A new source for these two dreams is making an appearance. It feels like a new language, like someone else is talking, generating a different kind of conversation. It’s my focus on being lucid during consciousness that’s coming through. I think this is what @aholecek meant about coming down out of the collective unconscious. See what you think. Comments welcome.
2/17/23 DREAM: There’s an upwelling rising out of the deepest, darkest depths of the infinitely deep ocean. A column of energy brings water up in a plume en route to the surface (not there yet). A fish or two are tumbling, showing me the direction of the upward movement. It’s absolutely silent and calm. My heart is racing, scared, realizing/feeling the enormity of the energy that surrounds me.
2/21/23 DREAM: I’m simultaneously going back and forth through a circle, hovering at the permeable interface (mandala) between unconscious and conscious awarenesses. I’m carrying the eternal flame of the Self. In the dream I realize that this visual documents the transition from lucid dreaming to lucid consciousness.
Hi. Thank you for the intimate details and for the images. I wonder what you “think” of these? You mention the “collective unconscious” and I wonder why you went there as an interpretive or metaphorical heuristic? At your leisure.
It could be an experience of larger Self generating the event, or you r tuned into it as it is always there. I don’t know the concept of coming out of the collective unconscious so I can’t respond to it.
When we return to the dominant waking gross realty state and then try to pin down the meaning of the subtle state, it is tricky because it is now lodged in memory. Finding the name of a state of consciousness is a form of taxonomy isn’t it? But because it is subjective recall we might force it into a category because we want it to be that thing. Just wondering, not that u r doing that. In any case, the description, visual image as well as verbal r potent, and fun to focus on as an outsider.
Maybe letting it rest after drawing it is all that’s necessary. For myself, I find trying to interpret what I dream too much can be like peeling an onion, with nothing to show at the bottom but peeled onion petals. On the other hand, looking at inspired art, as is yours, takes me outside myself in some way that is very useful.
Exactly! I agree, let it rest, let the meaning simmer and reveal itself. Sit back and observe feelings, see if the experience repeats, watch what insights surface. I don’t feel that there is a hurry to judge and name the event. Because then it becomes a grasping for attainment, rather than the relaxation and savoring of the event being bestowed upon us after all of the hard work. Feeling the afterglow. Even Jung used his active imagination to further investigate his dreams so as to not jump too quickly to conclusions.
Thank you. To be sure, and as you note, I wasn’t trying to straight-jacket the event. Indeed, the moment we impose our categories, we run the risk of obfuscating the experience. I was fascinated by the episode and the words you’d put to it, and perhaps a few more words might provide insight. It is the irony and the duplicity of words is it not – that they can assist us as well as lead us astray? That we are beings of the “logos,” but not contained by the “logos?” Even when we say “experience,” we “say” experience, and that too is an abstraction – for is there such a “thing” as “experience as such?” These aren’t rhetorical questions – just part of the puzzle of expression. I appreciate your turn to art because it does what words can’t quite do, but it too is a mode of expression and like all modes not the whole. Best wishes.
I can explain the reference to the collective unconscious. I attended a Q & A with Andrew a few weeks ago and asked him to respond to dream drawings I’ve been having of the collective unconscious. Posted here. I wanted to know what he does in that space.
Andrew told me I needed to go back down. I think I’m doing that.
I sat with this for a long time. It was perfect just like that. A diagram. The two bodies were clearly meant to been seen as aligned and parallel lines. To draw any more on it would ruin its purity to the dream.
So I redrew it and wrote about it. Like hieroglyphics.
When I saw the second pic, the first thing that came to mind was that looks like the shape of saturn.
The second thing that poped into my head (and I think more relevant) was that the circle reminded me of the image made by a total solar eclipse. Solar eclipses only happen during New moons, when the sun and moon are in alignment. The sun is also associated with consciouss awareness, and the moon unconsciousness. The 2 people (you) moving in opposite directions reminds me very much of the symbol for the zodiac sign Pisces (2 fish swiming in opposite directions, one the deep ocean depths, the other the shallow surface). Given the fact that the other dream involved a similar theme of fish and dark ocean depths (unconsciouness) and moving to more well lit shallower depths (more conscious depths), makes me wonder if there is a connection. The new moon this week was in the sign Pisces, as was the sun. Not usre if this is the message the dream is trying to convey to you, but very cool synchronicity if it is.
You may have a connection to this sign via planets in you birth chart.
Ah that is very interesting, I can see why there may be a connection to ‘luminaries’ in Pisces. Last yesr I commented on you having significant dreams when Jupiter left Pisces, and then again when it re-entered it.
The Gemini-Pisces angle is 90 degrees, which is viewed as being pretty disharmonious. When planets are in that sign, it may stir up energies in your life that are somewhat disharmonious.
I am very curious to know what your late mothers DOB was, and where she was borm, if you are interested in sharing? I have found that astrology definitely helped me understand why so many people are so radically different from one and other, and why certain personalities tend to clash or be disharmonious. Not sure if you know this or not, but I recently found out Jung used to do a astrological chart for all his patients, supposidly its considered the worst kept secret about him among many Jungian analyists.
Thank you. thank you for continuing the story, so to speak, for providing the context of its unfolding, … on my island abode in the Atlantic, courage arrives through this imagery.
It might be, but my hunch is that it is not, but I think the imagery is getting closer. I think it would be a really good idea to write out a question and send it in for the Q&A tongiht, asking him what he meant by going deeper. (Even better if you can ask him live and have a dialogue).
I think he may have been refering to Sleep Yoga, and experiencing Nonduality, when he said go deeper. I think he wanted you to experience the deepest level of consciouness, or the bedrock of awareness. Best to ask him and get a definitive answer.
Very cool that Jung used astrological charts on his patients. I know nothing about that area of knowledge. Whatever works, right? It must all work together.
I don’t mind sharing…here’s what I know about my mom. Her birthday was 9/6/1926. Born in New Berlinville, PA. She was raped as a little girl by a neighbor (which she reported to my sister.) I don’t believe she ever got over that and so suppressed a lot of her feelings – and mine. Her parents were harsh – her dad was a butcher and one of 13 children and her mother was chronically depressed. They would tie my mom to the clothes line when she misbehaved.
Mom’s last name was Renninger, descendent of a Pennsylvania Dutch colony of farmers. This particular branch is in fact being studied for its genetic inclination to manifest depression. This is where I get my bipolar disorder from. It was also passed down to my daughter. After my mom shared with me that she’d had one too many children (me) on her death bed, it became of paramount importance that my daughter and I finally get past depression’s debilitating effects since my mother never did. The more lucid I become the less the bipolar behavior dominates my life. What a relief.
I get that. While lucid in the upwelling ocean dream, I tried to locate myself in the scene but could not. My person had dissolved into atoms and I was part of the ocean and its energy. There was no duality. The experience of being infinite was overwhelmingly beautiful.
