosophers and theologians on edge for centuries. In effect it calls for a new religious dispensation. And considering the amount of blood spilled as a result of the last “dispensation,” it might well give one pause to raise a banner in the name of yet another one. But I didn’t ask for the dream, it came to me. Therefore I must raise the banner.
What I would call the “old,” or the current, dispensation can be summed up in the New Testament words of John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
This enigmatic statement derives from classical Greek philosophy and has provided the grist for many contending mills. It holds that the principle of the Logos -- divine mind or reason, the creative word, the “Word of God” -- is to be regarded as the fountain from which human life proceeds, from “the beginning.” It is a First Principle on the basis of which all else is based. Christian theologians were quick to seize on this concept and apply it to the Christ and, by extension, to Jesus. And so we have had a tradition which saw Jesus as the Christ, and Christ as the Living Word of God.
So far so good.
The problem is that this formulation, handed down from antiquity, has been overtaken by events and ideas of the past few centuries. The result is that few people today really understand, or even care, what it means.
At this point I am reminded of Edward Edinger’s profound statement: “The Jewish dispensation was based on law. The Christian dispensation was based on faith. The new dispensation is based on experience.”
If Edinger was correct, and I believe he was; and if my dream is relevant to our contemporary dilemma, and I believe it is; then we can say that any significant re-birth of a personal or a cultural nature will be based on the experience of a new Logos, a new story or telling, a new outpouring of the Creative Word. It will amount to a new way of imagining the world and our relation to it, requiring the gathering of untold numbers of perceptions, ideas, intuitions and insights, imaginative visions, creative renderings and understandings.
The “new Logos” will manifest the operations of the Creative Word as whispered and heard in the silence of millions of individual souls. Jung said that the Great Dream “consists of many small dreams, and many acts of humilitity and submission to their hints.” Russ Lockhart evokes the Aquarian image of many individuals pouring the waters of their experience into the common pool. And Edinger referred to the “Christification of the Many” and the “Coming of the Self” to all.
Thus the new Logos will manifest itself in as many ways as there are individual souls to witness its advent and lend their efforts to its articulation and expression.
This, of course, is a great task of untold duration, suffered by all but consciously borne by relatively few. How much more important, then, will those individual efforts and sacrifices be in the years to come? For there is no guarantee that the re-birth implicit in my dream will come to pass in this time of crisis and trial.
It may ultimately prove to be my folly, but I nevertheless continue to find hope for renewal in the births and re-births announced in our dreams.
But dreams will not be limited by clever Latin riffs, or any other attempt we make to encompass them. On the contrary, they encompass us, subsume us, just as our breath is subsumed by the atmosphere through which we move, which nevertheless forms part of our most intimate substance.
In taking up the vast question of re-birth in dreams, then, I am aware that the subject is way over my head. Yet because re-birth dreams have occasionally visited me, thereby forcing me to think about the question, I therefore feel justified in my audacity. I may seem like an ant trying to scale the Matterhorn, but so be it.
Two dreams in particular dropped the question of re-birth into my lap. Spaced a couple of years apart, they both took the form of verbal equations, as if I was dreaming an algebra of the soul. The dreams resonate closely with one another, the way paired strings vibrate sympathetically on a musical instrument. I’ll recount them separately, but hopefully some of their resonant tonalities will be audible.
Re-Bath
The first dream depicted a woman in a bathtub and carried the caption: Re-birth = re-bath.
Short and sweet. The image of the woman in the bathtub seemed like a visual portrayal of the formula’s solution: “re-bath.” At the same time, paradoxically, it was as if the “real image” of the dream was the formula itself and the picture of the woman in the tub was the explanatory caption -- a fox-and-hound relationship between the verbal and visual elements, like a fugue.
But for me the crucial point, the axis on which the dream turned, lay in the little prefix “re” -- again. All the thoughts and associations that have accrued to this dream gather around that simple part of speech. It suggests to me that the cleansing, re-ordering process -- the bath -- is repeatable, and therefore can happen at any moment: an ever-present potential. When Dylan Thomas referred to “the moon that is always rising,” he simultaneously evoked “the sun born over and over.”
This is good news. After all, if we were only allotted one re-birth per lifetime, we would all most likely end up in a pitiful heap. Periodic renewal is necessary for physical and psychological health and vitality, just as the body continuously sloughs off dead cells as it creates new ones. One could probably say that we all live in a constant state of actual and potential re-birth, if only we knew it.
The woman in the dream was an unknown figure. As such, she qualifies as an image of the soul -- in Jungian terms an “anima figure.” But the impersonal character of the dream tempts me to elevate her beyond the level of my personal anima. She seemed more like a general principle or an over-riding presence, along the lines of the Anima Mundi of centuries past. The fact that she was depicted not as a marble statue or elegant engraving -- the naked-yet-modest goddess standing atop the globe -- but simply as a woman in a bathtub, suggests to me that the grandeur of the Anima Mundi is to be found, not just in philosophy, but in our everyday lives: the transpersonal and transcendent vision glimmering right before our eyes.
The ramifications of this dream extend well beyond these brief observations, but this, at least, is a start.
A New Logos
The second dream was more complex: “Re-birth = re-interpretation in the light of a new Logos.”
This far-reaching statement is enough to set the teeth of philosophers and theologians on edge for centuries. In effect it calls for a new religious dispensation. And considering the amount of blood spilled as a result of the last “dispensation,” it might well give one pause to raise a banner in the name of yet another one. But I didn’t ask for the dream, it came to me. Therefore I must raise the banner.
What I would call the “old,” or the current, dispensation can be summed up in the New Testament words of John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
This enigmatic statement derives from classical Greek philosophy and has provided the grist for many contending mills. It holds that the principle of the Logos -- divine mind or reason, the creative word, the “Word of God” -- is to be regarded as the fountain from which human life proceeds, from “the beginning.” It is a First Principle on the basis of which all else is based. Christian theologians were quick to seize on this concept and apply it to the Christ and, by extension, to Jesus. And so we have had a tradition which saw Jesus as the Christ, and Christ as the Living Word of God.
So far so good.
The problem is that this formulation, handed down from antiquity, has been overtaken by events and ideas of the past few centuries. The result is that few people today really understand, or even care, what it means.
At this point I am reminded of Edward Edinger’s profound statement: “The Jewish dispensation was based on law. The Christian dispensation was based on faith. The new dispensation is based on experience.”
If Edinger was correct, and I believe he was; and if my dream is relevant to our contemporary dilemma, and I believe it is; then we can say that any significant re-birth of a personal or a cultural nature will be based on the experience of a new Logos, a new story or telling, a new outpouring of the Creative Word. It will amount to a new way of imagining the world and our relation to it, requiring the gathering of untold numbers of perceptions, ideas, intuitions and insights, imaginative visions, creative renderings and understandings.
The “new Logos” will manifest the operations of the Creative Word as whispered and heard in the silence of millions of individual souls. Jung said that the Great Dream “consists of many small dreams, and many acts of humilitity and submission to their hints.” Russ Lockhart evokes the Aquarian image of many individuals pouring the waters of their experience into the common pool. And Edinger referred to the “Christification of the Many” and the “Coming of the Self” to all.
Thus the new Logos will manifest itself in as many ways as there are individual souls to witness its advent and lend their efforts to its articulation and expression.
This, of course, is a great task of untold duration, suffered by all but consciously borne by relatively few. How much more important, then, will those individual efforts and sacrifices be in the years to come? For there is no guarantee that the re-birth implicit in my dream will come to pass in this time of crisis and trial.
It may ultimately prove to be my folly, but I nevertheless continue to find hope for renewal in the births and re-births announced in our dreams.
Wisdom in Dreams --- Part I
Humans have always flirted with wisdom, even courted it. From the Venus of Willendorf to the cave paintings of Lascaux; from the Great Pyramids of Egypt to the Healing Temples of Aesculapius, a sheen of wisdom has lain over the human enterprise, gracing our intelligence, skill and inventiveness with an imponderable something. When wisdom smiles on human endeavor we seem truly gifted, lifted beyond ourselves on wings that do not melt if they approach the sun.
Ancient cultures recognized this “something” as an enveloping, transcendent presence. They even dared to give it many names: Sophia, Shekhina, Athena, Nebo, Ea, Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, the Goddess, Venus, Thoth, mana, the magi, the daimon, among countless others.
Modern culture, drunk with the hubris of power and mesmerized by its trinkets, trains us to look with amusement on those early cultures. We scoff at the naïveté of the ancients, who not only saw fit to personify wisdom but also looked upon a world suffused with the quaintness of soul, the superstition of spirit.
But we live in a time when much of humanity seems gripped by a strange, fateful inertia. It is as though we were incapable of tearing ourselves away from our labors and amusements long enough to face the deadly paradox: that the mythological machinery of technological prowess and economic “growth,” if not somehow brought under control and harnessed to serve wiser ends, might conceivably bring the human enterprise to an unseemly, premature end.
In such a time we might ask whether knowledge alone -- severed from wisdom -- is worth what it is costing us. And if it is not worth the cost, how then are we to bring wisdom, however haltingly, back into our lives, re-connecting it with knowledge?
The Philosopher’s Stone
The aim of this article is to consider dreams as a potential source of wisdom. But first, let’s consider a few qualities of wisdom itself. Admittedly, sometimes wisdom rises to the level of rarified mystical insight or philosophical perception. But equally striking, and perhaps more important for our purposes, is the very commonness of it. An alchemical saying, referring to the Philosopher’s Stone, expresses it thus: “Here stands the mean uncomely stone, ‘Tis very cheap in price! The more it is despised by fools, the more loved by the wise.”
On a practical level, wisdom may come into play when we exercise discernment and insight. If a politician lies to us, for example, and we cannot discern the lie, then we can have little insight into the personality of that politician and little chance of responding wisely to the slogans and propaganda issuing forth from the media under his or her control. How can we be wise citizens in a troubled time if we do not actively seek such discernment and cultivate such insight? But with discernment, we are one step closer to wisdom.
Ironically, young children sometimes have an uncanny ability -- and why not call it wisdom? -- to see through social poses and put their finger on the telling characteristics of someone they meet. This reveals an unconscious capacity for discernment. The fairy tale about the Emperor’s clothes points to the presence of wisdom in the young, as does the expression “Out of the mouths of babes.” But what is freely given in childhood is too often drummed out of us by the time we are adults. The attainment of wisdom then becomes a matter of recovering something that we once had, but lost. I wonder if this in part is what Jesus referred to when he said “Except ye become as little children . . . .”
“Unto the seventh generation”
The word wisdom means “seeing doom” or “seeing judgment,” in the sense of seeing an outcome in advance. A long-term perspective is therefore implicit in a wise response to processes that affect us and others. An example would be native people’s ecological concern for the effects of an action on “seven generations.” Contrast this with the contemporary ethos of “resource-extraction for immediate profit,” and ask yourself which is the wiser course.
Wisdom can enter into our life-choices in subtle ways without our knowing it. “Mistakes,” for example, can further the larger process of becoming whole persons. Wisdom is always greater than we are. And whether we wish it or not, the shadow side of the personality forms part of the greater whole and, one way or another, will have its say. If we deny and repress the shadow, then -- willy-nilly -- it will express itself through projection. Thus the evil eye casts about for an enemy, seeking yet another resting place on which to displace one’s own darkness into the world. Would it not be wiser to come to terms with our shadow, however unpleasant the process, than to force someone else to carry the burden for us?
It should be evident from these everyday examples that wisdom is not always out of reach, even though from earliest times we have imagined it as a gift from the gods. But I believe the ancients’ attitudes, in many ways, to be healthier than our own, and more accurate. Ironically, in the “science” of wisdom they may have been more astute than we are.
For we have turned our backs on wisdom in favor of efficiency, expediency and power. In the process we have displaced wisdom from the elevated temple it once occupied as a ruling principle of the universe, relegating it instead to rarified individuals whom we then either dismiss as impractical fools, or place on pedestals, out of reach of the rest of us.
Only a stunted culture could imagine that wisdom is not a property of the universe, free for the taking, like honey for the bear, available to anyone with eyes to see.
The Wisdom Vessel of Dreams
Dreams provide a great corrective for the myopia of our age, insofar as they force us to look at ourselves more honestly. They confront us mercilessly with our shadows and our complexes, our fears and inflations, our manic ambitions. They show us the damage we wreak on the unknown creatures and persons of the soul. Whenever we take dreams seriously and allow ourselves to be challenged ethically by the claims they make, we have inched a little closer to wisdom in ourselves and in the world. For it is far more difficult to judge someone else wrongly, once we have seen the wrongs that we inflict on ourselves. It would be difficult to overstate the benefits of this kind of psychological hygiene for the world itself.
By showing us that we are not masters in our own psychic households, dreams help us to ratchet down the rampant egomania that threatens the world and all of us with it. Matthew Fox equates this egomania with “anthropocentrism,” which he calls one of the great unrecognized sins of our time, along with ecocide, geocide and biocide. For example, were we not so egomaniacal and anthropocentric, we would find it more difficult to look with such stunning, apathetic complaisance at the extinction of animal species taking place today on all sides.
These two features of dreams alone -- that they confront us with our shadows and thereby undermine our titanic egotism -- constitute a massive potential for the influx of wisdom into the suffering world.
But note: It requires the moral courage of a fearless witness to look at dreams in this light and to allow oneself to be transformed, not into what one would like to be, but into what one actually is. This same moral courage also forms a crucial part of what I am calling wisdom in the person, the dream and the world.
I say “crucial” advisedly. The word derives from the same root as “crux,” “cross” and “crucifix.” The individual who confronts the wisdom in dreams may indeed undergo a kind of psychological crucifixion, an excruciating suspension between the opposites. But how else is the one-sidedness that is tearing our world asunder to be brought into balance, if not through the moral courage of individuals, who find the wisdom to recognize both sides of their own story?
Balance, moral courage, discernment: all are parts of wisdom, as is the seeking of it.
Communing With the Animals: A Dream
We could fill volumes with examples of dream wisdom, once attuned to its subtleties. But I would like to cite just one simple dream, before concluding, as an example of what I consider the “wisdom-voice” in a dream. A woman dreamed:
I am standing in a field, on one side of a wire fence. On the other side of the fence a group of people calls to me impatiently, “Let’s go, let’s go!” Instead of getting caught up in their impatience, however, I calmly say: “No, first we must commune with the animals.” [End of dream.]
Several aspects of this dream reveal what we might call the “vector of wisdom.”
First is the distinction between the individual and the group, which are placed on opposite sides of the fence. So long as the dreamer is caught up in collectively-determined impatience -- drivenness -- she will probably not be open to wisdom. But she is on the “other side of the fence.”
Second, the wire fence is a porous division, not an absolute barrier. She can see the group and hear its call throughout the dream. But whereas they are agitated, she is calm. In this respect the dream shows the dreamer resisting the emotional pull of a complex, which usually draws one into a less-differentiated state -- a form of regression. We function at a lower level than what we are capable of.
Third, it is probably because she is standing “on her own side of the fence” that she is able to give voice to the wisdom-perspective. If she can stay grounded in this way, she may be able to detach herself from the complexes with which she has been aligned or identified in the past. They won’t disappear or stop exerting their pull, but at least she has established a precedent of “standing her ground.”
Fourth, the wisdom-message that “first we must commune with the animals” suggests that the dreamer is aware of a priority lost on the group: communion with the animals in some way takes precedence over pursuit of worldly concerns.
Fifth, it should be noted that “the animals” do not appear in the dream. They are not visible. Interestingly, this suggests that the “communion” need not be taken literally, that is, it can take place inwardly. The animals are always present, we just usually ignore them.
Finally, we should note that this small dream is an exception that proves the rule, since the wisdom-voice usually emerges from the depths of the dream, carried by a figure other than the ego. This is in line with our traditional notion of the angel, who flies from “heaven” to deliver a healing message to the receptive ego. Thus, it often happens that a stranger, an animal, even the structure of the dream itself, gives voice to a wisdom the ego is lacking. Here, the dreamer finds herself aligned with the “angelic” message.
This dream suggests that a shift is taking place in the dreamer’s psyche, a loosening of the ties between the ego and the complexes with which it is normally aligned or identified. The dream therefore points to new potentials that are within reach of consciousness -- if she can only continue to stand her ground.
A deeper implication is that the wisdom flowing from the Self, as an expression of the Whole, is close by, ready to manifest itself to her and, through her, to the world.
As we go deeper into our dreams, and incorporate more and more of their inherent wisdom, we may gradually find in the individual soul a reflection of the underlying patterns humans have always recognized as “divine.” In this sense, as individual sparks of the divine fire, we all participate in the cosmic currents of wisdom that, I believe, permeate the universe and everything in it.
Let us all seek wisdom, then, in ourselves, in our dreams, in one another and in the world. And whenever or wherever we find it, may we find the courage to live it, embody it, bring it forth and let it shine.
Ancient cultures recognized this “something” as an enveloping, transcendent presence. They even dared to give it many names: Sophia, Shekhina, Athena, Nebo, Ea, Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, the Goddess, Venus, Thoth, mana, the magi, the daimon, among countless others.
Modern culture, drunk with the hubris of power and mesmerized by its trinkets, trains us to look with amusement on those early cultures. We scoff at the naïveté of the ancients, who not only saw fit to personify wisdom but also looked upon a world suffused with the quaintness of soul, the superstition of spirit.
But we live in a time when much of humanity seems gripped by a strange, fateful inertia. It is as though we were incapable of tearing ourselves away from our labors and amusements long enough to face the deadly paradox: that the mythological machinery of technological prowess and economic “growth,” if not somehow brought under control and harnessed to serve wiser ends, might conceivably bring the human enterprise to an unseemly, premature end.
In such a time we might ask whether knowledge alone -- severed from wisdom -- is worth what it is costing us. And if it is not worth the cost, how then are we to bring wisdom, however haltingly, back into our lives, re-connecting it with knowledge?
The Philosopher’s Stone
The aim of this article is to consider dreams as a potential source of wisdom. But first, let’s consider a few qualities of wisdom itself. Admittedly, sometimes wisdom rises to the level of rarified mystical insight or philosophical perception. But equally striking, and perhaps more important for our purposes, is the very commonness of it. An alchemical saying, referring to the Philosopher’s Stone, expresses it thus: “Here stands the mean uncomely stone, ‘Tis very cheap in price! The more it is despised by fools, the more loved by the wise.”
On a practical level, wisdom may come into play when we exercise discernment and insight. If a politician lies to us, for example, and we cannot discern the lie, then we can have little insight into the personality of that politician and little chance of responding wisely to the slogans and propaganda issuing forth from the media under his or her control. How can we be wise citizens in a troubled time if we do not actively seek such discernment and cultivate such insight? But with discernment, we are one step closer to wisdom.
Ironically, young children sometimes have an uncanny ability -- and why not call it wisdom? -- to see through social poses and put their finger on the telling characteristics of someone they meet. This reveals an unconscious capacity for discernment. The fairy tale about the Emperor’s clothes points to the presence of wisdom in the young, as does the expression “Out of the mouths of babes.” But what is freely given in childhood is too often drummed out of us by the time we are adults. The attainment of wisdom then becomes a matter of recovering something that we once had, but lost. I wonder if this in part is what Jesus referred to when he said “Except ye become as little children . . . .”
“Unto the seventh generation”
The word wisdom means “seeing doom” or “seeing judgment,” in the sense of seeing an outcome in advance. A long-term perspective is therefore implicit in a wise response to processes that affect us and others. An example would be native people’s ecological concern for the effects of an action on “seven generations.” Contrast this with the contemporary ethos of “resource-extraction for immediate profit,” and ask yourself which is the wiser course.
Wisdom can enter into our life-choices in subtle ways without our knowing it. “Mistakes,” for example, can further the larger process of becoming whole persons. Wisdom is always greater than we are. And whether we wish it or not, the shadow side of the personality forms part of the greater whole and, one way or another, will have its say. If we deny and repress the shadow, then -- willy-nilly -- it will express itself through projection. Thus the evil eye casts about for an enemy, seeking yet another resting place on which to displace one’s own darkness into the world. Would it not be wiser to come to terms with our shadow, however unpleasant the process, than to force someone else to carry the burden for us?
It should be evident from these everyday examples that wisdom is not always out of reach, even though from earliest times we have imagined it as a gift from the gods. But I believe the ancients’ attitudes, in many ways, to be healthier than our own, and more accurate. Ironically, in the “science” of wisdom they may have been more astute than we are.
For we have turned our backs on wisdom in favor of efficiency, expediency and power. In the process we have displaced wisdom from the elevated temple it once occupied as a ruling principle of the universe, relegating it instead to rarified individuals whom we then either dismiss as impractical fools, or place on pedestals, out of reach of the rest of us.
Only a stunted culture could imagine that wisdom is not a property of the universe, free for the taking, like honey for the bear, available to anyone with eyes to see.
The Wisdom Vessel of Dreams
Dreams provide a great corrective for the myopia of our age, insofar as they force us to look at ourselves more honestly. They confront us mercilessly with our shadows and our complexes, our fears and inflations, our manic ambitions. They show us the damage we wreak on the unknown creatures and persons of the soul. Whenever we take dreams seriously and allow ourselves to be challenged ethically by the claims they make, we have inched a little closer to wisdom in ourselves and in the world. For it is far more difficult to judge someone else wrongly, once we have seen the wrongs that we inflict on ourselves. It would be difficult to overstate the benefits of this kind of psychological hygiene for the world itself.
By showing us that we are not masters in our own psychic households, dreams help us to ratchet down the rampant egomania that threatens the world and all of us with it. Matthew Fox equates this egomania with “anthropocentrism,” which he calls one of the great unrecognized sins of our time, along with ecocide, geocide and biocide. For example, were we not so egomaniacal and anthropocentric, we would find it more difficult to look with such stunning, apathetic complaisance at the extinction of animal species taking place today on all sides.
These two features of dreams alone -- that they confront us with our shadows and thereby undermine our titanic egotism -- constitute a massive potential for the influx of wisdom into the suffering world.
But note: It requires the moral courage of a fearless witness to look at dreams in this light and to allow oneself to be transformed, not into what one would like to be, but into what one actually is. This same moral courage also forms a crucial part of what I am calling wisdom in the person, the dream and the world.
I say “crucial” advisedly. The word derives from the same root as “crux,” “cross” and “crucifix.” The individual who confronts the wisdom in dreams may indeed undergo a kind of psychological crucifixion, an excruciating suspension between the opposites. But how else is the one-sidedness that is tearing our world asunder to be brought into balance, if not through the moral courage of individuals, who find the wisdom to recognize both sides of their own story?
Balance, moral courage, discernment: all are parts of wisdom, as is the seeking of it.
Communing With the Animals: A Dream
We could fill volumes with examples of dream wisdom, once attuned to its subtleties. But I would like to cite just one simple dream, before concluding, as an example of what I consider the “wisdom-voice” in a dream. A woman dreamed:
I am standing in a field, on one side of a wire fence. On the other side of the fence a group of people calls to me impatiently, “Let’s go, let’s go!” Instead of getting caught up in their impatience, however, I calmly say: “No, first we must commune with the animals.” [End of dream.]
Several aspects of this dream reveal what we might call the “vector of wisdom.”
First is the distinction between the individual and the group, which are placed on opposite sides of the fence. So long as the dreamer is caught up in collectively-determined impatience -- drivenness -- she will probably not be open to wisdom. But she is on the “other side of the fence.”
Second, the wire fence is a porous division, not an absolute barrier. She can see the group and hear its call throughout the dream. But whereas they are agitated, she is calm. In this respect the dream shows the dreamer resisting the emotional pull of a complex, which usually draws one into a less-differentiated state -- a form of regression. We function at a lower level than what we are capable of.
Third, it is probably because she is standing “on her own side of the fence” that she is able to give voice to the wisdom-perspective. If she can stay grounded in this way, she may be able to detach herself from the complexes with which she has been aligned or identified in the past. They won’t disappear or stop exerting their pull, but at least she has established a precedent of “standing her ground.”
Fourth, the wisdom-message that “first we must commune with the animals” suggests that the dreamer is aware of a priority lost on the group: communion with the animals in some way takes precedence over pursuit of worldly concerns.
Fifth, it should be noted that “the animals” do not appear in the dream. They are not visible. Interestingly, this suggests that the “communion” need not be taken literally, that is, it can take place inwardly. The animals are always present, we just usually ignore them.
Finally, we should note that this small dream is an exception that proves the rule, since the wisdom-voice usually emerges from the depths of the dream, carried by a figure other than the ego. This is in line with our traditional notion of the angel, who flies from “heaven” to deliver a healing message to the receptive ego. Thus, it often happens that a stranger, an animal, even the structure of the dream itself, gives voice to a wisdom the ego is lacking. Here, the dreamer finds herself aligned with the “angelic” message.
This dream suggests that a shift is taking place in the dreamer’s psyche, a loosening of the ties between the ego and the complexes with which it is normally aligned or identified. The dream therefore points to new potentials that are within reach of consciousness -- if she can only continue to stand her ground.
A deeper implication is that the wisdom flowing from the Self, as an expression of the Whole, is close by, ready to manifest itself to her and, through her, to the world.
As we go deeper into our dreams, and incorporate more and more of their inherent wisdom, we may gradually find in the individual soul a reflection of the underlying patterns humans have always recognized as “divine.” In this sense, as individual sparks of the divine fire, we all participate in the cosmic currents of wisdom that, I believe, permeate the universe and everything in it.
Let us all seek wisdom, then, in ourselves, in our dreams, in one another and in the world. And whenever or wherever we find it, may we find the courage to live it, embody it, bring it forth and let it shine.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
DESTINY AND DREAMS -- Part III
As I reflect on destiny and dreams, I think about how often matters of importance turn on points so small as to pass virtually unnoticed. I recall, for example, the first time I experienced the truth of Jung’s profound insight that the psyche has an objective reality quite independent of the conscious personality. He calls this the “reality of the objective psyche.”
I had been studying Jung and dreams for about a year, when one night I dreamed: I am looking across a corridor at an unknown man who is peering around a corner, looking directly back at me. End of dream. Period. The dream was so truncated, so minimal, that I was tempted not to bother writing it down. I had plenty of other images to record and ponder. And yet there was something uncanny and fascinating about this bizarre wisp of a dream, and it kept pulling me back into its curious “space.” What was it? Finally I realized what the strange effect was: The man really was looking at me. I was just as much an object of his perception as he was of mine. In a word, he was aware of me.
This was a bit of a shock, since I had naïvely assumed that the dreams I was so assiduously recording, and the figures that populated them, were always the objects of my perceptual awareness, but never the reverse. Suddenly I had to admit that I was not the only witness in the dream: I too was being observed.
This insight, repeated on other occasions, came to inform my outlook on dreams. I was forced to give new respect, greater credence and autonomy to the people and creatures, situations and dilemmas, of the mysterious world I entered every night as I slept. Dreams -- so readily dismissed as ephemeral nonsense -- were taking on substance, acquiring a strange kind of reality.
Over the decades this experience has so affected my world-view that I find myself squarely at odds with much of what my culture holds to be “real” and “unreal.” I might have come to the same conclusion in any case, without that dream, yet the fact remains that the dream -- small as it was -- inaugurated a new point of view, like opening a window onto the cosmos. And that dream still reverberates for me to this day.
How can we possibly discern the patterns of destiny in our dreams, if we have not had some convincing experience of the “reality of the objective psyche”? For without such a premise, and the experience on which it is based, we are like a dog chasing its tail. Recognizing no autonomous “Other” in ourselves, we are left with only the ego to account for dreams, which are reduced to a by-product of consciousness, as in Freud’s theory of dreams as a “rubbish bin” of repression. We may as well just ask ourselves what our destiny is, take the answer at face value, and get on with it. Many are content to live like this: the ego leading the ego ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
But to experience the Otherness of the objective psyche -- provided we can stoop low enough to admit it -- opens up possibilities for deepened insight. When we recognize the ego for the small island that it is, we may discover some of the profound hints that wash up on the beaches of our sleep every morning, in the note-stuffed bottles of dreams.
“Other” is a deliberately neutral term. But we could just as easily say “God,” “Fate,” the “Great Spirit,” “the Goddess,” “Wisdom” or any number of terms for that which exceeds our understanding and stands for the creative principle of the universe and of life. But “Other” has the virtue of modesty, humility and accuracy. With it we acknowledge our ignorance before this great mystery.
The autonomous psyche is an ancient, universal experience. Only recently have we stripped the world of its soul and its spirits, consigning what is left of the soul to the constricted chambers of our heads or bodies, where it undergoes its final reduction into mere brain chemistry or -- the new panacea -- “DNA.”
Yet the ancient truths still percolate as merrily as ever in the cauldron of the soul: the dreaming psyche. There we can still find what is so painfully and tragically lacking in our machine-world today: a sense of inborn purpose and meaning -- a destiny -- given with our nature and implicit in the realization of who we truly are, not who society tells us we should be.
A friend of mine recently told me a dream: She is walking along a path through the woods. Two large snakes overtake her on the same path, moving past her with a curious, un-serpentine motion. When they are both well ahead of her they stop, raise their heads, turn around and look directly at her. It is as if they are saying to her: “Well, are you going to follow us or not?” End of dream.
Seeking the course of destiny requires, as Jung put it, that we “follow the deeper currents of libido” -- autonomous psychic forces that reveal themselves in dreams, much like the two snakes above. The dreamer happens to be a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Could the two snakes waiting for her have anything to do with the ancient symbol of the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes, emblem of the healing professions? Possibly. The two intertwined snakes of the Caduceus certainly resonate with the healing tradition of Kundalini, whose serpent energy runs up and down the two spinal pathways, activating the chakras. But even if there is a correspondence between those traditions and her dream snakes, it is not as an ancient symbol but as living energies in her psyche and body that they tacitly speak to her. They invite her to follow their lead, calling her perhaps even beyond her profession.
If she can overcome the fear they naturally evoke, and follow them, then she may become a “healer” in the deepest possible sense: not just as one who skillfully practices an ancient tradition of medicine -- she has already accomplished that brilliantly -- but as one who has attained the far more difficult goal of becoming a whole person. We should keep reminding ourselves that the words “heal,” “health” and “whole” all derive from the same etymological root.
One at a time, then, and aggregated over the years, dream images ultimately show us who we are, who we have always been, and the paths we must follow if we are to approach the transcendent mystery of the Self. Fortunately, the various dream-guides who appear from time to time -- no matter how frightening or strange they may seem to us -- form part of our larger nature. We may gather hints from other people, or try to imitate them, but in the final analysis we ourselves contain the pattern and embody the mystery of the greater Whole.
And I believe that as we arrive at this deeper self-knowledge, we thereby reflect back to the originating cosmos a significant piece of its own essence. In the process we not only validate our own existence, we also validate the cosmos itself, and its fifteen-billion-year quest for conscious life.
I had been studying Jung and dreams for about a year, when one night I dreamed: I am looking across a corridor at an unknown man who is peering around a corner, looking directly back at me. End of dream. Period. The dream was so truncated, so minimal, that I was tempted not to bother writing it down. I had plenty of other images to record and ponder. And yet there was something uncanny and fascinating about this bizarre wisp of a dream, and it kept pulling me back into its curious “space.” What was it? Finally I realized what the strange effect was: The man really was looking at me. I was just as much an object of his perception as he was of mine. In a word, he was aware of me.
This was a bit of a shock, since I had naïvely assumed that the dreams I was so assiduously recording, and the figures that populated them, were always the objects of my perceptual awareness, but never the reverse. Suddenly I had to admit that I was not the only witness in the dream: I too was being observed.
This insight, repeated on other occasions, came to inform my outlook on dreams. I was forced to give new respect, greater credence and autonomy to the people and creatures, situations and dilemmas, of the mysterious world I entered every night as I slept. Dreams -- so readily dismissed as ephemeral nonsense -- were taking on substance, acquiring a strange kind of reality.
Over the decades this experience has so affected my world-view that I find myself squarely at odds with much of what my culture holds to be “real” and “unreal.” I might have come to the same conclusion in any case, without that dream, yet the fact remains that the dream -- small as it was -- inaugurated a new point of view, like opening a window onto the cosmos. And that dream still reverberates for me to this day.
How can we possibly discern the patterns of destiny in our dreams, if we have not had some convincing experience of the “reality of the objective psyche”? For without such a premise, and the experience on which it is based, we are like a dog chasing its tail. Recognizing no autonomous “Other” in ourselves, we are left with only the ego to account for dreams, which are reduced to a by-product of consciousness, as in Freud’s theory of dreams as a “rubbish bin” of repression. We may as well just ask ourselves what our destiny is, take the answer at face value, and get on with it. Many are content to live like this: the ego leading the ego ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
But to experience the Otherness of the objective psyche -- provided we can stoop low enough to admit it -- opens up possibilities for deepened insight. When we recognize the ego for the small island that it is, we may discover some of the profound hints that wash up on the beaches of our sleep every morning, in the note-stuffed bottles of dreams.
“Other” is a deliberately neutral term. But we could just as easily say “God,” “Fate,” the “Great Spirit,” “the Goddess,” “Wisdom” or any number of terms for that which exceeds our understanding and stands for the creative principle of the universe and of life. But “Other” has the virtue of modesty, humility and accuracy. With it we acknowledge our ignorance before this great mystery.
The autonomous psyche is an ancient, universal experience. Only recently have we stripped the world of its soul and its spirits, consigning what is left of the soul to the constricted chambers of our heads or bodies, where it undergoes its final reduction into mere brain chemistry or -- the new panacea -- “DNA.”
Yet the ancient truths still percolate as merrily as ever in the cauldron of the soul: the dreaming psyche. There we can still find what is so painfully and tragically lacking in our machine-world today: a sense of inborn purpose and meaning -- a destiny -- given with our nature and implicit in the realization of who we truly are, not who society tells us we should be.
A friend of mine recently told me a dream: She is walking along a path through the woods. Two large snakes overtake her on the same path, moving past her with a curious, un-serpentine motion. When they are both well ahead of her they stop, raise their heads, turn around and look directly at her. It is as if they are saying to her: “Well, are you going to follow us or not?” End of dream.
Seeking the course of destiny requires, as Jung put it, that we “follow the deeper currents of libido” -- autonomous psychic forces that reveal themselves in dreams, much like the two snakes above. The dreamer happens to be a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Could the two snakes waiting for her have anything to do with the ancient symbol of the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes, emblem of the healing professions? Possibly. The two intertwined snakes of the Caduceus certainly resonate with the healing tradition of Kundalini, whose serpent energy runs up and down the two spinal pathways, activating the chakras. But even if there is a correspondence between those traditions and her dream snakes, it is not as an ancient symbol but as living energies in her psyche and body that they tacitly speak to her. They invite her to follow their lead, calling her perhaps even beyond her profession.
If she can overcome the fear they naturally evoke, and follow them, then she may become a “healer” in the deepest possible sense: not just as one who skillfully practices an ancient tradition of medicine -- she has already accomplished that brilliantly -- but as one who has attained the far more difficult goal of becoming a whole person. We should keep reminding ourselves that the words “heal,” “health” and “whole” all derive from the same etymological root.
One at a time, then, and aggregated over the years, dream images ultimately show us who we are, who we have always been, and the paths we must follow if we are to approach the transcendent mystery of the Self. Fortunately, the various dream-guides who appear from time to time -- no matter how frightening or strange they may seem to us -- form part of our larger nature. We may gather hints from other people, or try to imitate them, but in the final analysis we ourselves contain the pattern and embody the mystery of the greater Whole.
And I believe that as we arrive at this deeper self-knowledge, we thereby reflect back to the originating cosmos a significant piece of its own essence. In the process we not only validate our own existence, we also validate the cosmos itself, and its fifteen-billion-year quest for conscious life.
Destiny in Dreams -- Part II
In the last post I proposed a category for those dreams in which elements of a person’s “destiny” can be discerned. I defined destiny as an irrational pattern of multiple images and meanings, all of which impart a particular shape and implicit purpose to one’s life. In this essay I would like to consider some common characteristics of destiny dreams.
Large Scale. I used to think that destiny was discernible only in big dreams -- archetypal behemoths that dwarf the dream ego with their sheer magnitude and power. But the more I ponder the mystery of destiny the more it seems that many smaller dreams also belong in this category, and it becomes more difficult to draw the line. Still, large scale itself can be an indicator that inklings of destiny may be close at hand. When we are prompted to say, “I had a big dream last night,” we usually mean that something about the scale of the dream took us beyond our personal, day-to-day concerns into regions of greater depth, where personal elements are either displaced altogether or subsumed in the larger context of the problems and potentials of humanity itself. The awareness of our position in the larger context of humanity or the cosmos imposes a kind of responsibility.
In tribal societies, it was understood that big dreams were matters of concern to the whole tribe. It was the dreamer’s responsibility to report the dream to fellow tribal members. This ancient pattern expresses a deep insight more or less lost to our modern mass culture. Today, we are no longer able collectively to follow the deeper movements of the psyche -- and widespread disorientation is the result. Nevertheless, many people are still having big dreams. This means that those few individuals who bother to record and remember them bear a heightened responsibility to pay close attention to the formative images rising up from below. This in itself comes close to what I call destiny.
Small Scale. As Jung pointed out, any psychological statement can be stood on its head, which can be very aggravating to the ego. No sooner do we make a grand pronouncement than the very opposite also turns out to be true. This annoying fact is well expressed in the French aphorism “Les extrêmes se touchent.” (The opposites touch one another.)
Thus, I must quickly add that aspects of destiny can be expressed not only in terms of large scale, but in terms of small scale as well. This is dramatically apparent in dreams where a baby appears. The very qualities of smallness and fragility seem to magnify its importance, especially if the figure is in danger, which it often is (“I discover that the new-born baby has been lost. I am terrified and must find it.”) Something has barely come within reach of consciousness and is already in danger of being lost. Extra care must be given to it, and its diminutive size and innocent freshness prefigure a long period of development extending well into the future. To take such a dream figure seriously will have a profound effect on the dreamer. For daily life, which normally proceeds according to the will and discretion of the ego, now finds itself subject to a greater will, for whose realization the ego is responsible. The ego finds itself contained within a larger life expressed by the apparent evanescence of dream.
Occasionally a dream may feature, not a baby, but a tiny, fully-formed human, which the alchemists referred to as a “homunculus.” In this case, smallness of scale is joined to impossibility, imparting an uncanny specialness to the image. Something so small is easily overlooked. And yet it is already fully developed. It is small, like a baby, yet mature at the same -- paradoxical qualities which enhance its uncanny importance. As a “complexio oppositorum,” the homunculus resonates with the qualities of the Self, and the dream context in which it appears may contain signposts that point the way to those deeper levels of authentic being out of which destiny arises.
These small, fragile dream figures -- baby and homunculus -- by evoking from us a caring response, involve us in something larger than ourselves. We cannot simply follow the desires and needs of the ego, pretending that we have done any justice to the psyche.
Dream-plus-dreamer thus comprise a greater whole than dreamer alone. Their fates are interwoven and the dream has once again made a fair claim on the destiny of the individual. Because of this, and because it happens so often, it may not be going too far to say that our well-being depends on the well-being of the figures in our dreams.
3. The Task. It should be apparent by now that I believe dreams in general, and destiny dreams in particular, place ethical demands upon the dreamer to whom they appear. They saddle us with tasks, which may be one reason why so many people choose to ignore or dismiss their dreams, finding them not only mystifying but also irritating, due to the onerous burden of increased consciousness the dreams implicitly impose.
But if we’re not looking for meaningful burdens to place alongside the busywork and trivial distractions that so encumber our modern lives, we probably shouldn’t involve ourselves with dreams. As I said in the last issue, to seek one’s destiny in dreams is not for the faint of heart.
In my view, then, the tasks with which dreams challenge us are best gratefully accepted, for they give us access to deeper levels of psychic substance and meaning, the lack of which is cause for much suffering in the world.
4. Scale and Task Together. Here is an example of a destiny dream in which “scale” and “task” are interwoven. A man dreamed that he was in a deep cavern, shaped almost like a theater. At one end of the cavern was an enormous window onto space. The planet Jupiter dominated the entire view. Somehow he knew that Jupiter was going to explode, and within seconds it did. The giant planet erupted in a tremendous fireball, and as the explosion subsided the man saw fixed stars falling from their places in the heavens -- in a flash, what had once seemed permanent and eternal was falling away before his eyes. With a feeling of great urgency he ran out of the cavern, onto the sidewalks of a busy city. He felt he had to tell people what had just happened, but nobody seemed interested. People hurried about their business, too preoccupied with mundane concerns to pay any attention. [End of dream.]
The explosion of Jupiter and the falling of stars from the sky is an image of cosmic scale -- a transpersonal event of archetypal magnitude, affecting all of humanity. The dream showed that a major shift in “heaven” -- i.e., the archetypal dominants on which our lives are based -- is taking place. The gift of the dream was to engage the man as a witness to the event. The task imposed upon him was that he had to take action on the basis of that vision, incorporating it into his life by telling the world what he had seen. The “kicker” at the end of the dream guaranteed that it would be no easy task -- the man rushed out to alert the world at large, but no one showed any interest.
An important feature of this dream is that it isolates the dreamer from the collective -- he is isolated by his knowledge, which people in general don’t want to be bothered with, even though it affects them in fundamental ways. He has become, if he wasn’t already, what Melville referred to as one of the “isolatoes.”
Paradoxically, even as it isolates him, the dream simultaneously relates the man to the collective, because it is to the world-at-large and to his fellow humans that he owes his service for having witnessed the cosmic vision. His task -- and I would say his destiny -- is to find some way to express to others what seems so gigantically difficult to express.
5. Paradox. The sense of paradox is another common characteristic of destiny dreams. Insofar as they challenge and engage the whole person, and therefore encompass the opposites, the dreamer can neither stand completely apart from the world nor feign disappearance in the crowd. In the case of our dream of Jupiter exploding, the individual task of the man is emphasized, not his collectivity, because it is as an individual that he has to respond to and come to terms with the dream. But if his only response is to reject the task and remain safely ensconced within collective forms, he will avoid an onerous burden, to be sure, but he will also most likely fail his destiny.
From my perspective, the man is not absolved of responsibility just because the dream came to an end, or because it was “just a dream.” It ended in a state of profound irresolution. An archetypal shift in the world has taken place -- indeed, it is ongoing -- and the lack of interest on the part of the public is one of the “problematics” of the dream. It is up to the dreamer to find words, images and actions adequate to convey to an oblivious public the changes bearing down upon one and all.
Large Scale. I used to think that destiny was discernible only in big dreams -- archetypal behemoths that dwarf the dream ego with their sheer magnitude and power. But the more I ponder the mystery of destiny the more it seems that many smaller dreams also belong in this category, and it becomes more difficult to draw the line. Still, large scale itself can be an indicator that inklings of destiny may be close at hand. When we are prompted to say, “I had a big dream last night,” we usually mean that something about the scale of the dream took us beyond our personal, day-to-day concerns into regions of greater depth, where personal elements are either displaced altogether or subsumed in the larger context of the problems and potentials of humanity itself. The awareness of our position in the larger context of humanity or the cosmos imposes a kind of responsibility.
In tribal societies, it was understood that big dreams were matters of concern to the whole tribe. It was the dreamer’s responsibility to report the dream to fellow tribal members. This ancient pattern expresses a deep insight more or less lost to our modern mass culture. Today, we are no longer able collectively to follow the deeper movements of the psyche -- and widespread disorientation is the result. Nevertheless, many people are still having big dreams. This means that those few individuals who bother to record and remember them bear a heightened responsibility to pay close attention to the formative images rising up from below. This in itself comes close to what I call destiny.
Small Scale. As Jung pointed out, any psychological statement can be stood on its head, which can be very aggravating to the ego. No sooner do we make a grand pronouncement than the very opposite also turns out to be true. This annoying fact is well expressed in the French aphorism “Les extrêmes se touchent.” (The opposites touch one another.)
Thus, I must quickly add that aspects of destiny can be expressed not only in terms of large scale, but in terms of small scale as well. This is dramatically apparent in dreams where a baby appears. The very qualities of smallness and fragility seem to magnify its importance, especially if the figure is in danger, which it often is (“I discover that the new-born baby has been lost. I am terrified and must find it.”) Something has barely come within reach of consciousness and is already in danger of being lost. Extra care must be given to it, and its diminutive size and innocent freshness prefigure a long period of development extending well into the future. To take such a dream figure seriously will have a profound effect on the dreamer. For daily life, which normally proceeds according to the will and discretion of the ego, now finds itself subject to a greater will, for whose realization the ego is responsible. The ego finds itself contained within a larger life expressed by the apparent evanescence of dream.
Occasionally a dream may feature, not a baby, but a tiny, fully-formed human, which the alchemists referred to as a “homunculus.” In this case, smallness of scale is joined to impossibility, imparting an uncanny specialness to the image. Something so small is easily overlooked. And yet it is already fully developed. It is small, like a baby, yet mature at the same -- paradoxical qualities which enhance its uncanny importance. As a “complexio oppositorum,” the homunculus resonates with the qualities of the Self, and the dream context in which it appears may contain signposts that point the way to those deeper levels of authentic being out of which destiny arises.
These small, fragile dream figures -- baby and homunculus -- by evoking from us a caring response, involve us in something larger than ourselves. We cannot simply follow the desires and needs of the ego, pretending that we have done any justice to the psyche.
Dream-plus-dreamer thus comprise a greater whole than dreamer alone. Their fates are interwoven and the dream has once again made a fair claim on the destiny of the individual. Because of this, and because it happens so often, it may not be going too far to say that our well-being depends on the well-being of the figures in our dreams.
3. The Task. It should be apparent by now that I believe dreams in general, and destiny dreams in particular, place ethical demands upon the dreamer to whom they appear. They saddle us with tasks, which may be one reason why so many people choose to ignore or dismiss their dreams, finding them not only mystifying but also irritating, due to the onerous burden of increased consciousness the dreams implicitly impose.
But if we’re not looking for meaningful burdens to place alongside the busywork and trivial distractions that so encumber our modern lives, we probably shouldn’t involve ourselves with dreams. As I said in the last issue, to seek one’s destiny in dreams is not for the faint of heart.
In my view, then, the tasks with which dreams challenge us are best gratefully accepted, for they give us access to deeper levels of psychic substance and meaning, the lack of which is cause for much suffering in the world.
4. Scale and Task Together. Here is an example of a destiny dream in which “scale” and “task” are interwoven. A man dreamed that he was in a deep cavern, shaped almost like a theater. At one end of the cavern was an enormous window onto space. The planet Jupiter dominated the entire view. Somehow he knew that Jupiter was going to explode, and within seconds it did. The giant planet erupted in a tremendous fireball, and as the explosion subsided the man saw fixed stars falling from their places in the heavens -- in a flash, what had once seemed permanent and eternal was falling away before his eyes. With a feeling of great urgency he ran out of the cavern, onto the sidewalks of a busy city. He felt he had to tell people what had just happened, but nobody seemed interested. People hurried about their business, too preoccupied with mundane concerns to pay any attention. [End of dream.]
The explosion of Jupiter and the falling of stars from the sky is an image of cosmic scale -- a transpersonal event of archetypal magnitude, affecting all of humanity. The dream showed that a major shift in “heaven” -- i.e., the archetypal dominants on which our lives are based -- is taking place. The gift of the dream was to engage the man as a witness to the event. The task imposed upon him was that he had to take action on the basis of that vision, incorporating it into his life by telling the world what he had seen. The “kicker” at the end of the dream guaranteed that it would be no easy task -- the man rushed out to alert the world at large, but no one showed any interest.
An important feature of this dream is that it isolates the dreamer from the collective -- he is isolated by his knowledge, which people in general don’t want to be bothered with, even though it affects them in fundamental ways. He has become, if he wasn’t already, what Melville referred to as one of the “isolatoes.”
Paradoxically, even as it isolates him, the dream simultaneously relates the man to the collective, because it is to the world-at-large and to his fellow humans that he owes his service for having witnessed the cosmic vision. His task -- and I would say his destiny -- is to find some way to express to others what seems so gigantically difficult to express.
5. Paradox. The sense of paradox is another common characteristic of destiny dreams. Insofar as they challenge and engage the whole person, and therefore encompass the opposites, the dreamer can neither stand completely apart from the world nor feign disappearance in the crowd. In the case of our dream of Jupiter exploding, the individual task of the man is emphasized, not his collectivity, because it is as an individual that he has to respond to and come to terms with the dream. But if his only response is to reject the task and remain safely ensconced within collective forms, he will avoid an onerous burden, to be sure, but he will also most likely fail his destiny.
From my perspective, the man is not absolved of responsibility just because the dream came to an end, or because it was “just a dream.” It ended in a state of profound irresolution. An archetypal shift in the world has taken place -- indeed, it is ongoing -- and the lack of interest on the part of the public is one of the “problematics” of the dream. It is up to the dreamer to find words, images and actions adequate to convey to an oblivious public the changes bearing down upon one and all.
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.”
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.”
Animals in Dreams
As far as anyone can tell, we humans have been dreaming for as long as we have been walking on two legs -- a million years at least, maybe two, maybe three. Even when our knuckles were still dragging on the ground, we were probably dreaming.
The entire course of human development has been thoroughly interspersed with dreams. For all of us, waking life emerges -- every day -- out of the prior background of dreams, just as the sun rises from nocturnal depths to create the world anew. This is the primordial experience, the basic fact of life on our spinning planet: out of our darkest animal origins comes a divine stirring, a creative movement toward the light.
As if to underscore the point, the Indo-European, Greek and Latin words for “day” are etymologically related to the word for “God” -- theos, deus, dios, día. The root idea is sun, sky, brilliance, shining. When baboons on the plains of Africa stop their chattering and gamboling to gather at daybreak and watch the sunrise, we know that something of primal importance is happening.
The human psyche differentiated itself slowly, and only partially, from its animal antecedents. We never really left the animals behind. At every level we bear physical and behavioral traces of our animal ancestors. Even our brains are built around a reptilian core.
For countless millenia we have lived in the presence of animals, to the extent that life on earth is inconceivable without them: We eat them, live with them, sleep with them, work with them, seek them as companions. We study them, breed them, train them, run from them, hunt them, wage war against them. We sacrifice them in religious and cultural rituals. We mourn and weep for them when they die. We mount their heads and hides on our walls as trophies, wear their skins and furs for warmth and elegance, fashion their teeth into jewelry, imitate their mating dances and calls, borrow their power. We name football teams after them (the Cougars, Lions, and Tigers) and invoke them to sell cars (the Impala, Jaguar and Mustang).
No wonder we all dream of animals.
The Garden of Eden
One way to think about their function and value in our dreams is to look at the Garden of Eden myth. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden for having developed conscious knowledge of the difference between good and evil, which shattered their state of oneness with God. In other words, consciousness -- the original human sin -- gave us God-like potentials, but it also broke our primordial state of fusion with the divine impulse. In that sense we resemble “fallen angels.”
The animals, however, never were cast out of Eden. Even today, they live on in their original state, in the unbroken circle of oneness with God. Human consciousness made us aware of our separateness from the animals and from God, but the presence and ubiquity of the animals reminds us not to stray too far from the divine roots of our being, not to get too strung out on our hubris. The animals are living reminders -- if only we pay attention -- that the cosmos does not belong to us, we belong to the cosmos.
Animals come to us in our dreams, then, carrying something of our lost, divine origins. At the evolutionary, biological level, we designate those animal origins as instinctual and physical. But on another level, those same animals, out of whom we originate, are spiritual beings who connect us to the creative mystery of all life, what we call “the Divine.”
Animals as Angels
In order to enlarge the language with which we discuss our dreams, and extend the range of our imagining in the process, I propose an unconventional way of regarding animals in dreams.
Try thinking of them as angels.
This is not so far-fetched as it might first seem. After all, the traditional way of representing an angel is to take a human figure and attach animal wings to it. Wings give an extra dimension to the human, suggesting an ability to transcend normal human limits -- to fly to heaven, as it were. In short, wings symbolize the power of the spirit.
The fusion of human and animal attributes in angel imagery suggests that, in some mysterious way, the two realms of being are actually one. For thousands of years this kind of symbolism has gone unquestioned: If you want to represent something spiritual, put wings on it. Or, to put it differently, if you want to show the transcendent potentials of the human spirit, then re-connect the human with its animal foundation, since they spring from one and the same mysterious source.
The animal belongs to that part of us that never was separated from the Divine. As such, it can be taken -- at least occasionally -- as a symbol of the state of Wholeness, or the potential for it. In that respect the dream-animal can serve as an index of your relationship to God or, in Jungian terms, your relationship to the Self.
From this perspective, it would be a matter of no small importance how the animal is disposed toward you, and especially you toward it. In any event, if an animal approaches you in your dream, you can assume it is trying get your attention. And if you stumble upon the animal in its own dream precincts, there is a good chance you are out of your normal depth, and a habitual ego response to the animal will probably prove inadequate.
We should not forget that, even if a dream-animal seems to oppose or threaten us in some way, it may still be bringing a “message” from the greater Self. This is what angels do -- they communicate between the greater and the lesser, between the divine and the human, as necessary links between the parts of a whole. In a way, the animal itself is the message. By its very presence it says, “Beware. You are close to something greater than yourself. If you follow me, you will be close to the Source.” Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said “He who is near unto me is near unto the fire.”
When Freud spoke of the “navel of the dream,” he was referring to a point in dreams where the trail of interpretable associations disappears, giving way to the unknown depths. Animals could often be said to produce a similar “navel” effect. If you dream that a bear stands on the path you are traveling, and you stop in your tracks because your fear of it blocks your progress, the bear is still your connection, the navel, that leads to whatever lies deeper in the dream, beyond the bear, on the other side of your fear: the end of the path, the goal.
It is not surprising that so many dreamers report animals that are chasing after them, since the dream-ego habitually flees, trying to stay ahead of the animal, leaving it no recourse but to follow behind, to pursue. The tendency to put oneself first, always ahead of the Other, is one of the ways the ego obstructs itself on the path to its own integration, its own taste of Wholeness. Jung said it well: “There is a greater person in yourself to whom you bar the way.”
The Angel’s Demands
A woman in her forties, a practicing artist, had a long-standing fascination with bears. She was talented but self-effacing, with a natural humility approaching saintliness. Bear motifs haunted her work, as if the bear was insisting on something, through its own representation in her work.
One night she dreamed that she was sitting at a small table. Across from her sat a large bear, on a chair. The bear wore eye-glasses, and had a stack of papers on the table in front of him. He was reading to her from the papers, reciting a list of demands. Among them were “money, fame, and beautiful women.” (End of dream.)
I am well aware that various interpretations could be applied to this dream and to the image of the bear. But let’s follow my suggestion and provisionally regard the bear as an “angel.” What do we notice? What can we learn?
First point. Notice that the bear wants something from her. She doesn’t present a list of demands to the bear, the bear presents a list of demands to her. This establishes a gradient wherein the demand conveyed by the animal/spiritual presence within -- the “angel” -- impinges upon the human ego. The implication is that we live our lives, not for the satisfaction of the ego and its desires, but to fulfill the larger, prior need of the angel. This, of course, violates our modern conceit that everything exists for the ego’s pleasure.
French Islamic scholar Henri Corbin (1) provides a valuable clue when he says: “The angel’s individuation comes first, then ours.” If our angel cannot individuate because of the way we are living our lives, then how can we ourselves possibly expect to individuate? Jung gives voice to nearly the same insight when he says: “Become the person you have always been.” In both cases, something eternal longs for fulfillment in time.
In other words, the angel pertains to the eternal features of our soul, which hunger for embodiment and expression. If we dither our life away without taking the angel’s demands into account, can we really hope to reach anything approaching wholeness? If we remain trapped in our fragmentary egos, how can we approximate the Self? The angel seeks us out, presents us with its demands, and challenges us to become who we are, in the deepest sense. It practically begs us to breach the defensive walls of the ego and extend ourselves further into our own depths, where we are out of our league. But that is precisely where the animal will be in a position to serve us as tutor and guide.
This usually terrifies the ego, of course, because our culture has lost sight of these truths. And so we run from the bear. What can it do but pursue us?
Second point. Notice that the bear is wearing spectacles, sits in a chair, can read, and speaks English. The spectacles draw attention to the the bear’s ability to see us and to read the situation. The whole ensemble -- spectacles, chair, papers, speech -- tells us that the “angel” is capable of reaching consciousness, and therefore that it can serve as a bridge between the ego and the deeper regions of the soul.
Because we can -- potentially -- perceive the angel as an object of our waking consciousness, we can also imagine establishing a communicative rapport with it, if only we are willing. Corbin refers to this indispensible willingness in a description of the moment when the angel stands ready and available to lead the seeker to “heaven.” At that crucial, culminating point, the angel says: “If thou wilt, follow me.”
Corbin also points out that to connect with the angel requires a certain solitude, a stripping away of collective attitudes, which are personified in the form of two “companions” that accompany the seeker, dogging him wherever he goes. These constant companions are identified as the “irascible and concupiscent appetites.” In other words, to prepare oneself for a fruitful encounter with an angel, one must first give the companions the slip, by letting go of the cultural baggage that creates so much inertia in the soul. Turn away from your quarrelsomeness and anger, your insatiable desires. Empty yourself, open your soul and make yourself available to the angel. Then it may appear.
If, on the other hand, you dream that you are hurriedly trying to catch a taxi, get to an airport, or get to a final exam in time, you will probably not have the presence of mind to follow the animal within, the spirit-guide who nevertheless stands ready to lead you deeper, like Corbin’s angel, if only you will follow it.
Third point. Notice that the bear’s demands call for a development of precisely those qualities which the dreamer, in her innocence, does not identify with consciously. She herself is modest, shy, frugal and unassuming. The bear is calling for a range of qualities opposed to her ego stance. In effect, the bear is calling upon her to reach into her shadow and find some way to pull up the instinctual vitality trapped there. Only then can the bear individuate, and she, as a result, be whole.
The Door of the Shadow
Psychologically speaking, the angel approaches the ego by way of the shadow. This, of course, is the neglected area to which the animal portion of our personality is usually banished. And it means that if we wish to encounter the angel we must be willing to turn around, face our own shadow and somehow come to terms with the animal energies within us. No one who wishes to experience the objective reality of the Self, the ultimate exponent of Wholeness, can escape this narrow passage.
The study of dreams, if it is to be more than an ego-trip, will demand great moral courage on the part of the explorer. Sooner or later the dreams will bring to the surface a conflict between the conscious values of the outwardly adapted ego and the unrealized aims of the deeper personality. Any confrontation with the rejected portions of our personalities, including the angel, requires a great personal sacrifice if it is to be carried out without resorting to violence against oneself.
This task is one of the main obstacles we must surmount if we are to re-vitalize ourselves in depth, both individually and collectively, in our spiritually devastated age. Why else would the hungering angel need to make its demands? But the potential value is worth the cost.
Imagine that you went off in search of a glimpse of the Divine Fire -- the supreme value that the whole world seemingly had lost. Even the merest trace would justify all your efforts. You looked inside yourself, found your dreams and befriended an animal who led you to the central ground of your deepest being. It was there you found a divine spark, your portion of the Original Flame.
Wouldn’t that be worth it?
The entire course of human development has been thoroughly interspersed with dreams. For all of us, waking life emerges -- every day -- out of the prior background of dreams, just as the sun rises from nocturnal depths to create the world anew. This is the primordial experience, the basic fact of life on our spinning planet: out of our darkest animal origins comes a divine stirring, a creative movement toward the light.
As if to underscore the point, the Indo-European, Greek and Latin words for “day” are etymologically related to the word for “God” -- theos, deus, dios, día. The root idea is sun, sky, brilliance, shining. When baboons on the plains of Africa stop their chattering and gamboling to gather at daybreak and watch the sunrise, we know that something of primal importance is happening.
The human psyche differentiated itself slowly, and only partially, from its animal antecedents. We never really left the animals behind. At every level we bear physical and behavioral traces of our animal ancestors. Even our brains are built around a reptilian core.
For countless millenia we have lived in the presence of animals, to the extent that life on earth is inconceivable without them: We eat them, live with them, sleep with them, work with them, seek them as companions. We study them, breed them, train them, run from them, hunt them, wage war against them. We sacrifice them in religious and cultural rituals. We mourn and weep for them when they die. We mount their heads and hides on our walls as trophies, wear their skins and furs for warmth and elegance, fashion their teeth into jewelry, imitate their mating dances and calls, borrow their power. We name football teams after them (the Cougars, Lions, and Tigers) and invoke them to sell cars (the Impala, Jaguar and Mustang).
No wonder we all dream of animals.
The Garden of Eden
One way to think about their function and value in our dreams is to look at the Garden of Eden myth. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden for having developed conscious knowledge of the difference between good and evil, which shattered their state of oneness with God. In other words, consciousness -- the original human sin -- gave us God-like potentials, but it also broke our primordial state of fusion with the divine impulse. In that sense we resemble “fallen angels.”
The animals, however, never were cast out of Eden. Even today, they live on in their original state, in the unbroken circle of oneness with God. Human consciousness made us aware of our separateness from the animals and from God, but the presence and ubiquity of the animals reminds us not to stray too far from the divine roots of our being, not to get too strung out on our hubris. The animals are living reminders -- if only we pay attention -- that the cosmos does not belong to us, we belong to the cosmos.
Animals come to us in our dreams, then, carrying something of our lost, divine origins. At the evolutionary, biological level, we designate those animal origins as instinctual and physical. But on another level, those same animals, out of whom we originate, are spiritual beings who connect us to the creative mystery of all life, what we call “the Divine.”
Animals as Angels
In order to enlarge the language with which we discuss our dreams, and extend the range of our imagining in the process, I propose an unconventional way of regarding animals in dreams.
Try thinking of them as angels.
This is not so far-fetched as it might first seem. After all, the traditional way of representing an angel is to take a human figure and attach animal wings to it. Wings give an extra dimension to the human, suggesting an ability to transcend normal human limits -- to fly to heaven, as it were. In short, wings symbolize the power of the spirit.
The fusion of human and animal attributes in angel imagery suggests that, in some mysterious way, the two realms of being are actually one. For thousands of years this kind of symbolism has gone unquestioned: If you want to represent something spiritual, put wings on it. Or, to put it differently, if you want to show the transcendent potentials of the human spirit, then re-connect the human with its animal foundation, since they spring from one and the same mysterious source.
The animal belongs to that part of us that never was separated from the Divine. As such, it can be taken -- at least occasionally -- as a symbol of the state of Wholeness, or the potential for it. In that respect the dream-animal can serve as an index of your relationship to God or, in Jungian terms, your relationship to the Self.
From this perspective, it would be a matter of no small importance how the animal is disposed toward you, and especially you toward it. In any event, if an animal approaches you in your dream, you can assume it is trying get your attention. And if you stumble upon the animal in its own dream precincts, there is a good chance you are out of your normal depth, and a habitual ego response to the animal will probably prove inadequate.
We should not forget that, even if a dream-animal seems to oppose or threaten us in some way, it may still be bringing a “message” from the greater Self. This is what angels do -- they communicate between the greater and the lesser, between the divine and the human, as necessary links between the parts of a whole. In a way, the animal itself is the message. By its very presence it says, “Beware. You are close to something greater than yourself. If you follow me, you will be close to the Source.” Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said “He who is near unto me is near unto the fire.”
When Freud spoke of the “navel of the dream,” he was referring to a point in dreams where the trail of interpretable associations disappears, giving way to the unknown depths. Animals could often be said to produce a similar “navel” effect. If you dream that a bear stands on the path you are traveling, and you stop in your tracks because your fear of it blocks your progress, the bear is still your connection, the navel, that leads to whatever lies deeper in the dream, beyond the bear, on the other side of your fear: the end of the path, the goal.
It is not surprising that so many dreamers report animals that are chasing after them, since the dream-ego habitually flees, trying to stay ahead of the animal, leaving it no recourse but to follow behind, to pursue. The tendency to put oneself first, always ahead of the Other, is one of the ways the ego obstructs itself on the path to its own integration, its own taste of Wholeness. Jung said it well: “There is a greater person in yourself to whom you bar the way.”
The Angel’s Demands
A woman in her forties, a practicing artist, had a long-standing fascination with bears. She was talented but self-effacing, with a natural humility approaching saintliness. Bear motifs haunted her work, as if the bear was insisting on something, through its own representation in her work.
One night she dreamed that she was sitting at a small table. Across from her sat a large bear, on a chair. The bear wore eye-glasses, and had a stack of papers on the table in front of him. He was reading to her from the papers, reciting a list of demands. Among them were “money, fame, and beautiful women.” (End of dream.)
I am well aware that various interpretations could be applied to this dream and to the image of the bear. But let’s follow my suggestion and provisionally regard the bear as an “angel.” What do we notice? What can we learn?
First point. Notice that the bear wants something from her. She doesn’t present a list of demands to the bear, the bear presents a list of demands to her. This establishes a gradient wherein the demand conveyed by the animal/spiritual presence within -- the “angel” -- impinges upon the human ego. The implication is that we live our lives, not for the satisfaction of the ego and its desires, but to fulfill the larger, prior need of the angel. This, of course, violates our modern conceit that everything exists for the ego’s pleasure.
French Islamic scholar Henri Corbin (1) provides a valuable clue when he says: “The angel’s individuation comes first, then ours.” If our angel cannot individuate because of the way we are living our lives, then how can we ourselves possibly expect to individuate? Jung gives voice to nearly the same insight when he says: “Become the person you have always been.” In both cases, something eternal longs for fulfillment in time.
In other words, the angel pertains to the eternal features of our soul, which hunger for embodiment and expression. If we dither our life away without taking the angel’s demands into account, can we really hope to reach anything approaching wholeness? If we remain trapped in our fragmentary egos, how can we approximate the Self? The angel seeks us out, presents us with its demands, and challenges us to become who we are, in the deepest sense. It practically begs us to breach the defensive walls of the ego and extend ourselves further into our own depths, where we are out of our league. But that is precisely where the animal will be in a position to serve us as tutor and guide.
This usually terrifies the ego, of course, because our culture has lost sight of these truths. And so we run from the bear. What can it do but pursue us?
Second point. Notice that the bear is wearing spectacles, sits in a chair, can read, and speaks English. The spectacles draw attention to the the bear’s ability to see us and to read the situation. The whole ensemble -- spectacles, chair, papers, speech -- tells us that the “angel” is capable of reaching consciousness, and therefore that it can serve as a bridge between the ego and the deeper regions of the soul.
Because we can -- potentially -- perceive the angel as an object of our waking consciousness, we can also imagine establishing a communicative rapport with it, if only we are willing. Corbin refers to this indispensible willingness in a description of the moment when the angel stands ready and available to lead the seeker to “heaven.” At that crucial, culminating point, the angel says: “If thou wilt, follow me.”
Corbin also points out that to connect with the angel requires a certain solitude, a stripping away of collective attitudes, which are personified in the form of two “companions” that accompany the seeker, dogging him wherever he goes. These constant companions are identified as the “irascible and concupiscent appetites.” In other words, to prepare oneself for a fruitful encounter with an angel, one must first give the companions the slip, by letting go of the cultural baggage that creates so much inertia in the soul. Turn away from your quarrelsomeness and anger, your insatiable desires. Empty yourself, open your soul and make yourself available to the angel. Then it may appear.
If, on the other hand, you dream that you are hurriedly trying to catch a taxi, get to an airport, or get to a final exam in time, you will probably not have the presence of mind to follow the animal within, the spirit-guide who nevertheless stands ready to lead you deeper, like Corbin’s angel, if only you will follow it.
Third point. Notice that the bear’s demands call for a development of precisely those qualities which the dreamer, in her innocence, does not identify with consciously. She herself is modest, shy, frugal and unassuming. The bear is calling for a range of qualities opposed to her ego stance. In effect, the bear is calling upon her to reach into her shadow and find some way to pull up the instinctual vitality trapped there. Only then can the bear individuate, and she, as a result, be whole.
The Door of the Shadow
Psychologically speaking, the angel approaches the ego by way of the shadow. This, of course, is the neglected area to which the animal portion of our personality is usually banished. And it means that if we wish to encounter the angel we must be willing to turn around, face our own shadow and somehow come to terms with the animal energies within us. No one who wishes to experience the objective reality of the Self, the ultimate exponent of Wholeness, can escape this narrow passage.
The study of dreams, if it is to be more than an ego-trip, will demand great moral courage on the part of the explorer. Sooner or later the dreams will bring to the surface a conflict between the conscious values of the outwardly adapted ego and the unrealized aims of the deeper personality. Any confrontation with the rejected portions of our personalities, including the angel, requires a great personal sacrifice if it is to be carried out without resorting to violence against oneself.
This task is one of the main obstacles we must surmount if we are to re-vitalize ourselves in depth, both individually and collectively, in our spiritually devastated age. Why else would the hungering angel need to make its demands? But the potential value is worth the cost.
Imagine that you went off in search of a glimpse of the Divine Fire -- the supreme value that the whole world seemingly had lost. Even the merest trace would justify all your efforts. You looked inside yourself, found your dreams and befriended an animal who led you to the central ground of your deepest being. It was there you found a divine spark, your portion of the Original Flame.
Wouldn’t that be worth it?
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