Suicide Example

This is something I started to work on an never quite finished. However it is worth reading and is, I hope, helpful. The following example I think is the best. It is a personal experience.

Example: One morning my wife 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 their baby, a boy, had been born. We didn’t have a 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 of the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the being now born as the baby had committed suicide using a drug.

I didn’t 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 their 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 that 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.

I don’t think there can be any clearer example than that, of the mind having some level of input other that information gathered through the physical senses and therefore what is already known in the brain. I use the example because it is not hearsay. It didn’t happen to somebody else who reported it to me. I witnessed every step of it. Recently I met the baby of that dream again. He is now a man of 35, and still needing the daily drug.

Example: I was a depressive and considered suicide several times; fortunately I was also fascinated by dreams and found ways round it. Here is one dream I came across as I helped people explore their dreams – not interpret them.

In the dream she walked across the Rye, which is a large park, in a new coat. The ground was like a bog, but she did not sink in, although she knew she had come to commit suicide. She lay on top of the bog, quite happy and ready. Then she saw a man walking towards her, only his legs visible. She knew she must now die, and thrust herself into the bog.

The first part of the dream was fairly easy to understand. She had recently had an emotional shock through seeing her husband kissing another woman at a party. This was terrible because although such an action was not uncommon to her, she always felt very insecure emotionally, and her husband’s action was a blow to her security.

The Rye was a place where her early courting took place, and represents her own sexual feelings, and the bog or insecurity underlying it. The coat was a thing that she did not own, but hoped for. So the dream imagery showed her taking her hopes for a better life on to the thin surface that covered the threat of her insecure sexual feelings.

She was willing to face these feelings, though her present self might die in doing this. But it was the man’s legs that could not be fitted into the interpretation. They could have been interpreted as a threat of sex. But this did not provide a satisfying picture of the dream. Therefore the woman sat quietly, imagined herself back in the dream, and saw the man’s legs approaching. She was then asked to look up at the man’s face, and see who it was. She did so, and with great surprise said, ‘It’s my father!’ The realisation of which helped to show the part her father had played in shaping her emotional background. With that information she could see that her present difficulties were not based fully on the present events. They had the strength they did ‘because’ of her relationship with her father. In fact she never attempted suicide because in exploring her dream she found many reasons to live. See Being the Person or Thing

Something many people who feel suicidal fail to understand is that their emotions are not them. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind. You had buttons pressed that produced fear, anxiety, sexual excitement or any mixture of feelings.

But because we are victims of our own feeling reactions we live an awful life. Someone says something critical and you feel low – something positive and your spirits rise instead of realising you are  a victim.

In effect you have been programmed to feel suicidal, and such emotional reactions are what creates the events that are destroying you.

It is such an interesting subject, that a human being does not have any sense of identity, or develop what we call a personality by simply growing. If left they are nothing much unless raised by an animal that passes on millions of years of experience to the baby and as that baby its whole drive is to survive. What it is raised by leads it to become, if it not a human being,  a wolf or bear. So we do not simply have a human personality unless we are taught the amazing program of speech and human thoughts and social responses. Many of us believe we are ourselves because we were born human. Not so. We are carefully fed programs and we are what we are by being taught it. We are programmed – and of course we can learn to recognise that programming and hopefully grow beyond it. Sometimes the humans who raise us give us terrible programmings that is an awful burden to bear and can lead to suicide. I know a man who when a child stopped eating and was dying. His father was such a terrible influence in his life his son wanted to die. Fortunately he was helped to again want to survive – to survive is our basic urge not suicide.

What is so strange is how little parents understand about the inner world their baby or child lives in. Perhaps it’s because most of us manage to brick up memories of childhood so it is all but lost except for a few snapshots and what they portray. Without remembering how it felt, the adult has no idea of what they faced and how they dealt with it themselves as a baby. I have to conclude this bricking up, this building of an impenetrable wall against feeling ones early years, has been going on for generations. It must be so otherwise adults could never treat children the way they do. As a group we could never expose them to the tortures involved in some aspects of school, hospital, and in fact everyday life as it occurs in many families. In fact just a few years ago babies were never given pain killers or anesthesia because it was believed babies could not feel!!!!!