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Author Topic: Circle within a circle  (Read 4169 times)

Romanov

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Circle within a circle
« on: July 16, 2021, 07:45:02 PM »
Hi Tony,

Hope you are doing great.  Touching base after a long time.

Lately I have been devoting time to container gardening as I live in an apartment. A lot of dreams I am having for the last few months tend to pick symbols from this hobby. This is one such dream too. Also I am going through some tough circumstances on a different front and was angry with Almighty, during the prayer and before I went to sleep and had this dream. I was angry that I was not being heard, my prayers not being answered and he is not giving me a break.

The dream;
There is a small circle within a big circle. Both circles are full of soil and dark compost, like it has just been spread. The boundary of the circle seems like a black biodegradable material used these days to do container gardening. I am sitting in the smaller circle on a stool, with my gardening tools in a pot beside me, looking up.

The spread of compost is very neat and even.

After I woke up I thought, maybe I was looking up expecting rain!

Feeling frustrated at this end. Please help interpret.

Best regards
Romanov


- anna -

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2021, 01:29:49 PM »

Hi Romanov,

Your dream reminds me of Hexagram 9 of the I Ching;

Quote
Gentle Restraint"

Winds of change
high in the Heavens:
Air currents
carry the weather.
Dense clouds
blow in from the west,
but still no rain.


https://www.ichingonline.net/

Or, as Tony has put it:

Quote
https://dreamhawk.com/i-ching/hexagram-nine/

Hesitate from grand action and watch for change coming from an ending, or from within. There is no great good and no great bad in this enquiry, but it could be a time in which to relax and enjoy the outdoors.

If things have already entered into misfortune however, there is no power here to quickly pull out. Nevertheless the winds of change are blowing, so be patient until the time comes to make a shift. The winds of change do not blow strongly enough to quickly alter your position.

A great deal of creative power is shown, but because of the situation, there is nothing for it to grasp and work with. This is why only small changes can be made until shifts bring new and different opportunities.

Quote
I am sitting in the smaller circle on a stool, with my gardening tools in a pot beside me, looking up.

Perhaps it is time to give yourself a break in wanting to move out of a situation you have found yourself in?

Anna :)


ToBeAware

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2021, 04:37:09 PM »
hello i think your dream adds yor gardeingproject and you feeling towards allmighty, together. You want help to grow, to come further, and you also have made a good preparation for it to be functional, so why is this not happening yet, is some of your feelings?

Tony Crisp

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2021, 11:25:17 AM »
Thanks Anna and ToBeAware for answering. Recently I have got lost in wandering through the many lanes of dreamhawk entries - so lost also in trying to write two new books at once and upgrading many entries I chance across.

Choosing the I Ching entries is a great choice because, on looking at the people who are on site at any one time - I just looked again and saw the following:

1.   /dream-dictionary/london/   1   
25.00%
2.   /dream-dictionary/shorts/   1   
25.00%
3.   /i-ching/hexagram-forty-n...hl=de&_x_tr_pto=ajax,elem   1   
25.00%
4.   /i-ching/hexagram-thirty-seven/

There are so many things too that i would love you to know - virtually all of them explored by Anna - WOW - but this is quite a good one to look at - https://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/
« Last Edit: August 01, 2021, 11:28:19 AM by Tony Crisp »

Romanov

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2021, 08:12:43 PM »
Hi Tony,

I appreciate Anna and ToBeAware's interpretation, but is there any more meaning to it then interpreted by them?

Regards
Romanov

Tony Crisp

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2021, 10:37:57 AM »
Romanov - I did a great answer but DreamHawk blocked it-so will try again.

Tony

Tony Crisp

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2021, 11:21:03 AM »
Okay - This basically about your personal efforts to grow psychologically.

The tools beside you show that you have ability to do the work but in the dream you are not doing it. Also the compost shows that your basic self is fertile enough to produce excellent growth. So you are all set to achieve.

You are going through a tough time. I had a lot of those and used to curse whatever was producing them, but having grown beyond some of the tough times I can look back and see that they were all ways of training me to gain new skills when I met the 'Big Un'  - through what I experienced and learn I was prepared tp take the next step.

Recently I have been reviewing some of the classic ways of meeting Life creatively. One of them was Jung's circle within a circle. It was his way of showing that the small circle is the small self we know as our personality and view of life from our limited senses - the bigger circle he named The Self - The Big Un.

Other descriptions of this may be a bit clearer:

In Yoga is the statement that we are all Sachidananda – or Sat-cit-ananda which is our fundamental self below everything, also a descriptive term or description of the subjective experience of the ultimate unchanging reality, called Brahman. The term means that we are basically Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
This is the very heart or basis of Yoga thought:

I am of the nature of consciousness.
I am made of consciousness and bliss.
I am nondual, pure in form, absolute knowledge, absolute love.
I am changeless, devoid of desire or anger, I am detached.
I am One Essence, unlimitedness, utter consciousness.
I am boundless Bliss, existence and transcendent Bliss.
I am the Atman, that revels in itself.
I am the Sacchidananda that is eternal, enlightened and pure.

Although your dream hints at work, we often have a strange view of work. Form the classic paths to the best in us they say things like -

There is no way – there is no path

The strange thing about yoga is that although one may make efforts to gain enlightenment, in fact we all have it and so there is no need to make an effort.

This life – of enlightenment – is just a describer, and one of the things it sees is that this state does not belong to anyone. It’s not something you can get from someone. It’s who everyone is. From here, the highest volume is the sound of the infinite ocean that we all are. Suzanne Sega.
 
If you stop editing your thoughts and emotions, and let things happen as Jung suggests, material that had been repressed and unconscious starts to emerge. If you are still totally identified with your emotions, your body sensations, your sexual urges and thoughts, then you could be tossed around like a rag doll by a dog. So, ‘Do Nothing but let things Happen’.
 
R. D. Laing sums it up in his book `Politics of Experience' by saying: “This journey is experienced as going further "in", as going back through one's personal life. in and back and through and beyond into the experience of all mankind, of the primal man, of Adam and perhaps even further into the being of animals, vegetables and minerals. In this journey there are many occasions to lose one's way, for confusion, partial failure, even final shipwreck: many terrors, spirits, demons to be encountered, that may or may not be overcome. 

He also said, “‘What you are looking for is what is looking.’ Enlightenment is not a state of mind you can create or develop. It is something beyond any change, outside of anything you can develop. After all, development suggests change.
 
Since there is nothing to meditate on, there is no meditation.
Since there is nowhere to go astray, there is no going astray.
Although there is an innumerable variety of profound practices, they do not exist for your mind in its true state.

Since there are no two such things as practice and practitioner, if, by those who practice or do not practice, the practitioner of practice is seen to not exist, thereupon the goal of practice is reached and also the end of practice itself.
Padmasambhava
 
Of course the above statements are made from a mind free from the restraints most of us live under, for as another Yogi said:

“The disciple is a being whose essential nature is Knowledge, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Then there is no need to give him knowledge but simply to remove the veil of ignorance that hides the existent Knowledge. This, of course, is not to be done at one stroke, since the disciple is immersed in age-old ignorance and needs repeated instruction, perhaps through life after life. And what is this instruction through speech about what is beyond speech? Isn’t it like removing the cover? Ignorance conceals the pre-existent Knowledge just as water plants cover the surface of a pond. Clear away the plants and you have the water. You don’t have to create it; it is already there. Or take another example—a cataract grows on the eye and prevents a man from seeing; remove the cataract and he sees. Ignorance is the cataract. The universe is the efflorescence of the indescribable Maya, which is ignorance; yet ignorance is needed to illuminate and dissolve ignorance … Jnana is not something to be attained, it is eternal and self-existent. On the other hand, ignorance has a cause and an end. The root of it is the idea that the devotee is a separate being from God. Remove this, and what remains is Jnana. (Jnana refers to pure awareness that is free of conceptual encumbrances – See The way of Mary ”-

So the virgin posture of the soul is an attempt to bring about an inner state, an inner feeling of fertility and love towards your invisible and unknown potential - purity from preconceived ideas - the offering of your whole being as material for your potential to use in creating a new self - the act of supplication in which you let go of your thoughts, emotions and body, so they can be played upon as a piano or organ by Life. There should arise a feeling of warmth toward and desire for the unseen Life, openness to any possibility Life may have in store for you, good or bad, allied with trust. If you have a temperament capable of this, then make it an act of love, a real devotion, approaching ones darling.
 
T


« Last Edit: August 19, 2021, 09:21:59 AM by Tony Crisp »

Romanov

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #7 on: August 14, 2021, 08:29:12 PM »
Dear Tony,

Your responses are always worth being weighed in gold.  8)

That said, I will not pretend to understand everything you have said, but at the same time, I think I do.

When I turned 40 (which was quite sometime ago), I had done major work on my psychological being. The first thing was to get rid of the negative influences on the self.  The influences that took too much head space and wasted so much life.  And in a lot of ways that was enough. As you said you remove the water plants and there is water. I removed those thoughts, and I found myself (it was a humongous task, but at least I got there).  That work also revealed to me, that all you need is inside of you.  And all you really need is you.

Despite doing so much hard work in the past, I am back to being stuck in a loop.  Same influences, same thoughts, and unable to get to the core of self, that operates me so well, where lies my peace.

Maybe its psychological laziness, or maybe I am just tired of this struggle, and for once, I just wanted Higher Being to intervene for me.

But apparently the Higher Being is telling me to get my act together.  So let's see.

Waiting for your book to be published soon.

Stay healthy. Stay blessed.

Love
Romanov

Tony Crisp

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Re: Circle within a circle
« Reply #8 on: August 19, 2021, 10:17:02 AM »
Romanov - As I have grown old I become a silly old man who is deeply moved by almost everything i experience.   

And from that I want to shout - "You are Freaking right." Or something similar to that. :-}

Well - I am back to being stuck in a loop.

Once when I was really stuck in the loop - So, the whole feeling at that point was that there was no way through, that my life is now in backwaters, or even stagnant waters out if which there is no way. If there was any real lesson to be learned it was that I need to accept this, not to fight it and feel distressed by it as I have. If this is a new phase of my life, struggling against it only leads to pain and conflict.

As I looked at this, as I was wondering how to come to terms with being a second-class sort of person in a second-class life situation. I started thinking about all the potential and mental possibilities I have touched in the past. How could it be that I had come through so many things, transcended myself in so many ways, and yet at the moment I am locked in this apparent decay and decline? Has all the past been an illusion? Have I declined so much that all the power and wonder of my previous growth is now lost to me?

I know I am capable of creative resolution of any problem, of any life situation. I know we are all capable of creative resolution - if we are daring enough to feel, to explore, to sense, to be capable of change and adaptation. So, why have I been in this situation for years now? Why am I stuck in this place?

Having asked this question I had an insight that I had got into a negative feedback loop. Because I had got stuck in this place, then I feared I was stuck in this place, which produced the certainty I was stuck, which produced the inability to move out. We feed back to ourselves images of failure and feelings of unattractiveness, and all the other negative feelings we all meet during the week. Instead of looking at them and seeing them as passing feelings, we take them as impressions of reality and drown in them. We accept them as true and start to live them. When that happens we see conformation for the negatives and so it goes on.

I tried to find the way out of the loop. The only way out I could find was the realisation that the loop has no end. There is only one thing to do, stop it playing. Grab it and stop the crazy record. To help with this, to help grab the thing and kill it, we obviously have to realise it is untrue. If we still believe the loop to be playing a truth, then we only strengthen the action. So, for its cessation we need to realise that our sense of self is a constantly moving fragile thing that has no stable reality. We really aren’t ANYTHING - for if we were a real thing we wouldn't go through such continuous changes. So how can we be a failure, or a success, or great, or of no account, or any thought or feeling? No thought or feeling represents our reality. No feeling, or sense of ourselves, is anything more than a sense, a feeling, it is not us. So, how could this feeling represent some sort of permanent personal reality?

The end of the loop and he escape from it occurred when I realised I had been lying to myself not believing my marriage had fallen apart. So maybe you are locked in some belief. For example for a whole year I was not moving, was stuck until I accepted my failure in something.

But there is also the need to die or what Laing call, "A sort of death" as you journey further in. As you said, "All you need is inside of you".

Each of us is immersed in a ‘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 our future. And this is a force of growth and change; and is fought like hell by many as they are afraid of such changes, especially getting old and facing death.

Tony.