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17. I’ve Got to Tell You About Auto Therapy.

It’s a term coined out of practical application. The phenomenon happened a couple of times so I had to name it.

Auto Therapy. Two friends in a car (the auto part of Auto Therapy) headed out for an uncharted weekend. East. West. North. South, pick a direction. Come to an intersection? Right, Left, or Straight ahead? Sometimes it was just that simple. Other times we might have an end point in mind but no time schedule or roadmap plotted. The point was to let go of all that held us to our every day responsibilities. Just drift the weekend away, letting mind, body, spirit go unfettered. Let the unconscious lead the way. What came up, came up.

The Therapy part of Auto Therapy comes about because, if you go with the flow, the unconscious is unfettered. (You remember the unconscious is where we store all those things that we don’t want to know about ourselves or have hidden because they weren’t accepted or pleasing to people in authority over us that we wanted to be accepted and loved by. Hidden. Dark. The bloody room. Post 11) The unconscious can bring up and have you talk about stuff on a whim, seemingly random thoughts, reminisces, events, grievances—old, new, and/or deeply buried. Consciously, you may think they’re all unconnected, but I’m here to testify: If you have a problem or issue, the unconscious will weave parts and pieces in and throughout a weekend of Auto Therapy to give you insights and answers. (I’ll explain more how that happens in the next post.)

Road Trip!

I like road trips. I always felt, as the car left city limits and living, I could feel the breaking of the strings that held us to the daily grind and responsibilities. I could almost hear the ping ping ping as each string stretched taut, pulled by the passing road until each one broke. We were free. Nothing holding us now.

I worked with Bobby Bare on his tv show and I remember him saying that the tour bus was like a rolling time capsule. They were all locked into this little cocoon rolling down the road. That’s what a road trip feels like to me. Encapsulated time. Encapsulated thoughts that stick around for you to revisit or regurg. The outside blocked as a blur behind glass.

As the drive meanders spontaneous, so does the conversation. Oft times it started with airing the grievances, Gritching we called it. A hybrid of Griping and Bitching including grievances. Causal grievances are the basis of griping and bitching (as well as the root of our humor according to Marshall McLuhan). If you’re free-wheeling from the unconscious in your rolling capsule, what comes up will sit in the pot and stew.

Such was one trip that MG and I started; I’m not sure now whether it was to a civil war battlefield or just ‘headed in a southerly direction’ to a destination TBD.

I recall I was in an angst-ridden session of gritching about money (again) and meeting responsibilities, paying my bills on time, being responsible for this and that and all the other. I like to think that my gritching is not from a victim point, but more from searching for an answer to “why do I keep getting into this same situation, and why does it bother me to vexation?” While it started out as a time to get away, this trip turned out to be a resonant “aha” moment that had me awash in tears. (Tears at an aha moment are a sure sign you’ve tapped into a pus-pocket of grief that you have just now lanced bringing instant relief! They are tears of recognition and release from the exhaustion of harboring a pus-pocket of grief for so long.)

I’m sure I gave MG some time to do some gritching of her own, but for two days I’d find myself reiterating my grievance, wailing verse after verse after plaintive verse. Until…

As we repacked our stuff to check out at the end of the weekend, I was still twanging on the same string of not having enough money to pay my bills and why was that so important to me? MG, who’d been listening for two days, a mule in the traces pulling along side to help me find my answer, announced, “You sound as if it is a matter of life and death.”

WHAM! BAM! THERAPY ENGAGED!

All of the scattered Dots the unconscious had been dropping all weekend, non-linear as they may have been, all zapped together in a whole new revelation. It was like I could feel tumblers of the safe falling into place. I felt the answer. I knew it! Without knowing how I got there. Without seeing how the pieces revealed their answer:

BEING RESPONSIBLE WAS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH FOR ME. If I wasn’t Responsible, I would die. Just like my daddy had died.

Tears validated the truth I had uncovered as I gushed to my friend, “If I’m not Responsible, I will die like my daddy.” Only then did the understanding fall into place: Somehow the convoluted thinking of a nine year old girl whose father had died two days before her birthday contorted into “If I am not responsible, I will die, too.” There is no linear explanation. No reason or rhyme. Just a young girl’s processing of feelings too intense to be recognized. Loss. Grief. Grief so devastating that her grandfather was worried “she would throw herself into the grave with her daddy.” Grief so out of control it would cause me to learn the word, keening.

There it was: I guess you can’t blame the adult me for taking on Responsibility as armor against dying. Who really can chart what effects the monumental, all-consuming, grievous loss of a loving father can manifest in the young and feeling psyche of a nine-year old girl? It may be the reason why I have tried so hard to find out “Why” to as many questions as I can.

Oh, What a Relief It Is!

There are immediate and lasting effects of aha moments. First is the intellectual and emotional understanding that comes in a rush. An epiphany many have named it; a revelation. Then follows ‘integration’ of the new understanding and that usually takes time, work, and practice. This particular weekend’s Auto Therapy brought an immediate load-lifting lightness that can only be felt when you finally lance a pus-pocket of grief and move to a better understanding of why you are. (We all have pus-pockets of grief that need lancing and draining to recoup our energy.) Just knowing why I felt so “responsible” all the time made me capable of relinquishing the onus part of it.

I remember proof-positive that I had integrated my new understanding of being responsible…or not. A co-worker came by my office. I can see her standing in the doorway as she started gritching about a grievance with the office or staff. All of a sudden I got an almost-smile on my face as I was able to say, “I’m not responsible for that.” I didn’t have to take it on, fix it, solve it, remedy it, deal with it! Oh what a relief it is!

Did I never worry about paying my bills or having enough money ever again? Probably not. But it never again held the life and death anxiety and angst that I had been living. All as a result of a free-wheeling car trip with no purpose in mind, just letting the River taking us where we needed to go. (Post 4.) I believe if we can let the unconscious talk to us, and for us, we can begin to clear out the pus-pockets of grief, the bloody-room of our best parts, and begin to live a whole life. The Dots are there.

Another Auto Therapy session with another friend revealed why I had to find Big Ron at Whirlpool.

16. Deja Vu…Dot…Dot…Dot

I found this written in a journal from the early days of waking up and asking questions:

“Deja vu last nite, packing stuff to move: In the background a movie I’d never seen before was on TV, about a coach trying to convince this chubby, insecure little boy that he would be able to be the emergency goalie they needed to win in soccer. I was packing the breakables off the coffee table, when very subtly it seeped into my conscious that I’d ‘done this before’—the exact same words, doing the exact same thing. That wispy, curious thing—not even a thing, a feeling—called a Deja vu. Then the follow-up thought: of course I couldn’t have done this thing ‘before’ to recognize it. Never saw that movie before. Never packed these breakables on this coffee table in this house before.”

Okay, you know I ask a lot of questions of Life, so for me, doing mindless physical labor like wadding newspaper around breakables is excuse enough for my mind to grab its freedom to think about the important things, like: What is a Deja vu? What causes a Deja vu? Do they mean something? What could they mean, then? I wasn’t necessarily in a rush to pin down an answer. No, I like to do that flow thing, collect more data or at least experiences, and live some long day into, if not an answer, at least a theory I can believe in.

Usually a Deja vu has been thought of as, “done this before,” and, yes, scientists have offered up some cerebral gymnastics, but I chose to formulate my own theory after lots of mind-time given to the above questions (and a lot of soul-searching for meanings to this life).

I will interject for transparency and full-disclosure that I am wont to (and feel comfortable) taking small samplings and extrapolating big theories about things that haven’t been proven yet and are, therefore, still open to the presentation of a well-thought out theory. Be it also known that my theories are always amenable to further proof and/or evolution.

Trying on Possibilities.

I like theorizing, offering up a Life Possibility. Why bother, you ask? I’ve been blessed-and-cursed with this recurring feeling in my existence of “there has to be more.” Somewhere after The Catalyst, (Post 6 and Post 7), life got past the lower case ‘life’ to the upper case ‘Life.’ Possibilities were pieces of a puzzle that just might fit together for The Big Picture of Life. You know when you do picture puzzles how you try different pieces to see if they fit? Why not try some possibilities that might fit? Plus, there was a nagging Dot that I retained from Mrs. True, my counsellor, who said to me, “At some time, you have to name ‘It.’” (‘It’ being what I truly believed in. I’d tried a dogmatized religion at an early age and saw past that but had never quite formulated what I did believe in. That became my challenge for finding The Big Picture.)

My theorizing is taking a small sampling of pertinent dots, seeing a pattern, and possibly connecting them into a logical and resonant theory. It doesn’t cost me (or you) anything to try it on for size. It doesn’t get me (or you) lost down a drutty rabbit hole. It’s just a possibility, and one that might fit into The Big Picture.

I remember making the same observation when I chose to leave the reward/punishment job at the major record label: “There has to be more than this.” When more job titles, more money, and more acquisitions didn’t sate the hole of ‘more,’ the search turned from outside to inside. Those Dots that I retained in my “pertinent pocket” without my even knowing they were being retained? Well, at some point, they seemed to connect. Why shouldn’t I try to connect some?

So here’s my theory of Deja vu’s.

I believe a Deja vu is a ‘rending or renting of the veil.’ The veil being that inexplicable mask that hides from us the “what-was-before-this-life” and “what-will-be-after-this-life.” In that wavery watery instant of Deja vu, you recognize in-this-life what you planned before-this-life.

Yes, I said, “what you planned before-this-life.” People have always joked about needing a manual for Life—they really have one. Remember The Schematic of Life (Post 8)?

We have one. We just can’t remember it without a whole heck of a lot of concentration, introspection, inquisitiveness, yea, questioning—which is hard to do in our harried lives. Along comes a Deja vu, and in that femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) that it takes for a Deja vu to seep through—your physical life has overlaid your Schematic. A Schematic so detailed with all the possibilities of your life that you were wrapping those same breakables, or your butt was seated in that exact seat on a production line. You saw behind the veil! Wow!

Deja vu is a wisp of what is locked behind the veil, seeping through the ethers and into the conscious. It is a ZAP connection to that Unknown of “where-we-were-before-we-were-born and will-be-when-we-die.” I’m also prepared to hazard the theory that a déjà vu may also be a checkmark that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, no matter the triviality of the moment. A Deja vu is a freeze-moment that gives me pause. Stop and marvel at the wonder of it. Staple this one femtosecond to the storyboard of my Life. And emerge with renewed energy to keep on keeping on.

You think maybe, even if you were able to swallow a Schematic of Life, can you swallow one so detailed that it would have you wrapping breakables from a coffee table? Or seated on a Whirlpool production line? Yeah, may be hard to imagine. BUT, if your plans for this life were made on ‘the other side,’ can’t you also entertain the probability that the abilities and capabilities on ‘the other side’ are beyond our comprehension? Yes, if you have given any thought to The Creator of us, however you have named It, you know It is not comprehensible to us. Hence we just keep updating our myths in our efforts to comprehend It.

Too deep? Ok, back to daily life. While the Deja vu I wrote about breakables on a coffee table was, on the Richter scale, say, about a 2 or 3, I had one during a very rough time in my life that hit a 7 or 8! I literally felt as if my head were swimming, my body physically swaying!

It was a tough time in my life. I was making the transition to freelance writing. I had clients, but the jobs were not enough to keep bills paid, home intact, and my two daughters in college. What do I do when times are getting tight? I lament aka whine. So in a lamenting phone conversation with my friend MG, she mentioned her company was hiring temps for their busy season of 3-4 months. I could apply for a second shift position so I could still see clients and write during the day. This would offer a modicum of base pay security as I built my clientele. Thank heavens I’ve almost always had the hutzpah to do what has to be done. So I did it.

I found myself on a production line at Whirlpool in T & A (Tests and Analysis—not the other T&A). While I was forlorn that my life had come to this ’at my age’, I took up the mantle I’d worn for every job I’d ever had:

“Whatever your hands find to do…Do that with all your might.” ‘

On to the training period for us second-shift temps: the dayshift would stay late and night shift came in early. The line would start and stop and stop for long periods because the newbie temps back up the line were being trained to do tedious and exacting work. I was at the end of the line, in the testing phase, after all the building was done. During these lulls, for some reason, seems the dayshift group leader, Big Ron, found the new person (me) on Wattage Tests a willing listener tethered to a production line.

Me? I was fighting dismay and forlornness, trying hard not to feel just a complete failure that I was back on a production line. Me, who had achieved a lot—I ticked them off: carpeted office (with couch and end tables, no less), personalized parking spot (up front), national advertising for a major record label, written for television, writing award from SESAC, even attained VP title. Me? On a production line again?

All those ‘accomplishments,’ yet I couldn’t help but note that a production line was where I’d started. Shortly after high school and an aborted carhop job in Indianapolis, I ended up living with grandparents in southern Indiana driving the 45-minutes to a job ‘on the line’ as a cookie-sacker and cracker-packer. Had my life come full-circle? Was this where I was to end up? Why? “Why, oh, why, indeed,” I woed!

I’m not sure how many days or even weeks it might have been that Big Ron would stay over from his shift, come sit and tell me about the wiles and woes of his girlfriend—who also had the same first name as I did. (Synchronicity aka a sign?) One day, well into my increasing dismay at the current status of my life, Big Ron started telling me the tale of how his girlfriend had turned down a date with him, only to find out she had a tennis date with another guy. He went to confront her on the tennis court. The tale went on…he ended up hitting the other fellow with a tennis racket, breaking his nose. W hooooaaaaa! I started swaying. I stopped him.

I said, “I’ve never met you before coming to work here, right?

He, dumbfoundedly: “No.”

Me: “And you’ve never told me this story before, right?”

He: “No.”

Me: “I’m having the biggest Deja vu I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

He: “What does that mean?”

Me, as calmly and serene and resigned as I’ve ever been: “It means my butt is exactly where it’s supposed to be. My butt is supposed to be right here in this seat.”

I didn’t know why I had to come to Whirlpool; I didn’t know why I was reliving my beginnings. Was I getting some sort of do-over? I didn’t know what was expected of me at this point, to be here. Yet a tsunami Deja vu and I was instantly reassured I was exactly where I was supposed to be, for whatever reason that might unfold. I was able to let go of all my dismay and woebegottenness. In washed curiosity instead. Why did I have to be here, in this seat, in this department, at this time of my life?

There’s a lot more to tell about my connection with Big Ron. I’m not sure if I found him or if I created all the events for him to find me.

It would take a series of dreams and an Auto Therapy weekend to reveal exactly why I had to find Big Ron at Whirlpool.

15. A Mind Is Like a Parachute; It Only Functions When It Is Open.

If you’re a fan of Frank Zappa, well, Frank Zappa gets a lot of cites for this statement and that’s fine. Truth be told, he was born in 1940, long after this pithy statement had a rash of appearances in newspapers across the United States as early as October, 1927. It was picked up by a Scottish distiller-and-maker-of-witty-epigrams, named Lord Thomas Robert Dewar in 1928 (he read Brit versions of US papers) so he’s credited with it too. It’s been recurring all the decades since—the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, the Cornell Engineer, even the 1936 film Charlie Chan at the Circus (screenplay by Robert Ellis and Helen Logan)—because, a Truth will stick around to be re-dis-covered forever.

Truth springs Eternal: A Mind Is Like a Parachute; It Only Functions When It Is Open.

Open-mindedness seems the natural default to me. Yet I’ve known people who were welded shut with close-mindedness on a certain subject, or as a lifestyle. Out of fear? Of what? An ‘unknown?’ The Unknown? Remember the friend who gave me the Rainer Maria Rilke verse of “live some distant day into the answers?” (Post 4. Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom) She also framed and gave me this quote:

“I dwell in possibility.”
Emily Dickenson

What is so fearful about ‘possibilities’ that a person cannot bear to stray one question away from their known? They remain clamped shut to considering anything other than what they presently believe? Why not ask? Why not venture? You can always come back. You can always return to Square One. Ground Zero. From whence you came. You will not get lost. I’ve asked a lot of questions…a…lot…of…questions…and I’m still standing.

A case for close-mindedness—not open to any and all considerations, to other possibilities—it just baffles me. I can’t make the case. It seems so limiting to me. Can anything be gained by closed-mindedness? Who benefits from close-mindedness? Perhaps a person wants to limit the amount of information they must contain? To be open-minded to possibilities, to ask questions of the status quo would be to have to contain ‘more’ than they want to deal with? Maybe.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

Life is all about evolving. Think about fire and the heat it provides. How it started with a couple rocks or sticks, a teeny spark and look what we have evolved fire into today. It can be brought inside and char our meat beyond palatability. It can be harnessed to provide warmth through big silver hoses to anywhere in our house. Think about communication. From smoke signals to jungle drums to telegraph wires to air waves to a computer on your wrist! Think about the Industrial Revolution…then picture every “As Seen on TV” gadget that has ever been invented. That’s evolution. And evolution is what EVERYTHING is about. Evolve is what EVERYTHING does. We started as energy blasted from a big bang, not even a dust mote, and look what we and billions of galaxies have evolved to.

I recall that the word ‘evolution’ may be a sticky wicket for some. Evolving is just growing. A baby grows to a child who grows to an adult who grows to an elder. What if a baby didn’t ‘evolve’ into an adult? What if an acorn never evolved into an oak? Growing is what is built in every molecule of our DNA, in every thing. Life was given to us for the purpose of growing. Not just in size and stature (or acquisitions), but in improving—understanding, communicating, coping, interacting, contributing. Learning more about why we were created in the first place. Evolving. Growing better, stronger, smarter, kinder.

Evolving is improving. Look at how rudimentary inventions have been improved through multiple generations of product. “All New and Improved.” And they just keep on improving, growing, evolving. Since humans are the creators of inventions, products, we should be the leaders in evolving and growing our selves.

I hear myself pointing out that even God “evolved.” Look at the wrathful, smiteful God he was in the Old Testament, sending all sorts of plagues and tragedies on one of his most faithful, Job. Then, seven, eight hundred years later when the New Testament books were being written after an infusion into the human species named Jesus, look what a loving father he grew into being. Did God himself evolve and grow? The Omniscient one? Once Omniscient, he should always be Omniscient, right? Maybe he got better writers to describe him?

So I’m pointing out that God probably didn’t ‘evolve.’ It really was OUR understanding of God and OUR place in the universe that evolved. We grew in our understanding about ourselves, the human psyche, relationship to nature, our surroundings, that big ball of heat in our sky, and those starry, starry nights. Hence, as we evolved/grew in our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of the unknown/Unknown ‘evolved’ with us. We wrote new stories and myths to exhibit our new understanding. Practically every Sci-Fi show or book you’ve seen or read is someone trying out a new possibility of our existence to consider.

I’ve mentioned Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, many times, and many times repeated one of the plethora of Dots he dropped: “Myths are the contents of man’s psyche.” So as we grow in our understanding of our place in the universe, our myths grow with us. Hu-man started out feeling there was something else in control of us, so we called upon sun gods, moon goddesses, fertility gods, corn maidens, rain gods, and multitudes of gods we intuited we had to appease for help in surviving this unknown nature around us.

Greek gods were overtaken by Roman Gods. Egyptian gods, Indian gods paralleled. Everyone was writing their stories to better grasp an understanding of our place in a life on this one planet of an unfathomable universe of unknown ‘out there.’ Gods kept being replaced, morphing, as the first humans grew to cogitate on their experiences in life and increase their understanding of who we are…trying to answer, “why” are we? Evolving. Eventually we made our way from many gods to one god. Polytheism to monotheism. And even monotheism just keeps evolving, changing, splitting, asking new questions and getting further awareness.

Evolving is our way of life. How can we do our best if we aren’t open to other possibilities, the all-new-and-improved, the next step in growing? Growing/evolving/becoming more than we are now/growing forward—it was hardwired into us as the very first energy of the big bang started a multi-billion-year-process that would become us. That’s a Big Picture.

You really can’t stop evolution. You can be blind to it. You can deny it. But you can’t stop evolution. Humans are going to evolve even if it means leaving others behind.

It is reported that there are as many as six (6) billion, with a b, Earth-like planets in our galaxy. And billions of worlds beyond our solar system. Whoever set off the big bang which evolved into this particular human species on this one-of-billions-of-planets biosphere–It built in the mechanism to evolve. We are ONLY here because of the innate and persistent evolution that has taken place for billions of years. Billions of years.

If you think of it at all, you can’t think that this place that we are all at right now is the end all-be all for human evolution. If as a species we can’t exhibit the love and acceptance that Jesus personified as an example for us, if we can’t “love thy neighbor as thyself” (as commanded over two millennia ago) or even “tolerate thy neighbor,” or erase all war, erase all inequality, erase all hunger and poverty, how can we possibly think that we are where God intended us to “stop” our evolution. Poke a fork in it—Done? Don’t think so. I certainly don’t have the quantity of hubris needed for that, so I keep on asking, searching, growing—evolving.

Just like the acorn has everything in that tiny kernel to become a giant oak, so does every soul born have everything inside to grow into a manifestation of the Eternal–that is the Self that Jung helps us find.

So to me, the Raison d’etre is to grow. Be All That You Can Be. Look on the inside and you will find the Eternal hidden there, covered up with all the flotsam and jetsam and BS you’ve piled on yourself from the day you entered earth’s atmosphere. Re-learn all the Knowing you dis-remembered when you left that warm, cozy, fully-nurtured womb for a shockingly cold, bright-lighted earth’s atmosphere. The Ember of that Knowing is still there. The Raison d’etre is to look at You and find It.

14. Dreams—Let’s Get Practical, Practical.

I know a lot of people don’t want to take dreams seriously. Many will say they never remember their dreams. I’ll tell you now that when you make the conscious decision and intent-to-grow as far as you can, searching for your true Self, seeing what your life is truly about—dreams will be the instrument of communication.

Here’s my Cliff Notes version of things I learned that were helpful in recording and interpreting dreams. This will also help when you come back and review your dreams in a week, month, year or years later.

From experience I know that reviewing your dreams almost always sheds more insights. There was the time when I was in much emotional pain from ending a relationship that was unhealthy. Lamenting my pain to a friend, she advised me, “Look at your dreams a year ago.” And sure enough, a year before it had all happened, was a dream in which ‘on a dark road (in the dark/unknown) a man had fixed my car (the way I go thru life), then left with two children (the man in question had a boy and a girl). I was grateful for his help, sad that he was leaving, and when he left, I said: “I hope you will come back.” Having the whole scenario played out, a year before it happened, gave me an understanding and then acceptance one year later that the man had done what he was supposed to do, and that was all. Acceptance brings relief from pain.

So here’s a practical practice of using dreams—shorthanded:

Write down THE DREAM no matter how weird or convoluted it seems, as much detail as you can—main characters, places, background, weather, colors, odd things, all of the details.
Write a SHORT STORY LINE or overall one-sentence-type theme to the dream which may give you a reference as to the meaning. Edgar Cayce says to check to see if the opposite is true in your life. If so, the dream may be letting your know you need to find the happy medium between the two opposites! (See Compensatory Dreams below.). Watch for a (many times humorous) play on words, “all wet,” “the stronger the wind, the higher I can fly,” “something ‘bugging’ you,” “something under your skin,” “let go of the baggage,” “in over your head.”
Give a brief overview of the EVENTS OF THE DAY before because you learn that most dreams are reactive to something conscious or unconscious that was stirred in the previous day’s activity. An emotion perhaps that flashed for an instant but you tamped it down. Your dream wants you to recognize/acknowledge that emotion. Plus it also gives you context if you come back to review your dreams a month, a year, a decade later.
What were the FEELINGS in the dream? Do they relate to a like-feeling from the day before? Or to something that is happening in your life now? Sometimes dreams will take a feeling, especially a scary one and construct a scenario around it to show you just how afraid you are (whether you want to admit it or not) and help you acknowledge/face/accept/deal with it.
First consider if it is a PHYSICAL WARNING in some way? For example, I had received notification of a recall on my car for something in the front suspension. Busy life. I didn’t want to be bothered to take time off work and go to the dealership, yet I was wondering if I was feeling something symptomatic in my car or just imagining it. I had a dream that showed my car wobbling as I was driving it. This dream was enough to make me act, and, indeed, the car was in need of the repair.
Note the MAJOR SYMBOLS in the dream. What did you choose in set-dressing your dream? Describe what the symbols mean to you specifically (even just writing adjectives helps). If that description brings to mind any “incidents” or memories, (called associations), note those, too. i. e. That ‘symbol’ or that ‘feeling’ reminds me of the time ________. Dream interpretations can be non-linear, too. Sometimes just remembering this ‘association’ and ‘that story’ all of a sudden fits the two together and you feel “aha” or “ooohhh” coming out of your mouth before you even know it.
Also know that some symbols contain specific meaning for you, like Mr. Stewart, my favorite teacher, father figure. Others are of the ages, from the myths, the psyches of all humans over our entire evolution. When from the ages, the symbol carries more than just the obvious—it is the best possible symbol for your unconscious to communicate to your conscious self. Writing adjectives to describe each symbol may help identify what issue or part of your psyche you are dealing with. (I remember one person explaining, “try to describe the symbol as if you were explaining it to someone not from this planet.”)
If it is a ‘series dream,’ repeating a specific symbol or location or even an entire dream— try to see the differences in the dream. How are you doing—disintegration or improvement? Or is it trying to bring home a point that you just are not getting or acting on?

“Dreams which are not interpreted are like letters which have not been opened.” The Talmud

Learning to interpret dreams is an-ever-progressing lesson. You’ll get recurring symbols, like Blake Book (for my art), or my high school teacher, Mr. Stewart, who always affirmed there was a “lesson” in there somewhere or he was starting a new class or I was failing my ‘test.’

You learn that your house means you, your life. Dream of your house? Describe the house. Does that sound like how you feel/see your life? Are there new rooms that you didn’t know were there that seem happy, intriguing, you’re pleasantly surprised to find and want to explore? (That’s all you!) One time in my dream, my house was completely destroyed (representing a year that was so financially distraught that I feared I would lose my house). Yet in the dream, it dawned on me that I would now be able to rebuild it any way I wanted. The dream identified my biggest fear and gave me an entirely different approach and outlook to my fear. (You may also remember the lesson I learned from the Catalyst: When you are irrational from fear, determine the worst that can happen, come to accept that even if that happened, you would still survive, be you. It takes you from irrationality to being rational enough to focus on thwarting that outcome.) This dream did that for me.

Windows in a house? Probably your “outlook.” I saw a big garbage heap from one window. Was that the way I saw my world at the time?

Your car can represent your life and the ‘means by which you go through life.’ Sometimes my car would be lost, stuck, sitting in a parking lot, have flat tires. I called these “status” dreams—they were letting me know how well I was (or was not) doing.

Flying dreams are by far about the best. I came to learn they usually referred to my ‘spirit soaring’ because I’d made a discovery or had a realization the day before. Think of the exhilaration that soaring gravity-free must bring—gravity-locked no more!

Flying is usually related to the ‘mental’ aspects. Many times my flying dreams would encapsulate the “free” feeling of joyousness when I had realized something that ‘elevated’ my life, my way of thinking, my insights into The Big Picture.

In most of my flying dreams, flying was a mechanical focus. It required body control and torque, arms out for stability. But one notable dream, I made a startling new discovery—a shortcut to flying! I dreamed all l I had to do was ‘think’ and I ‘dissolved into the air’ is how I described it, yet it felt as exhilarating as flying—even moreso because I had discovered a new way to fly.

After writing down the dream, I went to record the previous day’s events (#3 Above) and realized that amazing dream was capturing the elation my soul was feeling.

The previous day, my good friend and I had been with my ex-husband who was showing her a new house. He took us to dinner, and there he related to my friend that what I had done to claim a life of my own had been a very brave thing to do. He explained that he would not have learned some of the things he did if I had not left. He, whose heart I had broken, called me brave. The dream held the depth of the exhilaration I felt to hear such acceptance and affirmation from the father of my daughters.

Dreams Can Spell It Out for You.

Occasionally you get a pretty obvious dream. My journaling notes: “When I had this dream, there was this subtle urging—“you should remember this dream”…it was like I understood the symbolism while I was dreaming it. From my journal:

“House in the background—it belonged to me and the man I was with. The two of us started to soar, up above everything but I couldn’t see a landscape. I was hanging on to some ‘baggage,’ heavy cumbersome suitcase-like thing. I’m not sure exactly ‘what’ it was, but I was holding on behind it, being pulled through the air. The man was sorta leading, encouraging, reassuring me that if I let go, I could soar even more. I finally ‘let go’—releasing the ‘baggage’ to really let myself soar—and I gleefully and proudly proclaimed, “I finally let go!” There was a little jerk like you might feel if you jettisoned something heavy, but I recovered stability immediately. I was proud of finally ‘trusting’ to ‘let go’ like a kid learning to trust your balance on a bicycle or trust floating in water.”

“Let go of the baggage, I could SOAR!” (I’d even packed ‘all my stuff’ conveniently in a bag!) I finally let go and trusted! (Trust had been a highly suspect emotion in my experience!)

This dream came seven years after I had encountered The Catalyst (kissed awake). I had been working to claim my life for my own—which included integrating the Animus/masculine attributes of independence. Was the ‘encouraging male’ who said if I just ‘let go the baggage, I could soar’ my Animus? (If indeed my Animus, I described him as ‘older, wiser, a mate, comfortable, low-key, quiet, assured. I’d like to think my perfect opposite would be just like that!)

One flying dream was interpreted as I flew: “The stronger the wind, the higher I can fly.” I took that one to heart. It gave me courage to face whatever was blowing me about in my life at the time, and to see strong headwinds as merely the opportunity to soar even higher!

There is also a category called, Compensatory dreams. You can have a dream that is pretty much the extreme polar opposite of what’s happening in your life. It’s for the purpose of recognizing you need a balance between the extreme in the dream and the extreme opposite in your life. The human mind seeks balance and equilibrium. Your dream Maker is the communicator between your conscious existence and what your unconscious needs for your best life. I have to confess that sometimes in my lowest, hardest, most painful conscious life, many times I would have a compensatory dream that woke me up laughing! I needed balance.

I’ll also confess there were some dreams I just had to record and hope for further clarification at some point. Hence why we need to press the Pause button from time to time and ‘look back.” Sometimes it would be weeks, even years later, I’d be reviewing my dreams from a bigger picture and perspective view-point, and the meaning would ring clear as a bell.

We modern day humans try so hard to quantify our lives—numbers, years, net worth, fixed dogmas, final answers, five-year plans and retirement plans. Objective at the expense of the subjective. Discount and discard what we cannot see or grasp. Working with dreams connects you with a feeling that there is something inside each of us, working with us— something more than just numbers and things and stats—something that wants us to fulfill our soulful yearning for a meaning to life, our life.

“If one watches this meandering design (of dreams) over a long period of time, one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth –the process of individuation.” Carl Jung “Man and His Symbols” p. 160

If you want more detail and depth on working with your dreams, besides buying books, I found this site: https://cafeausoul.com/dreams/inspired-by-dreams/dream-expert-kari-hohne She has incorporated both Freud and Jung in dream interpretation and has a very easy-to-read, practical approach which can be quickly helpful.

If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.

13. Dreams—A Little Help from Our Friends

The Self can be defined as an inner guiding factor that is different from the conscious personality and that can be grasped only through the investigation of one’s own dreams.” Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols” (MAHS) p. 160

There are sooooo many books written about dreams, what they mean, how to use them. I have a whole shelf of books specifically about dreams and their interpretation. Yes, I have read and highlighted them. But I will disclaimer that my input can neither be academic nor even encompassing. It is experiential, my experience from what I have lived and learned.

My wish is to convey how useful and insightful and comforting and knowledgeable dreams can be to aid you in everyday living—and, moreso, in finding a raison d’etre (a reason to be) for the life you are living. Dreams are the navigational buoys in the sea of life and Life.

“(Dreams) work to accomplish two things. They work to solve the problems of the dreamer’s conscious, waking life. And they work to quicken in the dreamer new potentials which are his to claim.” “Edgar Cayce on Dreams” p. 9

The first thing to know about our dreams is that We are the “producer.” Some part of us—our psyche, our higher Self, our piece of the Eternal, ‘the One Within Who Knows,’—the part that holds the Schematic. Always wanting to get us on the true track of our Life.

Also, we play all the parts. Dream about your daughter (or son), think about the daughter (or son) part of you. Dream about your mother, think of the ‘mother’ in you. Dream about a “character,” write down a description and see which part of you they might represent. Dream about a scary, dark character—that may be your Shadow that wants you to recognize it. Face it. Look for the Anima/Animus (opposite sex) to see what additional aspects or attributes of your personality you need to incorporate. See what your starting status is and watch as you deal with each of your Parts and Pieces to get to your true Self. Dreams will let you know if you’re gaining or losing and how to fix the problem. They can also give you guidance for most every issue you face in life.

I know, I can hear you saying, “I don’t remember my dreams.” The best way to press ‘Start’ on remembering and getting help from your dreams? Buy a blank book and start writing them down. Once dreams see that you are taking them seriously, they’ll make themselves remember-able.

I began with ‘little’ blank books, the cloth-bound versions—save your money. Go for the 8 1/2 x 11” letter-sized books or even spiral notebooks (stock up when they’re on sale for back-to-school supplies!) Once you apply your sincere energy (the operative word, energy) and effort to follow that built-in urge toward growth, it will see that dreams, answers, synchronicities, books, friends, strangers, even podcasts, will keep you going forward.

What some call a “numinous” dream may even hold ‘the Call’ that begins a person’s search for their true Self. “Numinous” meaning it is a ‘BIG” dream; it holds some sort of divine, spiritual or something-Bigger-than-you-and-I feeling. It sorta demands that you pay attention to it and wonder on it for a while.

I had what I’d call a “voice of God” dream a year or two after I had been awakened by The Catalyst. It was before I had that intuitive feeling that ‘dreams might be important,’ but when you think you might have heard ‘the voice of God,” you’re gonna remember that dream without writing it down!

What I remember is that the night before I’d been watching what is called an “oater” in crossword puzzles—an old western movie, may have been John Wayne and a wagon train setting as I recall. Later that night I had a dream that I was with a wagon train and we were being attacked (dreams do like to play with recent tv fare). Our backs were to what felt like a big rocky cave and I was on the ground furiously directing and helping people pile all our belongings/”stuff” up in front for protection. Working frantically and furiously, all of a sudden…a disembodied voice, maybe coming from the cave, and striking silence all around, quietly announced, “You Will Be an Organizer.” That’s all. And it sorta ended the dream—or at least it woke me up.

My first reaction, again, was, “Whut?” What does that mean? And, again, all I could do was say, “OK. I’m listening.” What am I supposed to organize? I decided it wasn’t any project I was working on at the time. Voice of God seemed a little overkill for a tv project. All I could do was file it away (and wait for some other clue) because I sure couldn’t figure it out…or forget it. It did sound like what I would have thought the “Voice of God” would come to us like, so I did pay attention and wonder on it. Then all I could do was wait.

Fast forward 12-14 years later (remember, 12-14 years doesn’t even equate to the Eternal part we’re dealing with). Here is the description of a “non-descript piece of a dream” I recorded in my journal. “There were lots of mundane on-going dreams, but they were faint, not much registered or stayed with me. I remember thinking about/realizing I had this dream, seemed boring, just sluffed it off during the night til this morning when I realized it was a wagon train—and it was the wagon train I was with/helping out when I had the “You Will Be An Organizer” dream years ago.”

Again, “Whut?” I had almost forgotten about that ‘Voice of God’ dream.

In this dream, the wagon train was starting up again, moving on down the trail. I set about picking up odds and ends of our “stuff” and throwing it into various wagons as they pulled out. I didn’t want anything to be left behind. Twelve to fourteen years later—I was still organizing.

Here’s where I caution that you have to be awake to Dots dropping so you can connect them later—sometimes much later.

Remember the classmate who wrote the book I felt was an ode to his Anima? In this dream he was the one who “woke me” that the wagon train was starting up again. What is even more bizarre was that that classmate had been a recurring theme in my dreams for over four years leading up to a class reunion. His name was used as word play on the changing status of my ‘art’. Although his name was Art (so I wouldn’t miss the clue), let’s call him Blake Book. (In the beginning he was handicapped but I loved him so much! Probably a very apt description of my “art” at the time.) When I dreamed of BB, it was usually an update on the status of how well I was progressing in my “art.” BB many times showed up in a “Reunion” setting which made me more determined to go to the class reunion which I rarely-to-never attended.

After Blake Book was identified as the recurring symbol for my art, it was my dreams that led me to locating him after having been absent from my home town for a couple of decades. (As they say, ‘that’s a whole ‘nother story, Montel’) Four years of BB being the symbol for my art, then I attended the actual class reunion. The real BB and I talked over 18 hours. I gathered one item from him that ended up in my pertinent pocket. His theory of Marginal Multiples. I really thought his theory had merit, not to mention a little bit of humor, and… alliteration. MM.

(A quick note: if you understand that when an aggrieved or abused personality splits into “multiple personalities” for survival, BB had extrapolated and shared his theory of “Marginal Multiples.” He felt all of us take on borderline (on the margin) adjuncts to our personality—nothing too serious, just some oddities to our normal nature that pop up on certain prompted occasions. I already knew that when a child is traumatized—emotionally, physically, or spiritually—at an early age, there will always remain a child of that age (thinking and acting) in the adult’s personality. Hit a trigger and that young-aged child may stomp, yell or react in his now-adult body! Here BB had come up with a name—Marginal Multiples. (has a lightbulb gone on yet? MM?)

It was three years after that reunion that I had the dream that BB (symbol for my ‘art’) woke me up to tell me that the wagon train was starting up again.

Long time to be remembering Dots dropped, right? They neither drop linearly, nor do they drop conveniently close together. But if they are ‘pertinent to your survival’, you will. That’s why eyes, ears, heart and soul must be open, alert, and waiting (writing down helps, too). I’m pretty well convinced that the Self/Unknown/Eternal that we are dealing with really does not do well in our constriction of the time/space continuum. Time just isn’t factored in the same way. Or maybe it’s all just to teach us patience.

So how do we use our dreams?

Let’s get Practical, Practical.

If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.

12. Parts ‘n Pieces–The Anima/Animus: Why Opposites Attract.

Anima and Animus for Everyone

Next up, the Anima and Animus, which we’ve already touched upon in my particular journey. The Anima/Animus are the opposite attributes of what your physical make up is. We have both male and female chromosomes, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t we be utilizing the best of both? Sounds like wholeness to me.

A man must recognize, honor and incorporate his Anima–the feminine strengths of nurturing, compassion, and emotions. Emotions. Aaargh, say many men.

If you know anything of the decades of the 50’s and 60’s, there was a very strict delineation of female roles and male roles. A man just would never take on the responsibility of a ‘house husband’ with all the dirty diapers that entailed. Yet, that is exactly what has come to pass/evolve with the ensuing generations. More and more men are taking on nurturing, caretaking, housebound duties and roles. This is the male incorporating the nurturing feminine attributes of the Anima. Makes me happy.

Ode to the Anima

A long ago classmate of mine wrote a book sharing his journey into (and subsequent return from) the Land of Cancer. He had never married, lived alone. He was quite methodical in his detail of each of the precise radiation treatments and the young female technicians who attended him. He readily admitted that over the course of his treatments, he developed a strong, yet reserved attraction to one of the young ladies. He was quite naked in baring his innermost thoughts of her, eloquent in describing her kindness and caring, risking all with his bravery to finally confess his feelings for her, and her ultimate denial of like feelings. All I could think of as I read was, “She is your Anima.” I think his book was as much a manifestation to honor his Anima as a chronicle of his journey.

Rosie Leads the Way

For a woman, she works to integrate her Animus, masculine strengths. She must recognize, honor, and incorporate the Animus into her psyche—those masculine traits of taking care of herself, having her own opinions, being independent, and standing up for herself. While many suffragettes planted the seeds of Animus infusion, I believe it was the global circumstances of World War II that heralded the beginning of actual integration of the Animus. Rosie the Riveter breached this barrier for women and we’ve been pouring through it ever since. Women were forced (or allowed, whichever way you wish to look at it) to take on masculine roles and along with that the masculine attributes of strength and independence. That outpouring to independence through the 60’s was demarcated as ‘women’s liberation.’

Speaking of women’s lib, I really have to share this quote from Orson Welles that, to me, spoke volumes of what men were feeling after women shook loose their bonds. It was from a relatively unknown movie that I ‘happened’ upon who knows where or how, called, “Someone to Love,” written, produced and directed by Henry Jaglom. (somehow I stuck the Dot in the pertinent pocket!) Orson gives this dissertation:

“That brings us to the greatest revolution of our times which is the liberation of women. But by liberating women we are freeing the last of our slaves. And for fifteen, twenty thousand years there has never been a civilization, there has never been a single civilization, which has not been maintained by slaves. There’s a tremendous diminution to men’s energy. It’s partly because men are sympathetic to the new revolution and partly because we are scared to death of it.”

Unfortunately, since fear is not a manly thing to display (or recognize), men flung it into the Unconscious/Shadow, There, it ‘acted out’ in a scary, irrational spate of backlash against women that is still simmering in smoldering volcanoes for men who cannot face the Shadow and accept it.

Still, not all women chose to venture onto the field of liberation. Freedom can be a daunting prospect. When their time comes, if it ever does in this lifetime, they will need the armor of the Animus, I believe.

The short version of the job of the Anima/Animus:

“Woman’s sacrifice is in freeing herself from entanglements of personal relations to fit her for a more conscious role as an individual in her own right.”

“A man’s sacrifice – which is the surrender of his sacred independence. He becomes more consciously related to woman.” Carl Jung “Man and His Symbols (MAHS)”

Man must sacrifice his independence. Woman must sacrifice relationship to find her independence. Opposites sacrificing opposites in order to find completion/wholeness.

In dreams, the Animus and Anima usually appear as a ‘shadowy’ member of the opposite sex. Many times in real life, the call to recognize the Anima or Animus is projected onto a member of the opposite sex who is seen as an end-all-be-all love that must be attained. Here, one must become very attentive and discerning—the actual person may not be the end-all-be-all. It is their masculine (or feminine) attributes that your psyche needs to embrace and integrate on its way to wholeness. (Been there, done that!)

Opposites Attract for a Reason

Balance. Women need to recognize and incorporate some of the strong, independent masculine traits they see in their beloved. Men need to incorporate some of the feminine traits of nurturing softness they admire in their beloved.

Psyches contain the Opposites…both the dark and the light; the male and the female. The opposites of all things. And all things have an opposite. We just don’t like to acknowledge the dark, scary, bad-rep parts, but we need to. How can you possibly be the whole you with only half acknowledged? By recognizing them as a part of you, you bring light to their darkness, and wholeness to your being.

The Microcosm and the Macrocosm.

Jung also felt that what the individual (microcosm) undertakes in the process to become whole is also played out in the evolution of humankind (macrocosm)—(i.e. The Animus being integrated by women everywhere after WWII and women’s liberation. Then the Anima being integrated in men incorporating the role of nurturer/caretaker)…a whole ‘nother realm yet to be explored.

What about the Shadow? Is the Shadow what we are seeing projected on ‘the Other’ in our drastically divided nation right now? Is the American psyche having to recognize those things we ‘hate’ in the “Other” as being a part of ourselves and accept them? Incorporate the Shadow?

For those who dare enter the dark forest on their own path to seek their holy grail—their true Self—dreams can become your on-board, in-house, fully-involved consultant.

Dreams—A Little Help from Our Friends