Dream Interpretation Example 5

Love Draws You In

 

I explained at this point to my wife that the fantasy at the fairground had in it the sense of not being as good as other blokes. I see this as arising out of the realisation that as a teenager one has attained a new level of experiencing the world. This is partly the more implicit relationship with the opposite sex, but it is also the development of a much more rational, technical mind. One has understood more thoroughly many of the previously ‘magic’ underlying principles of the modern environment, such as electricity, amplifiers, recorded sound, film, TV, etc. As a child there was no conceptual framework on which to hang any idea of how those things functioned. In this sense they were ‘magic’. So my sense of not being as good as other blokes comes from a internal measuring gauge of what others at my age had achieved in the area of my development. This is purely an unconscious thing. It was never something I was aware of at the time.

Something happened strongly then. I reacted against seeing that my own fantasy had suggested that there was yet more of my past, perhaps a hurt teenager, or a hesitant teenager, still to deal with. I felt like saying, ‘Oh come on Tony, you’re not going to get hung up with yet more childhood pains are you?’

I decided to go on despite my impatience, and was confronted by what was the right approach to this teenager. I tried various attitudes – ‘Ah, that’s the mother’ – or ‘Hi, what is it your feeling at the moment?’

The hurt teenager

Now I am both the questioning adult and the youth. As the youth I express fantasies of the young girl and have strong sexual desire. The imagery quickly goes into plant like symbols of sex. The vagina is seen as something wonderfully attractive to push into. It appears very much like a matted, hairy flower, or something covered in fibres. This is very attractive in a hairy, musky way. It isn’t a hairless young vagina. Rather it is the fully developed sexual organs of a fully grown female/plant that I want to push into and burst open in. But then he/I imagine that if I get near to this wonderful brown hairy vagina a spider comes out.

I paused at this point and thought about the dream, and how I had wondered why, having broken through the fearful images in the past, I had not done so again in this dream. It also was curious that the day before I had brought a spider back from a trip out, and Léon’s fascination for spiders, and Quentin’s repulsion.

I met the hesitation again about looking at further personal difficulties, but once more decided to take time with listening to, allowing, the feelings I was meeting. I realised there was definitely something to deal with. I remembered from the car trip out on Sunday the intense urge I had of looking at almost every female. What struck me at the time was how strong it was, and how some of the women actually looked around questioningly. I felt I was, am, looking for something. I feel that some of the women pick up something of my intensity. I even thought I could get myself into a fight if their man caught me looking like that, but it didn’t put me off at all. There is definitely a connection between this looking and the dream, and of course what I am feeling as a difficulty.

Example: My wife looked at me and had no feeling of caring, and does nothing to help. She is telephoned by another man. I see him and her at the same time. He says for them to go off together, and gives the impression of how sexually adequate he is, and how inadequate I am. I feel so hurt and angry I decide to leave my wife for good.

Overcoming fears

Something happened strongly then. I reacted against seeing that my own fantasy had suggested that there was yet more of my past, perhaps a hurt teenager, or a hesitant teenager, still to deal with. I felt like saying, ‘Oh come on Tony, you’re not going to get hung up with yet more childhood pains are you?’

I decided to go on despite my impatience, and was confronted by what was the right approach to this teenager. I tried various attitudes – ‘Ah, that’s the mother’ – or ‘Hi, what is it your feeling at the moment?’

I paused at this point and thought about the dream, and how I had wondered why, having broken through the fearful images in the past, I had not done so again in this dream. It also was curious that the day before I had brought a spider back from a trip out, and Léon’s fascination for spiders, and Quentin’s repulsion.

There is something I am looking for, and I don’t find it in my wife, or at least I don’t sense it in her. It is a frightening thing and partly exciting. I am fantasising a struggle with a young woman. It is about wanting to have sex, but seems to be some sort of power struggle. The image was of a smart very confident and aggressive young woman. She was attractive and attracted but her approach was one of attack, so to have a relationship I needed to fight her. What I appear to be facing is that I have the sex drive, but what I am facing is a monster. In fact I had the image of a huge spider that could come out from hiding and drag you helpless into its lair, its many eyes shining.

The struggle with sex

The sex drive doesn’t abate, but within this image you have to time it just right. One must wait for the ‘beast’ to become passive then dash in and plunge into the wonderful hairy cavity. Otherwise the ‘beast’ will rip you apart. It is exactly like the horror films one sees of the monster that drags men or women back to its lair. It is actually all about one fear based on past pain.

The me who is watching this doesn’t feel frightened, but I do feel ready to be aggressive though. I feel like saying, ‘I’ve got the measure of you, you bitch. I’ll kick you in the fucking cunt if you get in my way. Fucking bitches like you, I know what you want. You’re like the walking fucking dead’. I asked myself here what they do want.

The fantasy becomes like myself walking along a street, the hard looking confident women are there laughing and calling remarks – ‘Come on big boy, I know what you want. Here it is between my legs. You want It, come and get it. – No not you, you little nipper, get out the way.’

I sense there are two parts to me. There is the part that laughs at this, and might even reply -’What you? I could fuck you and ten like you.’ But there is also the anxious part, the little nipper who isn’t even recognised as a man.

The confident part recognises that all the talk is bravado and sex play talk, and could walk up and say, ‘Come on then, you and me, here, get your knickers off.’ But I think back to the first eager woman I met when I was seventeen. More or less she said, ‘Come on, let’s do it!’ She was a beauty but I ran a mile. I was so scared I never went back to where I met her, and that was the anxious part of me expressing. So that is the type of fear I am facing. I don’t seem to be facing that fear much now, but there is still something in that area bothering me or else I wouldn’t have had these fantasies.

I went into the feeling of trying to help a teenage part of me that was still back there in that fear. I seem, in my development I seem to have gone around the problem in a different way, but I need to go back and deal with this part.

Now I feel I have let myself slip right into an experience of the biological sources of fear. I see that struggling for ones life is one of the fundamental sources of fear. In looking at this I feel I am not struggling for my life though. I don’t say this as a positive reaction, but as an assessment of how I actually feel. So I wonder what is going on. Maybe I struggled for life some time as an infant, but I don’t feel locked into that at the moment.

I regressed to being a young child and started crying about the dark. I didn’t like the dark. When asked about my fear of the dark the fearful part of me was gradually able to formulate the fear or feelings into words – ‘I just don’t see why I should have to sleep alone. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being in the dark alone. Why do I have to be in the dark alone? Why? I don’t want to be in the dark alone’

Regress to being a child

I had the feeling at this point of my parents sleeping together at the other end of the house, leaving me feeling distant and isolated. Gradually as the involvement with the young me deepened I saw how I dealt with this fear. I lived in my mind. By focusing on a point inside my head and keeping it blank, I could let an image of a moving pattern of coloured light occur. I said, ‘I’ve got a light inside me. If you’ve got a light inside you then the darkness isn’t so bad. It’s colours and patterns. Now I’m not so afraid.’

I’m not sure if all babies feel like this, but at the moment I feel like a cluster of cells. As such I am very open to attack by other cells or things like bacteria or viruses. Not that I have a name for such things. I feel almost like some living creature in the garden, sensing it could be attacked by things and feeling anxious. I am aware of all the noises – of birds and people – around me, and how many things could attack me. So I am very vulnerable. Things could eat me.

Suddenly this went on to a strong feeling of not wanting my mother near me. I feel she tried to kill me. ‘Don’t touch me. I am DANGEROUS!’

If you are very vulnerable, one of the great defences is to make creatures feel you are dangerous – so I am being very dangerous. I am a little curled up ball, but I am being very dangerous.

Once more I met the part of me that is saying – ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, not more bloody crap from childhood to deal with!’

Sorry for just being me

My response is – ‘I’m sorry but there is more. Here I am, sorry again. I’m fucking sorry for my life again. – Anyway, I’m not sorry about you little baby. I’m here to listen to you and to love you.’

As the baby – ‘I don’t want anybody near me. I’m dangerous. Keep away.’

How old are you, little dangerous being?

‘I’m three. I’m only little. But I’m dangerous. I will KILL YOU if you get near me. I’ll bite you or something.’

Well, little dangerous three year old being, I think that you are very lonely. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s okay if you come near me, but I am not going to make a move toward you. So there is no need to be frightened. But you can come to me if you want to, and you can go away if you want to. I am here and I love you. When you are ready you can come if you want to.

‘If I am alone who is going to look after me. If I’m dangerous I keep people away. I’ve got to wait until my mother comes back. I’ve got to survive until she comes back. I don’t think she will ever come back. I don’t think she ever really wanted me. She didn’t come back.’

Your mother actually came back physically. So I am wondering why you are feeling she never came back. She says she was deeply worried about you. Why do you feel she didn’t come back?

‘If she had loved me she would never have let me be alone for so long. How could anybody leave me for that long? She never ever came back after that. She is dangerous. She might do it again. I don’t want her near me. – I want my mother. That’s not my mother. I want my mother. I waited and waited for my mother. Every woman I look at to see if it’s my mother. Is that my mother? Is that my mother? Perhaps that’s my mother?’

Locked in a dungeon for fifty years

Good god, you’ve been locked away in this dungeon for fifty four years waiting for your mother. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were there. I honestly didn’t know you were still locked away. I’ve looked for all the parts of me. I’ve looked lots of times. I wouldn’t have left you like that if I had know you were there. I love you. I want you to love me. I WANT you. I want you so much. I don’t want you to be in that dark space anymore. I can’t go on if I think you are in that dark space. I will sit here, and I will wait until you come out. Little Tony, I love you. I AM your mother that you have been looking for. I have been looking for you, and I’ve been so lost without you. I’ve looked in this dungeon again and again, but I didn’t know you were here curled up in a little ball being dangerous. I had a dream telling me something was wrong. But even then I didn’t know what was wrong. But I have come looking for you. You are my son. Look into my eyes – I love you.

I don’t know why she did that, but you cannot ever be alone again. You are part of me and in me. We are always together. There was a strong image here of bringing light into the darkness, and of touching not only the child, but many ‘creatures’ that had been locked in the darkness of pain and despair.

I felt a change in me as the small frightened child let go of it defence and was willing to become a part of the adult me. I realised I had already, many years ago, cried out the pain of this situation, physically writhed with the pain of it, and there was no hurt to deal with. What I was integrating was the decision I had made as a small three year old that I wouldn’t let that woman near me again – who could not possibly be my mother – along with its fear that was keeping people at a distance with its feigned dangerousness. It was this fear and the pain that had undermined my teenage confidence. On the other side of this was the constant looking for the REAL mother to arrive, while actually now living with my natural mother. So from the age of three I had lived alone, as it were, waiting for my mother to come back. What I saw was that within this a conflict had developed. If my REAL mother ever came along – i.e. a woman who showed me love – I dare not actually allow myself to bond to her, because my assessment was that my natural mother would never led my real mother take me away. So I lived in the torment of looking but never allowing real bonding. What a bugger!

Exploring the dark side – the shadow

I began to look around to understand what the dark dungeon was as part of my own psyche. I immediately felt some panic (On looking at the previous misspelled word, I thought it was rather adequate) on the part of the child, and had to reassure it again, telling it I was only looking around and it would be with me all the time. I needed to explain to it – ‘It’s going to be a bit strange because you have been in this one place all the time. But it’s okay, I am used to places like this. I am going to look around and it will be okay with you. I want to see what this place is made up of. How it got you caught, so you wont get caught again.’

I am now trying to combine in the sensitivity of my feelings and imagination, being a father for that needy child, and also being an adult with a woman. A woman wants attention as well. I don’t know how to do both at once. Thinking about it though, I don’t want a woman who takes all the attention away from my child.

I was exploring my feelings out aloud, and went on to say I guess the woman would want to produce her own child. So it would be easier to get a woman who has got children.

I then went on to realise that my child was inside me, yet I was talking about it, feeling about it, as if it were external. This led to the insight that I was mixing up my external children who, when young, you had to give complete attention to, and my inner child who was a part of my experience in everything I did. I remembered the time I had overlooked the time by a few minutes and had not been at playschool to pick up my youngest son. A neighbour had taken him in tow, but he was devastated and angry with me. And that wasn’t the situation with my inner child. He can go with me everywhere and anywhere.

At this point there was some dialogue with my wife that is not recorded, about who was I. It was probably asking about whether I was identifying myself as the adult or child. My response was, ‘I’m the poor bugger who went down into the dungeon to get the child.’

The observing part of me immediately caught the fact that in describing myself I had expressed some sort of pity or impoverishment. So I asked – myself – Why do you feel like a poor bugger? Another dialogue with two parts of myself followed.

As the questioned poor bugger – I couldn’t find any awareness of knowing why I had used those words. I said, ‘I feel as if you have cornered me and poking me about’.

I haven’t cornered you. I would like to help you understand why you feel you are a poor bugger. I can hear that you do feel like that, and would like to know how it is contributing to your life.

The Poor Bugger

PB So you’re interested in me?

Of course I’m interested in you. You are a part of me. We are living together. You are contributing to my everyday welfare. We are not separate. You are a mood I sometimes meet and would like to understand.

PB I don’t know why I feel like that. I just do. I don’t know how to say anything else. I just happen to feel like that. – pause – I feel like I am surrounded by dead animals. They are all around me, carcasses. Things that used to be alive are now dead.

Me the observer suddenly realised here was another feeling quality. Along with the feeling of ‘I am dangerous’ this new feeling of surrounded by death was one of the ‘things’ in the dream room.

PB I suppose it’s just feelings about death really. Death is everywhere. Everywhere you look some bloody thing is dead. I realise that everywhere you look there is something alive too. But at the moment I am seeing death everywhere. Skins of things, leaves, gravestones. Dead everywhere.

This is a loneliness I feel about getting old. It’s a lonely thing, getting old. I don’t know how to express it. I feel I am not near anything I relate to in connection with ageing and dying. I have the feeling of being on top of the heap, as it were, everything else is going on at another level. I guess what I am trying to say is that I sense the society around me is not connected with death very much. It seemed to me to be a young persons culture, so from the point of view of my age I feel disconnected and alone.

It’s all me – the loneliness, isolation and disconnection

In saying the above I was now totally identified with the feelings and recognised them as my own, not a split off part of me. But a part of me I had not acknowledged clearly before.

I do feel lonely, perhaps a bit like the little child we just rescued from fifty odd years of isolation. I felt lonely as a child, now I’m lonely in old age. When does one ever get near anybody? What happens to make one feel lonely in old age? Or is it a condition of ageing? I don’t know the answers. I haven’t been here before. It’s quite new to me.

I do feel as if people don’t recognise that it is a different condition when you get to sixty. People recognise that adolescence is different to childhood, and thirties are different to twenties. There is a mid-life crisis now on the books, but somehow at the moment I don’t feel there is anywhere in our society that recognises, or make a place for old age. I think it is different in other cultures. In Greece I felt age had a place in the family and the culture. I haven’t found my place yet, and I know this is connected with my reason for coming to Australia in that I am looking for somewhere to get old.

Doesn’t anyone recognise that 60 is a different period of life – like adolesence?

You can’t keep saying to people, look, I’m nearly sixty. Anyway people get pissed off with it, and I don’t think they understand anyway, because they haven’t been there yet. I guess it is only other sixty year olds understand it. I see Hy still hasn’t got that understanding yet. I don’t want to drag her into bloody sixty year old place. Like in a trip we took yesterday with Hy’s daughter and her husband. I just felt most of the time that I didn’t want to be there dashing all over the countryside sitting on a seat that bashed at my hips at every bump. How do you get out of it? I do not want to do it. If I start saying it I have the sense this old bugger is moaning again, just moaning on and on, complaining about something. And I feel sad about that because I am not moaning, I am trying to find my place in things.

That is certainly why I feel like a poor ‘old’ bugger. Though I have never talked about those things before. I am looking for a place. I am looking for something and I can’t find it. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Why does our culture constantly push you to struggle way into old age? I do feel as if here in Australia it will only last a little while that we can afford to live here – and then what? Is that a fear?

Okay, I agree that is an old fear I am repeating. I don’t know what the future holds. I fear I will get dragged back into struggling to earn a living. Perhaps there’s even an element in the feeling of not letting on to anyone that you are happy. If you do, some bugger is going to come along and knock it to bits. So I can connect that in some degree with the ‘I’m dangerous’ urge in myself. Actually I have never had it so good as I have life at the moment. I know I am without a wage, but I am living on the hope of earning enough from royalties. And just at this moment, things are okay. Is there a fear of losing it?

My karma supports me

Of course there is a fear of losing it. It’s not a figment of my imagination I see in the newspapers, huge financial companies collapsed. Our savings have lost £10,000 in the last year without spending anything because of the world economy. Of course I could lose it all. But I don’t think that is eating away at me. What eats away at me is whether I will earn enough for next month, and the month after that – or to be more precise, what will it need for me to earn enough. Will I have to return to the sort of work I did in Ilfracombe, washing dishes to feed my kids? I certainly couldn’t do plumbing and wiring over here.

But I do see that the things I have done in the past are continuing to reward me. A lot of people don’t have that. It’s partly luck that I started writing and learning what I did. In a sense it was my anxieties that led me to it.

I do deeply appreciate having my wife as my companion.

I got back to the dream again. I felt we are all in that ancient – dream – room. We are all in this moment now. In this moment everything is happening. Nothing could be stranger than that. I mean everything in terms of what is happening in the world – murder, love, birth death, huge heroism, cowardice, and on and on. I felt very moved by the sense that I had touched something wonderful – the great love, Christ, the universe. I recalled the part of the earlier experience where I had gone into the ‘dungeon’ to recover the small ‘dangerous’ me, and had felt I was bringing light to countless other aspects of self that had got trapped in darkness. It seemed to me I was bringing the gospel to them, and the gospel is the experience of this immense love. As I felt this it seemed to me there was nothing outside of that love. Nothing was beyond redemption, nothing was beneath its attention or forgotten by it. Even if one shut oneself away as my little ‘dangerous’ person had, it will come and seek one out to bring light and love. Even if, as part of me had done, one says ‘get away. I don’t want anybody near me’ that love comes and finds you. Eventually it finds you and draws you back in.

Where did I get the strength from?

I asked myself what that means. My inner response was that it simply means what it says. Didn’t I go and find that little hurt part of myself? Where did I get that strength from to do it? Was I born to that strength? Where did I learn it – to delve again and again into those dark places? It was difficult today to take the session. So why did I do it?

I wanted to find out. I wanted to see. I wanted to look into the shadows. I wanted to find out and understand what the fear was, what there was to be afraid of. In my heart I don’t think there is anything to be afraid of.

Why?

Because at times I have touched something so wonderful, I can no longer see there are shadows.

If that is so why don’t I live it?

Well I am living it. If I weren’t I wouldn’t have done this exploration today.

I went on to a consideration of how I fit into society. I saw that it was easy to do. I could simply say I was a lonely sixty year old, and other people would stand up and identify themselves as feeling the same. So why didn’t I do it? I thought my other skills such as with dreams, are not being particularly sought out at the moment. But perhaps more people need something like being able to talk about their loneliness. I love being near people and get such a lot from it. I need it. I miss people a lot. I miss Prabhat such a lot. We are making the same journey into old age and recognised this. I need to tell him how much I miss him.

I went on to wonder about why Prabhat shows me so much respect. I thought that was his character, partly from being in the forces. But also I felt he see me as incredibly old – in the sense that my life has included a lot more than many people. So I am like a huge old tree, to be respected. I incorporate not only my own wisdom, but the ancient wisdom.

This brought me back to the ancient room again, and the realisation that I AM the room. Also, it is not that I am the holder of the candle stick, I AM the candlestick. I keep forgetting. I extended that candlestick. I created it. It is an expression of me. I keep forgetting. But what is it I’m forgetting?

I speak of and for the Spirit

I got back to the dream again. I felt we are all in that ancient – dream – room. We are all in this moment now. In this moment everything is happening. Nothing could be stranger than that. I mean everything in terms of what is happening in the world – murder, love, birth death, huge heroism, cowardice, and on and on. I felt very moved by the sense that I had touched something wonderful – the great love, Christ, the universe. I recalled the part of the earlier experience where I had gone into the ‘dungeon’ to recover the small ‘dangerous’ me, and had felt I was bringing light to countless other aspects of self that had got trapped in darkness. It seemed to me I was bringing the gospel to them, and the gospel is the experience of this immense love. As I felt this it seemed to me there was nothing outside of that love. Nothing was beyond redemption, nothing was beneath its attention or forgotten by it. Even if one shut oneself away as my little ‘dangerous’ person had, it will come and seek one out to bring light and love. Even if, as part of me had done, one says ‘get away. I don’t want anybody near me’ that love comes and finds you. Eventually it finds you and draws you back in.

This led to me touching the feelings in myself of always having wanted to be somebody who could speak for the spiritual. In this dream I feel as if I am it. I am trying to speak, trying to break through what is holding me back. I do manage to say ‘Higher – Higher’. I feel as if all the good potential in my life, all the fairy stories depicted in my spontaneous work on the dream – the waking of the sleeping beauty, the transformation of the Beast into the Prince – are all at work in this dream. But I am so AFRAID I will miss this. So afraid it will pass me by in life. All my life I have sought this, but I am afraid it will slip away because I cannot be it, grasp it, know how to let it be me.

This fear suggests there are still some ‘spiders’ about, still some creepy crawlies. As the spider I am the process in nature that lies in wait for food. As Tony I don’t see that as anything to especially fear. The predatory forces are always there in life to be aware of. I realised that from the point of view of Jessica in the dream, there is a great fear of being in the power of somebody stronger than them, as with a bully or a dominating adult who might sexually abuse one. Such people do not let you out of their clutches if you are frightened of them. It is so difficult for a child to break away from a certain level of this. People like that are like spiders. They bleed you little by little. Fortunately I had a vile temper. But I don’t understand what I am raising my voice against.

Raising my voice against the shadows, religous and childhood fears

Well, I suppose I have already said about this. I am raising my voice against the shadows that dominate people’s lives. Religious fears, childhood hurts, fear of madness, all tend to be shadows that can dominate someone.

I come to the point again of feeling that I have no grounded awareness of what the transcendent thing is inside us. I touch it lightly and it goes, but I can never define it except in terms of the void and absence of all that we might have been imprisoned by.

I went on for a while here about the article on Vivation I had read. It confronted me again with the way I go about presenting things. I don’t want to give love or transcendence a new commercial name and sell it in a box for a certain amount of money. On the other hand I don’t identify completely with any of the world religions. But I do identify with their overall wonder. I do share that.

I Am That I Am

I begin to talk as LIFE, saying – But it is human beings who wrote all the holy books. All of the stories arose out of me. All of the music all of the fears. All of the possibilities of life arose because I AM. Because I as human beings attained self awareness, all of this wonderful array of qualities arose.