Author Archive

Admiral

The ability to direct the many facets of yourself across the sea of life experience. In other words the ability to meet the difficulties of life decisively and to make decisions direct action. This may also be a father or authority figure. The admiral may also represent the best or transformative in you.

Or if you have connections with the navy you need to think or feel what an admiral means to you.

Useful questions:

Am I the admiral in my “sea of life experience”?

Does the admiral represent an authority figure I know, such as father or schoolteacher?

Am I meeting a need to deal with challenging circumstances?

See: Roles.

Addict Addicted Addiction

Something or someone may be influencing you in a way that undermines your ability to make choices. There may also be a connection with powerful emotional or economic dependence. These activities or influences are not arising from your will or responsibility, but from the emotions and fears, symbolised by that to which you are addicted in your dream. One can be addicted to a relationship, or to work. Your dream may be commenting on such a situation. If so, it is wise to consider how to move toward greater independence.

Perhaps there is an indication of fearing loss of control in regard to something or someone.

The dream may actually refer to a drug you are using and being warned about in your dream. Sometimes the fear of something is the power which actually dominates us – not the thing itself. Each of us have areas dominated by such fears or feelings, and the dream action will point to what they are. To dream of an addict who is other than oneself will still point to some issue about addiction in oneself. See Obsession.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What in my life might be overpowering my freedom of choice?

Am I in a relationship that is influencing me negatively?

Is there addictive behaviour I am not admitting to?

Use Processing Dreams to help with this dream.

Conditioned & Unconditioined Reflexes or Responses

As humans we are all conditioned by our parental and cultural influences. Even our education is a form of conditioning. See  Programmed

But at times human or animal programming is put in place either by forced training or by suggestion using our fears, hopes etc. Fear of death, of not caring for loved ones, is massively used in advertising and political propaganda. Often we see such things as natural feelings. So what is the difference between unconditioned and conditioned programming?

It is difficult to decide, but our basic unconditioned urges are the urge to survive, to eat, sleep, find a sexual partner and have intercourse, to care and be cared for, to defend our selves and family, self assertion,  also growth is an instinctive urge. But each of these is open to so much pressure from pain, from emotions, from social pressure, from child hood trauma, by the images we are presented about getting rich, getting power, getting sex, avoiding danger, that it is a very difficult area to really understand.

Although we are used to thinking of animals showing conditioned reflexes, as  with Pavlovian training, we seldom realise what a large part they play in human life. This is obvious in the problems we would face in going against social conditioning. When we move against an implicit social conditioning, we feel the pressure or pain of that – whether it is sexual, clothing, or whatever it is. If we go against such conditioning we may discover the underlying feelings and forces that have created the conditioning in the first place. Dreams often reveal to us what our conditioning is, and how it was imprinted.

Human beings in general are still largely moved by the old reptilian and mammalian urges, pushed into war, conflict and murder, territorialism and old mating patterns in ways that are far from rational – these are unconditioned responses. Most of us are urged to action by factors that are still completely or largely unconscious, arising as they do from levels of our being we know little of.

Because we have moved far away from being natural animals and have existed as humans for ages, we cannot and should not try to rid ourselves of our human programming. What we can do is to attempt to become more whole by integrating our animal selves we still carry in us, and attempt to remain in contact with our core self. See Touching Your Core;  Brain Levels and Dreams

Sometimes it might be we have problems about living, and suffer the civilised ills of neurosis, depression, sexual or eating problems or identity difficulties. See the link at the end of this feature.

Two examples of this follow.

Example: When I left my first wife and was living with my present wife, we shared a lovely country cottage in a small hamlet. Although beautiful, the few months I lived there were an emotional hell because I was away from my children, and because of the pain of the divorce. My second wife and I then moved to be nearer my children. We had left some beehives at the previous cottage however, and so six months later we started driving back to collect them. On the way I started experiencing severe stomach pains. The suddenness of this, and the fact I couldn’t think of any physical cause for the pain made me investigate my feelings. As soon as I did this it was obvious that a part of my nature which was usually unconscious, was just like my dog, responding in a conditioned reflexive way. The cottage was a place of torment – why were we going back? More to the point, how could it stop me going back? How could it deter me from facing that pain again? As soon as I explained that we were not staying there and the painful situations no longer existed the pain went and never came back.

An important point here that needs to be emphasised is that the unconscious is not a mechanical thing but is a part of our own living mind and consciousness, and is responsive. As shown by the example above our instincts, the animal we are and meet in dream and in the unconscious can respond by being talked to – just as a animal does that trusts us. So when you suffer panic attacks and sudden unexplained pains you can talk to your animal/instincts and it can often help.

As an example of this, some years ago I was taking a large and friendly Alsatian dog belonging to a friend for a walk. We had been playing with a stick and the dog, Sultan, was still carrying the stick in his mouth. Suddenly Sultan saw a black Labrador dog in a nearby truck. He immediately went into a frenzy of rage. I had him held tightly on a lead, so he couldn’t attack the dog, but the stick in his mouth was shredded.

This would again seem like an irrational response if we didn’t know that Sultan had been attacked by a black Labrador when he was a pup. Mike’s response was just the same as Sultan’s. We need to remember that we are all animals, and we still carry the ‘R’ brain. We can however, mitigate such responses by understanding their origins and releasing or reprogramming the conditioned response.

A man exploring his dream world wrote:

Here I experienced what I suppose are the sort of nightmare images along with feelings of fear. A nightmare scenario. But as I meet them I recognise that they are simple and see them as projections of images arising from fears that we frighten ourselves with. There is a mechanism in us to project such images to keep us away from whatever may have been the source. This is exactly a Pavlovian conditioned reflex. The original experience produced pain or fear. The original experience also had some physical characteristics in terms of objects, places, and perhaps people. Any of those characteristics when met again can trigger a Pavlovian response. Psychologically the response is to say in huge letters, “Keep Away”. This is a natural and instinctive way of helping us to survive. Unfortunately it means that many people constantly avoid the source of their original conditioning and so cannot reprogram it.

The conditioning not only keeps one away from the people, places, and situations that were the original cause, but it also keeps one out of one’s own resources. And such conditioning stands in the way of former relationships, former self-expression and creativity.

So as I look at this nightmare scenario – these nightmare images – I recognise them for what they are and pass through them, seeing, as it were, the projectors that produce the images. I can see that the images project from some of my most profound childhood terrors. They can cause an eruption of all those old feelings about such things as my torture, abandonment, sex. And I look into these images to see what lies behind the outer form, and I see clearly my childhood fears that I am gradually meeting and integrating.

Now I have reached a point where I am trying to summarise where all this leaves me or leads me.

Well, it leaves me with a multitude of other questions.  I laugh here because this is such a Me trick, to end with more questions than I began with.  But let me see if I can summarise.  What have I learned?

Well, it all goes on, and on, and on.  There is never a final end to anything.  I laugh because that is the reality that we live in.  That is a part of the plan.  You think you have reached your goal and that the journey has ended, and it hasn’t.  A whole new area opens up – hopefully to your delight.  A door opens, a door closes, another antagonist comes into the arena.  Dear God, it is never ending.

So dealing with the habits that arise from conditioned reflexes is largely recognising what they are, and in doing so go through the awful images guarding them. See Life’s Little Secrets

Dialogue With a Dream Character or Object

Every part of a dream, whether an object, person or animal, is alive with our own intelligence. Each part has been created out of ourselves in some way, and depicts some area of our own total being. We can therefore talk with them. Such dialogue is of great importance and very revealing.

As I wrote in my book, Lucid Dreaming:

No computer, however amazing, can yet do what your mind does in creating a dream. It produces a living being such as a dream character that can have a conversation with you, and in doing so draw spontaneously from huge areas of your experience or memories. Behind the image lies enormous data, emotional response and created patterns of behaviour. So the main thing to remember at this level is that you are in a full surround databank of fantastic information. You can tap this information just as you would with any person, by asking questions and prodding for a response. But, even the trees and animals in your dreams are also enormous reservoirs of information, linking back perhaps infinitely with your potential and experience.

To do this, imagine yourself as one of the characters, animals or objects in your dream. It may help at first to have two chairs – one empty and one you are sitting in. The character or object of your dream is in the empty chair. When you are ready to be that character move from your chair, sit in the empty chair and speak as that character. You really need to let that character speak without any editing. So in the case of your dream, if it is a person you cannot see who is a hidden person, you could say, “I don’t really want to be known, because I like to hide my activity of getting you to feel like you might find out my real motives.”

A quick way of understanding your dream is to realise that the images in our dreams are just emotions, thoughts, fears. traumas, ideas and feeling projecting out of you and appearing as images, people or scenes outside you on the screen of your mind. If you draw back the imagews of your dream to make them a part and become them in your imagination, you might then discover what they represent about you. This is so simple that many people fail to try it, and instead try ‘thinking’ about their dream’. I have found that many people feel sqeemish abouit doing this – but your dreams do it all the time.

If it is difficult to get rid of the image, then take the image into you again – after all it was projected out of you, so taking it back into you by imaging you are it introduces you to whatever caused it. Imagine yourself becoming the image. For more information about doing this see Being the Person or Thing

So after you have imagined yourself as the person, care ot thing and felt what was the feeling underneath it, ask yourself, “When have I felt this before – even years ago? What is the feeling about and what part does it play in my  life?”

That is only an example so let yourself speak freely.

Be playful and curious in doing this. Question the character, and when you move to that role, let whatever your feelings are as that character motivate what you say and do. Exploring your dream in this way unfolds a great deal of information that would otherwise remain unconscious. It also enables you to make real changes in unconscious attitudes or habits, as you are literally dialoguing with areas of character patterning or programming, and can change them.

Example: When I spoke as the new born baby of my dream I really felt as if this was me, newly born. I had had a difficult birth and my reaction was that I wanted nothing to do with life. I wanted to stay curled up like an egg, not getting involved in the exterior world.

The adult observing me could see how this aspect of my inner life had led me to be withdrawn from social activity all my life, so I explained this to the baby me, saying – I need you to be ready to meet the world. You are a part of me and if you continue to withdraw I lack the enthusiasm to get involved with other people.

Back as the baby I felt totally vulnerable and didn’t want to take any risks – No I don’t want to come out of the egg.

As the adult again I said – Look, if you remain curled up this is more of a gamble than actually getting out and taking risks in life. Just lying there anything can get you. I had watched a documentary of baby turtles hurry to the sea, and some of them got  eaten by seagulls.

The view of the seagulls really really got to me as the baby. I could see that simply lying there was more dangerous than being still. I felt a change in me and a readiness to begin the journey of meeting life outside the womb.

This change really made a difference to my everyday activities. A lifelong habit of being introverted gradually dropped away. Trevor P.

Obviously it is important to use this a few times to really feel confident in it. Also do not feel as if you have to be guarded or careful about saying what is  important or ‘true’. None of that matters because only what really connects with you is of any use, the rest you can let go of. In the example of the new born baby, it was what was really felt in the role, and what made a difference that was important.

 

 

 

A Pygmy Model for Beautiful Parenting

By Ushanda io Elima

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The Efe Pygmies are “wholly non-aggressive,” Jean-Pierre Hallet told me. Could that be true? Since Hallet largely grew up with the Efe in equatorial Africa, and has lived with them for much of his sixty plus years, I figured he might know.

And since aggressive people increasingly threaten our lives, both locally and internationally, his claim seemed worth checking out. Whether or not humans are genetically violent, as some maintain, has significant relevance for we who are peace activists. The root causes of aggression, both interpersonal and international, matter greatly regarding effective strategy for prevention and elimination of human violence. And, while I cannot tolerate false hope, I was feeling a need for first-hand information that could offer genuine hope of a better world for our human family.

My fascination with the African Pygmies began in the 1960s, when I read The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, who had lived with the Mbuti Pygmies for three years. In the late ‘60s I attended Turnbull’s lecture series at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

In the early 1970s I heard Jean-Pierre Hallet speak about the Efe Pygmies at the University of California in Berkeley. At that time he showed his 1972 documentary film on this indigenous African tribe. Later I read Hallet’s book, Pygmy Kitabu. Hallet has lived with the culturally pure Efe Pygmies from early childhood. He gave startling evidence of the trusting, cooperative, and joyful lifestyle of these forest people.

Thus I was pleased to meet with Jean-Pierre Hallet in his Malibu home. He is six feet and four inches tall, far from pygmy size, and speaks with passion. He lost his right hand while dynamiting Lake Tanganyika for fish to feed a group of starving Africans in South Mossi. Dubbed “one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century,” he is the only white man to become a member of the Bwame Secret Society, and a blood brother of the Lega, Tutsi, and Nande tribes. He is also an initiated Maasai warrior.

Mr. Hallet was born in Belgian, but went to Zaire’s Ituri Forest, where his artist father had been living, when he was only six months old. Hallet told me that, for the most part, he grew up with the Efe Pygmies. He went barefoot, wore a loincloth, and did everything that they did. He still spends time with them every year.

The following account of Pygmy life draws upon my meeting with Hallet, as well as other firsthand reports from him and Colin Turnbull. What emerges is a picture of a culture based on honoring—to use a Native American concept—“all our relations.”

Sexual Maturity and Pregnancy

The Pygmies are well aware of the connection between sex and conception, Hallet explained during our meeting, and sexual relations before marriage are accepted. If a girl becomes pregnant, she always knows who the father is, because it is customary to have only one lover at a time. Should the couple wish to marry, they do. If they choose not to, then many men will want to marry the mother-to-be, because children are most desirable.
Birth

Hallet said he has delivered more than 500 African babies, Pygmy and non-Pygmy. He described Pygmy labor as being very short, natural, and easy, even for a first-time mother. And this is in spite of the fact that Pygmy babies are, proportionally, the biggest babies in the world. For example an 80-pound Pygmy mother typically gives birth to an eight-pound baby, about one-tenth of her body weight. This would compare to a 130-pound woman birthing a 13-pound baby.

When the mother’s membranes rupture, she notifies her two midwives, who then walk with her to the river, one on either side. “At the time of the pain,” Hallet said, “she will walk and sing, sing and be joyous.”

Once at the river, the pregnant woman squats on a flat rock. The midwives hold her on each side, and breath deeply with her in what Hallet referred to as “a tremendous feeling on oneness.” When they feel the time has come, the women hold their breath. “They pause together,” said Hallet, “and then you see the baby coming out.”

One of the midwives briefly holds the baby upside down, washes the upper part of the body to make sure the baby is breathing well, and then returns the child to the mother for nursing. The other midwife works her teeth down the umbilical cord until she finds the narrow part, a few inches from the infant’s abdomen. “This is the place where, if a baby were dropped from the womb of a standing mother, the weight of the child would be enough to break that cord at that point,” said Hallet. The midwife bites this narrow part very slowly, and then gently squeezes the cord with her fingers. There is usually very little bleeding.

To celebrate the birth of her child, Hallet noted, a mother will sing this song:

My heart is so joyous,

My heart flies in singing,

Under the trees of the forest,

The forest, our home, our mother.

In my net I have caught

A little bird,

A very little bird,

And my heart is caught

In the net with my little bird.

 

During the birth, the father stays away. Birth is considered to be women’s business. After birth, when the mother and baby have returned to their leafy, dome hut, the father comes to them and asks permission to enter. Then the father might clap his hands and thank his wife for their very wanted child.
Newborn Care

According to Hallet, there is no bonding ritual, but there is a bond — “like a fruit to its branch” — a physical attachment for the first year or so. During this year, the baby is “never separated from the mother.” In Hallet’s view, this constant contact is one reason why Pygmy infants rarely cry. Pygmy babies appear to feel good. “They are satisfied in all of their requirements,” he stated. On the rare occasion when a baby does cry, it is only for a moment, because the baby’s need is immediately taken care of. Often this means nursing, which satisfies the baby’s necessity for close contact and attention, as well as for nourishment.

Hallet remarked that the baby is usually carried in front, although sometimes on the back. In either position, Pygmies feel it is essential to maintain skin-to-skin contact, with the child naked against the mother’s bare skin. If clothing is needed for warmth, the mother wraps a clothe around both herself and her child, not between them. This constant skin contact continues for at least the first six months. Thereafter, the mother continues to provide plenty of touching as well as baby-led nursing.

A Pygmy baby continues to nurse for about five years, Hallet reported. If there’s any milk left after the new baby is finished, the breast may go to the baby before, and then to the child before that one, in turn. The priority is always the newly born child.

Hallet said, “Sometimes you’ll see little children playing, perhaps making a bow and arrow. They interrupt their play to go to their mother, reach for her breast and suckle a little bit . . . still finding the warmth of a few drops of milk.”

The breasts of women with many children may be really flat, going all the way down to the waist, commented Hallet. I thought this might result from a combination of breastfeeding along with a physically active lifestyle and no bras. Although such “droopy breasts” may be unattractive from a modern point of view, to the Pygmies it is a good sign, I learned, because it indicates a woman has been feeding a lot of children. Prolonged, child-led nursing also provides a natural form of birth control and child spacing.

The Pygmies do not equate breasts with sexual stimulation, Hallet claimed, and they do not use the breast for erogenous foreplay. The breast is considered sacred, reserved for the child.

The father takes great interest in his baby. He plays, holds and hugs the child as much as the mother does. Men and women equally manifest love and care. In fact, fathers will sometimes hold their babies for very long periods of time. Hallet recalled, “The most beautiful time for a father is when he holds his baby for the very first time. He will hold his newborn with great . . . tenderness. And usually he will cry, because he is so touched by his baby.”

Close physical contact, nursing as often as the child feels the need, emotional warmth, and loving care are among the basic requirements of very young children, according to the Pygmies. Fulfilling these needs maximizes the child’s potential to develop into a naturally sociable and responsible human being who can enjoy a good life.
Childhood

Family members sleep together. The big girls cuddle on the left side of the hut with the mother. The boys line up beside the father, on his right. The youngest child who is still breastfeeding sleeps between the father and mother. Pygmies feel that this is an intrinsic part of life, Hallet said. Since their only blankets are each other, they cuddle and fit against one another’s bodies in a very natural way.

This feeling of closeness carries beyond the family hut. Hallet said that children refer to their parents’ peers as “mother” or “father.” Children outside the immediate family are called “brother” or “sister.” As Hallet’s documentary revealed, there is a great deal of affectionate touching among all of the Pygmies. Babies and small children are held and carried. Older children and adults frequently hold hands or sit with an arm around a friend, or place their head in another’s lap. Anyone feeling the need for reassurance may touch someone briefly or go for a hug. Many enjoy cuddling.

Girls and boys are treated and valued equally, according to Hallet. Marriage involves no dowry or bride-payment, but rather simple exchanges. Most areas of work are not limited solely to one gender or the other. A man will gather food if he passes something tasty and his hands are free. And all the people—men, women and children—play a part in the hunt.

Hallet never saw a Pygmy adult hit or criticize a child. Nor do they tell their children how to behave. When I asked how they control their children, Hallet answered, “They don’t. The children do not need to be controlled. Whatever the adults do, the children do. The woman goes to gather wood for the fire, and the little girl follows and picks up a few pieces too.”

Once he saw a toddler heading straight toward a blazing fire, and called out to alert the mother. The mother calmly replied, “Let him go.” As Hallet put it, the mother knew the child would soon feel the heat and slow down. She trusted nature, including the instinctual wisdom of her child’s human nature. The child might touch a glowing twig and learn about fire without serious harm to either his fingers or his budding self-confidence.

“This is probably the most striking difference between the Pygmies and our society,” said Hallet. “They do not tell their children what to do or what not to do.”

Adulthood

After an easy birth and attentive childcare, what quality of life do Pygmies experience in maturity?

According to Hallet, Efe Pygmies are physically healthy. Living traditionally, they do not succumb to such modern diseases as high blood pressure, heart disease, or cancer. Death is usually due to pulmonary diseases like pneumonia, a result of the constant nearly 100 percent humidity of their forest environment. The second leading cause of death is what Hallet termed “accidents,” such as being crushed by a falling tree.

For simple ailments like an infected cut, the Pygmies have natural medicines derived from various combinations of roots and plant juices. They have a cure for every normally occurring illness, according to Hallet. They either eat the substance, drink it, or make a little scratch and absorb it into the bloodstream much like an injection. Through centuries of trial and error, they know what works and what does not.

The emotional health of the Pygmies is also impressive. Hallet, constantly touched by their goodness, believes that the simplicity, harmony, and serenity that the Pygmies experience are qualities we could learn to incorporate. “They are not afraid,” he said. “They are totally secure.” They have a high level of respect for themselves and others.

Most significantly, Efe Pygmies are free of hatred, greed, and competitive feelings. Physical violence against others is forbidden.

Hallet’s documentary reveals the role that social responsibility plays in a telling scene of conflict between an Efe wife and husband. The argument heats up with much shouting, hands on hips, and dramatic finger waving. Suddenly the husband picks up a stick. The wife disappears from the screen—but soon reappears bearing a club taller than herself. At this point, the women hold back the wife, and the men hold back the husband.

What usually happens when a husband and wife fight, says Hallet, is that they are encouraged. “If a man is about to hit his wife, the others will give him a stick and say, ‘Hit her with this. You are a strong man. You can kill her!’ By this time, the husband already feels a little ashamed. The others group around and call out, ‘Okay! Go! Go for it!’ And then he realizes how foolish he looks. They end up making a joke out of it, a sort of soap opera. Then every body claps, and they are happy.”

Pygmies express all of their emotions freely. According to Hallet, if Pygmies feel like crying, they cry. If they want to scream, they scream. They yell. It is acceptable for a man to cry openly. They pygmies do not suppress their emotions; instead, they say, “Tell the truth. Do not hide it—let it out.”

Turnbull referred to the bright-eyed, open look of the playful Pygmies, and was surprised by the extent of their emotional freedom: they may even fall to the ground and roll around when expressing intense sorrow, or laughter.

Even though Pygmies usually do pretty much what they feel like doing, community relationships do not suffer. As Hallet sees it, a major part of their great personal freedom comes from a mutual feeling of trust. As he spoke I thought, because the innate trust human babies are born with is not betrayed by their caregivers, that trust can continue. According to Hallet, Pygmies concentrate their attention on the betterment of their personal relationships. He said that the entire Efe society had not one criminal, not one rapist, one molester, or one case of incest.

Although a man might think of making love with a woman other than his wife, knowing how that would threaten the root of their sacred marriage for life, he would resist the temptation.

The Pygmies have no chiefs, no courts or prisons. Turnbull wrote that they did not want individual power, preferring shared decision-making.

More than anything else, what forms the basis of the healthy relationships that Pygmies enjoy is respect. For instance, respect is shown in the handling of food, which is shared with all. If food is scarce, the first to be fed are the children and then the elders—those who are the most vulnerable.

Great respect is shown for the elders. In Pygmy society, the elders are “the stars of the show.” According to Hallet, they are the most important people because they have the wisdom, the honor, the beauty that deserves respect. They have worked all their lives. They have given a lot of love to other people. They naturally reap the reward of becoming truly important in the eyes of all others. The Pygmies have a saying: “Thank God if you live to grow old.”

When I heard that I wondered how many of our modern elders feel as honored and grateful in old age.

Pygmies also show respect for their forest environment and resources. “Never cut the tall trees,” they say in Hallet’s Pygmy Kitabu. Ecology is a natural part of their religion.

According to Hallet, the Pygmies believe in one God, one Spirit, one Creator of all life. They consider no form of punishment, no hell or revenge, because they see God as being only benevolent. In The Forest People, Turnbull records the words of a song he heard his Pygmy companions sing: “. . . If darkness is, then the darkness must be good.” So completely do the Pygmies experience a trustworthy world.
The Future: Danger of Extinction

Pygmy lives are now endangered. “It is impossible for them to survive with their traditional hunting and gathering because their forest is being destroyed at a tremendous rate,” said Hallet. In fact, many experts predicted that the Efe Pygmies would be extinct by 1977. In that year, their population numbered 3,800—not yet extinct, although a significant decline from the two or three million who were once the only inhabitants of central Africa.

“The forest, that perfect ecosystem that took millions of years to be established, is destroyed now to less than ten percent of its former glory,” said Hallet.

He repeatedly stressed the view that humanity needs to help the Pygmies survive because they are also the key to our own survival. “The Pygmies are the living evidence of our innate goodness.” In a world threatened by oppression, conflict, and violence, these forest people demonstrate that when we gently birth, nurture, and guide our children, without violence and other repressive controls, we human beings can live together in freedom and harmony.

Nurtured by a community that reflects the loving care adults received early in life, children develop freely in an environment of safety, warm concern, cooperation and shared pleasures. The Pygmies say, “Love the children extravagantly, with all your heart!”
Summary: A Sustained Culture Reveals Possibilities For Humanity

The images and expectations we hold in our minds powerfully influence our children’s development. The picture of “human nature” given by some modern people depicts a human “inheritance” of violent and selfish “instincts.” When we believe that humanity is innately violent or greedy, we fearfully demand obedience from our children, and strive to maintain rigid controls over the emotional responses that we have been taught to fear in our own childhoods. Dominance over others’ behavior, and over our own natural emotions, brings neither inner nor outer peace. Instead, viewing human nature as dangerous has helped to create perilous consequences for the human race.

The image of human nature demonstrated by the living Pygmies offers us the hope of better ways of relating, arising from a more accurate view of our original nature. The Efe Pygmy culture reassures us that we need not assume that human beings are genetically violent or greedy. Therefore we need not teach our children to suppress themselves or to blindly obey others. Pygmy society shows us that when children’s needs (life requirements) are lovingly provided for, they will not grow up harboring unmet needs that may become greed. They will not develop the rage and fear that result from early neglect and punishment, and may be destructively expressed for the rest of some lives.

Startling to our modern minds, it becomes clear that it is unnecessary to teach our children to love. Instead we can trust and support their innate tendencies toward empathy and generosity, which I too experienced while living in Africa and elsewhere. We can safely allow our children emotional freedom, while gently guiding them in appropriate, mutually respectful ways of behavioral expression.

In short, the Pygmies demonstrate that we do not have to war with our children. We do not have to teach them violence by our example when they are small. Instead we can cooperate with them in the graceful unfolding of their inborn integrity and kindness.

What happens in our parenting as we begin to act from this harmonious image of human nature? For one, we find ourselves reviving such ancient practices as natural homebirth, unrestricted breastfeeding, carrying our infants and maintaining close physical contact with them. Rather than punishment, we teach our children by example. In so doing, we are not simply returning to our roots. Rather, in our individual ways, we are weaving a new synthesis appropriate for our times, one that creates fresh possibilities for the whole of humanity.

From the self-respecting awareness of our inherent human goodness, a sweeter, grander version of ourselves will emerge.

Pygmy Proverbs

“Goodness and kindness put an end to badness.”

“God returns the good that one does.”

“With truth one may reach God.”

“A bad mother is not a mother.”

“Children are people’s treasures.”

ESP in Dreams

Many dreams extend perception in different ways.

dreaming the future – Just before his title fight in 1947, Sugar Ray Robinson dreamt he was in the ring with Doyle. ‘I hit him a few good punches and he was on his back, his blank eyes staring up at me.’ Doyle never moved and the crowd were shouting ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’ He was so upset by the dream Robinson asked Adkins, his trainer and promoter, to call off the fight. Adkins told him, ‘Dreams don’t come true. If they did I’d be a millionaire.’ In the eighth round Doyle went down from a left hook to the jaw. He never got up, and died the next day.

The problem is that many dreams felt to be predictive never come true. Often dreamers want to believe they have precognitive dreams, perhaps to feel they will do not want to be surprised by, and thereby anxious about, the future. When the baby son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped, and before it was known he was murdered, 1300 people sent ‘precognitive’ dreams concerning his fate in response to newspaper headlines. Only seven of these dreams included the three vital factors – that he was dead, naked and in a ditch.

Out of 8000 dreams in his Registry For Prophetic Dreams, Robert Nelson, who was sent the dreams prior to what was predicted, has found only 48 which bear detailed and recognisable connection with later events. See: prophetic dreams.

dreaming the dead See dreaming of death

dreaming together – The Poseidia Institute of Virginia Beach, USA have run a number of group ‘mutual dreaming’ experiments. Although the institute suggests very positive results, a critical survey of the dreams and reports reveals a lack of hard evidence. Like other areas of ESP dreaming, it can seldom ever be willed. But the dreams did show themes related to problems regarding intimate meeting. Also, some of the dreams were directly about the goal of dream meeting, as in the following example.

Example: ‘I find the group of people I am looking for. There were maybe six or more people. They were asleep on mattresses except for two or three. These were awake and waiting for me, and wearing small pointed hats such as Tibetan Lamas wear. In the dream I realised this meant they had achieved sufficient inner growth to remain awake in sleep. We started to communicate and were going to wake the others.’ Tom C. See: meeting in dreams.

There are ‘meeting’ dreams however, although these seldom occur under test conditions.

Example: ‘I dreamt my sister was attacking me with a pair of scissors. She backed me against a wall and stabbed me. During the day after the dream my sister phoned me at work and said she had an awful dream in which she stabbed me with scissors.’ D.

Example: My husband is in the Navy, serving on a ship in the Gulf. We’ve always been close, through 22 years. I dreamt we were making love, and could even smell him. It ended as lovemaking always does for us, with orgasm and a cuddle into deep sleep. I woke surprised he wasn’t next to me. He phoned next day to say he had the same dream, same night. Mrs. E.H. – Gosport

the dream as extended perception – Even everyday mental functions such as thought and memory occur largely unconsciously. During sleep, perhaps because we surrender our volition, what is left of self awareness enters the realm where the nine tenths of the iceberg of our mind is active. In this realm faculties can function which on waking seem unobtainable. A list of these would include –

1       Extending awareness to a point distant from the body, to witness events confirmed by other people. This is often called Out of Body Experience or OBE, but some of these experiences suggest the nature of consciousness and time may not be dualistic having to be either here or there. See: out of body experience.

The March 24,1974, New York Times Magazine contained a report about a dream that Lieutenant Colonel H. R. P. Dickson, a British political official in Kuwait, experienced in 1937. One day, a violent sand-storm carved a hole by a palm tree in his compound. That night, he dreamed he approached the hole and saw a sarcophagus at the bottom. Inside he discovered a shroud, and when he touched the shroud a beautiful maiden rose to life. As the dream continued, shouting strangers arrived and wanted to bury the girl alive in the desert, but the colonel chased them away.

Perplexed by his dream, Dickson consulted a local Bedouin woman who had a reputation as a dream interpreter. She explained that the girl symbolised wealth beneath the sands of Kuwait and the men trying to bury her were strangers from across the sea who wished to prevent its discovery. At that time, a British oil company crew had been drilling nothing but dry wells for two years at Bahrah on Kuwait Bay.

The Bedouin interpreter told Dickson he should move the team to the desert of Burgan and concentrate drilling activities by a lonely palm tree, where they would find great treasure. When the drillers laughed at Dickson’s urgings to move the team, he sailed to London and told his dream and its interpretation to the company executives. One of them, who believed in dreams, felt the dream interpreter’s instructions deserved a try. He cabled Kuwait and the team was moved about thirty miles south to Burgan. In May 1938, the drillers discovered huge oil deposits there in the desert by a lonely palm tree.

In a recent news program on television, a man who survived the Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore had been given a photograph of children by a dying soldier he did not know. The man had asked him to tell his family of his death, but did not give his name. The photograph was kept for forty odd years, the man still wanting to complete his promise but not knowing how. One night he dreamt he was told the man’s name. Enquiries soon found the family of the man, who had an identical photograph.

2       Being aware of the death or danger of a member of family. Kinship and love seem to be major factors in the way the unconscious functions. See: dead people dreams; Talking with the dead

3       Seeing into the workings of the body and diagnosing an illness before it becomes apparent to waking observation. Dr Vasali Kasatkin and Professor Medard Boss have specialised in the study of such dreams. In a recent dream told to me a man looked back into a bedroom and saw a piece of the wall fall away. Waves of water gushed from a main pipe. The dreamer struggled to hold back the piece of broken pipe. Within two weeks his colon burst and he had to have a major operation. See: meditation.

I – the author – witnessed a number of extraordinary dreams told me by my first wife Brenda. One of them has become a landmark for me of what is possible in dreams. One morning Brenda woke and told me she had dreamt about the baby of two of our friends. The friends, who I will call Jane and Bob, were living about 200 miles from us. We knew Jane was pregnant, and about a week or so before the dream we had received a short letter saying the baby, a boy had been born. We were not on the telephone at the time, so the letter was our only means of communication.

In the dream Brenda saw the baby and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day for the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the person now born as the baby, had committed suicide using a drug.

I did not take the dream seriously, thinking it was some sort of personally symbolic dream. But we couldn’t seem to extract any personal meaning for Brenda, so just in case I sent an account of the dream to Jane and Bob. About a week later we had a letter from them saying that the letter and dream had crystallised an already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme which was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.

4       Access to a computer-like ability to sort through a massive store of information and experience to solve problems. These dreams are often confused with precognitive ability. Prediction does occur from these dreams, but it arises, as with weather prediction, from a massive gathering of information, most of which we have forgotten consciously. Morton Schatzman, in an article in New Scientist, showed how subjects can produce answers to complex mathematical problems in their dreams. See: the dream as process as computer; creativity and problem solving in dreams.

5       Tapping a collective mind which stores all experience, and so is sensed as godlike or holy. See: spiritual life in dreams .

6       It seems likely that before the development of speech the human animal communicated largely through body language. Some dreams suggest we still have this ability to read a persons health, sexual situation, intentions and even their past, through body shape, posture and tiny movements. See: Postures Movement And Body Language.

See: Cayce, Edgar; collective unconscious. See Also: hallucinations; altered states of consciousness..

Energy, Sex and Dreams

Dreams depict this in a variety of ways. It might be shown as electricity, as something flowing, like water, or as a house. But one of the frequently used symbols is the snake. In fact many ancient cultures used the snake or serpent and even the dragon in their religious symbols to illustrate how we relate to the huge process and energy of life, but a modern symbol of it is electricity.

So, instead of using the word energy, we could use the word potential, in its latent and expressed form. Personal potential, and the part your sexual feelings play in your life, becomes clearer in the way dreams use images of the snake, electricity and water.

A good example of this is the way electricity exists in a house. First, we have the supply of electricity into the house. The wires carrying the supply to the house are not in themselves the electricity. The current is invisible, but it has great potential for good or harm. So we usually deal with it carefully, and have means of controlling it via insulation, fuses and switches. When the electricity is wired into the house, its potential can be expressed in a huge variety of ways. It can manifest as heat, light, and power to move or do things, such as with a drill or vacuum cleaner. It can produce sound or images as with television, and can, via programs for the computer, manifest in almost magical ways, storing and retrieving huge amounts of information and manipulating it.

Limitless Potential

The usefulness of this image of the house with its electricity is that we can use it as an analogy of energy in your own life. Your potential can express as cellular activity, or physical movement. You can experience it as sexual drive and its pleasure and pain, as emotions, as sight, hearing, sensation, smell and taste. You can express it as thinking, and vocalising in speech or singing, or as the creation of a personal virtual reality, as you do in fantasy and dreams. Some psychic experiences even suggest that part of your potential is to extend your awareness over huge distances, or gain penetrating insight into another person’s state of mind or body. But all these are expressions of it, and are not IT. See Edgar Cayce; Dimensions of Your Experience

As with electricity, your potential is probably limitless, and depends upon the state of body and mind you use to approach and express it. In connection with this, something interesting happened the first time I slept in the same bed as my wife Hyone. She fell asleep quickly, and I noticed there was a great struggle with her breathing through her nose. My impression from listening was that as she started breathing in, a tension occurred in her nose, closing it in some way. This led to a gasping sound as air was forced into her closed mouth.

While she still slept I spoke to her quietly, suggesting that the muscles in her nose and face would relax. I repeated this a few times and Hyone’s breathing became easy and normal. Seeing that she responded so well, I decided to try something else. So I quietly suggested that her whole body would drop unnecessary tensions, and emotional and mental stress would melt away. I went on to say that this would open all the doors of her being, allowing cleansing and healing throughout.

There was no apparent response to this, so I lay quietly ready to sleep. But suddenly, about eight minutes later, Hyone woke, almost with a jerk, and said enthusiastically, “I just had the most amazing dream.” 

In the dream Hyone had been with her mother and sisters in a garden at the back of a house. Hyone was lying in the sun relaxing. As she relaxed she felt a wave of energy flow up her body to her head. Then, wave after wave moved up her body, giving her tremendous pleasure and feelings of well-being. But the waves got stronger and stronger, and she was frightened they would overwhelm her, and at that point she woke.

This is a very important dream because we know what prompted it, and therefore exactly what the symbols refer to. We can also see that Hyone’s energy potential, released as a healing influence, was felt as threatening when it became intense. Also, Hyone doesn’t symbolise her potential as electricity or a snake, but experiences it directly as waves of pleasure.

The Power of Life or Death

There is no suggestion in Hyone’s dream that the enormous energy flow she was experiencing would harm her. It was felt as healing and life enhancing. But we need to remember there is also a negative facet of our potential, and we need to avoid becoming a victim of it. In the following two dreams this is shown clearly. See Reaction to the unconscious

Example: I am in overalls working in a house. I am kneeling on the floor. The house is not familiar to me. In some way I had hold of, or was connected with, a large electric cable. The cable was live with electricity, and it touched my right shoulder. The effect was excruciating and shocking pain. The most intense memory is of struggling to pull the cable away from myself, fighting to stay conscious against the terrible current lashing through me. I screamed out for my mother, who I was sure was in the building somewhere, to switch off the electricity. I knew I only had a little time because I could not survive that current long. I have a vague sense that the current stopped, and then the current and struggle started again. Steve.

The second dream uses the image of the snake.

Example: I am quietly lying in bed, alone at night. I see a snake slithering toward me. It comes across the bed and bites me in the region of the heart. I manage to pull it off and suck out the poison. Jane.

Both the dreams portray a dangerous situation. We know that touching an uninsulated electrical supply wire can kill. We know that snakebite can be dangerous or fatal. But what are these dreams saying about human potential being so dangerous? But the electricity in the dream was found by the dreamer to be his own powerful energy turned inwards, short-circuited by what he felt to be the criticism, the rejection, non-understanding of his two last women partners. “I felt that I had tried and tried, while preserving my own integrity, to live in the way they wanted me to. But this felt as if it was an enormous self-denial at times. It was a self-denial that created this almost death dealing introversion of energy.”

But sex is not a universal impulse, but is determined by the energy we take in by foo and air. Experimental “starvation” was the physical condition in some other studies which made it clear the link between food and sexusl impulse.. In an investigation reported in 1919, the subjects were two groups of twelve young men. One group had their usual caloric content reduced by one-third or one-half for a period of four months, and the other group was maintained on an even lower caloric level for three weeks. Of the twenty-four men, twenty-two reported a decrease in sexual interest, sixteen claimed a decrease in nocturnal emissions, and none of them claimed recall of any sexual dreams. 43 In a 1948 study involving thirty-six male conscientious objectors, the subjects maintained a good diet for three months (about thirty-five hundred calories), a markedly reduced diet of less than sixteen hundred calories for six months, and then a rehabilitative diet for three months. The men lost about one-quarter of their body weight during the starvation period. Sex feelings and expression were virtually extinguished” in all but a few subjects. One subject declared, “I have no more sexual feeling than a sick oyster.” According to the investigators, nocturnal emissions were absent or greatly reduced and sex dreams also were greatly reduced in number and intensity.

Looking back to where the possibilities of human potential were listed, among the descriptions were thinking, fantasy, and emotions. The dangerous aspect of these is that if someone you sincerely believed was a doctor examined you and told you he or she had discovered signs of a terminal illness, you would experience all the anxieties and emotions connected with that information, even if the statement was not true. Such anxieties and emotions, even though based on a lie, could cause an illness through anxiety and stress. The point being made is that whatever negative idea you believe to be true, produces the accompanying negative emotions. Also, whatever negative emotions, such as resentment, guilt, anger or fear are generated, by whatever cause, they poison your system. Jane’s dream of the snake illustrates this. Jane had experienced feelings of resentment, anger and betrayal, in connection with her husband. Her emotional energy has the potential to be expressed in any form, but perhaps because of the betrayal, Jane was feeling anger and resentment, and the dream shows this poisoning her. However, at the time of the dream, Jane is making changes in her lifestyle and relationships that are not only stopping the poisonous emotions (she had actually experienced a breakdown and had been on antidepressants), she was also drawing out the poison from her heart. See Avoid Being Victims – Emotions_mood

Your Emotional and Physical Energy

The first dream of the electricity depicts this even more dramatically. The dreamer, Steve, feels he will die if he cannot stop the electricity. In exploring his dream, Steve felt the electricity illustrated how his enormous emotional and physical energy was being turned back on himself. Steve expressed a lot of his love through work, supporting and helping others. But in his relationship he had felt deeply criticised. And through this criticism had been holding back his flow of love. In other words his energy was being interiorised, turned back on itself. This is depicted as the electricity flowing into his body. Steve realised from the dream that he must not allow past or present criticisms to cause him to hold back his positive flow of life and love.

The damage such in-turned or negative emotions can do is enormous. Many years ago a woman who could hardly walk came to stay with my wife and I. She hobbled along using two sticks. Within a week, without any treatment, she could walk normally. She told us with great enthusiasm that she now knew what had caused her illness. Three years previously her son had married and had asked if he and his new wife could lodge in his parent’s house for a few weeks while they looked for a house of their own. His mother felt resentful that he and his wife had stayed for years and made no effort to move out. But being a Christian woman she kept her feelings to herself. She ended the story by saying, “Being on holiday away from the situation has allowed me to be free of the resentment, and this has healed my legs. So I know what I am going to do when I get home. I am going to tell my son and his wife to pack their things and move out.”

Understanding this energy and the personal misery we can create with it if we do not understand how it works, is fundamental to a satisfying life. It is strange, considering this, that it is deemed more important in school to teach children how to write, how to add and subtract, perhaps to learn the religious beliefs of those around them, rather than how to deal with their own being. Using the analogy of a car to represent yourself, it is like learning the history and make of the car and motor vehicles; learning to calculate how many miles per gallon of fuel the car might do; learning the different types of motor vehicles – but developing no understanding at all of how the accelerator, the clutch, the brake are used to control your speed and direction. Even as adults few of us learn how to handle the vehicle of our body, mind and spirit with any great skill. It is not something that is well understood or practised in western culture.

Example: In observing and thinking about this as it happened, I thought it might be some childhood trait or habit I was dealing with, or even childhood obstinacy of some sort. But it gradually developed into the circling arm movements, accompanied by the, “Yes. No.” The yes and the no coincided with the direction of the energy flow upwards or downwards.

There was a part also where I was saying, “I am. I am my life.” This has been a theme that occurred occasionally for some time. I took it simply to be a very general statement.

I was still wondering what this was about and so asked the process to help me understand. Gradually it became clear that the yes and no was a switch. For instance, life energy can be expressed in any number of ways. It can be movement, sexuality, thought, emotion, writing, swimming, and so on. The direction, or the way we direct, our energy, comes about through the yes/no action. Perhaps we do it unconsciously, but we are always applying the switch of yes or no to direct each movement, each action, each thought even

Example: Then the throat pain became unbearable. I investigated it and I became aware of doom. If I didn’t fight it, doom would take over. I was weary of fighting it so I let doom take over and sank into the doom and it was then that I found myself at the foot of the great being and total acceptance of my life. Spontaneously, before I knew it I was offering everything as a sacrifice, including past mistakes and cock-ups, and that I had to do this.

And then there were the images again of clefts: the earth, female genitals, undersea-ocean crusts opening and something, as yet formless, emerging. This, I suspect, is my creativity in the world.

To be aware in more detail how a dream can portray, not simply the mishandling of this energy, but also the life effects it has on a person, the following dream and the dreamer’s comments are helpful. The dream and comments were written by a man in his late forties who, as a child, was placed in an orphanage, despite his parents still being alive.

 Example: Seeing an overall view of dreams has gradually led me from a goal oriented view of life and human beings, to one that can be called Repertoire. By this I mean that often we are led to believe that if we achieve a certain position or place we will find satisfaction – this is goal orientation which influences large numbers of people. Dreams suggest that there is no goal, but rather a fuller meeting with all the facets of oneself. One person may live largely in an experience of their genital drive; another in their emotions; someone else through their religious feelings; another in their anxieties, mind, etc. The discovery of these different aspects of oneself leads to enormous flexibility and satisfaction. Each time another ‘room’ of ones being is opened to access, your repertoire is increased, and another area of pleasure and creativity emerges.

The Pain of Being a Child

Example: Dreamt I was standing on a street somewhere in the city of London watching an old-fashioned phone box. It was a weekend and all was quiet. The door of the phone box is open and on the floor are a variety of bones. At first I think they are from an animal, but quickly see they are human. A man enters the box to make a call. Suddenly three or four savage dogs attack, ripping him to pieces.

I worked with this dream. To begin with I felt a knotted feeling in my stomach. In exploring this by focussing my attention inwards and allowing spontaneous imagery and emotions, I found a lump that I had kept deep within that no one could touch or ever has. I split the lump and two halves of a walnut appeared. There was a picture of my mother in one half and my father in the other, as they were when I was a child. As I looked, the two halves crumpled into dust.

This was the secret I have carried since childhood, that unlike the other children in the orphanage I had parents. Yet I too was left. The emotions came to the surface and I really cried. After this wave passed I was left in a very passive state. I then saw myself go into the telephone box and try to make the call to reconnect with my parents. Again another shock. There was nobody to connect with. So once again the realisation came that I am an orphan. This brought another great wave of emotion that tore me apart.

I then turned toward the dogs as they came at me. I began to feel the sickness that I have always experienced in sessions, but I just shrugged and let the feeling wash over me. It felt like I have always ended up in hell by that route, and I realised afterwards that hell is hell and will never be anything else. I felt there was something deeper, so I kept to a centre line, trying to reach it. Again there was no feeling, so I turned toward the God dream that I had when my friend Rob was with me. The look of total love for me in God’s eyes gave me the strength to trust my own process. I then experienced God holding my hand and telling me to surrender and allow myself to die.

Then the crisis broke through, and there I was in the kid’s home as my father was leaving. I saw myself, or I should say my being, go out to him. I felt that if I loved him he wouldn’t leave my sister and me. Then he left, and I felt split in half between him and my mother, creating a schism in which I was left with a personality on either side. Schizophrenia is the word that covers this state. I felt what I would call the primal scream emerge from my being. Then I was through. I saw the dogs as my anxieties that have taken up two thirds of my energy through my life, constantly tearing me apart. I also saw that as a kid I didn’t have enough information to redirect the energy elsewhere. Kevin K.

Kevin graphically describes to us a shock and pain that split his developing personality as a child. That split and its accompanying pain directed Kevin’s potential energy into almost constant anxiety, and into feelings that he was not loved and was not lovable. In his dream the telephone depicted his attempt to reconnect the split halves of himself and to attempt to find the love he so wanted from his parents. And the dogs are his own energy turned against himself through anxiety. The dogs, his emotional energy, could have been caring and supportive. This is true of Jane’s dream of the snake also. The snake is simply potential energy. It can be poisonous or protective depending upon how we unconsciously direct it. If there are difficulties in learning how to transform the poisonous into the supportive, they lie in making conscious the unconscious factors that direct the energy. In exploring his dream, Kevin was doing exactly that. He became aware of the split in his personality. He saw how the pain created fear of abandonment, and how that fear in turn created continual anxiety. Kevin describes something of feelings that he continually lived with in the following.

Example: I have been observing that I become very upset if I am left alone for more than five minutes. Either I return to my head and experience images of me killing someone, or else I breakdown in tears. I have very little energy to really converse with people, and when quiet I choke down my feelings. I am currently feeling sorry for myself, not self-pity, just sad that a child has had to endure such pain and suffering, worse in some ways that it is myself. I have also realised that although I have stepped out of the telephone box, I am still standing alone in an empty street. It does not surprise me why I have always needed to keep a connection with several women; this feeling of isolation, and anxiety has ruled my life. I also feel that I have destroyed a lot of my relationships through these problems. 

What Fear Can Do

In the early years of being a parent, my wife and I lived in a two-bedroom house. Our three young children slept in one bedroom, my wife and I in the other. At that time I was also running a part time book business. Because it was quite a small house with little cupboard space, I used a cupboard in the children’s bedroom to store new books. Much of the work I did with the books was done in the evenings when the children were in bed. Unfortunately this meant entering the children’s bedroom while they were asleep, and with a small torch searching for books I needed. Quite quickly it became apparent that one of my children showed signs of terror each time I entered the room. From his point of view all that was visible was a small light accompanied by shuffling sounds. I realised that he believed I was some sort of strange or ghostly creature coming into his bedroom. Of course, with this belief, he was terrified.

As soon as I understood this, I waited for darkness and entered the room with my torch. I could hear my small son’s sharp intake of breath and feel his sense his terror. Then I gently spoke, explaining that I was in the room looking for a book, and I switched the light on so he could assure himself of this truth. The terror never reappeared.

I explain this because Kevin’s fears, locked in the darkness of his unconscious childhood experiences, were acting upon him like my son’s terror of a ghostly presence. Kevin had no insight into where his enormous anxieties were arising from. Therefore he could not dismiss them or deal with them. However, in understanding their source, when they arose he could remind himself that they come from childhood pain, and being a grown man he can now care for himself.

Recently, while in a waiting room, I read an article in Eve Magazine about women who work as psychologists in prisons with men with violent behaviour. A statement in the feature remained with me. The psychologist being interviewed said that without exception each of the prisoners had a history of being abused or treated with violence as children. We may have escaped such a horrific upbringing, but each of us have lesser degrees of violence in our history in some way. It is these that twist our energy into self-destruction, violent behaviour, or inner pain.

This is deeply important. Often the redirection of our emotional energy cannot take place until we are assured of certain things about what causes our energy to become an attacking force. This shift in the way one relates to one’s own potential energy is illustrated in the following two dreams. They occurred several years apart to Trevor, a man who through most of his life struggled with low self-esteem and anxiety.

The Deadly and the Healing Snake

Example: I dreamt I was walking over the hills near where I live. There were worms about that were snakes in the grass. They became poisonous snakes, only visible by their rapid movements. I had to keep a penetrating look out in case one attempted to bite and poison me. Several times I stamped on them until I broke them in half to kill them. Then my dog, who was also trying to protect me, got bitten. I thought he would die, but he slowly turned into a wildcat. I knew I had to get well away from him before the transformation was completed or else he would attack me, but if I was well away, there was no danger. Trevor.

The dream gives a very clear picture of the situation we meet when feelings pull us down into depression, or we feel threatened by them. Fear, aggression, a sense of danger, are all exhibited in the dream. It is obvious too, especially at the end of the dream that Trevor feels he must distance himself from his emotions because they might attack him. In the next dream Trevor moves towards a completely different relationship with the snakes, and therefore with himself.

Example: Last night I dreamt I was outdoors walking through open ground, like gardens. I was with others and we frequently came across large snakes that we reacted to us as if they were venomous. Then I came across a lot of them in long grass and they swarmed onto me. I froze, terrified that if I made a move I would be fatally bitten. But they just swarmed over my body and got under my clothes without harming me. Gradually I relaxed and slowly began to move about with the snakes still on me. They started to feel like a built-in defence system that would attack anyone who was aggressive to me. At one point several large and aggressive dogs walked past me. They turned as if thinking about attacking, then appeared to sense the snakes and ran off cowed. As time passed the snakes became part of my body. Trevor.

What was a drain on Trevor’s ability to deal with the world, and something he had to protect himself against, is shown in the dream as a new found strength. Knowing Trevor, I can see these changes have actually become observable in his daily life.

In such features as peer dream group; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; A Master Class in Dreams; and Life’s Little Secrets, I have explained in detail how to explore your dreams and move toward personal transformation. Therefore I will not repeat those instructions here. Instead, I will move on to explore something of what dreams reveal about love and sexuality.

For this study I am using a collection of seven thousand dreams. Unfortunately this collection does not include any appreciable number of dreams from young children and teenagers, nor from homosexuals. Therefore I am not able to explore what dreams say about those areas of sexuality.

Nevertheless, the subject is enormous, and looking at a few dreams will help to begin the definition of this. The first dream is from a man in his 40s.

Example: I was sitting with a group of young people mostly girls. There was one in particular about 14 with long dark hair. I noticed that she kept looking over at me. When I returned the look I could see she wanted to be near me. I felt all right about this but realised that it would involve sex in a way that society could not handle, and so I sat calmly and let the feeling pass over me. Dan.

Dan’s dream illustrates a number of issues that relate to or influence how we deal with sexual urges. The basic theme of the dream is that Dan would like to have sex with a young girl. In his waking life there was opportunity for this, but Dan never followed through in that direction. In his dream Dan is saying that society could not deal with him having sex with a 14 year-old girl. But in our dreams we can do what we wish without harm, without social repercussions. We all know this, and yet we inject our waking difficulties, morals, and rules into our dream life. So Dan is struggling not with what society could handle, but with what he could handle in dealing with other people.

The other obvious factor in the dream is that Dan is exploring sexual feelings that he might not easily admit to himself while awake. The next example shows another side to this.

 

Your Dreams Are a Safe Place in Which to Love

Example: A young girl kept coming up to me and placing my hand upon her breast. She was just developing her breasts, and they felt so very beautiful. Les.

In this dream Les is not holding back from being involved with the young girl. The dream, any dream, is a full surround experience of virtual reality. While in the dream it usually seems totally real to us. So as far as Les is concerned, while he is dreaming, he is actually experiencing what it would be like if a young girl came up to him and put his hands on her developing breasts. This means that dreams are a wonderful gymnasium of the soul, a place where we can play, experiment, try new things, in fact allow ourselves areas of experience that we or others might forbid in waking life. The next dream shows this even more vividly. At the time of her dream Heather’s husband was frequently avoiding any sexual relationship with her. However Heather does not have any reservations about allowing herself the pleasure of her own feelings.

Example: I was with a dark, curly haired man. He was very brown, could have been a native, but he didn’t feel strange to me. We were making love, I was very aware of the pleasure in my lower body. It was very slippy-slidy and wet. There was enjoyment for both of us. Very intense body feelings with a childlike quality, not passion – but pleasure and joy in my vagina. Heather.

Although this is not yet obvious, the recognition that your dreams are a safe area in which to allow any experience, ties indirectly with what has been said above about the negative and positive aspects of personal energy. The next dream, experienced by Heather’s husband, shows this very clearly.

Example: I was in a farmyard watching a bull loose in the yard. There were cows in the field beyond a wooden fence. The bull saw the cows and smashed through the fence. It then charged the first cow to mount it, but so terrible was its energy and emotion that it could not expressed as sex. It smashed the cow aside as it had done the fence. Then it rushed the next and tossed it over its head, charging and smashing the next. Meanwhile I climbed into somebody’s garden trying to get out of the district. Peter.

Peter had grown up in a Christian culture that, at the time, looked upon sex as something not to be spoken about. Underlying that attitude was that restraining sex was somehow a spiritual discipline. Also, while in his early teens, Peter’s mother had pushed a strong fear into him that sex could kill you. She probably did this because tuberculosis was a killer disease at the time, a strong sex drive was one of the signs of the illness, and she was scared that Peter had caught TB. Consequently Peter avoided sex until overwhelmed by his own desires. In fact it took most of his adult life to find normal loving and sexual feelings.

Sex Can Also be a Pain in the Arse

Peter’s dream suggests that his restrained sexuality transforms into destructive anger. It also shows him running away from, or trying to avoid, this side of himself. Peter often experienced sexual fantasies, and desires for women other than his wife – and that because fantasy sex never became real – so he could both avoid it and experience it at the same time. But there is no sign of this in his dream, so the dream is not a wish fulfilment. It is not a way that he can fulfil his desires without actually having sex. The dream points out to Peter what he doesn’t want to see. Namely, that he is damaging himself, and those around him are suffering from his irritability and anger. Importantly, the dream reminds us of something seen in many dreams, that repressed sexual energy can transform into anger, or even murderous rage.

So, our dreams can be an area where we can freely explore any manner of experience. They can be a way of looking at and trying to resolve a conflict, such as Dan is doing in his dream of the young girl, where his desire for her conflicts with his feelings about what society permits. Our dreams can also be a mirror showing us the problems, the sickness or the beauty we hold within us. Heather’s dream shows her as a healthy passionate woman who is at ease with her own feelings and desires. Peter’s dream depicts him as avoiding the enormous conflict and destruction taking place within himself and in his own life. Yet, innate in Peter’s dream is the possibility of healing. By showing the harm that is being done, Peter’s dream is also pointing out how such harm could be avoided.

Through working with his dreams, Peter did in fact transform his relationship with the bull, and therefore with his sexuality. This is clearly seen in the following two dreams. The first one still shows his battle with himself.

Example: I climbed up a wire fence, like those around tennis courts. The bull came and reared up after me. Having a thick piece of oak in my hand, I brought it down full on the bull’s nose, knocking it down. Peter.

In the next dream, the aspects of Peters conflicts are shown together – his mother, the bull and the cow. The dream occurred some years after the two quoted above, and after much personal work with his dreams.

Example: I and two other people, a man and woman, are entering a field. It is a field in which I used to play as a child. We enter through a gate that borders a wide verge near a road, and the field rises in a fairly steep hill. The woman, who it seems now to be my mother, is leading a magnificent bull by a halter. We are going to introduce it to the cows already in the fields. Once we are through the gate, which is left open, my mother halts because she thinks the bull is resisting her and it will be difficult to lead uphill. I point out that it is not resisting her it is just walking slowly. So she walks on and the bull follows willingly. She then drops the halter to give the bull freedom. I am now above the bull slightly further up the hill. Looking down I see how beautiful the bull is. It is young, not too bulky, but obviously powerful and streamlined. I realise it has unusual features in the shape of its head, and think this will pass on genetically. As I watch, the bull lowers its head to the grass, which is lush and green, and pushes its nose deep to smell. I feel it is absorbing this new territory and becoming at one with its surroundings. It is beautiful and moving to watch. I sense I am watching a wild and live creature being moved by deeply wise and instinctive urges.

The bull then turns to the left, where a cow is visible. The halter is still hanging from its neck, so to prevent it being hindered I approach it to remove the halter. I am careful because its horns are long and splendid. I notice that the very tips of the horns are delicately carved in a simple curved design. I manage to pull the halter off and the bull sees the cow. It responds, its whole body indicating a change. I particularly notice or see its tail. This appears to be stretched out on the ground as if the bull is lying down with tail pointing backwards. As I watch I see ripples of movement in the tail, surging and pulsing. I have the impression of deep impulses of life surging in the body of the bull. The cow at first does not want the bull. There is some memory of the cow running for the open gate, but it doesn’t go out. It is unnecessary anxiety.

This is a wonderful dream and shows an enormous deepening of Peter’s personality. Instead of his conflict with his own sexuality, he now sees it as “deep impulses of life surging” through his own being. He also describes his sexuality as “deeply wise and instinctive”. The dream is so rich a very long commentary could be written about it.

Because the subject of dreams and sexuality is so huge, we can only deal with some aspects of it in this feature. But something that is fundamental and important is that of gender as dealt with in dreams. The following dream is very direct in its presentation of this. I was sent this dream while working for UK Teletext.

Example: I have several recurring dreams, but all have a common theme. I am always a young woman of about thirty years of age, and always doing mundane things such as shopping or picking up the kids from school. I know what this female ‘me’ looks like. I see her reflection in shop windows. Why am I always changing sex when I dream? Bernard – a concerned Chap! 

I Don’t Know if I’m a Man or a Woman!

Unfortunately some of our cultural values lead us to believe that if we are male and have feelings of being female it must mean we are gay. Also, that if we are female and have feelings of being male it must suggest we are butch or a lesbian. Dreams suggest something quite different, and can meaningfully explain some of the situations we find ourselves in as a human being. The next dream clarifies this point.

Example: I was giving an exercise class in a small field. It was sunny and everybody was spread out, seated on blankets, some stripped to the waist. I was only wearing my brief underpants. Somehow, in one of the exercises my pants came right off. Nobody noticed, not even myself, until I was seated with knee up, heal in groin. Then looking down I noticed my legs were very smooth skinned and I had female sex organs. There was no pubic hair at all. Making a joke of the situation I told the class to look the other way while I put my pants on. As I was putting them on a couple of the women did not look away and I noticed I now had male sex organs again. After this the class had lost its centre of interest. I had found a pair of my class trousers washed and sun dried on a wall, and put them on. I did this because I had put on an old pair of my swimming trunks over my pants, but they were split. A man in the class said that he felt bad because he had few clothes on. There was an atmosphere of shame because of sex or the body, so I told him to put his shirt on. Bob.

The message of this dream is that Bob has the characteristics of both genders. It suggests that psychologically Bob is basically male, especially in a relationship with a woman (a couple of the women did not look away and I noticed I now had male sex organs again). This is not something that Bob at first finds easy to look at about himself. This is shown by Bob trying to cover himself up again, and where the man in the class says he feels bad because he has few clothes on. As the dreaming Bob says, “There was an atmosphere of shame because of sex or the body.” But this is a cultural view Bob had taken in, and is not innate. Later dreams in this series show Bob accepting and loving his female characteristics. The following dream is an example of this.

Example: I am in love with a woman who is not from this planet. The love is so complete we literally swap minds or souls. So now I have all that she is inside me, and she has all of what I am inside her. This, I feel, will gradually merge into the rest of me and will extend all that I am capable of. Bob.

If we look back to what was said about energy, and remember that at base our psychobiological energy is pure potential, this ties in with what is emerging about how our dreams see our gender. Our energy can express as anything, creative or destructive. Also, within ourselves, we can be anything, any gender, any age, and any disposition.

This may at first seem to be an exaggeration. But if you have kept a record of your dreams over a period of years you will see the extraordinary number of people, of creatures, of places and situations you create while you sleep. For instance, Bob actually felt what it was like to be totally loved by a woman, and to have his being merged with hers in his dream. We could argue with this and say, yes but that is just a dream, and has nothing to do with reality, with waking life. But if you have that viewpoint, it is just an assumption you make based on what you have experienced so far. From those assumptions would you think that the following dream and its events were real? See Archetype of the Animus and Archetype of the Anima

 

You Are More Than You Dare to Believe

Example: I was in what looked like huge white ribs. In the ribs was a big heart beating. Beyond that was my homeopath. I could hardly breath, struggling to live. I could hear the heart beating, but as I listened I could also hear another heart beating. It seemed to me it was my sister’s heart connected to my own invisibly. The homeopath came forward and stretching open the ribs, reached into them, took hold of the invisible heart – it was like a shadow behind the other heart – and pulled it out. Immediately I could breath again and felt I was whole.

In everyday life my sister and I have been incredibly linked, even to the point of having cramps at night on the same nights, though living in different parts of the world. I had become ill recently out of this connection, but as soon as I had this dream I was well again, but my sister became ill. She has just been diagnosed as HIV positive and is dying.

Many other such dreams could be quoted, but would that convince you? It is enough if the idea has been planted so there is the possibility of future experience proving or disproving this to you.

The point being stressed is not that you can physically become anything or anybody – although that is not beyond the realms of possibility. However, within yourself you are formless, and can take on an unimaginable number of forms. You are in fact doing this each night in your dreams when you create a whole new surrounding environment, new characters, and new experiences. If you can grasp this, if you can recognise that your fundamental energy is simply potential, perhaps infinite potential, and that the personality you take to be so formed, and so immutably you, then you can shift and change and roam through babyhood, through gender, through all manner of experience. You will begin to drop away your limitations and explore a strange new limitless world. You will in fact have touched your spirit.

Whatever name you give to that enormous potential underlying your existence, whether you call it Life, Chaos, God, The Mystery, it is the source of your physical existence. We struggle with words, with concepts, when we approach that Mystery. Even the words used here, such as energy and potential, are simply attempts to define something that in the end is more than the words we use to describe it. We struggle to understand how we can to be. With great passion and one pointedness we have learned some of the secrets, as in recognition of DNA and the genetic code. But if you have followed what has been said above, dreams lead us beyond forms, beyond definitions. They cut suggest that the flow of energy that you call your sexual drive and your urge to parenthood, does not in the end belong to you. Yes, you can restrain it, deny it, completely give yourself over to it, or even attempt to wash your hands of it. You can add quality or brutality to the way it is expressed. But in the end it is like a river that flows on, and passes through you.

And isn’t love like that too? Do you ever possess it? Dreams suggest that the painful love so many of our cultural love songs mention arises out of our attempts to control or possess this natural flow, this wonder that is not ours to possess. We relate to it so personally.

See Ages of Love – Dimensions of Human Experience – Near death experience – Unconscious – Inner World – Learning to Love

 

Emotions and Mood in Dreams

Dreams often involve intense emotions. This feature examines how to work with these and what part they play in our health.

Emotions and Mood in Dreams

There is a level of human experience which is typified by intense emotional and physical response to life. Such emotions and bodily drives may remain almost entirely unconscious until touched by exploring your dream content in the right setting, or by being revealed by dramatic events in your life. When such feelings and bodily movements arise, as they do in dreams, we may be amazed at their power and clarity. See: processing dreams; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – movements during sleep.

We are all unconsciously aware of how emotions and mood flow into physical movement and actions as well as influencing our personal response to life. We recognise how someone who is vivacious is expressing lively emotions. Similarly someone who is depressed physically is obviously withdrawn emotionally. In fact emotions are not only what energises us, but also what can pull us down, cause us to withdraw or give up. The feelings we have about people and events are also sensors telling us how we are responding, what frightens us, what excites us. So any means used to deaden emotions such as nicotine, alcohol and pain killers also deadens these sensors.

It is now well known that emotions can have very destructive effects on the body, as in grief and anxiety. Also the healing effects of laughter and pleasure are equally marked. Dreams help us see how our moods and emotions are influencing our health and general responsiveness in life.

If we take away the images and events occurring in a dream and simply look to see what feelings or emotions are evident, the dream is often more understandable than if we try to interpret the symbols. Feelings in dreams are nearly always undistorted. We therefore do not need to interpret them, simply to recognise them and see if we can recognise where they occur in waking life.

The images in a dream may be the way we unconsciously pictorialise our flux of feelings and the play of internal energy flows. For instance love or sexual drive can give rise to physical movement – as in sexual intercourse. Repression of sex or love also represses such physical movements, leading to tension and conflict, which might be presented in the drama of a dream.

Example: ‘I was with my wife, walking along a street, on holiday with her. But I felt awful tension. It was the sort of stress I feel when I have turned off my sexual flow – as I have at the moment.’ Brian V.

Brian can easily see the connection between the dream feelings and his everyday life. Making such connections may take practice. But the situation could as easily be expressed as a dream image of a blocked river. The underlying feelings would then be less easy to grasp.

Example: ‘I was in a very ancient crumbling building, confronted by a large stone door, deeply engraved with many designs and creatures. I began to open the door and felt high feelings of anxiety. I realised this was an initiation and I must calm my feelings in order to pass beyond the door. i.e. if I were controlled by my feelings I would run away.’ Derek F.

How we meet the emotions in our dreams illustrates our habitual method of dealing with them. The feelings of anxiety in Derek’s dream were met and moved beyond, but this is unusual. This is because most of us change our direction as soon as there is a hint of fear. The amount of nicotine and alcohol human beings consume suggests how poorly we meet anxiety, considering that both these drugs inhibit feelings, and thereby deaden anxiety. Going beyond fear or pain is an initiation which opens doors for us. We might now apply for the job; ask for the date; raise the issue; express the creativity; make the journey abroad, which anxiety previously kept us from. We see this in the next example.

Example: ‘I had a ring on my marriage finger. It was a thin band of gold. I woke up frightened. Angela LBC.

Angela is not married and feels obvious anxiety about the commitment.

Dreams give us a safe area to express emotions which might be difficult or dangerous to release socially. Anger in a dream may be expressing what we failed to discharge in a waking encounter, or it might be our habitual response. It may also be directed against oneself, causing illness or tension.

Dreams also contain many positive emotions. Sometimes they present a new aspect of feeling which is life enhancing. In the example below the dreamer overcomes the feeling of defeat and death, and in imagery expresses a sense of rebirth.

Example: While heavily pregnant 11 years ago I dreamt I and thousands of Japanese-like soldiers had been at war and lost. Our punishment was beheading. Not wanting to see my comrades killed I went to the front. I felt the cold blade hit my neck, then was dead, outside my body. Dressed in golden armour with a lion symbol I told my comrades they outnumbered the enemy. They won and took my baby from my dead body. BMW – Southport.

Some feeling states in a dream are subtle, and may be more evident in terms of the symbols than the feelings. A grey drear environment suggests depression and lack of pleasure. A sunny light environment with flowers and colour shows pleasure and good feelings. A country landscape depicts quite a different feeling state to a smoky busy city street. We can define these for ourselves using the techniques described under Secrets of Power Dreaming

Whatever feelings or emotions we meet in our dreams, many of them are bound to be habitual responses we have to life. Where these habits are negative we can begin to change them by working with the dream images.

Here is a man’s description of the sort of emotions felt in exploring a dream.

As this came out I started crying from a deep emotion. But right away the feeling was so deep only deep agonised groans of pain could come out. So much agony came out my body was paralysed into silent paralysis with it. I have had a lot of sessions where I have exploded with pain. But this was deep, silent, struggling with pain. My body flayed and contorting with it, my nose clogged with mucus. Gradually it broke up and I cried out with it, deep, sobbing, long held pain. The words came out of me, “I did it. I did it. Love. I killed it. So much pain. So much of it, because I killed love.”

Dreams – What Are They?

Experts discussing any subject will disagree, and expert opinions on dreams and what they are differ considerably. A neurologist might describe them as random firings of the brain; a biologist would consider them in the light of their evolutionary emergence and advantage and say they are a way of practising life skills. Psychologists such as Freud and Jung also disagreed, but both saw them as doorways to deeper self understanding; while in his book Dreams and Nightmares, the psychiatrist J. A. Hadfield says dreams reproduce difficult or unsolved life situations or experiences. They thereby aid the dreamer toward solving or resolving problems.

But for myself I believe that if you really investigate dreams, first you will meet yourself. You will walk again the long road of your growth with the etched-in experiences that shaped you into the person you are. You will however, if you persist, see that there is a vaster self than this present personality, one that can reshape who you are, if you so dare.

Example: When someone falls asleep, he takes the stuff of the entire world, and he himself takes it apart, and he himself builds it up, and by his own bright light he dreams. … There are no chariots there, no harnessings, no roads; but he emits chariots, harnessings, and roads. There are no joys, happinesses, or delights there; but he emits joys, happiness, and delights. There are no ponds, lotus pools, and flowing streams, but he emits ponds, lotus pools, and flowing streams. For he is the Maker.

Finding your way through these different theories may be difficult. However, if you remember that there countless ways you could examine or relate to a house, some of the difficulty drops away. You could see it from the perspective of a builder, a buyer, a sociologist, a historian, a chemist, or even a psychologist, as the place and environment of where we live greatly influences us. We can’t say any of these approaches is wrong. They all have value. But none of them by themselves cover every aspect of the house and what it is or can be.

The same applies to dreams. The neurologist who from that particular study might refute the possibility of precognitive dreams, or their psychological meaning and benefit is telling the truth – from that perspective and discipline. And the biologist and psychologist are giving their truths from their perspectives, disciplines and experience.

So if you are actually serious about understanding your dreams or their relevance in your life, there are bits of information you can take from the various disciplines that can clarify and help, remembering of course that all theories are constantly being revised.

At one time one argument was as good as another about what dreams were, how often they occurred, and what length of time a dream took to experience, but in 1953 Eugene Aserinsky stumbled upon a way to begin a science of sleep and dreams. This occurred while working under the direction of Nathaniel Kleitman in a sleep study laboratory, and Aserinsky was the first to observe the Rapid Eye Movements – REM – now known to occur during dreaming. As Aserinsky had seen this in the sleep of babies, it was first assumed only to occur with infants. Later investigation proved it occurred with all people observed. This finding started a period of intense research into the psycho-physical functioning of dreams. See: Aserinsky.

To sum up what such science found, we now know that –

1 – When we dream the brain produces full sensory and muscular impulses to express what is done and experienced in the dream. But the impulses to move the body are suppressed by a small area of the brain called the pons, otherwise we would perform all the movements dreamt. It is only the eyes that are allowed full movement.

2  – While dreaming our voluntary muscles are thus paralysed making it difficult or impossible to move. This is probably what gives rise to such dreams as feeling your limbs are like lead and hard to move. Also it is behind the experience of sleep paralysis in which the dreamer struggles to wake from a dream, often with great fear, and is unable to move. See: Sleep Paralysis.

3 – Waking a person each time they dream quickly leads to psychological breakdown. Animals died when this was continued. We can therefore say that dreaming is not simply random firing of the brain. It is in some way vital to physical and psychological health. See: Dream Deprivation.

4 – Almost without exception, we all dream every night, on average about five times in regular periods of dreaming. The longest of these periods is just prior to waking.

5 – The most ancient creature to show signs of dreaming is the duck billed platypus. As this creature has existed for 250 million years, dreaming has been around for a long time before human emergence.

6 – Some neurological research has shown that a learning process is observable during dreaming.

These scientific insights have done much to dispel older speculations about what dreaming is and what it does, but it has not done much to help us understand and relate to our own very personal dreams and nightmares. As an aid in doing this we are often directed to the writings of experts on how to interpret or analyse our dreams. Unfortunately these are intellectual activities, and as the platypus connection suggests, dreaming existed long before the rational mind. A dream is an ancient and primeval process, and to actually experience it you might need to strip off your civilised veneer of thinking and enter into the jungle of the deeper parts of your nature – the unconscious – the unknown parts of yourself that lie beneath your usual awareness, the parts that actually do all the work of your existence, like heartbeat and cellular integration.

Having trod those ancient pathways of dreams for the past forty years, I believe that thinking about a dream is like attempting to know what swimming is without getting into the water. Swimming is a total physical, emotional and sensory experience. As with swimming, the surface of a dream – the dream imagery – often holds beneath it a vast depth. Beneath the image lies enormous data, emotional response and created patterns of behaviour. So when you actually plunge into a dream you are in a full surround databank of fantastic information. Even the trees and animals in your dreams are enormous reservoirs of information, linking back perhaps infinitely with your potential, your memories and experience, and your biological past through the millennia.

This need to dive beneath the rational mind exists because it is your ancient self, your platypus self, the process of life in you, that is creating the dream imagery as a primeval form of problem solving or ‘thinking’.

But, and this is a key to such dream swimming, all the data held in the dream imagery and drama is unconscious. Most of it has never ever been brought anywhere near language, and language is what we use to think and analyse with. The dream is imagery and drama expressive of issues and processes that are still without words, without a voice. Thinking about a dream is, as already said, like thinking about swimming without getting into the water. You can only really understand after directly experiencing immersion. Words will come later.

Nevertheless, the thinking questioning mind is vital in bringing this massive and ancient unconscious life experience into awareness. Dogs and cats dream, but they cannot take the lantern of personal awareness back into the usually unconscious process of their being to investigate it. That is what you do when you truly know a dream.

As for how you can directly experience your dream beyond thinking, it is a learning process. You have to discover how to be something of an animal that experiences life without words or thinking. You need to learn how to be aware of your feeling response to what is around you and the imagery and drama of your dreams. You must learn to enter into things with your feelings wide open. So instead of thinking about a friend who sits beside you, imagine yourself in their body, with their movements and their expression, and observe what happens, what you feel. Then do the same with your dream characters, animals and places. Eventually you will arrive at very positive felt responses that give you recognisable insight into yourself and others. You will touch passions so deep, so felt, that your whole body will experience excitation and depths of things that only great adventurers, mystics and lovers usually know.

As for what you will find if you do that – well anything and everything. The ancient world of the unconscious is not, as Freud suggested, full of dark repressed infantile urges, though of course it has its share of those. Like an ocean it stretches away gradually from the shores of personal, limited awareness – limited to sensory impressions and what has been learned and experienced. From the reasonably stable and concrete world of the physical it moves to the more plastic world of what has been called the psychic – the world of dream imagery that can be shifted by a thought or change in attitude. But it moves far beyond that into realms only suggested by quantum physics in the last century – where everything is at the same time past, present and future, where here and there are the same yet separable, where life and death do not have fixed boundaries.

But first you will meet yourself. You will walk again the long road of your growth with the etched-in experiences that shaped you into the person you are. You will however, if you persist, see that there is a vaster self than this present personality, one that can reshape who you are, if you so dare. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dreams – The Way to Their Heart

Dreams are more than surface deep. Research has shown dreaming began in creatures 20 million years ago or more. This suggests dreams emerge from some of the deepest levels of our being. You don’t need a self-aware personality, a thinking mind, rational reasoning, or any of the other sophisticated mental and emotional equipment we consider to be human to be able to dream. Even babies in the womb are known to dream. As yet we do not know what they dream, but the process of dreaming is part and parcel of the baby’s survival and growth. They are also part and parcel of our own adult survival and growth, at all levels of our being.

Those things are said because mostly we hear about analysing dreams, as if they are something we could penetrate by thinking about, or being analytical about. In writing about this elsewhere I have said this is rather like thinking that you understand what the experience of swimming is like simply by thinking about it, but never having been in the water. Being in the water is a very powerful physical sensation, it is an emotional experience and it requires the learning of a skill to move around in that element and survive. Dreams are very much like that. If you enter the emotional and sensory aspects of dreams rather than simply think about them, it is often a very deeply felt experience. There are certain skills you need to learn to be able to do that, to move around in dreams, and learn from them.

Elsewhere, in writing about what I call Life Stream, I have said that each of us grew from a tiny fertilised seed in our mother’s womb. Wisdom innate in that tiny cell, in your mother’s body and in how the universe works, enabled and directed the amazing journey of growth. That journey is perhaps the most incredible of any life form on our planet. From a very fundamental level of life your being moved from a single cell to a bundle of cells. Then, in starting to form an organised body and nervous system it developed from being an aquatic creature toward forming a body capable of living in and breathing air. At birth you transformed from being fully immersed in water to breathing air and beginning independent life.

If, as we see with some plant growth, these changes were filmed and speeded up, you would witness an extraordinary process of growth and energy flow. In fact energy streams through your forming body, directed by innate wisdom. That wisdom, that innate process that was behind your growth and is now behind your continued existence, is the source of dreams. It is the life process in you that produces your dreams. It does it in animals, it does it in unborn babies, it does it in you. As such it involves every aspect of who and what you are; everything from your body, your organ processes, the fundamental levels of your awareness and sensory connection with the world and others, as well as the emergence and development of your self awareness. You are all those things and more, and your dreams arise out of your wholeness, and if you are not experienced in, or not ready to experience the depths of who you are, then you will not really know what your dreams are.

So, how do we enter into and move around in the great waters of our dreams?

The first steps are in learning how to allow things to happen spontaneously. The dream itself occurs because you have surrendered control as you slipped into sleep. The dream is a spontaneous expression of something other than your conscious will or thoughts. To enter the world of the dream you need to learn how to do that consciously. Learning how to let go of your goals, your conscious thoughts and desires, your will, is the first skill needed. See The Life Will

If you consider what happens when you go to sleep, you completely let go of the world, your activities, your thoughts and feelings. Then your thoughts and feelings start to flow in their own way, being moved from a deeper level than your conscious decisions. It is worth examining your experience of this and trying to reproduce it while you are alert and awake. Dreams do not communicate with words or intellectual discussion, and if you cannot allow the spontaneous your dreams will not be able to communicate with you.

I tend to call this the keyboard condition and have described it elsewhere in various ways. The first steps in learning the keyboard condition are to hold your body, your emotions, your sexuality, your mind, memories and imagination as if they were keys upon which the inner dream maker can play. As you fall asleep you let go of your control over what you think, what you do with your body, and what you fantasy. Your I, your decision making self has relaxed and left the stage free for the dream maker to create its dramas. So, in beginning to access the deeper possibilities of your dreams you need to take on a similar relaxed state without actually losing awareness. In this way you are holding your body free to move spontaneously; you are letting go of any control or resistances you might have in connection with your emotions; you are relinquishing your thoughts and goals, and you are leaving the stage free for your imagination all to be able to respond to something other than your conscious will and ready to be moved spontaneously.

Remember that when you dream you often experience very powerful emotions, you move, you run, you make love, and more than anything else you experience an enormous variety of situations or environments. To enter into these, to gather what they depict about yourself and your deeply unconscious life processes and mind, you cannot simply analyse or think about them. You need to experience them.

Learning to be capable of being moved like that for most people takes practice. Two simple techniques enable you to do this. The first I call ‘self watching’ and the second one is ‘carving in space’.

Self Watching

This is one of the most important skills we can learn, not only in regard to entering into our dreams; it is also a doorway into many other possibilities in your life.

It is most helpful if you can practice this skill with a partner who will listen without comment. Their quietness is important. It is so easy to simply sit and have a conversation or for the listening person simply to tell you what they think about what you are saying, and that is not the aim of this exercise. Having a partner who will listen without comment focuses your attention. It is an enormous aid, and you can take it in turns to be the person using the process.

You need to sit somewhere you can be reasonably relaxed and undisturbed for at least fifteen minutes. Then, as far as you are able take on the keyboard condition. In other words agree with yourself that you are not unconsciously telling your body it must be still. You are leaving your body open to move, to stretch, or do whatever comes to you spontaneously. It means being ready to experience your emotions, memories or imagination in any way they arrive spontaneously.

Then, with eyes closed, turn your attention onto yourself. Perhaps imagine that your body is like a television screen and you are simply watching what images and drama appear on it. So start by being aware of what sensations, feelings, tensions, or discomforts are apparent throughout your body. Describe them to your partner or to yourself if you have no partner. I mean by this actually speak aloud what you feel and observe, even if you are alone. This focuses your attention enormously. You are not aiming to reach any goal, so simply observe and gradually observe what is flitting through your thoughts, what feeling state you are in and watch the changes that occur as you continue your observation. As any shift occurs describe it.

Remember that you are not attempting to reach any particular goal of feelings or attitude. You are simply observing and describing what you can see. Here is an example of somebody using this technique. As you can see they move gradually from general observations of what they are experiencing to a particular theme, that of relationship. This is often what happens. Certain directions are taken spontaneously and feelings or memories arise that take you in a particular direction.

As I turn my attention to the screen of my body the first thing I notice is that my mouth is quite tense. I am almost biting my lip, so I relax that tension. And then I notice that the rest of my body has tensions that are unnecessary and I relax them. Now a feeling is occurring in the upper part of my body, almost as if a heavy cloud were shifting from my head and there is a sense of opening, or perhaps something like walking out of a small room into the open air and experiencing the bigness of the sky. It is a nice feeling. Now I get the urge to move my head by turning it side to side, almost as if I am exercising my neck. My whole body gets involved in this now and I shift my position for one that feels more open and comfortable. Now it seems as if I am simply listening. I am feeling as if I’m going to open. I am opening. These words come to me spontaneously and I speak them. But I don’t know what they mean yet. Now I yawn. I am looking at something that isn’t very clear and it is about the way I relate to women. That’s how it seems. I am feeling as if I’m trying to open. I’m not sure why. It’s all to do with being independent. I don’t want to get involved in somebody else’s needs and desires. I can see I feel that a close relationship means becoming beholden to someone. It’s nothing that I can’t deal with.

One of the important points of this technique is to help you develop awareness of the subtle feelings, shift of feelings, physical sensations, and urges that arise when you give yourself that sort of attention. If this is difficult for you at first it is helpful to think of someone you love or something that is beautiful. It can be a pet, an object, a person or a place. As you hold this in mind notice what change of feelings occur. Notice how your body feels as you hold in mind what you have chosen that is beautiful.

When you have observed this, change what you are thinking about to something else, something that is ugly or that you don’t like. Again notice the difference in what you are feeling and the sensations in your body, and even what memories or images arise.

What you can learn from this is that every thought you hold, everything you see in the external world, produces a corresponding shift within yourself and the way your body feels. This awareness can then be applied to exploring a dream and entering into its drama. Once you have learned to give yourself that awareness and notice what is going on within you, you can then hold in mind the drama or imagery of the dream and observe how your being responds, what it is telling you spontaneously about the dream. Ask the question, “What is my dream depicting to me?” Or take a particular character or part of your dream and ask what aspect of your life or insight it depicts.

Carving in Space

The second exercise is a wonderful way of extending this ability. It brings the body more fully into play, and begins the process of allowing a full keyboard condition to be used. It enables you to watch what can arise spontaneously, and how creative you are if you simply let go and allow things to happen.

For this exercise you need sufficient floor space to move easily, or even lie full length if necessary. It also helps to have loose clothing. Then you stand in the middle of your floor space giving yourself time to explore what you feel and experience.

Start by slowly circling your arms. Take the arms above the head, down the sides of the body with the arms fully extended. Then take your arms upward crossing the front of the trunk. In the full movement the hands are then forming wide circles that cross the front of your body.

Now, as you are circling your arms with eyes closed, bring your awareness to the shape your hands are making in space. As you become aware of the shapes the handsor finger tips are carving in space, watch what feelings you have as to how your hands and arms would like to move. Give yourself permission to doodle, to make any sort of shapes your feelings or body incline you to. Allow any sort of posture or movement, as active or quiet as you like. Allow sounds to accompany the movements if there is an urge to, and allow whatever feelings accompany them.

 

Hold the attitude that what you are doing doesn’t have to make sense. Nor does it have to comply with what other people might expect of you. Realise that you are allowing another part of yourself, perhaps a non verbal part, or a facet unknown to the rational mind, to express. With a non critical watching attitude, relax and let your body and feeling sense direct what happens. There is no need to fiercely concentrate in order to wipe the mind clear of other influences. But you may need to relax the part of the mind that always needs to know beforehand what you are going to do.

This is not like creative dance in which you might feel you must produce something pleasing for others to watch. With this exercise you need an open area in which your inner being can express in its own way. Movements and feelings have a chance to unfold outside of rational criticism and the demands of everyday life.

Give yourself at least twenty minutes in which to explore what spontaneous movements and feelings emerge. Below is a summary of what may happen in this practice.

1. Although the movements may at first appear haphazard and irrational, if you allow them to continue without criticism, they usually express – perhaps only over a period of several sessions – a particular theme or point.
2. Like a dream, the theme or drama often symbolises your life situation, or something within you, such as the remaining emotions or attitudes from past experience, or a creative realisation. Or the movements may be expressive of your body’s own need to release energy or mobilise itself and its urges.
3. There are obvious stages or depths to the experience. Movement is often the first. Feelings and fantasy then often combine with the movement in expressing as a mime of some sort. Only with a few people do they occur without each other. If met in the right way the movements, fantasy and sounds can lead, through the mime, to insight into what is being expressed. In other words the symbolic movements, if that is what they are, can give way to rational understanding. This is not because one has thought out a plausible explanation for what happens. It is because your critical, conscious mind has watched the spontaneous working of what usually only occurs in sleep and unconsciousness. This gives automatic feedback to the unconscious mind and it can speed up its processing and problem solving. A communication thus takes place between the unconscious and conscious mind.
4. When you reach a stage that you can easily allow spontaneous movement, along with sound and perhaps feelings, you can dispense with the arm circling to start you off. You will find that if you simply stand in the keyboard condition ready to let your body express what is within you it will begin.

The exercise is a way of entering into the usually unconscious processes of your being and working with them. Usually the only way we let go so fully and allow the spontaneous action of our inner nature is when we sleep and dream. But in this way you can open to your core while awake.

The Power Search

What was said above about the symbolic movements or mime giving way to rational understanding is incredibly important. Understanding it gives the key to real dream penetration. The idea also holds within it the kernel of what happens when we successfully enter into a dream. The symbols unfold their meaning enabling us to arrive at an understanding that we can verbalise. This becomes understandable in what follows.

First though, the above techniques need to be practised until you feel easy with them and can experience real spontaneous emergence of your own inner life, and have learned to accept and allow it easily. Once this has happened you can move on to the real business of entering a dream.

The exercises have started the process during which a flow of communication occurs between your unconscious and your observing conscious mind. At first you are simply observing, and maybe what occurs is highly symbolic. For instance the images that occur while you are in the process of self observation, any movements that you make or feelings that arise might not be understandable. The same is true of what happens in the arm circling exercise. Spontaneous movements, sounds or themes might emerge. They certainly will if you are successfully using the technique. But that is a halfway position. Your unconscious expresses itself in mime, imagery, symbolic drama, irrational sounds, and in any other way in which it can begin the process of bringing to consciousness things that have in themselves never been verbalised, and have never been consciously experienced before. The first stage for this is perhaps in spontaneous movements or irrational sounds. The next stage is that a theme, mime, or symbolic drama is expressed. This needs to be worked with. It needs to be recognised for what it is — symbolic. The communication now needs to be in two directions.

At the heart of the process is the way the memory functions. Every day we use the process of memory countless times. We might seek a telephone number, an address, a word to use in conversation, and the very act of seeking it brings it into awareness from dark unconsciousness. When the piece of information we seek comes into mind we usually have a very strong feeling of recognition. In fact if you are observing the process carefully you will see that a scanning goes on that sorts through many bits of information until it arrives at the right piece. Once you understand that clearly then you can use the process in a slightly different way.

So, the techniques that I have outlined above and suggested you to practice are leading up to this — you start with a fairly clear dream. To begin with it is best to use a dream in which the imagery is impressive and clear. You then take one of the images and explore it by asking what the meaning of it is, and opening as in the keyboard condition, allowing whatever spontaneous feelings, memories or body movements arise. At times very strong feelings will come in this way also.

If you have not practised the self observation and the carving in space, you may feel that this is a pointless exercise as nothing will arise. It is only through practice that you can stand on the edge of your unconscious, so to speak, drop in the question and be aware of the response from within.

The response is very similar to what happens when you seek parts of your memory in everyday life, except that the pathways to normal everyday memory have already been formed. What you are seeking in the dream has never been made conscious before and so you have to approach patiently. Maybe you will not even arrive at any clear insights the first time. But with persistence gradually more and more understanding will arise. When it does, it does not come from an intellectual analysis or thinking about the dream. It comes because something emerges that you can actually witnessed and see, like a mist clearing while you’re standing on a hill so that you can clearly see the landscape below. You don’t need to think about that you can directly observe to experience it.

When something arises that you do not understand you communicate with your unconscious by saying, “I don’t understand this. What does it mean? Please clarify this.”

This two-way communication gradually develops as you practice so that you learn to penetrate beyond the symbols of your dreams, or the spontaneous mimes, sounds or images that arise as you spontaneously open to your dream imagery.

Do not be satisfied with explanations that you give to the imagery by consciously analysing the dream or jumping to conclusions about what a mime or fantasy means. When insight arrives it will clearly explain and link with your everyday life, your history and how it connects with the imagery of the dream. You will discover something new about yourself that you didn’t understand before, something that you can explain to somebody else and they can also see it clearly.

That is the way to the heart of a dream.

See: Techniques for Exploring your Dreams –