A Dream Fragment Demystified
A freight train chugs
slowly along the tracks as I sit in my car and watch. A flatcar loaded
with huge, forty to fifty pound, live chickens piled up on top of each
other now passes my gaze. Someone else in the car asked "I wonder
what keeps those chickens on the train?". I answered in all seriousness,
"Must be chicken magnets". Then I awoke and burst into laughter
at the thought.
What are we to make of such seemingly nonsensical, mental movie scenes
which run through our heads several times
a night, whether we remember them when we wake or not? Why do we dream?
But most of all, what does it mean?
It is my understanding now, after many years of personal work with the
stuff of dreams...symbolic images....that all of the above questions can
be answered satisfactorily....and it DOES make sense, when the conscious
mind is aware of the proper translation keys.
In the dream above, there was much more to it. And all of that scenario
put together, plus the data and understanding gleaned from many subsequent
dreams over the years, allowed me to begin to decipher just what my own
subconscious mind was saying at the time I had the dream.
A "train" is a vehicle which represents "destiny".
It follows tracks...and thus is not free to maneuver or meander outside
of the prescribed limits of the previously laid down railroad tracks.
This is what karma is. This is also what cause and effect is. So that
symbol alone set the stage for my eventual understanding of the scene.
It was about "destiny".
Next I realized that "chickens" are creatures that flock, like
many other birds. And I also realized that "chicken" is an American
slang word which means "afraid". (The subconscious mind is very
good...like a computer...at finding relationships to a symbol, the use
of which might deliver more than one meaning within the same symbol. Like
most of nature, it understands economy, and will usually say what it needs
to say in the most economical and energy efficient way possible.)
Magnets, of course, are attractive/repulsive forces that cannot be seen
except by the evidence of what they act on.
Then there is the "car" which I later ascertained represents
some form of personal security....the opposite of being afraid...being
chicken. Feeling secure...unafraid of change.
When all this is put together the interpretation would go something like
this:
As I sit enveloped in my own personal need for security (car) I look to
my left and see how destiny (train) rolls slowly along a predetermined
course. The huge chickens represent humanity (and myself) as I complacently
allow destiny to carry me along on its own path. I do not leave the path...i.e...fall
or jump off the train because of fears...my lack of security....to take
responsibility for my own actions. Instead, it is easier to remain glued,
as if by some "magnetic" force, to the flatcar of the train.
Peer group pressures and the ingrained modern myths of our culture kept
me following a narrow, predetermined course, like most other humans, but
it was not fulfilling me in a creative sense. We all tend to feel more
secure when we are with others, even if we are all being led to the slaughterhouse.
But this is a myth we've been led to believe....the myth of Conformity.
Both the chicken on the train and the magnet were "me". And
indeed, so was the train itself. Some smart, brave chicken needed to stand
up, flap its wings in defiance and hop off the train. And while doing
so it would learn that "security" comes from within....NOT from
without. Security is a feeling....a lack of fear...a comfort zone. It
is not a "thing" that exists in the outer world, per se. So
don't expect to find it there. It can only be generated from within, though
of course, outer things and situations always have their effect on the
inner state.
This is what the dream
was telling me. I know this is true because this is what many dreams were
telling me in those days....each in a different way. My spirit was dying
because I had settled into a life of conformity which consisted not of
creative living but of simply following the rules.....the tracks....like
those plump, satiated chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse. The
lesson that the dream gave me was that "we either choose our path
through our power of creative thought and action or we are condemned to
follow the path laid out by our previous choices....of destiny without
choice. Free will is a right that we've been given by the fact of our
sentiency but it is also a responsibility that we have to our spiritual
and emotional bodies. When free will is unused, the spirit and the emotions
atrophy. We become already "dead" inside...and life becomes
dull rote rather than the adventure of gaining new growths in awareness
as it should be.
My subconscious mind "knew" that my conscious mind needed to
fully understand this issue at the time. Hence the dream was given to
me for my better, waking understanding of what was going on in my life.
Some part of me knew more than I did...and was trying its best to get
me to know it consciously....so that I could attend to the choices and
actions that are necessary to change the predetermined course of my life.
What we are not aware of can, and often does, affect us detrimentally.
Guidance in Dreams
First off, I've never seen a dream that "guides". This doesn't
mean that it is impossible for a dream to give guidance. It just means
that I haven't experienced it. Dreams generally only show transient states
of mind.
However, reality as I now understand it, is
projected out of transient states of mind. Thus dreams
predict the future by showing the current internal state that is soon
destined, barring any changes by the conscious mind, to become the future
external reality. In this way, and this way alone, have I seen dreams
be relevant to the guidance issue.
But is it truly guidance when only the future is given to us? It can be,
if we don't ignore the ramifications of this working principle. If we
see a future that we don't particularly care for depicted in our dreams,
we then have a reason to be energized into action...to make different
choices...so that we don't have to go down the "tracks of destiny"
that our dreams showed us will be.
But the only way we can do this with any degree of success is to first
understand what it is that the subconscious mind is trying to show us.
So we must properly interpret the dream symbols, in order to receive
any benefit of guidance from our dreams, I think.
And we must not understand the dreaming mind as one which says you "should"
do this or you "shouldn't" do that. I just don't think it works
that way. I think that it is simply showing us what IS on the inner, right
now, and through proper interpretation of the symbolically we can project
what WILL BE on the outer, soon, if we don't make some different choices
and take appropriate actions commensurate with those choices.
This is easily explained
by illustration. Having it "rain on your parade" in a dream
shows your current emotional state. In this case....not a good one. Our
current emotional state is responsible for our future experience of reality,
during the ongoing, moment to moment creation of our lives. This would
tell me that I need to attend to my emotional state NOW!!!!
Now if the dream was showing it "rain on your crops" this would
imply emotions within that are beneficial to external circumstances and
maybe even necessary to your growth. So the "guidance" would
be saying "keep up what you're doing" that is nurturing you.
What
Are Symbols?
Actually words are collections of letters which are themselves graphic
icons that symbolize sounds and can be strung together in certain orders
to emulate human speech and thus convey ideas, concepts and things. So
everyone already knows what symbols are. But before words were invented
symbols were depicted with pictures and diagrams. These graphic images
served as communicators of larger concepts than words.
Think of the difference between the old Macintosh computers and the old
PC computers before Windows, a graphical user interface, was introduced
to the PC platform. The Mac was user friendly because it had little graphic
images called icons to click on. The PC was not user friendly because
it required typing in a sometimes complex path and filename. Now, of course,
Windows is iconic so the analogy doesn't hold, but the experience of this
former relationship between the two computer operating systems shows us
that it is easier to convey more information in a single picture than
in a single word...even if the resulting communication is less exact and
often unsuitable for technical purposes. But is also illustrates the fact
that words are more specific than graphics, yet graphics can convey more
information than words.
Another way to envision
this concept is to think of showing a picture of an elephant to someone
who has never seen one. Then imagine that you have a written description
of an elephant that you give to another person who has never seen one.
Then take them to a zoo and notice which one recognizes the elephant first.
It is most likely that the one who saw the elephant picture will, but
the one who read the description will likely be able to provide additional
information about the elephant.
These two opposing but complementary, operational aspects of mind exist
within each of us. It is the subconscious mind which recognizes pictures
and it is the conscious mind which recognizes words. The former is feminine
in nature and the latter is masculine in nature. So, speaking with pictures
is the easiest way to inject information DIRECTLY into the subconscious
mind. And because of its nature, the subconscious mind speaks this language
itself....symbols...the language of pictures. But it goes one step better.
It also uses MOVING pictures....moving icons....carried through a sort
of time, and complete with colors, shapes, sounds, smells, feelings, and
taste. In short, it mimics the waking experience of input that we get
from the five senses, PLUS what we get from inner experiences of ESP and
intuitive sources. These are derived from its current "state".
These mental movies...these dreams are like pictorially descriptive graphs
or readouts of that state of being that exists within the subconscious
mind's database of memory, and often include input that it has received
from the body itself.
This is what dreams are. They are composed of graphic images that consist
of symbolic portrayals of our inner self's awareness'. To understand symbols
we must understand what they are "like" in our waking world.
Each of our minds is constantly correlating our memories that exist inside
already with what everything in the outside world is presenting to our
senses and coming up with an equation of what each new experience is "like".
Then the subconscious mind stores these new conclusions into its database
of memory. And it uses the symbolic language of dreams...the native language
of the soul...to depict our current, inner state of reality to the waking
conscious mind... if we consciously remember the dream. Waking life does
the same thing, but in a literal fashion rather than a symbolic one. The
picture that we get if we compare the two chronologically, is that they
both show the same thing in different ways, but dreams are displaced farther
back in time than life experiences.
This is why I say that nearly all dreams are precognitive. By this I mean
that a future, conscious state of affairs can be predicted by knowing
the present, subconscious state of affairs. And it is precisely this which
dreams give us...knowledge of our internal state of awareness at the time
of the dream. In this way, they can be said to be predictive.
This is the end of
my brief discussion on this page about dreams but I would urge anyone
interested in this subject to read the book called Art
and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light
by Leonard Shlain, Ph.D. I think it ranks among the best books ever written
regarding the nature of our own minds and how they work on different levels.
It also contains definitive proof that art always precedes linear discoveries
in the sciences, especially physics...and thus proof that dreaming information
is way ahead of conscious information. Dr. Micho Kaku, one of the leading
theoretical physicists specializing in the String Theory today, even recently
acknowledged, on the Art Bell radio show, that physicists owed a great
debt to artists, who pictorialized reality in forms that allowed physicists
to model it better with their theories.
| This
book is superb. One person said it's the best explanation of physics
AND the best explanation of art. I agree. I personally think that it should be a required textbook for all students in high schools everywhere. Everyone that I know who has read the book has been delighted by it. Both scientific and engineering types and artist types should know the information contained in this book....as should male and female types. I think it would help each of them better understand the other, if nothing else. But it can also help us better understand the tools of mind that we each have access to within our own self. There is also an excellent group of reviews of the book on the order page. |
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