Archive for the ‘Dreams’ Category

A friend of mine, after reading “Fighting Against Monsters: Dreams of an Apprentice Warrior”, wrote me sending her dream. Besides being a an useful dream for many women, I want to publicly comment it to make justice to the “monsters”.

“I was at home, at night, getting ready to go to sleep. It happened that there was a black animal after me, half snake and, at certain point of its tail, half lizard, its tongue in and out, and always following me. I was scary to death, I moved through the rooms trying to sleep, but the monster was always after me, walking slowly. My husband told me not to be afraid, that it would do nothing bad. But I couldn’t trust it, until I as so tire that I decided to stop in a particular room and the animal did the same. I was laying down and looking at him. After stopping at my side, it turned into an undefined gray thing. I couldn’t devise its shape, but only distinguish the head from the body. It was as if, at my side, it wanted to camouflage itself, it closed its eyes, its  color was as gray as stone, and it stayed with its eyed very closed. And I, looking at him all the time, was afraid it could attack me. As I couldn’t sleep, I always moved in the house, and it always followed me. When I stopped, it also stopped and laid down, it changed come next to me and changed its form, from snake-lizard to a shapeless figure. Actually, it didn’t attack me, but I only was able to sleep after closing a door and putting a fabric on the floor underneath the door. I thought the animal would be able to find a way to break in, but it didn’t followed me. Finally, I slept in my dream, and I awake from the dream. My feeling was so real, I felt very scared and the animal looked quite real, but I didn’t feel in panic.”

Clearly, the reading of my article stimulated a new awareness about something that was already inside the dreamer. Thus, now, she was able to see what was dragging after her, what was at her side, day and night, night and day. Now she knows, and can’t keep this reality locked in some closet of her internal house.

The dream also brings another information: beside existing and always following her, the black monster doesn’t threaten her integrity. In the dream there is no conflict, only the shocking sight of the monster at her side. Although certainly not pleasant, it’s not dangerous.

It’s when she moves that the animal becomes visible, when she’s still it lives camouflaged, very quiet, closing its eyes. To me, it looks tender…

This is the black animal that follows the good girls (and this one I know is a very good girl, although not fool). The more they stay quiet in life, not making trouble and not moving from “their place”, the more the little monster lives hidden, as a shapeless and invisible shadow. However, when they dare to venture themselves around, when they want more, they demand, they put limits, think more and all these things that generate “confusion” and “discomfort”, our black friend gets out from the shadows, heavy and slow, and acquire a figure.

In my friend’s case, the animal is between the snake that drags itself on the ground, with no legs, and its more evolved cousin, the lizard. By the kind of animals they are, I guess that she has a long way ahead, for they are cold blood animals at the beginning of the evolutionary chain. To get to the human shape there’s quite a distance. This means that the potential that this animal represents is remote from the dreamer’s consciousness. With conscious psychological work (whose time is out of the physical time) this monstrous figure will turn into Prince Charming, who all women expect. He will be the handsome masculine, with an original project in life, vision and courage. Thanks to him, the dreamer’s unconscious contents will be available and handy to make her journey on Earth a creative passage.

Meanwhile, let’s see what the snake, which still looks like stone and in movement is a snake-lizard, means. The serpent zigzags on the ground as the gods’ lightening zigzag in the sky. Both are synonyms of energy, that potent one that shakes and brings news. Because of its changing of the skin, the snake is the symbol of transformation, therefore it represent the evolutionary energy that agitates inside, moving, and leading to dare.

What’s concretely in the dreamer’s life does it mean? She, herself, explains it, without knowing it, when she writes:

“In theses days when I was playing chess, I could realize why I was losing the game. I really can think straight when playing, but I never attack the opponent. I keep defending and defending myself, until I get to the point that I have nothing else to play and I receive a checkmate. I think I need to learn to attack, face the threatening situations that show up in my life.”

This is it, my friend. The potential is at your side. It hasn’t a handsome form because you have used it very little. With a proper training, which will be achieved acting in the small things of the every day life, it will turn into a beautiful Animus at your service. Give your welcome to the black animal.

There are phases in life when we become aware that reality is not the way we thought and, most of all, that we need to decide who we want to be.

The individuation process, as Jung introduces it, is a path of liberation from the external stereotypes as well as from the inner ones that we carry as “impulsive” tendencies, inherited or archetypal. The individuation spiral-shaped movement allows the flourishing of the personality. Now, one needs to fight. Nothing comes easy, much less the realization of oneself.

I’m going to tell two dreams of an adolescent in full process of consciousness and taking a stand in her life. They reflect what has been conquered after more than one year of therapy work on some important aspects of her psycho-social development. It must be said that this person had always had as ideal the sweetness of the good girl, who doesn’t hurt anybody, is never rude or gossiping. She’s afraid of the dark and has had frequent nightmares.

Here’s the first dream:

“Dracula breaks through the window. I’m Princess Tamina (from the Prince of Persia movie), I’m standing at the door and therefore he can’t bite me on my neck for I can scream for help. Realizing the situation, he tries to be ‘nice’ and says he wants to introduce me to a girlfriend of his, named Lidia. The scene changes, I’m walking holding a beautiful black dog at the leash, it’s Lidia. We are at ease and talk in human language. Suddenly the dog opens up lengthwise. The animal’s two halves fall on the soil and from the its empty interior comes out Dracula. He grows bigger and bigger and finally jumps on me. I’m scared and shout ‘no’. But then I think: “I am the Princess Tamina and I can fight!” I kick, I strike, I hit. At last, I wring Dracula’s head. He turns into black smoke that oozes in the air, while a mask falls down.”

The next night, she dreams:

“I’m in a grey city, it could be any big city, kind of New York. I see people moving ahead in masses as robots, gray and dull, their stare fixed in front of them. There’s a bomb on the floor, its wick is lightened up. It explodes. The people transform little by little, each piece of their body, into clowns. Their big red mouths is twisted in a grotesque smile, showing  sharp fangs, they wobble into me. They want to eat my head. I grab a metal bar that was on the floor and start hitting them. I wake up.”

Dracula is the seducer who sucks vital energy (the blood) from another person. Vampirism is one of the most common forms of relation: it includes dependence and power. Dependence, because Dracula needs the other person to survive as a vampire (there’s no death and rebirth in this story); power, because to obtain what he needs, he controls the other person and, finally, reduce them to what he is.

Vampires are people without own energy who cling to the others, pleasing or perturbing them, in order to fill the emptiness they feel inside. Irritating or seducing, there’s always a form of manipulation. The entire behavior consists in manipulation and domination. The psychic and spiritual energy is obtained only by these mean: with gifts or threatening, the result is the same.

Realizing that he can’t suck the dreamer’s energy because help is close by, Dracula uses the subterfuge of the dog. This animal is universally known as friend of the human kind. In this case is a female dog, adding the quality of sweetness that also matches with the dreamer’s ideal. On top of that, Lidia means “the joy of life”. Dracula’s perfidy is highlighted in the choice of the elements that he knows can seduce his potential prey.

The dreamer finds out the imbroglio, empower herself and fight. The dog is just one more lure. There’s no joy, no friendship, no sweetness: it’s all a lie. Wringing Dracula’s head is revealing the truth that makes the mask fall.

The following night, the problematic continues. Now is not a single figure, but the collective itself, that is, the mentality. People walking as automatons are the ones who live without really thinking, following the given main road that they didn’t shaped for themselves. The internal flame of the creative life is burned out in them. It remained the gray of the lack of grace and meaning. Actions and obligations are daily replicated because “it is what it is”.

The opposite of this is the clown. The bomb explodes, the masses of automatons turns into a bunch of clowns. Again, there’s a reference to joy and laughter, but the dream reveal who they are: ridicule and evil figures. They want to destroy the head of who is not like them, that same head they have giving up. In fact, who is an automaton doesn’t use his own head but the groups’ stereotypes; who is a clown makes himself ridicule to have people laughing.

The wisdom of the dream shows that the forced laughter and being part of a group to model one’s personality it’s not the solution for when one searches for a meaning or feels the lack of it. Merging in the group or into a fake diversion is a form to hide, sabotage oneself, running away from reality. That’s kidding, right? An evil kidding.

“It started with a shooting. The sky was gray. The scene changed, in front of me there was a huge world map, it’s bi dimensional and rectangular. It’s divided in two parts: the upper part is the West, the lower, the East. A sea separated the two halves.

On the East, I saw cannons pointing West and shooting bombs. People tirelessly put balls in them. Others, with submarines crossed the sea, passing deep in the bottom, and arrived on the West coast that attacked incessantly. Meanwhile, in the West, scientists worked on the creation of powerful bombs to throw over the East. The goal of each of them was to exterminate the other race, in order to be the only ones on Earth.

I saw myself in a kitchen located next to a hospital. My job was to make teas for the wounded. I was in the West.

I got out of the hospital and walked. I passed by a group of soldiers gathered together, and listened to their conversation. They talked about religions and said that either West or East had internal wars among tribes. On the West there were the Catholics (Christians) and atheists. On the East, Hindus and Buddhists. The weapons used in these wars weren’t so powerful as the ones for the big war between West and East, for nobody wanted to destroy the land on which they themselves lived. The soldiers continued saying that the Christians were much aggressive, they attacked Buddhists and Hindus considered to be wrong. They also said that there was a war close by the hospital, between Hindus on the Western territory. They told me to leave. But I knew that I needed to stay one more night.

I didn’t belong to either side, but I said nothing to anybody for I didn’t want to be bribed by none of them. There was a lot of conflicts and killing. I saw scenes of battles, men with swards on horses, people being stabbed, heads cut. It was a sea of blood every where.

I was in the hospital and my older sister arrived, she was an adolescent. She didn’t look to be much caring about the situation. We had to disinfect all the tools for the sick and she didn’t bother with that.

It became dark and this was the worst time for in the dark it was easier to hide and attack people. I said: ‘Let’s to it quickly.’ I was making a chamomile tea for this warrior who was arriving. Then, I had this feeling, that the tea had been poisoned. My sister thought otherwise, but I made a new one and threw this one away. On doing so, its color changed to red, like blood.

The warrior came in. I was very impressed by what I saw: he was losing a leg, an arm was cut and the eyes were bloodshot. He said to me: ‘Let me show you the situation on the East.’

We went to this place, kind of Islamic, and there were these women. In the beginning, I thought they were blocks laid on the soil, for they were crouched, embracing their knees, and covered by their shapeless dresses; they huddled around a big post. Suddenly, they rolled back and a large rope was visible tying them on their ankle to the post. The warrior told me that the women were much abused, that anyone who passed by could pay and do whatever he wanted with them. Mainly, they were raped.

I started crying. One of the women were saying: “Help me, help me!” All them wore these long dresses that cover everything but the eyes. Each dress was had a different color, but the same shape: red, yellow, green and blue. The woman who spoke to me was dressed in dark blue.”

This is the dream of my 12-year-old daughter, a dream depicting the reality we live in. Spectacular, isn’t it? And shocking. It’s an archetypical dream, much bigger than the consciousness of a girl entering her adolescence.

The dream pictures a realist image of our world – which is the world she is going to go in. If there aren’t concrete bombs destroying our houses, we have misunderstanding, judgments and rejection; we have backstabbing, lies, falsity, guiles and evil. The halves of the world (and of the psyche) are in ferocious conflict, to which are added the internal wars (non conscious conflicts) expressed in the image of the religious disputes, the eternal fight to affirm a god over another. Nobody is united, but in pain and blood. The map shows a bi dimensional world, where the third dimension is missing: deepness, insight and sensitivity. It’s a rectangular world, a geometric figure far from the circle harmony or even the square balance. The dream ends with the atrocious image of women tied, at the mercy of abusers. Women slaves. A quite important subject since the dreamer is going to be a woman.

The war between West and East is, psychologically, the one between the consciousness and the unconsciousness. This conflict crosses nowadays every person and it can be seen in the internal fight between thoughts and feelings, model and real, that is: between what one thinks it should be (the official values learned and followed) and what one actually feels and desires. This inner dichotomy produces neuroses, external conflicts, dissatisfaction and all kind of psychological and relational problem.

In religious wars each god represents a vision of reality, life, and meaning (an ideology). God is the reference point, the head of a human system, a way of living and acting. We can understand the sense of this conflict if we transport it to our personal reality. It happens to be rejected and persecuted without having done anything wrong, or be pushed into a competition and opposition that we don’t want. In spite of all the efforts for peace and the lack of interests in a war, it seems sometimes impossible to disarm the others. Why? Because our way of being scares. One doesn’t need to do anything special, existing is enough. Our life option is faced as a questioning about others truths. This is sufficient to be attacked with the intention of “exterminate” the way of living that menace them.

The same dynamic is visible in the psychological conflict: when it’s time to change life, change the usual interpretation of the events, the perspective, that is, when it’s time to evolve, the non reflexive ego opposes, considering the change a denial of the way it carried life until then. The concept and the practice of dialectics has not been absorbed yet by people’s mind. Dichotomy dominates: it’s me our you. As the ancient Roman used to say: my life is your death.

And we get to the women. What it’s done to the feminine is mirrored on what is done to the inner feeling (or vice-versa): it’s chained and abused. The official values are ego’s, not the inner self’s, therefore, what’s inside is disregarded. Love, desire, sentiments, intuitions are violated. In the name of social patronized values, of stereotypes and gender mythology what’s inside is routinely violated. And this is why, women are considered “crazy” when they give voice to what they feel deep inside them.

My article “In Order Not to End Up Being False Without Willing” has been read by a person who mirrored herself in the exposed situations. She wrote me telling me about a dream she had the same night, and which is worth to be publicly commented for it is as simple as clarifying about the question and its solution.

In the dream, the person sees a black dog quietly eating in a corner of the room. Between she and the dog there is a big spider, on the floor. Some others were scattered around. The dreamer feels anguished by the spider’s presence and wants to protect the dog. That is, she needs to kill the spider. And she wakes up.

The dog symbolizes the guide, the instinctive orientation. The dog allows to diagnose a situation without going through the rational path, as a he finds water without using a map. It’s not necessary to understand rationally everything, there are things that must be “got” and this is it. That’s instincts. When a person finds herself in a tricky situation and doesn’t realize it, she’s “in the woods with no dog”.

The direct and explicit harm shouldn’t be necessary in order to realize that there is something wrong with the relations we are in. However, many people live in this way. They are tied by the colored appearance and don’t see what’s underneath. They stares at smiles and don’t realize the falsity in them. That is not being in contact with one’s own internal dog. This animal was considered by the ancient Greeks a “psychopomp”, or “soul guide”. To finalize, the dog is black probably because he isn’t under the dreamer’s conscience lights spot, she isn’t paying attention to the dog, and that’s one of the issues the dream is revealing.

The invisible threads that tie a person to a situation preventing her to see what is at stake are woven by the spider. This insect, on one hand, is the representation of the weaver (one of the attributes of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom) and of its creative art, pointing at the feminine creativity able to transform simple materials in complex ones. On the other, the spider weaves a web that imprison and kill other insects. In this aspect, it represents the archetype of the Bad Mother, who is bad because imprisons and kills the growth, independence, and continuing of the different life stages of the people she relates to. The Bad Mother holds, she is the symbol of the negative power in its feminine version.

In the dream, there is the dreamer’s anguish, which is already a sign about what the spider symbolizes. Not only that, there’s the fact that the spider locates between she and the dog, therefore it’s clear that there is the need to overcome the spider in order to get to the dog.

Thus, the dream’s message is: if you want to get in touch with your instincts of orientation you need to win the netting tricks of the internal spider. Because the negative spider captures, the dream stresses the need of having courage to dare, that is to accept the risk of loosing, letting something go. The dream says that it’s necessary to give more space to the instincts and less to the diplomatic affective politics.

Finally, it seems to me that that dream wants to communicate to the dreamer a more self confident attitude toward herself. The spider-way is disturbing the other psychological aspect, which is as important as the weaving of the social net: the nose. Follow your instincts. Trust in yourself. The balance is made by the two elements combined.

Most of the people do not believe in dreams. They consider them nonsense, weird or “crazy”. When they try to interpret dreams, they label them with the everyday life’s codes, resulting in the reaffirmation of the common sense, or, instead, they manipulate dreams in order to make them express their own desires.

Believe it or not, dreams are independent from us and from what we want, they don’t follow are logic and don’t respect our values. Dreams come from another voice, an unknown one that is inside us (or around us, everywhere, as Jung thought), which can complement, contradict or surprise us.

Everybody knows superficial and profound people, the “normal ones” and the “seekers”. Homeopathic medicine and many other alternative therapies work the treatment by steps. They call it the “onion peeling” process: the  to obtain the cure one must proceed through progressive layers, going deeper and deeper, because this is the way the problem shows itself. From the more superficial layers, the first to appear, one moves to the next one and so on, until reaching the core, which probably has been supporting all the other problems.

The same applies to the psyche: it’s structured in layers. In the periphery superficial dreams are produced, the deeper layers generate profound dreams. In addition there are the “flashes” that in synchronicity movements cross space and time, giving us visions about the future.

The question is how to distinguish one layer from another, how to associate the proper meanings to the dreams elements. And here is where the dreams’ detractors win their argument, for it is easy to take trinkets for jewelry.

In fact, it’s not about “deciphering” dreams, as one would decipher an enigma, like a novel Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass at hand. It’s the inside meaning that has to be discovered. Meaning here means direction: where is the dream going to, what is the path it is showing to the dreamer? This is an essential question and typically Jungian. Freud understands dreams like codes to be deconstructed and reconstructed in a rationally comprehensible way. Jung sees dreams like messages that lead to a direction, which it doesn’t necessarily exclude the need to dismantle enigmas in the Freudian fashion. The Jungian vision is, I would say, holistic, for it focuses the elements inside their contexts and in movement. According to Jung, dreams are expressions of a living organism (biological, spiritual, psychological, it doesn’t matter) who lives because it has finality (and we rescue here the fourth Aristotelian cause, forgotten by modern science). Finality is movement that goes in a direction.

The impasse in the comprehension of dreams lays, not in themselves, but in the eyes that look at them. The view that land on them 1) belongs to a determined psychic layer and 2) is loaded of expectations, desires and intentions. Therefore, to properly understand dreams you need to see your own way of looking, what your eyes carry with them, their “template”. Depending on the psychic layer the view belongs to, the dreams will have the correspondent consistency, a profound dream maybe read as banal, and an apparently not interesting one acquire a serious meaning.

When you want to catch a dream‘s meaning, you need to be able to free yourself from easy-quick interpretations based on the common sense, but also from the ones related to your wishes. It’s about to let the dream work its way within you. Start feeling it, sense what it has to say before being able to actually translate it into words. The matter dreams are made of are images and, as the media well knows, images interact at various levels of our psyche: intellectually, sentimentally and emotionally. However, while the media images are collective and stereotyped, keeping us fiddling with the same faded consumed figures, dreams’ images are personal and their meaning, even when supported by archetypal symbols, carry a personalized and punctual value.

Summing up, dreams are customized messages sent to a specific person in a determined moment of her or his journey, which have to do with what she or he is going through and suggest paths to successfully move on while facing life turmoils.