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Author Topic: A Combat Mission-Imported from Comments  (Read 3926 times)

Tony Crisp

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A Combat Mission-Imported from Comments
« on: February 21, 2018, 11:45:58 AM »
Alex

The other evening I had a dream. I went on a combat mission and we were seeking out the enemy. The Platoon leader was feeling confident with the initial successes, but there was the potential that the enemy was only establishing the conditions in order to lead us into an ambush later on. In the dream I was scared, and was hiding underneath a couch at one point firing back. I made a funny comment about the “tet offensive.” The mission ended and I finally found the time to take a shower. As I was taking a shower the steam that was let off from the water rose through the ceiling of the shelter I was in, but I was fearful that it would give away our position to enemy mortar and artillery fire. The dream transitioned into me hovering above the ground with my military uniform name tapes being blank, only to appear with my name on them when I was on the ground. I was with a Platoon of Soldiers in a garrison (non-combat) formation and we were making plans to go back out for the final combat mission. As mission preparations/rehearsals were taking place I began feeling immense fear to go back out. I was fearful for my own safety in battle. I pulled my First Sergeant aside to speak with him, almost wanting to tell him that I didn’t want to go back out. Out of fear of the upcoming mission. I asked the question if it was worth it (or something along those lines). A Soldier near me said that “it was worth dying for.”

Just a little background.. I have been on a nearly four year healing journey in order to heal from a dissociative disorder, which I attribute to childhood trauma. It’s limited my ability to fully engage in life in that I don’t feel much emotion/connection. I sense that the trauma I experienced occurred very early on in life in addition to multiple adolescent and adult traumas. I’ve been working diligently to get to the root causes of my problems.

Tony Crisp

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Re: A Combat Mission-Imported from Comments
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2018, 11:48:23 AM »
Alex – I too struggled and even fought to find a way out of the misery I lived in. I can only share some of what I found that may helpful.

In 1900, Charles Richet a French physiologist gave information by saying, “The living being is stable. It must be so in order not to be destroyed, dissolved or disintegrated by the colossal forces, often adverse, which surround it. Everything in our universe strives to reach a state of Homeostasis or equilibrium. This principle applies to single individual entities to massive complex systems either metabolically, physically, socially or psychologically, even spiritually. By an apparent contradiction it maintains its stability only if it is excitable and capable of modifying itself according to external stimuli and adjusting its responses to the stimulation. In a sense it is stable because it is modifiable – the slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism.”
It took me a long time of searching to find, in my own way of life, the wisdom in those two statements. It took me even longer to learn how to apply that in my life. When I did an extraordinary process revealed itself.
I have written elsewhere about suffering depression and terrible exhaustion in my twenties and how I found my way out of it. And it was through dreams and life’s little secrets stated above that it was done.
In searching for relief from misery I tried many different things, relaxation, yoga, meditation, fasting, and diet among them. They promised to be helpful but something was missing that I only began to uncover when I started teaching relaxation/surrender. Some of those classes I taught were huge back in the sixties and seventies. To help people I would wander around the class and lift an arm or leg of some of those lying quietly relaxed. I moved the limb to let the person have an enhanced awareness of their relaxed condition. What amazed me was that often the arm or leg was so rigid with tension it was hard to move. If I let go the limb would remain suspended. On asking the person how they felt they would say, ‘Fine. Really relaxed.’ They didn’t know they were carrying enormous tensions.

Are you relaxing or suppressing?
It took me a while to realise what that indicated. You could relax surface muscles and feelings, but a mass of tensions were unconscious. Later I learned that such tensions had often arisen from difficult or traumatic past experiences, still locked in the body and emotions. By using relaxation techniques such as dropping the tension of the voluntary muscles or meditating on positive things those inner tensions were being pushed back into the unconscious – undealt with. When left at that point, relaxation and meditation were a method of suppression and control, not of healing.

With shock I realised this was true of many things that were supposed to be helpful, such as meditation and positive thinking. What they often did was to calm surface feelings by controlling thoughts and body. They did not deal with the real difficulties that had been pushed into the unconscious. Their purpose was to quieten the conscious mind and the voluntary movements of the body, not release unconscious tension.

I went on an almost fanatical search for what could be done to change that – to release the unconscious problems. The clue was, as Richet says, that ‘the slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism.’ I gradually realised that to really adjust to the many knocks and changes we meet in life, our body and mind need to be capable of a type of ‘instability’. It needs to be able to move, to express freely, and to respond automatically or spontaneously. Yet all our cultural training and habits are about control and suppression. Governments also sometimes give huge threats to the people if they do not conform. All in all, we have in many ways been trained to be sick – as I was myself. And, amazingly, my doctor, to deal with depression and physical but undiagnosable pains, was telling me to take a drug, a tranquiliser, to maintain the status quo.

I gradually found a way through dreams. I had been dreaming for some weeks that I was marching with troops to the battlefront. Then one day I dreamt of being in the trenches and going over the top as the bullets were flying – something I had been scared of previously.

Then having sat for months dropping my aims and beliefs, one night after going to the toilet, I was just getting back into my bed and I heard a disembodied voice say to me, “You have asked how God touches the human soul. Now watch closely.” A couple of days later, having realised all that, I got together with three friends – Mike Tanner, Sheila Johns and Chris Stevens at the Kingston Club/Ashram in Combe Martin, Devon – to experiment with how to allow this process of self-regulation to express. How did you give your being freedom to express spontaneously so it could rid itself of what it held unconsciously?

To sum up we found these things helpful – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ and http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-arm-circling-meditation/

Tony

Tony Crisp

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Re: A Combat Mission-Imported from Comments
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2018, 11:49:29 AM »
Tony – I read your response and am excited to begin familiarizing myself with some of your links you’ve referenced. Thank you for sharing your story with me! It sounds like the Battlefield theme was present in your dreams as well. Very interesting.

It feels to me that my unwillingness/fearful apprehension to go back into Battle is a direct reflection with where I’m currently at with my willingness to face my traumas. Would you agree?

One of the biggest obstacles I had to overcome was finding out that healing was a process and not a destination. I had convinced myself around the age of 23 that my symptoms would be resolved during the next therapy session, only to find that they did not. After hearing from others about the value dreams hold in healing, I began my own dream journal. I too have had some incredible experiences that I can only describe as being Divine in nature. Encouraging me that the future held healing.

Alex

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Re: A Combat Mission-Imported from Comments
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2018, 11:52:14 AM »
Alex - It feels like a battlefield inside us as we are ‘fighting’ to get well. Here is part of the battle –

Then we were walking to Friends House from the other direction. Marie Barakan, who was also Liz and other women, were holding my hand. I felt we had a lot of love for each other. I was trying to explain the reason for waiting - about the cricketer having to wait for exactly the right moment swing his bat, otherwise his stroke fails. She had other ideas which I forget. We all went into the foyer of Friends House (Quakers) to get married. She handed in tickets. We got to the door to the meeting room. Two powerful men acted as receptionists. They took the tickets but said that there was only a ticket for one person. Marie went to the left into the meeting. I asked the man to allow me to exit out of the revolving door to Euston Road. I did this and found a battle going on, bullets flying, and people dead in the street. I lay beside a dead body pretending to be dead in case I got shot. A soldier, possibly American, a big man who had no fear of the bullets, came up to me as I lay face down. He told me I had an alien clinging to my back. I thought of this something like a limpet clinging to my back where my back pain is, with roots into my body. This was a creature from space. He put a knife under its shell and removed it from my body. But something of it remained and he spread a thick layer of peanut butter up the spine. This acted as a sort of poison to the alien.

As you can see, I was scared of the battle, but the Big Man was another thing I needed to build into myself.

Yes, for it took several times even marching up to the front line before I managed to go ‘over the top’.

As for destination, it is an eternal journey. We find healing on the way, but it is about growth as a person. That is the amazing part – “the Divine in nature”.

Here is some more links that might be interesting - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/mountain-path/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/trauma/#Examples - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-is-the-unconscious/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/features-found-on-site/

Tony