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« on: November 09, 2011, 11:47:13 AM »
Rain_Dancer – Obviously you are moving, and yet when you get there you don’t know where you have got to in yourself. It is very common when people to enter lucidity to actually stay in the dream world and not tackle it as a dream. What I mean is that a dream is an attempt by a very interior part of your whole to express something. But it comes from a part of you that is not the three dimensional world of the body, so a dream is a half way to self awareness. To make sense we have to take it up to the next level.
Van Rhijn has defined the levels of consciousness says there are four stages:-
1] A plant for instance might have some sort of bacterial illness, but would not be able to bring that to awareness. In a sense many things which occur to us, although they are very real and definite, never become a part of our conscious life, but always remain in the ‘plant’ level. If they are to move from ‘deeply unconscious physiological process’ to becoming known consciously, there are stages such events go through.
2] As the physiological process moves nearer consciousness, its next level of expression is postural or gestural. Thus we may express our deepest hidden feelings in an unconscious body posture or movement. Not only our feelings express in this way, but also our physical tone or health shows in our gestures and movements. Even the plant droops if it needs water.
3] Next, when something moves from the gestural to the next stage of expression it becomes a dream or a symbol, which although it may not be understood, is now entering the arena of awareness.
4] At this stage, what had been deeply unconscious, then symbolised, now becomes known enough to be verbalised or thought about and analysed. If one had attempted to verbalise something in level two it would have been so far outside of consciousness as to defy description. Also, when looking at these levels or stages, they suggest that the dream process is a means by which deeper stages can be portrayed to awareness in order to make them known. Therefore, by working with the dream process we can tap deeper levels of awareness and make them known.
Something I have found helpful in lucid dreams or waking lucid dreams is to ask, “What is this about? I need to understand it, so help me see.” One of the first examples of this occurred during a WLD (waking lucid dream). I had a very clear image of a baby elephant head. I quote from my journal, “Slowly a fantasy (dream perhaps) began to build up. First of all it was an image of a brown clay like substance. Then the bas relief image of a baby elephant could be seen on it - a mobile image. Now the trunk reached out, but there was some problem attached to that.”
That was the fantasy, now a spontaneous attempt at understanding it. The unconscious had released something that the rational self sought to understand. What does it mean that it has trouble with is trunk? It is something to do with reaching out for its needs. It is a baby elephant so this must be a problem over reaching out for its mother’s milk.
Hold on though, a baby elephant doesn’t suckled through is trunk but directly in its mouth. Of course, it only uses is trunk when it reaches out for its needs as it is weaned. It is its individual ability to exist by its own efforts. What an amazing symbol! How does that apply to me? No, it’s not directly about me, but about being a parent, and helping children to wean from support and reaching out for their needs outside of parents and the home. How does one teach them that? Ah, I see now, there isn’t any needs to teach it them as a lesson, all one has to do is to demonstrate it by ones own life. I also see how I was in fact injured in this area, and found it difficult to have an individual life outside of the home environment and wife and family. But lately I have begun to develop the ability to leave home, work away from family, plan new endeavors outside of my family environment, such as groups away, and then come back with warmth and contact into our family life, bringing my outside gains or experience with me. Because of this example my children will be able to do the same more easily, more confidently than if no parent had previously done it.
I feel that the dream and fantasy life always link with everyday situations, although they usually add a great depth when understood. So it is always good to ask for real insight.
Tony
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