Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Tower of Babel  (Read 7390 times)

Aristocrates

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
    • View Profile
Tower of Babel
« on: September 15, 2016, 02:39:07 AM »
A piece within a series of dreams from a few days back has stuck out in my mind.  A friend who I met about three years ago was in it.  He is in his 50's and he'll check in with me every couple months or so.  I met him when I was still working for my family at their auction barn.  He is an interesting person.  He is a Sicilian, drummer, former professional bull rider and trains cutting horses.  He was on the same circuit as Lane Frost as a bullrider.  His eagerness to maintain a friendship has perplexed me.  We're 20+ years apart and he's a surefire type A and I'm a surefire not that way.  He has expressed to me his frustration with me having a passive attitude.  I find he is often confrontational with people where I would find little reason for it.  He does seem to have a thoroughly charitable heart though.

In the dream is a round tower of sorts made of red brick (common in this area).  I see him on some scaffolding removing bricks from the top of the tower and I'm confused as to why he's removing them.  I'm thinking,"why are you wasting your time on this?  What's the point?" 

Edit: I should also note that this tower resembled a chimney at the power plant of the university I attended. 

« Last Edit: September 15, 2016, 02:56:35 AM by Aristocrates »

Christine

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 410
    • View Profile
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2016, 03:19:54 AM »

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2016, 08:53:48 AM »
Aristocrates – First of all your friend is a part of you!

When you think about a friend or a person you meet, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they are what makes you the person you are.  The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.

So your dream is saying that you do have an active sure fire side to you – maybe picked up or learned by being with him. I remember when I was 14 I learnt generosity from one thing a friend did. The lesson is still alive in me. Is your friends example still alive in you?

Such towers or chimneys are usually blasted down, but you/him are doing it the slow way. I don’t know what your feelings/associations are with the chimney, but in recent years they are being destroyed as new technology is coming available. In fact, the very latest tech promises free power.

So if you imagine yourself up there doing the work of removing the bricks, what do you feel you are doing it for?

20 years age difference puts him in the father role.

Tony
« Last Edit: September 15, 2016, 08:55:56 AM by Tony Crisp »

Aristocrates

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
    • View Profile
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2016, 12:28:51 AM »
There are many lessons alive inside of me.  In high school I worked repairing barbwire fence in the summers with an old man down the road, a long-time family friend.  He taught me the value of hard work and was patient in teaching me.  I do find myself wishing for a closer relationship with my biological father.  He's short on words and time.  He's not the type who plans time with his children. He does make time for his snooker friends even leaving family functions to go play.  I also resent how he seems to have that same attitude toward my mother.  I've just never sensed a deep connection between them.  I think they love each other but they seem to live on different worlds.  He is a good provider and worked diligently to build his business(es).  I'm the 7th of nine children, my twin the 8th so their attention was quite divided when I came along just on that fact alone.  The time I did spend with him was typically corralling cattle and the sorts and he was very short-tempered when it came to that.  He had zero patience in teaching us.  I was 10, 11 when first started working with cattle.  It's intimidating for anyone initially being around animals of that size in close quarters let alone having your father go ballistic if you didn't cut out the right cow or god-forbid leave a gate unlatched which he and his father before him were actually notorious for themselves.  He's 61 and turns 62 tomorrow!! Just thought of that!!  He's at the age and in the position where he can take it easy and he sure does love his grandchildren.  I know he's extra proud of my boys.  I think he would love it if I was set on getting back into the family business and I might if I were in a different situation.  Their mom works 60-80 hours a week on nights so I have to be home during the day so she can sleep.  And I've found myself throughout the years looking to other men to fill that void.  One man in particular, actually an Irishman, seemed to be just what I needed.  He seemed to understand my mind and offered encouragement and guidance until I realized he wanted me as someone to touch rather than teach.  And then there was another man who I looked to for guidance who after years of knowing and trusting him made a sexual advance.  He's around 65 now.  I actually worked for him off and on.  I do know in my heart that my father is there for me just not in the way I would like him to be or imagine a father should be.  And I'm too proud to take advantage of the family business.  I already have two older brothers who are in it, anyways.   

My feelings with that particular chimney has always been that it seemed like a relic even though it was actually a functional part of the power plant.  The university is on a separate grid from the rest of the town.  My grandmother (my dad's mom) who just passed away last year at the age of 92 went to the same university(just a side note).  I spent 6 and a half years there and it was kind of central to the places I frequented and I always just had sort of an admiration for that chimney.  It was right in between a college ministry I attended and the heart of campus so I crossed it's path many times.  But, along with my initial statement about the chimney, perhaps it symbolizes an era gone by that I need to deconstruct. 

I imagine that I am removing those bricks as a penance for past mistakes/misdeeds. 

I'll come back to this later.  I need to let my mind rest. 
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 12:37:50 AM by Aristocrates »

Aristocrates

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
    • View Profile
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2016, 12:48:56 AM »
Text from Christine's Link:

Saturn and Uranus - the sudden breakout of realization, destruction of old values
Planet: Mars
Tree of life: The Axis Netzach - Hod
Element: Fire
Number: 16 as 4 x 4: induration. But the cross sum is 7

The Tower is a symbol of endurance and its destruction, an allusion to sudden, maybe shocking realizations that crushes old views and persuasions, maybe the view of the whole world.

The area of relative security starts wavering, our tower then falls and with it the walls around us that have become too narrow. It is rarely the evil, but rather the necessary development we meet when there is a change in the armor of destruction.

So in the positive aspect, this most violent trump will mean that we proceed to learn that losing the old secure fortress of our beliefs will reward us with a major step forward.

And a good step forward sometimes requires a kick in the ....


Drive: Breaking up structures, destroying the old, getting rid of obsolete loads

Light: Sudden realization of the truth, the will to change old ways, to recreate life and start something new

Shadow: Blind destruction

RESPONSE:

I did get a swift kick in the ass from my fiance a couple days ago and I'm set on doing things differently now.  I was smoking marijuana daily and thus neglecting some of my household responsibilities as well as future job opportunities.  In the two days I haven't smoked I've managed to get quite a lot done and I notice that my mood swings are all but gone.  I'm actually using dreamhawk as a way to kick the habit.  Whenever I start thinking I want to buy some weed I hop on here.  Even before I decided to kick the habit I sparked a conversation with a long-time friend who advised me to make better use of this forum and all the resources it provides.

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2016, 09:00:08 AM »
Aristocrates – I felt very privileged to receive your words. I feel I ought to share something of my beginnings with you and others. So here are words from my Journal.

December 24th 1966 - I have hesitated for some days to start this book. I have looked along other streets, but could see nothing at the end of them, or even nearby, to attract my footsteps. Despite the hesitation however, the urge to start has been with me all through the last few weeks. Now I can find no more contradictions in myself, or in circumstances.

Thinking back, there has been a long “in between” since I last wrote anything serious to myself, or for my own notice. The last thing was undoubtedly Apologia Rosae Crucis. This, being such statements as Psychic Development, Light of the Mind, History of the Soul, Cosmic Majesty of Sex, Alchemy of Self, and The Silent Watcher, was surely the emptying that led me to leave the Rosicrucian Order. The time, then, must be all of two years.

Two years - but they are only two that link with another two, or another four. I am on the brink of my 30s, and must look back. It was in my 21st year that I married, and tentatively began The Arcane Library, first as a group, then as a book business. This began proper on October 19th 1960, and ended around October 1964. Four years of possession by an ideal. Four years of non-ceasing toil. Toward the end came a breaking up period. I had written and printed my statements, had discovered the idea of doing nothing, and had met Sonia. (A beautiful woman I fell in love with but never acted upon – causing me a torment for years).

All the passions I had previously held back now spilled out and tormented me. My statements had loosened my attitudes, my Godalmightyness. I conceived at last, the idea of letting God act through me as an unfixed concept, of not making my own God. The wilderness swallowed me up, and fantasies and torment were everywhere; in my own body, on the faces of others, screaming from my mind and emotions.

At the end of the two years, I find myself torn from certainties I knew. Without the surety of God or myself, having lost what I had with nothing as positive, or as dynamic in its impress, taking its place. Gone are my recitations of definite truths, definite goals, and definite gods. Gone the energy that drove me for every day of four years.

See my hand is opened.
Look at what it held,
Some night dreams and some daydreams,
That for a while impelled.

Despite my opened hand, and uncertainties, I am more at peace now than ever before. It is not even a certain peace, but even that has to be accepted. So here we are (the scattered parts suddenly), at the eve of another year, seeking to restate what has been my experience, and what have been my realisations therefrom.

January 2nd 1967.

I can’t say I was a romantic or precocious child, or even a child of God. The first memories that come to mind are my childhood fears. These are common to all children - the dark - losing one’s mother - fear of not belonging and of not being accepted. I had no dreams about what I wanted to be. For instance, I can never remember ever wishing to be an engine driver. Soldiers passing with their rifles marching to D-Day let into me a desire to handle guns, but it was not excessive. Nothing stands out as a golden thread through my early childhood. It consisted merely of separate events that are mostly forgotten. Added later (That is, except for one memory deeply etched. I must have been about four, pedalling my child’s car up the walk my family had a shop in. I got to the top of the walk and saw a man cleaning the drain. In those days he had a metal ladle and a prodding rod. I felt an enormous feeling of wonder at what he might find there, money, fountain pens – anything. I knew then that was what I wanted to work at when I was older. Later I realised that it was what led me to work at cleaning the blocked drains inside of people – I was fascinated by seeing and learning what came out of them. It was what led up to writing so much about the process.)

Looking at my parents, there is much of them in me. My mother is an emotionally positive person. What she feels is right. She has no doubts about the likeness of what she feels. Thus she is able to display a social temper, angering shopkeepers etc., (who she feels, or thinks), have done her wrong. I would say that she has virtually no insight into her own feelings, and I have never heard her delve analytically into herself. This adds to her conscious certainty, although I must say I find it hard to understand what her inner life is like. I can only write about what appears objectivity. For example, whenever my mother mentions God, it is in a manner of positive belief, and yet such statements always seem surface statements, and I can never ascertain whether such belief comes from real inner conviction. It would seem more likely that they are second-hand - that they have been inherited from her mother unquestioned by either her emotions or her intellect.

But there are forces lurking beneath the certainty, her fear or loathing of sex, and anything to do with it. She will laugh at a joke with the best of them, but there is a terrible bitterness attached to her remarks about loose women, men’s dirty underwear, sex in general. She also talks with pride about the infrequency of her sexual relations.

She is given to enormous exaggeration, tremendous certainty, in the face of logical argument, and intense feeling.

Despite all this if I am to get through to the soul in her, I must say that these things are but shadows cast over her spirit, which still shines through. The soul is a proud, forceful one, strong in its love, determination and faithfulness.

January 3rd 1967 - My father is an entirely different proposition. At times, he displays the depths and subtleties of human nature. I mean by this that his conscious mind dips into his psychic/emotional experiences of life, and he lives them again in speech. In this manner he can talk of his family and youthful experiences. But this psychic life seems to be only alive up to the time of his marriage, and retarded afterwards. Thus he seems to be far less conscious of his psychic reactions to present-day life than to his past experience. Therefore, his present life lacks the depths of relationship of which he is capable. He no longer reaches, or even admits (except rarely) the depths of his present experience – not to me anyway.

This possibly stems from several factors - an almost extreme inability to express love and affection. Yet he is not incapable of feeling these things - a fixed mental or intellectual philosophy, of quite a materialistic nature. His soul, I would say, is far more realised than my mother’s, but it has become anchored, unmoving.

He is a restless man, physically and emotionally. His environment is never satisfying. He does not wish to move from it, only to keep improving it. The only failing in this is that he does so without an ideal in mind. His almost continuous efforts at decorating and modifying his house, therefore achieve very little apparent results. I mean this in the sense that compared with his efforts and money spent, his house should leave on one a far more impressive imprint.

Another of his difficulties, I should imagine, is anxiety about initiating changes. Therefore, even with sufficient capital, he has never attempted his own business.

Briefly, that is the emotional, mental and spiritual soil from which I spring. Physically, both of my parents are hardy and well built. However, they are both of a somewhat nervous disposition in various ways, as suggested above. My mother holds firm to her own mother, resisting change. Emotional situations arise when circumstances conflict with her firmly held values. This conflict between the events and her own attitudes, manifest as exhausting illness and emotional disturbance.

For my father, his apprehensions are more in regard to fear of heights, insufficient money, being made to look a fool, illness, hospitals, etc. This suggests fear of personal safety, or fear of death.

To say that these dispositions have blended evenly in myself is to speak without due thought. It is more difficult to assess my own position from an objective viewpoint, but underlying most of my activities are a need to be loved, a need to know, and a need to succeed.

My search for love is sometimes a desperate and anguished one, made difficult by my inability to ignore the various points of view, and signs of truth. My attempts at knowing are equally as desperate. Having developed, or realised, in recent years, a caustic cynicism, that cuts achievements and experience to the bone, my search for knowledge has been a frustrating one. This would not be so hard to bear, if another part of my nature were not so much given to dreams and hopes, often of an impossibly romantic nature. My hopes spur me on to activity, efforts to achieve some impractical dream, while my cynicism is actively showing me just how little of that hope I manage to realise.

Tony
« Last Edit: October 03, 2016, 09:12:40 AM by Tony Crisp »

Aristocrates

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
    • View Profile
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2016, 08:19:10 AM »
My first aspiration as a child was to be an author and illustrator.  I was writing stories in 1st grade.  I enjoyed drawing and I think I even showed some promise there.  My twin also loved to draw and I guess it bothered him that I liked it too because I later found out that he would rip up my drawings and I remember one time in particular when he relished in the fact that my mother poked fun at one of my drawings (maybe to make him feel better, i don't know).  He relayed it to me rather quickly.  That hurt.  I also remember starting a journal and my mother poking fun at it.  My mother is a highly positive and encouraging person, 99.99% of the time actually and I'm sure she meant nothing by it at the time but it stung.  I took it as an insult and maybe that's the pattern I need to stop.  Allowing slights to make me repeatedly put the things I enjoy away.  I was labeled the outgoing more physically aggressive twin and he was labeled the artsy, sensitive one and I think we both fell in to those respective tracks.  Even up in to high school it seemed to please him that he was seen by peers as more intelligent, more gifted artistically, and he was sure to remind me of those instances.  I don't think I ever went out of my way to hurt him is the thing.  Where he almost seemed malicious about it.

Also, from an early age I developed an affinity for black culture, black people.  Of course this is an odd thing to discuss openly anywhere these days it seems, even with my fiance.  In first grade I made a friend who has the same surname as you actually.  We would race to the playground everyday and it was usually a tie.  In those days, the NBA seemed to be at it's height of popularity, the Chicago Bulls had three peated and you had mega stars in several markets across the country and my father loved to watch the Bulls I remember.  I think maybe this is one of the reasons I pursued basketball so aggressively. In my mind black people could do everything at the highest level: sing, dance, inspire.  But, that was rural Tennessee in the early 90s and it still wasn't very accepted to have black friends much less love interests.  And I didn't foresee that I would be with a black woman and have twins.  My parents did take my brother and I on a senior trip to the West Indies in St. Lucia.  She(my mom) had a half-brother(mixed) there that she had just found out about and she wanted to meet him.  He ended up coming to the states to live with us for a while.  Anyways, I met a girl there who I was awestruck with.  She was 16 and I had just about to turn 18.  She was a sprinter and you could tell it.  She had a beautifully sculpted body. She had the most unique voice too.  It was raspy and rhythmic.  I've never been kissed better by anyone before or since.  My fiance seems to find it awkward. Initially, we would kiss often, but rarely ever now.  I never imagined i'd be with someone who didn't enjoy it.  I think she reminds me of my father in a way.  She works very hard like he did and she doesn't sugar coat anything.  I think she keeps me grounded.  I mean she seems to be well-grounded in reality.  Haha, i used to tell her I didn't like white girls cause it seemed all they wanted was to be pampered.  My family is known for having money here.  And you know what she says about that?  "What makes you think I don't want the same thing?" How's that for a harsh reality.  I mean it's understandable that anyone would want to live comfortably, but at the same time it leaves me feeling like an investment.  I think I've paid off fairly well so far.  When we met I was working 70-80 hours a week and kept her fed well throughout her pregnancy and it was my credit that allowed us to purchase a house and nice car.  The passion I've expected should be in a relationship isn't there.  It all seems so calculated.  Well, I better get a little sleep.  I started out meaning to talk about the parallels between our parents but ended up going in a different direction. 
« Last Edit: October 03, 2016, 08:21:55 AM by Aristocrates »

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Tower of Babel
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2016, 09:55:21 AM »
Aristocrates – Thanks again.

I feel that your brother may have tried to kick you out of the nest as many birds and children do. But he may have been jealous of your obvious talent and hit back. Babies and children are natural animals and in fantasy often kill of their brothers or sisters. Also it is a pity you didn’t develop your art side. It is useful to have several abilities.

It wasn’t my mother who put me down, put her frantic care set me back for many years of my life.

My mother was a country girl born in Amersham. I see my mother as being an uncomplicated woman without much subtlety, but powerful, strong and very shrewd in her assessment of people. I don’t think she was capable of intellectual thought, but her instincts were clear enough, and one image I have of her is that of a mad cow, and I don’t mean this as an insult, but as a description. It’s an image that explains to me some of the things she did to me as a child, and how she responded to me.

 When I was born my mother related to me in a primal way. The missing eight weeks of development in the womb meant it was difficult for me to digest anything. I was on the brink of death. So imagine a wild cow whose calf doesn’t show much signs of life. It is imperative if the calf is to survive that it get on its feet quickly, that it moves around and looks lively. So when I try to understand the things my mother did, it makes sense that she saw me like this and gave me a good kick now and again to get me on my feet and looking lively. She had no subtlety remember, and didn’t think about things. She simply responded. If I didn’t stand up then I would die, so a good kick might stimulate me into being a bit more alive. I think this was heightened with my mother because she had several heftily built sisters who produced babies weighing in at the magnitude of 9 pounds. My tiny frame of 4 pounds appeared tragically fragile beside them.

But it was my father who never even seemed even to notice me, and that was a deep cut. But it may have been in response to my mother. One day my father smacked me. My mother told my father that if he ever did it again she would kill him – and she meant it. Later in life when a school teacher hit. me on the head, she went to the school with a frying pan and gave him a good clout on the head with it.

I could go on about marriage and relationships, but will just say that after an eventful life in the area of relationships I have lived alone for most of the past 16 years. I never get lonely or visit friends, but it helps being in my seventies. But I have never had a strong sexual urge that I see in some men.

So be with your wife with as much care and love as you can give. And care and love can simply mean being there for your children, supplying a home for them, and supporting their mother in her enormous job of raising her and your young.

Tony
« Last Edit: October 04, 2016, 08:38:00 AM by Tony Crisp »