Posts Tagged ‘life-decisions’
Be Warned
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Thousands of Americans have non-violently occupied Wall St — an epicentre of global financial power and corruption. They are the latest ray of light in a new movement for social justice that is spreading like wildfire from Madrid to Jerusalem to 146 other cities and counting. Quoted from Avaaz-The World in Action. |
“As working families pay the bill for a financial crisis caused by corrupt elites, the protesters are calling for real democracy, social justice and anti-corruption. But they are under severe pressure from authorities, and some media are dismissing them as fringe groups.”
When any great world changes are approaching people experience warning dreams and visions – (a vision is a waking dream. See: Visions.) As an example of this I experienced an incredible dream and two such visions. One occurred to me on January the 3rd 2003. And the information that arose from that dream warned me of the world upheavals to come. Like a tsunami, massive world changes start out of sight, and then they appear and we are not ready for it.
Because I am interested in exploring my dreams I made an effort to work on what was an extraordinary dream. What I experienced with great force was a meeting with the creative forces of our individual lives, our world and the Cosmos. I understood from this meeting that we as humans have not been the custodians of earth and its creatures, but were like a massive attack and greed. I then understood that a very powerful change was arriving. This was understood as a change of season rather than any form of punishment. It seemed from what I understood that there are enormous forces that act upon humans and can act destructively or to our good. Just as when the temperature changes enormously people die of heat or cold, so global forces can cause enormous disruption unless we understand them and learn to work with them.
So what I learned was that the changes would have an effect on individuals and society similar to an earthquake. It shakes up everything so that if the person or social structures do not have a sound foundations the person or the structure will fall. Most of us have heard this – “Built your house upon a rock and not a upon the sand.”
There was another influence acting upon us in this season. It is a force that pulls down the weak. Considering the inequality, greed, corruption and aggression in governments, businesses and society, there is an awful lot of sickness in humanity and our creations. A recent report said that . It found that 38% of the population in Europe suffers from mental disorders, and that disorders of the brain account for about 26.6% of the total disease burden. USA has an even higher percentage, and all of this shows how much out of balance we are as a society and as individuals.
Those things are inner weaknesses. In a way, what is weak shakes itself to bits through its own internal energy. It self destructs because it is not connected with life giving forces, especially when outside stress challenges it. As a society we are full of self grabbing and self centredness. If a tree does not integrate the fundamental life giving forces of the sun, the bacteria and microbes at its root, it dies. So do we as a society, if we are not connected to what gives us life, die. See 2012 Predictions
Prophecies of Edgar Cayce
Cayce, in his state of sleep in which he got all his amazing information says, “As for the future of mankind, shortly after the year 2000 A.D., Christ will manifest himself to the world once again to usher in a new era, a one thousand year period of world peace and righteousness, the age of Aquarius (the water-bearer). The end of the Age of Pisces (the fish, the symbol for the Christian church) is upon us. But before peace and righteousness comes, the earth will undergo catastrophic disasters upon civilization. These disasters will force mankind to once again rely on nature, God, and other people to create harmony and stop all war, evilness, and end the continuing desecration of this planet. As in the days of the dinosaurs, the days of Atlantis, and the days of Noah, civilization also experiences a process of evolutionary renewal from time to time that leads to perfection. The earth has a mind of its own and it cleanses itself of impurities as a single organism does.
Each soul came to earth not by chance, but through the grace, the mercy, of a loving Father; that the soul may, through its own choice, work out those faults which prevent its communion and at-onement with God.
What we Face
We can already see huge changes occurring in the world, as witnessed in recent global economic turmoil. But until 2012 we must live in uncertainty as to whether the prophesy is correct in saying a very different world order will exist. What you can be certain of though is that you have already lived through and survived enormous world changes. These changes presented you with a totally new world that you managed to meet and adapt to, even enjoy and take advantage of. And if you take time to remember these tremendous times of change and how you managed them, it will stand you in a place of strength to meet anything the future will bring.
So, how did you survive a complete physical change as your body moved from being a baby to a child? How did you navigate the shifting world as you left childhood behind and became a very different creature in adolescence? Then again, events transformed your body and mind as you entered the world of young adulthood. How did you ride these rocky rapids of change when you not only had a new body and glandular system, but you were confronted by a completely different way of responding to the world?
Think about it – you are an amazing being to pass through such enormous changes and survive.
Well – how did you manage those incredible times of change? There may have been really tough stretches when the going was hard, so what did you do and what did you learn? Did you think it all out? Did you plot a course? What resources did you use? How did you know what direction to take?
It really is worth taking time to look back at that journey to understand more fully how it was done. Or if you are in the middle of it at the moment, how it is being met.
Having made the journey myself into being a senior survivor I can see that at times I didn’t have a clue what was coming next or how to get there. That was true not only in the shift from childhood to being a teenager, but also at times in my adult life. The new and unknown that is coming may be outside of you in the world. A lot of the time though it is also coming from inside you. My teenager grew from inside me. Fortunately I let it happen most of the time. Though I did have a hell of struggle with emerging sexual feelings, and some people struggle with their self image, or food.
Certain things stand out for about those times of enormous rebirth. I think they may be as true for you as for me.
Firstly, life in me knew where to go and how to do it. I guess I should have known that. After all life is millions of years old. But my education didn’t help me to believe in myself in that way. In fact quite a lot of what had been passed on to me set me in opposition to myself, to Life. If not that then it misinformed me. It took me an age to undo some of those mistakes.
Next, being in some ways in opposition to my natural growth meant that I killed out some of the most precious parts of me that would otherwise have emerged and flourished in my life. This may sound strange, but our culture sometimes trains us to be afraid of who we really are, to be afraid of the process of Life in us. The pressure to conform is so great we hold back some of the most important parts of our own nature. Having worked as a therapist with people I learned that a major part of the work was to help people unblock the parts of themselves that had been repressed or damaged.
The lessons to learn from this is that what is arriving in the world and from within ourselves is often unknown. As a child we don’t know what our future is, but we can trust our innate life process to grow us into it. The mistake is to feel we know who we have to be, or copy other people, and we may then prevent the best in us from emerging. When we freely allow our full emergence our passions, fascinations and natural growth lead us toward our own future. We only feel lost when we have repressed those parts of us or they were damaged in our early years.
What rock can we build upon?
We are making decisions every moment of our waking life – and each of these decisions shapes who you are and your future, it literally creates your future and the future of the world around you. Mostly we make these decisions unconsciously, we make them out of external pressures. I remember when, as a young boy standing with a friend in a huge bombed area where miles of London had been destroyed during the war, we were looking at a lone standing box for letters. My friend was ready to take them out and see if there was money in them. I was firmly saying “No”. As we stood there wondering a policeman stepped out from behind crumbling wall. He had a smile because he had witnessed the whole process of decision making.
That may sound like childish situation, but it is out of tiny things like that we create who we are. And if you ask yourself what is behind the decisions you make you will come to enormous insights. I mean it. Take time to consider the decisions you have made in life, and see the consequences. And if your life is a massive misdirection, ask yourself what was behind the decisions.
Considering the way many people create their life, people we know now have swindled the nation out of billions, we can see the forces behind the tremendous dream I had – saying that individuals and even societies will crumble as they are shaken.
Also what you believe is a shaper of you. It is wise to remember that we are always a dynamic action of opposites. If you believe one thing totally it will create imbalance. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk
So the rock to build upon is to consider whether you are motivated to make decisions out of greed, out of being pressurised to sell yourself, out of a stupid fashion and the hard sell that tries to capture you and your money. Make decisions consciously, and if you have any sense of what you know to be your highest balanced motivations decide from there.
The Groundswell
Another ‘vision’ I experienced some time later I recorded as follows:
Did you feel that?! Seemed like the ground moved. Not like a shake or quake, More like a swell, A rolling shifting in slow motion. Then it was gone.
So I ran to a hill Beyond my house, Where I could see things On a grander scale. And there it was, So slow you would miss it If you stared straight at it.
Waves were rolling across the landscape. Dear God — it was powerful to watch, To see it building up, To glimpse the changes it was moving toward. And as I looked, I saw the tension of that groundswell Mounting in the West. I felt the earth move again, And saw at last the people in their millions Powering the waves.
Frustration, tension, energy, Forming like an earthquake Looking for the trigger, The direction, the release for that terrible, Wonderful energy to flow. People, the sea, the earth, All one thing. No separation. Bodies, mind, energy, The earth and sea moving as one.
Then, on the horizon I could see it coming. I saw that awe-full power, Shifting and transforming The shape of things. Pushing over the old forms. Like some new strength of a growing thing, Splitting open rocks, And pushing obstacles aside. Truly a wonder. Somehow no more destructive than Spring, Breaking open the old seed cases, And transforming into the new.
And here it comes – People finding a focus for their longing for change. Finding a trigger of release To shatter the old imprisonment Of manipulation by a system Needing ever greater production and destruction – Ever greater conflict with opposing views.
Here it comes – That transcending moment Of a catalyst — a union Of millions seeking release – A focus for that new life – Technological breakthrough – A ground swell Changing the face of things.
The Magical Dream Machine
We all dream every night, so we each have what could be called a Magical Dream Machine.
To gain a feeling of this, imagine yourself entering one of those game machine areas where youngsters can ride a motorbike, or ski down a slope. But instead of a simulation of a car, you discover a large machine that you can climb into and become completely enclosed. When you close the door, contacts link onto your body and head in the complete darkness. It is quiet as all the external sounds disappear, and you relax your hold on your body and senses. Your whole experience of yourself shifts as the external world melts away, along with your awareness of your body. That is sleep.
But now – in the darkness a light glimmers. Gradually it takes shape. The shape of a person is suggested. In the time that follows he or she evolves form, moves, and you have full sensory experience. You are totally involved, with all your emotions and sexual responses. Changes occur and you love, fight, fear, murder or bring to life again the person, who can become an animal, a devil, God or a bodiless voice lost in a sombre countryside. Your experiences are totally real, and you move through heaven and hell, despair and joy, darkness and light. Scenes from your past can be revisited – or totally new experiences can be felt so clearly, you are enriched. That is a dream.
Seeing Is Not Believing
If you had been in such a machine, and on coming out of the total involvement of these moving experiences, you were told you had created it all yourself – that on the black screen you had, out of your fears, habits, secret longings and passion; out of your immense store of memories; with your unbelievable range of feelings and creativity – you had given form to urges and processes in your body and made this rich world of experience, what would you feel? Would you disclaim responsibility? Would you consider it meaningless? Would you realise what amazing creativity and potential you have?
In your dreams you create such a world and such experiences. But perhaps you have not taken time to consider the wonder of your creative process in dreams. Every night you create a new drama. You conjure out of your own being the people, the creatures, the surroundings of your dream. Then you give life to what you create – not only life but purpose and drama. You are a supreme dramatist, playwright, actor and actress. You are the great Creator – in your dreams. Considering this, have you ever wondered why that enormous creativity does not flow into your waking life? You can see that some people have that creativity and are enriched by it personally and financially. Why not you?
But what is the REAL world?
In considering how you reply to this, remember a few well-known facts about how you encounter the so-called ‘real’ world of waking life. Firstly, when you look at an object such as an orange or apple, remember that although you have the sense of seeing what colour and texture the fruit has, in fact all you are seeing is reflected light. You never see the actual colour of the object.
Also, as far as texture is concerned, this is a mystery to you. Texture depends entirely on what you approach the fruit with. If it is an electron microscope, then the texture is one of shifting swirling atoms and subatomic particles. If you were tiny the apple would have a very different appearance than it does to you at your present size. Also, remember that you never actually know what the apple feels like or looks like directly. Your eye takes in streams of light that are translated into nervous impulses transmitted along the optic nerve. In the brain these nerve impulses are again translated into an image that enables you to have some relationship with an apparently external world. In the same way the nerve endings on your fingers transmit signals that are translated into sensation.
Similarly the television picture you watch on a screen is translated from signals the TV set is sensitive to and changes into pictures, colour and sound. The signals are not in themselves images, colour or sound. So, like the TV, the world you feel so sure you are seeing and experiencing, is one your brain has created in order to enable you to deal with survival. Even so it is a translation of ‘the world’ that has been shaped by evolution and its limited needs. You only respond to very narrow wavebands of light and sound for instance. So you do not know much of what is actually going on in the world anyway. Your eye, as a lens produces an upside down image of your surroundings, and this is ‘corrected’ to help you move around more easily.
Considering that you only experience a virtual reality of the external world created by your brain – and that is itself limited to a tiny fraction of what is actually surrounding you – you cannot take seriously your perceptions of the world or people. There are so many radiations, energies, and depth upon depth of texture in the cosmos and objects around us, that in effect we are blind and deaf. See Inner World
You Are the Creator
So it is true to say that you live in a world, in conceptions of yourself and your surroundings that are a self-created virtual reality. You could just as correctly be asked the question of whether you accept that you create all you experience in regard to the objective world, as you could of the magical dream machine.
However, we are discussing dreams, but remember that what is said could equally as well refer to your waking life.
So, your dreams are a magical place in that you have the ability in them to create a totally real world. Do you discount them? Do you see that you create your own world of experience in them? If you do, have you wondered why you may have a propensity for creating what you do? Or why, with such creative potential, you might still lack self-confidence? Just as you create your surroundings in dreams, you also create the psychological and sensory world you live in. Understanding your dreams can help you to clarify why you at times create what does not satisfy you, and how to generate a whole new world of experience. You can take charge of your creativity and ride with it instead of being at its mercy. Such power, after all, can as easily produce misery and ill health as pleasure and ability – unless you learn to direct it. Such creativity can lead you into hell, or create a heaven.
A few magic words to remember to say to yourself – “I have the magical power of creation. So I can create a hell for myself or a heaven. I have immense ranges of ability and problem solving. So here I go in believing in myself!”
Amazing Storehouse of the Mind
Although you constantly use the huge storehouse of memory and developed skills in your everyday life, you may usually fail to recognise what you are doing, and what a miracle it is. As an example, you now hold in store millions of bits of information. By asking you a simple question such as ‘What is your present home address?’ I can call to conscious awareness a minute part of the information lying unconscious. If I were to present you with a bicycle, or you were dropped in deep water, the skill of cycling or swimming could also emerge from latency if you had previously learned those skills.
Apart from these aspects of your immense storage of information, there is also the possibility that by the right series of questions or experience, you could arrive at a creative synthesis of information already held. In other words something not previously held in memory could arise by putting together old ideas or experiences. With the right stimulus, in the same way you could bring to expression potential within you that is at the moment lying dormant.
While we dream we have a very full access to the storehouse of our experience. If we learn to use the dream process we can more capably use the riches of what usually lies unconscious like treasures at the bottom of the ocean. There is a natural process of putting together the separate pieces of your experience into creative new combinations. All of this can be accessed by exploring the treasures held in your dreams and the dream process. See Using Your Intuition; Clicking On
Mind Watching
Because of the many nature films shown on television we are now used to the idea of mature and intelligent adults spending days or years watching the behaviour of animals such as hyenas or chimpanzees. In her book In The Shadow of Man, Jane Von Lawick Goodall explains how, by watching chimpanzees and taking note of her observations, radical new insight into the behaviour of chimpanzees arose. She didn’t think beforehand what she expected to find, but simply observed and put together the information that arose. For instance on several occasions she saw the chimpanzees kill another animal and eat its flesh. The knowledge that chimpanzees were meat eaters was entirely new.
In a similar way, by observing dreams and laying bare the emotions and associated ideas and memories you have with your dream imagery, you gradually define your personality, its strengths and weaknesses, in a depth you had never managed previously. I have called this mind watching, but it covers every aspect of human nature, not simply the intellect or thinking. See Self Help
This mind watching through observation of your dreams first presents information about your personal experiences and memories and how they influenced your growth and influence present responses. Gradually the information arising from such watching leads beyond your present boundaries of self. It shows in many cases how your unique self has arisen from, and has indissoluble links with your forebears, with your culture, with the past as a whole, and with the cosmos itself. It leads from yourself to the edge of the known, and perhaps helps you take a few steps beyond that edge into the unknown, to create new understanding, and enter new dimensions of experience.
Remember that you are probably one of the millions of humans suffering amnesia. If you doubt this ask yourself why you do not remember your childhood. No doubt you have also forgotten your life as a baby. You fail to remember your life in the womb. Perhaps, more importantly, you have also forgotten your link with the rest of the cosmos. In fact you are an amnesiac, and by ‘dream watching’ your memory can gradually be restored. It takes time and perseverance, but gradually the time line of your existence will be filled with detail.
This mind watching also gradually reveals to you the many aspects of your mind’s working, and with such insight may come the growing ability to use these facets of yourself. Not only may you discover great vistas of personal memory, but also the roots of your creativity, the subtle senses of your emotions and unconscious, and the treasures of experience you have gathered.
The Path To Take
There are many methods you can use to discover the enormous content within your dreams. For instance look at the following features and explore them to discover what works best for you: Introduction to DreamWatching; The AmplificationMethod – PeerDream Group – Active Imagination.
Another method that can be used with great benefit if you are a person who meditates, is as follows:
The meditation method of dream understanding rests on the function of memory. The aim is to hold the dream in mind, and at the same time hold the question of what are the activities, passions, memories or pains in you that have formed the dream?
You hold this question in the same way that you hold any question – such as the one asked above about your address. Do not strive, and do not struggle to arrive at an answer. Simply sit and WATCH the dark space of your mind and feelings. Take note of whatever memories, feelings and fantasies arise.
It helps to think of your being as a keyboard that your unconscious knowledge and intuitions can play upon. Holding your self stiffly, in mind or body blocks this mobility. See the passage on using the body in dream work for further information.
This may not be a quick method. So be patient, even when nothing seems to be happening. The mind is a wonderfully responsive thing, and will attempt to present what you are seeking. But at first perhaps only stray memories or feelings will arise. Also, the insight might require you to feel something deeply, so be ready for that and let it happen if you can.
Over a period of days gradually more and more will arise, and it is worth the time spent in the exploration. But do not be content with airy-fairy insight. Do not make the dream a platitude or a cliché. Dreams are powerful expressions of your down to earth, here and now self. You will know if you have arrived at insight because it will be deeply moving and clarify areas of your life that were previously obscure.
It is important to consider what you have received and weigh it against practical observation. See if there is something you can learn from it and apply. Test it wherever practical. Do not be afraid to doubt it and try it against the world. If you are not accessing the best in yourself you need to know it. This avoids the trap of wanting your intuitions about your dream to be true at any cost. The intuitions arising from the meditation method are a valid way of gaining information, just as your senses are, or your ability to read. But your senses and your ability to read can also be ways in which false information is taken in. So your discrimination is needed when using your intuition, as it is in everyday life. The more you use it the more sharp your faculty will become. But discrimination must not act as a source of doubt that blocks your ability to receive spontaneous information.
The Hidden Buttons in the Machine
One of the things we take for granted in our experience of the world is that there are many possibilities hidden in nature that nature itself does not express. For instance lightning is one of the few ways nature expresses electricity. But as a species we have learned there are many other possibilities for the use of electricity. By directing it in various ways we can produce heat, light, sound, power to move things, and pictures as we see on the television, PC monitor or in the cinema.
This applies also to our own body and personality. The example we can use here is the drive towards sex. This has developed in us through millions of years of evolution in the process of reproduction. This gradual development has formed organs and traits, such as courting behaviour, that lead directly toward an attempt to plant the seeds or receive the seeds to reproduce.
In our own culture we largely accept this except where there is psychological trauma that may prevent a normal expression of sexual drive. We have the unconscious concept that there is no other possibility. This is rather like looking at lightning and saying, “Well, that’s how nature does it, and that is the only possible way it can be experienced.” But some other cultures have looked upon the sexual drive in a similar way that we have looked upon electricity. They have explored its possibilities.
To explain what they found, and its relevance to what is being said about your personal potential, we need to remember that in nature the electricity in the lightning simply earths itself. All that tremendous energy flows into the earth. What we have learned to do is to put something in between the flow, such as an electric fire or a television set. In this way the flow back to earth produces many different phenomena. New potentials of the electricity are manifest.
Although this is an analogy, we could say the same thing about human sexuality. The discharge of feelings and body fluids in sexual orgasm and ejaculation are like the flowing back to earth. Nature does its thing and the energy is gone. In most human sexuality today there is not even the possibility of reproduction. What other cultures have developed is the concept of this as energy. They say that this energy is potentially many other things than physical reproduction. So they divert the energy into the body toward the brain, rather than out of the body to be earthed. The results of this when successful are extended functions of the brain and senses.
The techniques and teachings lying behind yoga are fundamentally about recognising the potentials lying dormant in you and learning to use them. The eastern cultures, far more than is true in the West, have developed techniques to extend possibilities of human life. See Kundalini
Bringing this back to the “Magical Dream Machine”, once we recognise the enormous creative potential we have, and that we can see active in our dreams, we can begin to realise we are only at the foothills of the possibilities open to us. For a start, millions of tonnes of drugs are taken each year to deal with depression. Yet here we each are, capable of creating a full surround virtual reality, with extraordinary people and creatures, but we are still victims of our own feelings and fears. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that a tragedy? See – Avoid Being Victims; Life’s Little Secrets; Archetype of the Paradigm –
Take the journey! Learn how your magical dream machine works. Find out which buttons you unconsciously press to create heaven and which buttons you press to create hell! Create your own music. Create your own life!
Birth Dreams and ones Natal Experience
Few people who have not re-experienced it for themselves, can believe, or comprehend, the enormous influence ones birth has upon personal development and adult behaviour and feelings. Many images in dreams link directly to the influences/memories still alive within us relating to our birth. Being in a tight place and struggling to escape, being under water without breathing, being strangled, crawling through a tunnel, coming out of a pool of water, difficulty in breathing – may all relate to birth experiences. See: active imagination.
The experience of being in the womb and of being born lie at the very foundation of all we learn and accomplish in the further years of our growth. The way we react to that earliest of life dramas defines the way we react to later situations. I am not saying such reactions emerge from a self-aware centre in the baby – far from it, but like any other mammal or living creature, we as a baby can learn conditioned reflexes to given situations. We can and do make a sort of ‘life decision’ about things, a decision in the form of a massive feeling response.
So, if for instance the emergence into life outside the womb is difficult and without any compensation of loving contact and welcome, we might very well have a deep feeling of withdrawal, of not wanting to be ‘here’ in the external world. In later life this will be experienced as difficulty in wanting to be involved in everyday life or other people.
The psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor has written extensively about the subject of birth dreams, and gives the example of a woman who was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and in adult life frequently dreamt of being strangled. Also an example is quoted of a person who received a head injury during birth, and in adult life frequently dreamt of being scalped.
Such stories are of course not definite evidence for the influence of birth experience in later life. But I believe it is something that is very important to consider in any attempt to understand ones adult behaviour or tendencies. I myself was born two months premature, at a time when there was no intensive care in hospitals for such babies. My recovered memories of that experience, gained from working with dreams, are intense and have convinced me that enormous personal difficulties regarding relationship with people and with meeting opportunity in life, have their roots in my premature birth. My memories revealed to me that being born so early left me feeling physically and psychologically inadequate to relate to and deal with independent life. My digestive system was immature, as were my breathing organs. My vulnerability caused my mother anxiety, leading to a lack of bonding between us. In my condition I needed months of being held close to her body and bathed in feelings of confidence and care. Instead of that I felt deeply anxious and alone. My lack of psychological readiness to be in the world also meant that I had an inner feeling of not being as capable as most of my peers. The constant desire to be back in the womb remained into adult life. I didn’t know that my interest in meditation and the unconscious was in fact a desire to find the ‘heaven’ of life in the womb again. This fixation of delving deeper into my inner life also caused a lack of understanding of motives that led other people to grasp opportunity in external life. In fact external life didn’t mean much at all to me. The disruption this caused in achievement and in feeling a part of everyday social interaction has been enormous. Now, seeing the extraordinarily premature babies who are kept alive, I cannot help but feel pity for what they will face as adults.
Whatever it is we may have lost during our birth, or whatever gained in the way of painful or disruptive decisions and conditioned reflexes, our dreams try to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that was our life in the womb. They try to recreate the scene of the expulsion from Eden, so we can understand and perhaps grow beyond the afflictions gained at that time. To lead us back to this recovery of our lost selfhood or wholeness, our dreams represent our story in symbols or in a sort of personal mythology. As I have explained in the feature active imagination, finding ones way through the imagery back to direct meeting with oneself as the baby, needs certain skills to be learnt and practised. Without these skills, or the help of someone who can introduce us to the skills, we may become lost in the shifting world or imagery and imagination, where resistances to meeting our pain play with us in a shadow world of truths disguised in dream landscapes and imagery.
Van de Castle quotes the description of Jane English, a physicist who writes about her dreams and how they helped her uncover the influence of her caesarean birth on her life – (her book is Different Doorway: Adventures of a Caesarean Birth.) Jane’s dreams were not direct expressions of a birth situation, but held within the symbols the feelings and sense of being overwhelmed that when met and allowed more fully into consciousness, led to the direct insights into her birth.
There appear to be several reason why dreams do not directly represent such early experiences and experience resistances. One is that they have never been thought about, or been a part of the refined imagery and concepts which arise as we learn language. Another is that they are usually intense body and feelings experiences, and to truly remember or represent them, needs us to actually feel emotions and physical sensation at that intensity again – something few adults are willing to do. Such memories are not neatly separated off from our personality and labelled ‘birth memories’. They usually arise as intense emotional reactions which we fully identify with and do not necessarily see as having to do with anything more than present experience. Many a relationship has foundered because the powerful emotional response in a marriage has not been seen as relevant to birth rather than to a problem in the marriage.
A report of a man experiencing the trauma of premature birth
The man was born prematurely in the 1930’s, before great efforts were made to care for such babies.
so this premature baby was thrown aside after its umbilical cord was cut and the baby was not breathing. This led to the infant meeting death, but fortunately his grandmother took hold of his body and bathed it in hit and cold water and his breathing started.
“I am so alone. Even when someone loves me I can’t feel it. I want to change. I don’t want to keep hurting. My wife feels like she is feeling like she isn’t there at an emotional level. But that is the feeling world I have lived in – who is there for me? I was part of something and I lost it. I was part of something that was good, and I lost it. I was a part of a woman and I lost her. I was rejected. Now I face this struggle just to exist, just to breath, just to be. This feeling of life being a terrible struggle just to keep going has pervaded me all my life. I’ve got to struggle to exist just to keep alive. Got to struggle just to keep alive! GOT TO STRUGGLE TO EXIST – JUST TO KEEP ALIVE! GOT TO STRUGGLE BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING THERE. I WANT SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO. I’VE GOT TO STRUGGLE JUST TO KEEP ALIVE.
I cry like a baby. The question burns in me – Why is life like this? I cry again. Then I realise that at first when I was born I was too small and undeveloped even to be able to cry properly, so I couldn’t let out my misery. It is such a relief to cry now and be understood, to have known what I felt at that terrible time.
I am aware of my connection with my stream of life having been broken – the umbilical cord. What I realise as the adult watching this, is that because of its proximity to the genitals, there is an unconscious connection made between the genitals and the connection I seek to sustain my life. So even as a baby I am reaching for that connection with my genitals. I want to be fed. I attempt to reconnect through my genitals, but the pain of the separation is so acute even when I do try in adulthood through sex, the pain of the separation turns me back. This is the story of the Garden of Eden. I was in the garden and was cast out. Now when I attempt to return, an angel with a burning sword turns me back. Not only was it painful every time I attempted reconnection/sex, but I had the unconscious expectation to be fed, to be nourished. Instead of that every time I had sex I felt cheated, deceived and betrayed. I was not fed, but deeply sucked dry of what small nourishment I had managed to build up. I wasn’t fed, I was fed upon by a predator. Each sexual act was a betrayal, a predation, and a torturous pain. Yet I had to find my way to the garden again, because there lay the secret of my genesis and myself. So, I would return, to be wounded once more. It is even painful to look back on those years of misery now. Why is life so painful?”
When you experiences a dream which may relate to your birth, one of the most helpful tool’s to use in exploring the deeper levels of the dream associations is fantasy or active imagination. Skill in using fantasy can help you create an environment in which the spontaneous processes of the psyche are set free, enough at least to move beyond the boundaries of common experience and present the strange, awful, wonderful world of babyhood. See Processing Dreams – Opening to Life
In doing this certain basic psycho-physical facts are worth remembering.
Firstly the self regulatory process underlying the fact that your body and mind are still functioning without your conscious effort, holds in it the continuous move to heal whatever hurts you experienced. It does this by pushing those experiences toward your conscious awareness in any way it can. The depressed feelings, psychosomatic body pains, irrational reaction we have to some situations, and of course the strange and sometimes frightening dreams we experience, are all ways this process attempts to make conscious what was hidden.
Secondly, the difficulties we need to deal with are all lined up just beneath conscious awareness, like a queue behind a closed door waiting to come through.
Thirdly, the reason things do not surface, become known and resolved is because we resist them. These resistances are obvious and need to be meet for healing to take place. Dreamers wake with terror from a nightmare for instance and desire nothing more than to blot it out from their feelings. The nightmare is an attempt to make conscious the intense feelings from a trauma, but we resist this because we have not learned the ability to witness such feelings and personal emotions without fear. Another resistance is the automatic withdrawal from pain. Just as we automatically draw our hand away from a hot surface, so we draw our awareness away from a painful memory. The methods we use are many – using redirected attention, as when we rush to entertainment, alcohol, talking with friends, nicotine, breath holding, and so on.
Such resistances are the main reason we do not find healing through dreaming, even though dreams are constantly trying to heal us. Of course another one seen in massive number of dreams is fear. Fear acts just like pain to make us avoid/resist the action of dreams.
So recognising these processes in oneself is the first step to self discovery. See: Integration – Meeting yourself – active imagination; self regulation fantasy and dreaming; Life’s Little Secrets; fundamental processes; self regulation; lifestream – A Psychotherapeutic Experience of Premature Birth
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