Sunflower – The feeling of entering another level is possibly because you have, because life in the body is about constant change, entered another phase of your growth. Each of us is immersed in this ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood, and there are more stages of growth beyond adulthood. And as we passed through these changes we died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through old age and through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create your future. And this is a force of growth and change.
The drive is largely about becoming an individual, which is quite a journey, for it is about becoming independent of all our childhood dependencies and the often unconscious traumas that act as barriers to this. The journey of individuation is not only that of becoming a person, but also expanding the boundaries of what we can allow ourselves to experience as an ego. As we can see from an observation of our dreams, but mostly from an extensive exploration of their feeling content, our ego is conscious of only a small area of experience. The fundamental life processes in our being may be barely felt. In many contemporary women, the reproductive drive is talked about as something that has few connections with their personality. Few people have a living feeling contact with their early childhood; in fact many people doubt that such can exist. Because of these factors the ego can be said to exist as an encapsulated small area of consciousness, surrounded by huge areas of experience it is unaware of. These unconscious areas of their being direct their life to an extraordinary degree. Individuation means to emerge from unconscious dependence on this hidden side of self. It means to become functionally independent of the huge patterns of behaviour that dominate human life. In many ways it is similar to, and includes, becoming functionally independent of ones mother and father.
Your dream seems to be about a greater awareness of your reptilian mind, a great growth in itself. The Reptilian Brain is sometimes called the ‘R-complex’, and includes the brain stem and the cerebellum. It carries our genetically transmitted ‘instinctive’ behaviour such as suckling at the breast as a baby, aggressive response as with and including territorial defensiveness, the courtship and mating behaviours in reproduction. One of the best known expressions of this brain is the ‘flight, fight, freeze or faint’ response in survival situations and of course panic attacks.
This brain deals with behaviour that is either innate, as described above, is learned and has become habitual, or is a conditioned response. If it is habitual we can repeat it without having to learn it or be very aware of how we do it – as with riding a bicycle or driving a car once we have mastered the skill.
This is because it links intricately with our unconscious physical and psychological systems and with our self regulatory functions. So it throws into consciousness things that might detract us from a direction, a decisions or a relationship. This might not be rational as far as we are consciously aware, but is nearly always based on past experience that throws up a red danger signal, or a ‘yes’ response. There is no moral judgement at this level of our awareness. The ‘R’ brain simply gives rise to acts in ways it has learned that enable survival, reproduction and food gathering. In actual lizards it has a limited range of behavioural responses.
But it sounds as if you have developed a good relationship with it and have encouraged it to ‘crawl from under the rocks (the unconscious) and develop into normal forms of life...then they stood up and started walking like human beings. One was wearing a king's mantle and existed in a foreign/unknown place which was close to the 'highest' existing mountains.’
This suggests you are growing toward the ‘highest’ within you, but you are not quite there yet. I don’t know how you have managed this level of growth, but keep at it, for it promises contact with your experience of what I call Going Beyond. This is going beyond every day awareness and achieving what may be the next level of human evolution, a different type of awareness. It is that enlightenment, wholeness, is your right. It isn’t something you have to earn, it’s yours. You don’t have to pay a mortgage to get it. You don’t have to be terribly good, or to conform to some rigorous moral practice. You are an integral part of the universe, of that living consciousness, now! You are loved and you are wanted. When you hear the Core of your being speak to you, it says, “I want you. I love you. I want you in every conceivable way. Don’t hold yourselves back from me.”
Tony
