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Of things dreamt

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
11/10/19

This dream is mostly forgotten, though I feel that it was a complete dream I merely couldn't remember well. Sometimes they disintegrate in waking memory, and seem to undergo fragmentation

Sometimes they seem very complete

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There is a road that may ring round the forest. I fly to places in the forest to set up camp, to avoid traveling the rugged road, presumably. I feels as though I leap places in a single bound, rising high and dropping to where I go.

Apparently now, my zeppelin or blimp is burning on the ground where I land, so on one expedition I am stuck somewhere. My family seeks me and arrives. Vision of blackened logs.. nothing else
 
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amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
11/11/19

Before I forget this one... I feel I sort of remember a little over half of it

I am compelled to take an advanced math course in perhaps linear algebra, or logarithms or something. I travel down to take it in the middle of the night, in a suburban house. I travel to it from a muddy road next to a thick corn field.

We have to take a very difficult math test in a pitch black room. There are some story problems on it, you almost would not know they were math questions unless you really read deep into the center of them. I think one of them got morbid or weird, something to do with dead feet. The person in the desk next to mine breezes through it, and I am only half done when most are finishing.

I fail presumably, and arrive outside in the pitch black darkness. There are no clouds, there is no moon. I walk up a hill in the middle of a corn field, and enter the lighthouse, though there is no corn in this section and there is no sea.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
11/10/19

There is a road that may ring round the forest. I fly to places in the forest to set up camp, to avoid traveling the rugged road, presumably. I feels as though I leap places in a single bound, rising high and dropping to where I go.

To clarify, if possible, is there a good road that forms a ring around a forest and there are separate rugged roads that lead into the forest or is there just a rugged road that rings around the forest?

Leaping high (over the treetops?) vs traversing the rugged road. That seems like a possible metaphor for sensation vs intuition, two different ways to create perceptions in the human brain. In this case a preference is shown, perhaps, for intuition which finds patterns across sensory modalities.

Over the course of my life I have had many varieties of flying dreams whether hovering or leaping. Trees seem to make a good point of reference suggesting an intermediary realm between earth and sky.

Apparently now, my zeppelin or blimp is burning on the ground where I land, so on one expedition I am stuck somewhere. My family seeks me and arrives. Vision of blackened logs.. nothing else

I cant help but think of this as a sort of Icarian fall (Icarus - Wikipedia) but not, here, in the extreme sense of unbridled hubris. The first chapters of Edinger's Ego and Archetype describe the cycles of the ego through a rising and falling pattern (an ennobling and a humbling pattern), a vertical circle of sorts to maybe compliment the horizontal circle suggested by the road "may ring round the forest". As such this represents a faintly mandalic image in three dimensions.

So there appears to be a vehicle now that is involved in your ability to leap. Technology, or consciousness, seems to develop where we expend our energy and repeat our efforts. The fact that the zeppelin now appears after the sense of leaping could be a metaphor for the development of your consciousness or personality from a natural bodily function to a self-consciously made vehicle (the personality).

The zeppelin is on fire...I took a moment to read the Wikipedia article on the Hindenburg disaster (Hindenburg disaster - Wikipedia). This examples a common motif in dreams which I like to call the Wound. It is a moment of injury or disaster that is in some way fearful. It may very well be that in your dream you did not experience any fear, however. Often a dream will lightly skip over or pass the moment of the "wound" as if it were to much to watch. I call it a wound because it often takes the form of what would be a bodily injury in the dream. It often can be a consequence of a fall or a bite or some other encounter with a harming force. It is standard fare in people's dreams at some point if they are attending to their dreaming life.

The zeppelin being on fire also indicates that while an effort of the ego has failed it is also releasing energy. Excess energy stored in an excess of effort of the ego is now available to other "voices" in the psyche. The family seeks and finds the dreamer. This suggests that the dream ego's efforts are oriented toward the separative mode of conscious development which directs energy to one central voice as opposed to the cooperative mode of conscious development which distributes energy to the various voices of the psyche.

Blackened logs...I've had some interesting dreams regarding trees turned to logs turned to wood. The energy of the fire from the zeppelin, here, seems to have spread to the trees.

Perhaps, one vital piece of information that would unlock the significance of this dream for the dreamer would be to understand what happened on the day before the dream took place. Typically something from the previous day's experiences serves as "the spark that lights the fire that is the dream" (my metaphor). The dream represents a common collection of motifs in dreams but is also, always, painted with the associations relevant to the dreamer. The dream tells a long story that has been "triggered" by something that happened that day. Oftentimes I have found that something which touched me as troublesome but I quickly (easily almost dismissively) suppressed is the thing that got "under your skin" and got released that night as the inspiration for this dream.

Those are my thoughts on this dream. I hope they are somehow helpful.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
11/11/19

Before I forget this one... I feel I sort of remember a little over half of it

I am compelled to take an advanced math course in perhaps linear algebra, or logarithms or something. I travel down to take it in the middle of the night, in a suburban house. I travel to it from a muddy road next to a thick corn field.

It seems that your dream is analogyzing itself, that is, the process of dreaming or whatsoever takes place in one's psyche at night that is akin to "learning", to an advanced math course. What are your feelings about what it would be like to actually have to take such a course?

It is a common motif to also analogyze a downward journey to the process of losing one's waking world consciousness as one falls asleep. The house may be a straight-forward reference to the personality or the area of the brain that is where the learning will happen with learning being, perhaps, a reconfiguration of said brain/personality.

Muddy road and thick corn field...this dream also seems to feature a departure from a road. This road is muddy whereas the previous dream's road was rugged. In either case travel along the road seems to be more difficult than going off road.

We have to take a very difficult math test in a pitch black room.

I would say that the dream is double-downing on the difficulty with the math test given the pitch black room. It is hard to imagine any test that would not be difficult under those circumstances. However, it seems that you as the dreamer and the other "test takers" are prevailing nonetheless in spite of the darkness. A paradox. I sense humor in all this actually.

There are some story problems on it, you almost would not know they were math questions unless you really read deep into the center of them.

I find this to be an intriguingly semi-poetic way of describing doing a story problem. Buried in the story problem's story is a math problem. This could be a metaphor showing that the learning as represented by the math is something to be found contained within one's story. The story can be, on one level, for entertainment purposes, but usually whether we attend to it intentionally or consciously or not, our stories are also problems to solve in terms of determining who we are and what meaningful relationship we have with the reality we find ourselves in. This sort of work Jung described as individuation and it involves getting at the heart of who we are through the jungle of our habits, wounds and excessive behaviors. It is a most difficult task that may often feel like taking a test/being examined.

I think one of them got morbid or weird, something to do with dead feet.

Perhaps the greatest of human fears is death. Death is the end of our existence to all practical determinations, faith beliefs notwithstanding. I now read "dead feet" as potentially associated with the muddy road. I can imagine dead feet as relating to one's feet stuck in the mud or one becoming dead tired for having to slog through the mud. Given your other dream about leaping...those feet were quite amazing!

There might also be a reference here, given your association to the road as muddy or rough, that you are following a different path than the one already laid out for you. That premade path is un-preferred to the one you are choosing although the one you are choosing has its own difficulties it seems. It may be that that pre-made path is also "morbid or weird" and that taking this test, after all, is really just another way of walking that road.

The person in the desk next to mine breezes through it, and I am only half done when most are finishing.

Being the not best in class dream figure for me indicates that you are playing in another inner psychic role than that which you might identify with while awake. The waking ego has all the energy to direct to its own ends...that is why it is the ego. But in the nighttime classroom of dreams you may experience life in your psyche as the shadow. The shadow is typically a same age, same sex dream character who has less energy than the ego and who is often at cross-purposes or has a different experience than the ego. The competent ego breezes through while the shadow makes do. Also the shadow often represents making choices differently than your ego has made them.

This seems to fit in with the not following the main path. Let's say the path that has been laid out for you is the path of your waking ego consciousness, but you sense that there is another path, another voice, that should also be considered. Maybe your ego journey has become difficult and you suspect that this is because of an inner thing, something you need to discover about yourself that might make things better. It is a divergence to pursue such things and one may expect trials like tests, fears like death and failures as well.

I fail presumably, and arrive outside in the pitch black darkness. There are no clouds, there is no moon. I walk up a hill in the middle of a corn field, and enter the lighthouse, though there is no corn in this section and there is no sea.

The shadow knows all about failure, the shadow usually fails when it compares itself to the ego. The ego is the author of the official history of the psyche and the shadow always, eventually gets the short end of the stick. But as any Jungian will tell you, this is critical and essential work.

From darkness inside to darkness outside. Not even the reflected light of the sun/consciousness. You have, perhaps, reached a deep well of no psychic energy. The shadow stands in the shadow.

Walking up the hill represents a raising of energy as you are beginning to wake up, perhaps. You presumably pass through that corn field and now you find a lighthouse. No corn, no ocean. A lighthouse without an ocean is a paradox but one that I might be able to offer an explanation for. One of my super-epic dreams involved starting off on the shore of the ocean but the waters had all receded! The whole rest of the dream involved a series of scenes that took place on the floor of the ocean as if it were dry land. Toward the end the waves were returning...to escape them I moved upwards...

So I suspect that your dream has a similar metaphor in mind...while the dream state lowered your psychic energy to as low as it could go, moving out of the dream meant a return of that energy. Waiting in a building which is a lighthouse is an indication that there is, in fact, an ocean nearby, maybe even all around, but that in the process of waking the waters may return. In so many ways dreams indicate that consciousness is up and often up a tall building, while losing consciousness involves descending. I have since come to believe that the ocean in dreams is the flood of sensory neural inputs into the brain/psyche and that dreaming often self-describes this "land beneath the waves". In this dream land our unified sense of conscious personality gives way to a fractured collection of voices who are more or less integrated or cooperative. Sometimes they are experienced as combative.

The one major motif left to consider is the corn field. I am going to say something that might seem reductionistic or simplistic or even surreal, but I will expand on it enough that it might be more appreciable...I believe that the corn field, like the forest in your other dream, is metaphoric of the structure of the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is that part of the brain that is associated with our ability to have language and to think beyond the capability of other species. Structurally it is a very thin "layer cake" of neurons with massive connectivity down into the mid-brain and sensory nervous system as well as massive connectivity between cortical regions. This layer cake has a "columnar" organization on a few levels. There are tiny "mini-columns" all the way up to those cortical regions which often contain a map of the body or world implicit in their connectivity and behavior.

If you look at a neuron it will often look like a tree. It has a horizontal long structure with branch-like dendrites on one end and root-like axon extension on the other. Now the trick to this interpretation is that this is not something that dreamers typically know. Maybe somewhere once they learned about it but why would that be an applicable metaphor to think that a dreamer's dream is referring to that? It may be simply a coincidence of poetic proportions.

But let's look at another way to look at the forest/corn crop metaphorically. In our waking experience we know that such things involve, for the most part, the natural growth of a natural organism. These examples of the plant kingdom root themselves in the dark earth for stability and reach up to the sunlight for energy. This is largely analogous to our own bodily experience of the sun as heavenly energy provider and the earth as dark ground of stability. The metaphorical possibilities here are endless. Consciousness itself is also seen as up while unconsciousness is seen as down. The sun is the light of waking consciousness and the moon is the pale reflection of that waking light in terms of the mostly unconscious experience of dreams or even of our inner thoughts and experiences.

These plant growths are also susceptible to another process whereby the natural resource of the tree or the corn is converted into another form via energy and intent by the conscious will of conscious beings. Corn with its golden "fruit" at about head height seem to reflect this sense that the yellow sun is captured in the head as the gold of knowledge and illumination. Trees can be harvested for wood or burnt for heat and light. All these things are metaphoric of the experience of a conscious being harvesting the resources of nature and converting them into the conscious uses of humanity...and so to is the process of the development of consciousness itself.

Over the course of our life we take in energy into our crop of neurons, they grow fruit in the form of the mind, its learnings and ideas. We take these perceptions and concepts and construct languages, cultures, technologies, art, etc. Amidst all of this we grow ourselves, our personality, our identity. And all of this is by virtue of some difference, presumably in our cerebral cortex or our ability to form un-noisy syllabic sounds...and out of this fertile grove of columnar neurons has come the the whole of what Teihard de Chardin has called the noosphere out of the biosphere, the realm of consciousness in physical operation over and above that of the relatively unconscious biological realm.

So perhaps we might see the lighthouse as having been constructed out of the corn in the field; built, perhaps, on a small rise just high enough to remain un-submerged when the darkness falls and the light of consciousness returns and innundates the dark land with the oceanic flood of the external world into the neural sea.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
Wow thanks a lot for writing that SealChan. You must be quite interested in dreams, I'll have to read what you think after I get some time later..

11/13/19, this latest dream annoyingly woke me up early, it was an anxious dream of a star wars battle that I think I lost, and upon losing it I snapped awake. The person I was fighting betrayed the team I was on and wanted to take over the complex, and my friend who was helping me beat him sort of ran away at the end, allowing the muscular 6 foot tall gray alien to get me. Other things about it I won't post as I feel they are sort of inappropriate in a way, though it's not like I created the story
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
Thanks again for responding. Maybe I never took it as seriously as you, but you seem to be very good at this. I think you might even have the potential to commercialize your work with this kind of thing, if that's possible

You don't have to respond to my responses here if you don't want to, I'm kind of just thinking it through more by writing some more

To clarify, if possible, is there a good road that forms a ring around a forest and there are separate rugged roads that lead into the forest or is there just a rugged road that rings around the forest?

Well, the dream vision comes from an actual place I was familiar with earlier in life I think, where the main road does a ring. There are less traveled roads that kind of go off it, but the main emphasis is the circular nature of the main road. It could be pretty hard traveling depending on the season

Leaping high (over the treetops?) vs traversing the rugged road. That seems like a possible metaphor for sensation vs intuition, two different ways to create perceptions in the human brain. In this case a preference is shown, perhaps, for intuition which finds patterns across sensory modalities.

Yeah. I suppose maybe intuition is judged to be a shortcut. 'Sensation' can be more about the arduous task of the body and mind to gather and process data to learn new things. If you use merely use your intuition, well maybe then you bypass the things you might otherwise allocate to sensing proper. You make a leap from trusting your gut, which you might feel is tuned up enough to give you the answer.

I cant help but think of this as a sort of Icarian fall (Icarus - Wikipedia) but not, here, in the extreme sense of unbridled hubris. The first chapters of Edinger's Ego and Archetype describe the cycles of the ego through a rising and falling pattern (an ennobling and a humbling pattern), a vertical circle of sorts to maybe compliment the horizontal circle suggested by the road "may ring round the forest". As such this represents a faintly mandalic image in three dimensions.

Hm... quite a bit to swallow there. Never would have occurred to me to tie in the ringing road with the arc of the jump. Feels about right though

So there appears to be a vehicle now that is involved in your ability to leap. Technology, or consciousness, seems to develop where we expend our energy and repeat our efforts. The fact that the zeppelin now appears after the sense of leaping could be a metaphor for the development of your consciousness or personality from a natural bodily function to a self-consciously made vehicle (the personality).

Yes. It wasn't actually really there much when I was jumping though, I don't think. But I think maybe it did seem like something I was trying to build. Anyway, it does seem like a metaphor for the attempts to develop things I try to do anyway, yes. Maybe it seems to represent trying to give a part of the mind more depth. Or control. Wanting the intuition to work better, to give the senses a break

This examples a common motif in dreams which I like to call the Wound. It is a moment of injury or disaster that is in some way fearful. It may very well be that in your dream you did not experience any fear, however. Often a dream will lightly skip over or pass the moment of the "wound" as if it were to much to watch.

For me, no. It seems like if the wound is going to happen, it always sort of builds to it as a culmination of the dream. Oftentimes it's probably the most lucid part of the thing, as I'm paying attention more as it happens, and sometimes it results in me waking up unfortunately. It doesn't make me fearful, but I think anxious as I dream. The anxiety that results from the failure then ejects me from sleeping. Luckily my dreams aren't always like that, but lately it seems like it.

A couple years ago I had recurring dreams of fighting the alien from the movie Alien, probably like five times throughout the year. I might have wrote one of the most lucid ones down somewhere, but it's pretty obvious what that one means I think. Basically it comes down to the great challenge of having to face the unknown in life, and having it have the real possibility of whipping you

Well I'll have to continue this later, I have to go now
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Thanks again for responding. Maybe I never took it as seriously as you, but you seem to be very good at this. I think you might even have the potential to commercialize your work with this kind of thing, if that's possible

Thanks! I really have loved studying dreams for many years and much of what has been a driving motivation in my life seems to converge around this area. I have actually thought about trying to do this as a service. Some people do. I suppose having a "day job" at some point gets in the way. For now I continue to, on occasion, love to explore peoples dreams and share my own experience and insight. Given I don't have a specific professional credential to create authority, I have thought that I could substitute by giving free samples on a forum. The problem seems to be the longevity of those forums and the focus I have on doing this work. It might be something I look at more seriously as a retirement income perhaps.

You don't have to respond to my responses here if you don't want to, I'm kind of just thinking it through more by writing some more

The more opportunity I have to discuss what I see in the dream with the dreamer the better I can be at recognizing "my thing" from that of the dreamer. There is always the all-important subjective aspect of the dream which only the dreamer has final authority to speak to. Understanding how I might find a motif that means something to me, no matter how well-grounded that might be across the hundreds of dreams I have looked at (my own and others), that really is always secondary to the dreamer's own understanding. The dream is the dreamer's intellectual property. But I deeply appreciate the opportunity for a back and forth discussion with the dreamer should the dreamer care for such things.

Well, the dream vision comes from an actual place I was familiar with earlier in life I think, where the main road does a ring. There are less traveled roads that kind of go off it, but the main emphasis is the circular nature of the main road. It could be pretty hard traveling depending on the season

Ah...it is always interesting to learn that something in a dream is modeled after a real place. The configuration of the landscape may still have significance but the real world experience of that road also most likely does.

Yeah. I suppose maybe intuition is judged to be a shortcut. 'Sensation' can be more about the arduous task of the body and mind to gather and process data to learn new things. If you use merely use your intuition, well maybe then you bypass the things you might otherwise allocate to sensing proper. You make a leap from trusting your gut, which you might feel is tuned up enough to give you the answer.

In my view intuition and sensation are co-equals. If I appeared to render an absolute judgment then I apologize. But I may have been getting at a bias which is a preference in your psyche for intuition over sensation...at least in the area of your psyche that this dream is addressing. I'm a big fan of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kersey Temperament Sorter approaches to understanding personality.

Hm... quite a bit to swallow there. Never would have occurred to me to tie in the ringing road with the arc of the jump. Feels about right though

When you look at a lot of dreams and you study those who have (such as Jung) you begin to recognize the sorts of patterns that appear across those dreams. Jung got into mandalas for that reason. Considering that the sensory mode with the most cortical real estate is vision, it makes sense that dreams would use visual metaphors to structure dreams...or to put it conversely, that dream narratives would fall into visual patterns. Once this is realized then much of the structure of dream content becomes familiar.

Yes. It wasn't actually really there much when I was jumping though, I don't think. But I think maybe it did seem like something I was trying to build. Anyway, it does seem like a metaphor for the attempts to develop things I try to do anyway, yes. Maybe it seems to represent trying to give a part of the mind more depth. Or control. Wanting the intuition to work better, to give the senses a break

My observation comes from a familiarity with how dreams are often staged. Recognizing, for instance, how an author of a story might write a scene for a reader will differ from how a movie director might create that scene in a screenplay, the dream has its own ways. These ways may depend as much on the economy imposed by the structure and function of the brain. One big rule that is immensely useful IMO is to look at things in dreams that are close together in a serial fashion as being two different ways of looking at one thing. This duplicative way of creating dream narrative may have everything to do with the separate cerebral hemispheres presenting their separate views of the same psychic content. Consciousness may configure that as two separate events narratively in order to integrate the opposing perspectives. That is my theory at this point.

For me, no. It seems like if the wound is going to happen, it always sort of builds to it as a culmination of the dream. Oftentimes it's probably the most lucid part of the thing, as I'm paying attention more as it happens, and sometimes it results in me waking up unfortunately. It doesn't make me fearful, but I think anxious as I dream. The anxiety that results from the failure then ejects me from sleeping. Luckily my dreams aren't always like that, but lately it seems like it.

I agree that just as you observe dreams can show this sort of progression prior to a "wound". It seems that you have your own experience of dreaming to draw upon. For me sometimes the wound is the thing and sometimes its incorporated into a dream narrative in a less intense way. I think we are all wounded (that is have a wound motif in our dreams) but not every psychic situation has to be focused about the wound.

I've also observed that an increase in the level of emotion in a dream usually goes hand in hand with an increase in lucidity and a greater likelihood of waking up.

A couple years ago I had recurring dreams of fighting the alien from the movie Alien, probably like five times throughout the year. I might have wrote one of the most lucid ones down somewhere, but it's pretty obvious what that one means I think. Basically it comes down to the great challenge of having to face the unknown in life, and having it have the real possibility of whipping you

I have had my own Aliens dreams...several in fact which I did some intensive study on with a small group online.

Well I'll have to continue this later, I have to go now

I hope that if you are inspired to do so we can have further discussions on these and other dreams or about dreaming in this new forum.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
The zeppelin being on fire also indicates that while an effort of the ego has failed it is also releasing energy. Excess energy stored in an excess of effort of the ego is now available to other "voices" in the psyche. The family seeks and finds the dreamer. This suggests that the dream ego's efforts are oriented toward the separative mode of conscious development which directs energy to one central voice as opposed to the cooperative mode of conscious development which distributes energy to the various voices of the psyche.

Interesting stuff there, now that I thought about it a bit. I guess I am that way, sort of trying subvert the stray thoughts and notions into the integrated whole. Cook into my brain to create a better sense of instinct or something, as opposed to a diffusion of conflicting ideas

Blackened logs...I've had some interesting dreams regarding trees turned to logs turned to wood. The energy of the fire from the zeppelin, here, seems to have spread to the trees.

And that doesn't sound like the best outcome does it

Perhaps, one vital piece of information that would unlock the significance of this dream for the dreamer would be to understand what happened on the day before the dream took place. Typically something from the previous day's experiences serves as "the spark that lights the fire that is the dream" (my metaphor).

For me, I think it depends on how well I took care of myself during the day or week that I have it. As in having a very good diet, the optimal amount of exercise, invigorating conversation if I can find it, and fresh ideas or emotions if I can unlock them.

I think the last really lucid dream I had, I had made some homemade lemon-ginger tea, which I never tried before. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I seem to think so when I think about that dream.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
It seems that your dream is analogyzing itself, that is, the process of dreaming or whatsoever takes place in one's psyche at night that is akin to "learning", to an advanced math course. What are your feelings about what it would be like to actually have to take such a course?

Daunting and probably a mistake. I'd feel like I shouldn't be there

Muddy road and thick corn field...this dream also seems to feature a departure from a road. This road is muddy whereas the previous dream's road was rugged. In either case travel along the road seems to be more difficult than going off road.

I think maybe I see at as more boring, as taking longer to get anywhere in some way.. Maybe the thick corn field / forest is what I perceive as an impasse. I think that I can't really anywhere from right off the road unless I dive off it somewhere. Wouldn't have occurred to me to pay attention to the road being in both dreams

It is a common motif to also analogyze a downward journey to the process of losing one's waking world consciousness as one falls asleep. The house may be a straight-forward reference to the personality or the area of the brain that is where the learning will happen with learning being, perhaps, a reconfiguration of said brain/personality.

Ok, yeah I can see that

I would say that the dream is double-downing on the difficulty with the math test given the pitch black room. It is hard to imagine any test that would not be difficult under those circumstances.

It seems to represent something that I'm thinking is nearly impossible, doesn't it

This sort of work Jung described as individuation and it involves getting at the heart of who we are through the jungle of our habits, wounds and excessive behaviors.

Yeah I read a book by Jung a while back, maybe I didn't understand enough of it. Might have to read something by him again

Perhaps the greatest of human fears is death. Death is the end of our existence to all practical determinations, faith beliefs notwithstanding. I now read "dead feet" as potentially associated with the muddy road.

Never would have occurred to me to associate the feet with the road. What a puzzle. Maybe it represents something like a limit on the time or energy that life has; the endurance available to search the road. That you have to stop somewhere. I feel like I don't quite know though.

There might also be a reference here, given your association to the road as muddy or rough, that you are following a different path than the one already laid out for you. That premade path is un-preferred to the one you are choosing although the one you are choosing has its own difficulties it seems. It may be that that pre-made path is also "morbid or weird" and that taking this test, after all, is really just another way of walking that road.

Yeah I guess. Trying to avoid the monotony of the road, but ending up over my head anyway with some other problem
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
From darkness inside to darkness outside. Not even the reflected light of the sun/consciousness. You have, perhaps, reached a deep well of no psychic energy. The shadow stands in the shadow.

Walking up the hill represents a raising of energy as you are beginning to wake up, perhaps.

Well, at least it has something on the radar, even if it is merely an ascent within a black void. Better than nothing.

I suppose I should read Jung to figure out a few more things about this. Why does this shadow being need to be helped? It's having a hard time from what can be ascertained, but it doesn't seem to be living in quite the same world as the ego is. Or at best it's trying to navigate the trash pile of the ego, and not much can be done for it. I don't know, this is complicated stuff isn't it

I believe that the corn field, like the forest in your other dream, is metaphoric of the structure of the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is that part of the brain that is associated with our ability to have language and to think beyond the capability of other species. Structurally it is a very thin "layer cake" of neurons with massive connectivity down into the mid-brain and sensory nervous system as well as massive connectivity between cortical regions.

Food for thought, it could be that way, you seem to make a good case

So perhaps we might see the lighthouse as having been constructed out of the corn in the field; built, perhaps, on a small rise just high enough to remain un-submerged when the darkness falls and the light of consciousness returns and innundates the dark land with the oceanic flood of the external world into the neural sea.

Yeah, that seems logical.

I hope that if you are inspired to do so we can have further discussions on these and other dreams or about dreaming in this new forum.

Ok. Sometimes I go a good while without having much for dreams, but I'll try to remember not to dismiss them. You've provided some insightful food for thought, I don't think I've had dreams analyzed like that before, and I could never do too much with em
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Interesting stuff there, now that I thought about it a bit. I guess I am that way, sort of trying subvert the stray thoughts and notions into the integrated whole. Cook into my brain to create a better sense of instinct or something, as opposed to a diffusion of conflicting ideas

I am a strong intuitive myself, always looking for that secret pattern, wanting to feel like I am walking on the path ordained by some subtle divine plan...taking the slightly different way because I feel something pulling me from within to do so...

My wife is the opposite and sometimes her efforts to anticipate me make her so frustrated.

And that doesn't sound like the best outcome does it

It sounds destructive but I also find that dream symbolism is, in an interesting way, not judgmental. If I bring a certain expectation with me as far as what a "good dream" from a wise and knowing person looks like, I find that the next night's dream will inevitably undo that judgment.

If you can connect the dream to the previous day's experience then you might be able to make some more practical association to that image. The way I might do that is to try to imagine the burning log as a metaphor and then recall the events of that day to see if the metaphor will stick. Maybe "if I'm not careful my leaps will turn to fires and the whole forest will go up". That take on it suggests that there is an emotionality at play and some habitual approach to something "lands" you on occasion in a potential conflagration. Now this dynamic may not be some new problem but rather may be an old dynamic, one with which you are already familiar and have grown to accommodate. I would say your dream indicates that whatever "problem" the "crash landing" caused, you as dreamer seemed to have walked away unscathed, your "dream family" finds you and the one log burning is just that, not necessarily a forest fire. This all speaks of a moderate outcome.

I would also caution, although not rule out, that the log on fire is not necessarily a bad thing. Dreams are all about metaphors and less about judgment. Usually judgment (that is, whether things are good or bad) is often associated with a level of force or emotionality that is not wanted whether from the dreamer or other forces or characters in the dream. If we don't like how we behave in a dream or what happens to us in a dream we should and should not reduce that to a judgment call in any comprehensive sense. Same as in waking life where we can love someone who does something wrong, we should be careful how we approach something unpleasant in a dream. Bad events usually represent legitimate needs that have been forced to express themselves in unacceptable ways. That is why I think that the one universal in dreams is that dream characters at cross-purposes always represent a need to open up negotiations between those two dream "voices" that are facilitated by the ruling party, the dream ego. This requires the dreamer's conscious involvement through imaginal internal dialog or creative expression of some sort. The dreamer has to open up to the possibility that their dominant personality is not handling certain situations as adaptively as it could and that a part of his or her psyche "voices" that.

For me, I think it depends on how well I took care of myself during the day or week that I have it. As in having a very good diet, the optimal amount of exercise, invigorating conversation if I can find it, and fresh ideas or emotions if I can unlock them.

I think the last really lucid dream I had, I had made some homemade lemon-ginger tea, which I never tried before. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I seem to think so when I think about that dream.

I have definitely noticed an increase in lucidity when I have had an unusually high amount of certain herbs.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Daunting and probably a mistake. I'd feel like I shouldn't be there

If I were to overlay the two dreams and your personal association to the idea of taking this advanced math test we might begin to map out the following space...in the center of the forest/corn crop, on a rise, there is the "tower" of your conscious personality development. This is your center or strength but that center can also evidence a point of failure. This is a map that is as true of everyone's dreams as it is yours by the way and as such it is a fairly objective take on dream landscapes. Moving outward from that center one comes to areas of less comfort and strength...but moving "outward" and moving "inward" often leads to the same thing.

I think maybe I see at as more boring, as taking longer to get anywhere in some way.. Maybe the thick corn field / forest is what I perceive as an impasse. I think that I can't really anywhere from right off the road unless I dive off it somewhere. Wouldn't have occurred to me to pay attention to the road being in both dreams

Dreams are never literal especially if you look at multiple dreams which can arguably speak to similar metaphors using very different imagery. This experience I have had from dreams has helped me immensely in understanding sacred literature, especially in reading Genesis, where one can see the various stories throughout the book having different takes on what is essentially a similar striving for a knowledge of and relationship to God. It is much more like a kaleidoscope than it is a logical treatise. So too are dreams. Each dream refers back to your personal experience of your life. Given the fact that the dream landscape is a sort of "drained" landscape usually innundated by the flood of the waking world, what we see in dreams is a more subtle take on what it is we experience about ourselves while awake. In my past private dream group one participant made much of the metaphor of The Road as it is a very rich metaphor for our journey through life and our dreams certainly make great use of that metaphor.

Having kept a dream journal at times for extended periods of time I have been able to trace the development of several motifs across multiple dreams and can say with confidence that as with various religions that attempt to understand and approach God, our dreams are "written" by various voices...but they all are trying to describe what it is like to be you.

It seems to represent something that I'm thinking is nearly impossible, doesn't it

Nearly impossible, yes. What the psyche takes to be nearly impossible...but in the psyche/dream world what is nearly impossible is also, strangely, compellingly important. Taking a test in a difficult subject in the dark is really a kind of humorous idea I think. It is ludicrous really. What could that possibly mean?

If we take this to be a self-referential metaphor and consider the overall landscape in the dream we might say that this darkness and difficultly is metaphoric of how this subject, which is metaphorically advanced mathematics) is far from the light of the lighthouse that represents your personal orientation and bias. The ego puts itself in a position to obtain as much energy as possible in the psyche and directs that energy whether it is in a way to control it or to share it out cooperatively. Those areas of neglect are left in the dark or the shadow of the light the ego has coordinated with.

Chances are there is a voice in your psyche that has or will find expression in your dreams and your life that will represent that part of you that is needing that "impossible" work to be addressed. That is the Work or Magnum Opus in the language of Alchemy which is, itself, a system of metaphors for understanding the psyche and dream motifs.

Yeah I read a book by Jung a while back, maybe I didn't understand enough of it. Might have to read something by him again

Jung is a good thinker but he is such an intuitive...his writings tend to make their arguments based on an unending string of metaphoric associations based in dream content, myth and other psychological experiences. Without immersing one's self in the subject matter (literature, art, music, dreams, myths, etc.) one may struggle to appreciate this approach. Since Jung's education is based on studies available over 100 years ago and from a European education, his source material may now diverge from what many of us have at our disposal.

In that case, reading the Jungians might be preferential rather than Jung himself. Sometimes their own personalities are such that they are much easier to relate to. I have found that Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a great Jungian who has wedded story-telling with her practice of Jungian therapy and has written a very popular book called Women Who Run With The Wolves. I am hoping to read that for the second time sometime soon. As a myth lover and as a student of Jung I found the book very perceptive. As a man I hope it has helped me to understand women better and how they are not like men.

Never would have occurred to me to associate the feet with the road. What a puzzle. Maybe it represents something like a limit on the time or energy that life has; the endurance available to search the road. That you have to stop somewhere. I feel like I don't quite know though.

I find that looking at how the dream can interconnect with itself seems to create a more three-dimensional understanding that the dream seems to dissect as a two-dimensional story. Reflections and speculations about life or dreams are often like taking a step down that road and then stopping as the questions don't often lead to immediate answers.

Yeah I guess. Trying to avoid the monotony of the road, but ending up over my head anyway with some other problem

That last sentence sounds like it might metaphorically reference that dream. If you often use the phrase "over my head" when describing experiences in your life then this dream might be reflecting that back a bit.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
I suppose I should read Jung to figure out a few more things about this. Why does this shadow being need to be helped? It's having a hard time from what can be ascertained, but it doesn't seem to be living in quite the same world as the ego is. Or at best it's trying to navigate the trash pile of the ego, and not much can be done for it. I don't know, this is complicated stuff isn't it

I really like the idea of the shadow having to navigate the trash pile of the ego...I find that a very apt metaphor.

In the dream world there are well built structures which I tend to identify as the personality development of the ego. There are also mountains that I suspect are a more naturalistic metaphor for the same. The mountain, as if were, is the unconscious process of the formation of the personality above and beyond the waking world experience as it impacts the psyche. Now if we see that "natural accumulation" as a "trash pile", then we might very well understand that the shadow is a wanderer in that region. My simple starting point for the shadow is that it is a same sex, same age figure in a person's dream and that that voice represents a choice different from what the ego made. So the accumulation of the "unchosen options" would maybe be represented by a pile of trash outside the castle walls, so to speak.

This is reminding me a lot of the animated movie Astro Boy which has this floating city in the sky and this endless junk pile down on the planet. Also similar is WALL-E where you have the Earth abandoned as a garbage dump while the people live in space ships. In both cases in the movie the protagonists are robots.

Ok. Sometimes I go a good while without having much for dreams, but I'll try to remember not to dismiss them. You've provided some insightful food for thought, I don't think I've had dreams analyzed like that before, and I could never do too much with em

Thanks! I very much enjoy looking at dreams. I just seem to have a natural love of doing so and so many of my other interests seem to support this.

Thank you for sharing!
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Wow thanks a lot for writing that SealChan. You must be quite interested in dreams, I'll have to read what you think after I get some time later..

11/13/19, this latest dream annoyingly woke me up early, it was an anxious dream of a star wars battle that I think I lost, and upon losing it I snapped awake. The person I was fighting betrayed the team I was on and wanted to take over the complex, and my friend who was helping me beat him sort of ran away at the end, allowing the muscular 6 foot tall gray alien to get me. Other things about it I won't post as I feel they are sort of inappropriate in a way, though it's not like I created the story

Cool, Star Wars!

Now that I'm over that...this sounds like a classic scenario of a cooperative (vs separate) dreamer ego-team (a collection of voices all, more or less, coordinated with the dreamer) and the process of it encountering a "separatist" voice. Your first two dreams seem to have a separatist focus in that they focus on the actions of you as dreamer without coordinating with a team. In this dream the coordination is being threatened by a lone actor.

There is the person who "betrayed the team" and also a friend who was helping you who "ran away at the end". Both of these people represent a betrayal of the "team" it seems. Can you describe the alien any further? Is it like a human or maybe like a Ridley Scott alien?

I can appreciate having boundaries about what to post on a public forum.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
The dreamer has to open up to the possibility that their dominant personality is not handling certain situations as adaptively as it could and that a part of his or her psyche "voices" that.

Yeah that could very well be. Seems like taking the test in the dark would be something I'd really want to avoid, and yet the dreamer went ahead and decided it was the thing to do. I'm kind of stuck thinking it just represents a bad choice, to go along with bad choices I'm made in the past that wasted time. Sure there's part of me that wants to go there, but it seems like wishing for success is most likely a whole lot of false optimism. I'm just an average human that's trying to do something that would suit a super high iq nocturnal bat creature

Since Jung's education is based on studies available over 100 years ago and from a European education, his source material may now diverge from what many of us have at our disposal.

Did he associate metaphors with the bible a lot? If so, I've read the bible, so that would make it easier.

My simple starting point for the shadow is that it is a same sex, same age figure in a person's dream and that that voice represents a choice different from what the ego made. So the accumulation of the "unchosen options" would maybe be represented by a pile of trash outside the castle walls, so to speak.

As an aside, and I'm not aware if Jung or others thought this, but do you think that people who are really mentally ill might have the shadow and the go flip-flopped? Or maybe gets to the point where the shadow seeps into the waking world, making negative input there that fuels inadequate choices. Maybe a good question for a degree holder that might be out there in the forum

There is the person who "betrayed the team" and also a friend who was helping you who "ran away at the end". Both of these people represent a betrayal of the "team" it seems. Can you describe the alien any further? Is it like a human or maybe like a Ridley Scott alien?

Well a thing is, to clarify, the person who betrayed the team started out as a human, and then by the end was that alien. Not sure if that was clear. This particular alien was kind of cartoonish and gray, and looked muscular or tall as I said. More powerful than me in the closing scenes.

The Ridley Scott alien I had for all those other dreams I mentioned, the five or so others from a few years ago.. pretty friendly thing to have in a dream eh

I can appreciate having boundaries about what to post on a public forum.

Yeah I mean, some things I wouldn't know how to describe since they get just maybe a little x-rated or maybe represent really controversial ideas.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Did he associate metaphors with the bible a lot? If so, I've read the bible, so that would make it easier.

In certain works. For a somewhat famous read you could look at "An Answer to Job". This should give you a pretty good understanding of how Jung saw the Bible and other myth as useful material for understanding the psyche and for understanding the myth/Bible.

As an aside, and I'm not aware if Jung or others thought this, but do you think that people who are really mentally ill might have the shadow and the go flip-flopped? Or maybe gets to the point where the shadow seeps into the waking world, making negative input there that fuels inadequate choices. Maybe a good question for a degree holder that might be out there in the forum

Without being mentally ill I have had several dreams where I am fairly certain I was the Shadow. Typically those dreams where one is the less powerful individual or even when one is tyrannized or pursued by a malevolent figure of vastly greater power. Not always though as Jungians would more likely describe a powerful malevolent figure as representing the Self. In my own understanding of the God dream I have a similar perspective. I'm still working out some of that for myself. I've also been a female figure in a dream (my Anima) on a couple of occasions and have morphed from one to the other.

For me I am not sure how mental illness would show itself in dreams. I also find it difficult to identify the dreamer by sex unless that is specifically called out in the dream report or obvious from my familiarity with the individual. This ambiguity has driven me to avoid "sexing" the dreamer although there are some motif cues that are common. Women tend to dream more in terms of the ego-team and men more as an isolated individual. But I don't find that to be a reliable metric.

Well a thing is, to clarify, the person who betrayed the team started out as a human, and then by the end was that alien. Not sure if that was clear. This particular alien was kind of cartoonish and gray, and looked muscular or tall as I said. More powerful than me in the closing scenes.

The Ridley Scott alien I had for all those other dreams I mentioned, the five or so others from a few years ago.. pretty friendly thing to have in a dream eh

My own series of Ridley Scott alien dreams ended when I dared to "go down the hall" and "open the door" and looking down I saw not the insectoid species but cartoon aliens sort of in the basement. I think that having had the courage to approach the alien represented that I was able to drain that separation of psychic voices and approach my Shadow on a humorous level rather than fearful. One of my favorite Shadow dreams represented for me the ultimate in relationship to the Shadow as co-equal comic partner. I dreamt that I saw myself and my shadow looking into each other's eyes very close together. And in reference to the Bond movies my dream ego said, "I'm Angel, Noramiah Angel." My Shadow said, "I'm Animal, Noramiah Animal". Best joke I ever told.

So in the dream above it seems that there are aliens masquerading as part of your ego-team. Actually I think that this represents a close Shadow voice that, nonetheless, diverges from your personalities' direction and triggers in your ego a response to that voice in an act of complete opposition or suppression. This can come about through a unshakable judgment value regarding that voice and the choice it represents. But really that alien is close to being your good buddy even if he/she has a different approach to things. The trick here I think is to open a dialog (via Jungian active imagination) with that defector and try to understand what's up rather than to continue having these "fall outs". Also to identify what experience from the day before might have charged that particular dream drama.

Active imagination - Wikipedia

If you are a creative person at all chances are you may have a ready technique for incorporating an active imagination into your creative work. If not then your interest in your dreams is a good foundation for the same.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
A dream I had lately.. this one is of me buying a farm.. The cows are escaping onto the road.. the horses are fighting the rhinos.. I hire a dragon , to stop freddie krueger from getting me.. the dragon wants to eat the cows.. Perhaps it was a dream delivered to my subconscious, by a crow earlier in the day.. I had gave it a look, the one which was in the forefront.. H e communicated a loud caw or two , while gazing directly at me
 
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