Carl Jung – Mesmarriah Miracle

18. Making Order Out of Chaos—Stir It Up!

You may wonder how an ‘aha’ moment, an epiphany of understanding, or revelation happens. You may wonder how you can accept as a Truth something that just ‘bubbles’ up seemingly from out of nowhere—that you can’t quite trace back the linear logic that got you there. Some people say, “it resonated with me.” Is ‘resonates’ really even a thing? That’s sorta what happened to me in Auto Therapy (Post 16). I fairly vibrated with the information that bubbled through from somewhere even though I could not retrace a logical progression of A to B to C afterwards.

Quick version: if something resonates with you, it’s an internal, almost perceptible bodily vibration when your mind/consciousness/psyche/soul recognizes a Truth. Some people may call it a ‘knowing.’ They just ‘knew.’ Sometimes it’s felt like a ‘glow’ in your gut, solar plexus.

So it’s happened to me, I questioned it, and then found evidence of the universality of it in all of us. And, I’m gonna say, even a scientific basis.

Feeling the Glow.

Here’s my experience: If you read Post 6 and 7 (The Catalyst, Part I and Part II), I had worried most of all about the heartbreak I was causing my daughters, my grandmother, my family. Tearing apart my life and family to claim a life of my own, could it truly be the ‘right’ thing to do? At a bookstore visit during the hardest times of the break-up, there, right at the cash register was the book, “Co-Parenting.” It was a new concept at the time, but I felt it was meant just for me to find it and offer it as a mediating solution. Mrs. True, our counselor, always expressed her pride in how both the girls’ father and I were able to put the girls first as we worked through the pain.

I’m not sure if it was months or even a year of co-parenting when it happened. I had chosen to move to the outer edge of the girls’ school district and the price I was willing to pay was driving the girls to school each morning, most years to two different schools before I would then get ready for my own job.

One such morning, I had dropped first one daughter at her elementary school, took the second daughter to her middle school and back home, to get ready for work. I’ve sorta accepted that we pay a price for most everything, and I was comfortable with the price of driving every school morning that I had the girls, feeling happy even that I was comfortable with the cost of the arrangement.

I can see it as plain as day exactly where I was when it occurred. I was getting ready to enter the on-ramp to the interstate that would take me to work. Perhaps I’d still been feeling the self-satisfaction of the progress my choices had been giving me. All of a sudden, I felt this glow is all I can use to describe it. Right in the middle of my gut. I may even have reached my hand to touch it. And with the glow came a realization that my daughters would not have to go through the pain I did to claim a life of their own. They would inherit it from me! I had absorbed the pain so they wouldn’t have to go through it.

I had lived into the answer to my emotional question.

Did the glow come first or the realization and answer to my question? I can’t say. I just know I felt the glow radiating from the pit of my stomach, and as the illumined answer to my worries about my daughters came, that glow warmed my heart all the way to every extremity. It was more than an answer; I felt it a reaffirmation that I had made the right decisions. So, I extrapolated: a revelation of something hidden and previously unknown that is True, well, the atoms in your body vibrate with the excitement of Knowing a Truth!

Perhaps you’ve felt something ‘resonate.’ You read something, someone speaks something, and you feel a bodily ‘knowing’ it’s true. A micro tremor of the atoms somewhere in the gut region (solar plexus), sometimes throughout your entire body. I haven’t gotten into atom research (yet)—maybe they do increase their vibrations—but if you have ever felt it, you know exactly what it feels like. Here are the Dots that help explain this bodily reaction to Truth or Knowing.

Nobel Prize Winning Dot #1. The Clue.

The first clue was a Dot I picked up long long ago (and retained) from a book, “A Life of One’s Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married” by Joan Dash. (I also retained the book because I felt some day it would be pertinent for me to have it—like to quote this Dot to you.)

The three gifted women were Margaret Sanger, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Margaret Sanger was a nurse whose mother died at 50, presumably from the wear and tear of having birthed eleven children. Margaret worked/advocated/politicked for birth control for women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Edna St. Vincent Millay won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her poetry and verse which she went on to use as her medium in her activism also for women’s rights.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer is probably less well-known as a nuclear physicist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for her work in “discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.” Out of my ilk for sure, but…it is her description and other scientists’ descriptions of something resonating bodily that I retained for decades. (And please note that the feeling was so great, it made receiving a Nobel Prize pale in comparison!) From the book:

“But it happened in her mind even before she saw it on the paper, an awesome process that Maria would never forget; and before it happened in her mind, she felt it almost bodily: the feeling she had then was what made the day of the Nobel Prize an anticlimax. James Franck once said that the way he could tell a new idea was really important was the feeling of terror that seized him;…And Robert Wilson, a distinguished nuclear experimentalist, described at length the aspect of terror in his creative insights in an interview in ‘The Way of the Scientist,’ by the editors of ‘Science and Technology:’

…the real kicks come, of course, when you have…filled yourself with a particular problem, and—you know—you have a great desire to have some clarity in it. You go through this long, hard period of filling yourself up with as much information as you can. You just sort of feel it all rumbling around inside of you, not particularly at a conscious level. Then—it can happen at any time—you begin to feel a solution, a resolution, bubbling up to your consciousness. At the same time you begin to get very excited, tremendously elated—pervaded by a fantastic sense of joy….

But there’s an aspect of terror too in these moments of creativity. You must come pretty close—can you call it the life force?…I think there’s something universal about the experience of something coming from your subconscious almost fully formed. It’s like throwing up when you’re sick.”

That’s resonating. Your body atoms ‘knowing’ something is true/infallible even before your mind registers it.

Nobel Prize Winning Dot #2. The Science.

Fast forward several years from that book, I discovered that Nashville had a C. G. Jung Society which met once a month. I started attending, found most of the speakers presenting more and more ideas and insights that strengthened and lengthened my understanding of human beings, dreams, egos, shadows, all of it! I have also shared, many times, that the Jungian Group was the first place I ever felt totally accepted. No question was questioned. No thought or feeling trivialized.

One such speaker told us about another Nobel Prize recipient, a Russian-Belgian physical chemist Ilya Prigogine. In 1977 he was awarded the Prize in Chemistry for his Dissipative Structure Theory. To my layperson thinking, it explains just how that whole bodily ‘aha moment’ can occur to anyone with a brain (literally).

Prigogine’s Theory is about the functioning of closed and open systems. He named ‘dissipative structures’ which are systems that seem to be self-organizing—taking all the chaos and making ‘a new order out of the chaos.’

The Jungian-based guest speaker (and I apologize for not being able to credit him) correlated Prigogine’s dissipative structure to our brain, which is an ‘open’ system. He explained that in a closed system, no new information is introduced. An open system is one that receives new ‘information’ from the outside, limitless information even, always feeding more and more new information into it. Then, if all that new information is stirred up, (what Prigogine called “perturbations’)—stirred stirred stirred—all of a sudden the open system can and will totally reorganize itself into a whole new (and improved) complex structure-paradigm-answer-resolution-order.

If we feed more and more new information into it, then stir it up, thinking about it, asking questions, pondering, inquiring, (all perturbations), our brain can totally reorganize into a whole new perception/aha/answer—and it will bodily resonate through the atoms. (Doesn’t that sound exactly like what Robert Wilson described in the quote above?)

The description the scientists talk about was because they had a theory! Most new discoveries are based on theorizing first (suspending ones’ self out over an abyss, home of the pumas (Post 4). Then they exerted energy, zoomed atoms around at supersonic speeds thinking of possibilities and probabilities, testing and retesting, heating the brain to the core to find an answer…and the brain totally reorganized…put the pieces of the puzzle into place. Atoms vibrated and there was the answer bubbling up!

My theorizing is that the phenomenon is not limited to scientists. We all have a brain. We all have access to new information. We all know how to perturb, I’m sure. Ask your question, any question, fill that question up with information, searching, asking, then stir it stir it stir it up! Wait for those atoms to rearrange, reorganize and relay a whole new thought/view/perspective! It happened in my Auto Therapy trip. (Post 16)

Open the parachute (Post 15). Ask your questions. Fill it up. Stir it up. Don’t give up.

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

11. Parts ‘n Pieces – The Shadow: Why We Hate.

Scary Shadow/Gold Shadow

The Shadow, yeah, that one even sounds scary, right? It may sound, even be, a little dark, but it only appears scary until you accept it. You remember what happened when the princess deemed to face that harassing frog and kiss him? He turned into a prince. That’s what happens when you face the scary Shadow in your dreams and ask what it wants from you—acknowledge, recognize, welcome it—give it a big fat kiss!

The Shadow is represented in dreams by an intruder in our house—or a dark figure, sinister feeling because it represents the part of ourselves that we “don’t want to recognize,” that we’re unconsciously afraid of. Our house is ‘us,’ our life, our psyche. When you have that scary intruder or monster dream, try to recognize it as some part of you that wants you to acknowledge it in your conscious life. When you refuse to acknowledge it as a part of your ‘whole self,’ it will continue to stalk and scare. Your dreams will report how the ‘scary’ changes and dissipates as you work to integrate the Shadow parts of your psyche.

The Shadow’s Backstory.

So what’s the Shadow’s backstory? How’d it get to be so scary? It represents the parts of ourselves that we’ve tried to ignore or repress by hiding ‘in the dark.’ It’s the unconscious parts of our psyche that our conscious/ego does not recognize in itself or (worse) refuses to recognize in itself. What you accept about yourself is ‘conscious.’ What you don’t want to accept, well, that’s what we hide in the ‘Unconscious’ aka The Bloody Room in ye old myths and fables.

Anything in the Unconscious WANTS to be conscious.

So, the object is to recognize it all, the good, the bad and the ugly as part of your entirety. It’s all gotta be recognized as a part of you to become whole—that’s all, just recognized and accepted. You don’t have to become “the Shadow,” just shine a light and say, ‘ok, bad stuff, you’re a part of me, too!’ Shining a light and admitting to what you see—being honest even when no one is looking—is all that’s required.

Containing the Opposites

We all contain the opposites of any attribute we have—the good and the bad. The nurturing mother and the devouring mother. Many times we do not want to lay any claim or recognize the ‘shadow’ side of the opposite—“Not as a part of me, by gosh!” We stick it in the Unconscious and hope to hide it in the dark. We’ll just forget it’s there. It now becomes the Shadow.

“Everything in the Unconscious seeks outward manifestation.” Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR)

WARNING! WARNING!

If you don’t acknowledge it on your own, that hidden shadowy part you don’t want to recognize will ‘act out.’ Yep, it takes on a will of its own. IT WILL BE KNOWN! You’ll be doing stuff you know you don’t even want to do, but that Shadow will make you do it anyway because, by god, it wants to be recognized! You don’t have the Unconscious under your control. It has you.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious,

it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Jung

Trying to keep something in the Unconscious? It’s like trying to hold a ball underwater. Ever tried that? Hard. Takes a lot of (emotional) energy. Produces a chronic tiredness that may cause you to take your tiredness out on other people. More than likely, you’ll tire out before it does and it will pop the hell up out of the water and smite you smack dab up the side of the head!

Just claim as your own any of those things you think “huh-uh, not me!” You just have to acknowledge that both the good and the bad are contained in you, are contained in each person. And it’s okay. It’s what makes you whole. You have to ‘contain’ both sides of the opposites.

The Projector Room of the Psyche

What your Unconscious wants you to deal with, it will ‘project’ onto another human, to get it out there where you can at least see it! It was my Unconscious projecting my Animus onto ‘the perfect man’ so that I could see the strong masculine traits I also contained to be able to integrate them into a whole life. Likewise why we ‘project’ those traits that we don’t want to admit we have onto others. This is why we ‘hate.’

Jung: “To the degree that you condemn others and find evil in others, you are to that degree unconscious of the same thing in yourself…Or at least of the potentiality of it.”

Why We Hate.

The aspects of our personality or psyche that we find difficult to accept about ourselves (and deny, deny, deny), we will impose or “project” onto another individual (or group or sect). That’s how the psyche works to get us to recognize we contain both the good and the bad. It will project the ‘shadow’ aspect that we don’t want to claim for ourselves onto another person, another race, another religion, or any one not like us, referred to as “The Other.” The Other holds all those horrible attributes that (we think) WE DON’T HAVE!

“We Bitch Most About Those Things We Do the Worst.”

That’s projection. Your Unconscious/your True Self has gotta get it out there for you to see it in yourself. No harm. No foul to admit it. Makes you whole. Makes you empathetic. Makes you stronger. I have another saying: Repression Is the Root of all Evil. Repressing that admission will only bring harm, dis-ease in your soul and psyche. I love the way Kari Hohne describes the projection of the Shadow in her blog:

“Jung pioneered the study of the Shadow and referred to it as the repressed and undeveloped aspects of the personality. Jung described projection as changing “the world into the replica of one’s unknown face.”
https://cafeausoul.com/dreams/dreamdictionary/Shadow

“The replica of one’s unknown (repressed/hidden) face.” That face is the part of you that you don’t like, can’t admit to. That face is exactly the part of yourself you need to give a big fat kiss! And look at what the ‘replica of one’s unknown face’ is looking like in the world today.

If you hear yourself complaining and pointing a finger at a particular friend, or group, those 3 fingers pointing back at you carry a message for you. When you can’t see, admit, own, and accept that you do anything bad like all those ‘other’ people, those are the exact things you think are too horrific to admit could ever be a part of you. And you are always going to project what you can’t see in yourself onto ‘the Other.’

That’s a hard life. An angry life. A tiring life.

You have to shine the light on your dark side, recognize it and accept it. It requires that you own both the good and the bad of every opposite out there.

Here’s the bonus round:

Once you recognize and accept your own failings, shortcomings, bad traits, you will no longer have to ‘hate’ them in others. You’ve hated those things in others because it was easier than to hate them in yourself. (Do you know how much energy hate takes???) You’ll be more accepting. Life will seem to get a whole lot easier. Less angry. Less tiring. What you accept in you, you will no longer hate in others.

I don’t know if incorporating the Shadow is easier to do for women than men. Women, since Eve, have been told we were the root of all evil in the world, even down to every thorn on every rose, according to my Baptist pastor. Perhaps it’s easier for us to accept the dark side and lead it into the light.

Gold Among the Dross

If the Shadow sounds like bad news, remember: we’re talking about opposites, so here’s the good news! The Shadow also contains all the good parts of our selves that we have ripped from us and thrown away (repressed) into what the myths call ‘The Bloody Room.’ How’d those good parts of us get torn off? Bloody stumps thrown into a locked and hidden room? More than likely because someone in authority in our lives—parents, church, teachers, friends, peers, and other authority figures—made us feel bad about those good parts or didn’t accept them, many times shaming us for them. We felt we had to get rid of them to be loved…or to be accepted…or to keep peace…or not to show weakness…or to be a part of the group.

Good parts among the bad-rep parts. Yup, thar’s gold in that thar dross darkness.

In myths, The Bloody Room is always locked and forbidden, but if we have the courage to look, we find gold in the dross (from the Bible also). We find outstanding attributes, traits, talents, feelings and abilities that we have hidden in The Bloody Room, the Unconscious—living quarters of the Shadow. That, in and of itself, should give us courage to look inside. Shining the light on the Shadow and accepting it into the conscious, you will also dis-cover hidden assets that came with your whole Self.

Anima and Animus for Everyone–Why Opposites Attract.

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

9. Landing in a Plane Backwards.

Connecting the Dots (or a brief chronology).

The encounter with The Catalyst and the feeling that I’d just woken up.

Wandering and wondering, I lean into some inner leading via feelings mostly and active searching for an answer to what am I supposed to do—is it the man, or something more?

Five years of that and I have a ‘feeling’ that dreams are important and start writing them down. Within weeks I find Carl Jung whose psychology incorporates the importance of dreams as a communicator for that inner leading.

The next synchronicity coming up—I ‘happen’ upon a book that answers the persistent “Why?” questions. (Remember, every answer to a “Why” question can always solicit another, “Why?”)

You may remember how I found Carl Jung synchronistically. My trip down the Natchez Trace for a day off, the intriguing mystery of Meriwether Lewis’ death, and off to visit the library for a book to decide for myself if Lewis was murdered or committed suicide. Then seeing Carl Jung among all the other A to Z biographies in that section, and pulling his book off the shelf. The reading of his bio, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” bringing a feeling of ‘elation’ as I read what had been happening to me in the previous five floundering years.

That fateful trip down the Trace was a Thursday, August 22. A note in my journal shows that I started reading the Jung bio on Friday, August 23, with the note, “Elation!” On August 28, less than a week after my sojourn down the Trace, I had this dream:

(From my dream journal) “After starting to read Jung’s autobiography: I had a remember-able dream about going to some foreign country, an “S” country—I just remember it as “S” and cold/white)–and landing in an airplane backward (the tail section first) and thinking it funny with the people I was traveling with—or was sitting beside in the plane—looking out the window and realizing the plane was tail first streaming down the runway. Seems like my travel or seat mates were an older man (Jung?) and an older woman. When I got into the airport/customs area, I realized I had no passport/credentials to enter a foreign country and started to feel dismayed until brightly I realized I would still be able to get into the foreign country. It would just take me 45 min to 1 hour longer to get cleared. A young girl, helpful, efficient, personable, tall, set about clearing me. I was never worried about it at all, just confident it would work out even though I was ‘breaking the rules’ and not doing it like everybody else. It would just take me longer.“

It would be the first of many directive, insightful, instructive, and encouraging dreams that I would have.

From Jung:

“To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can, just as a plant grows or an animal seeks its food as best it can.” …I regarded the unconscious and dreams, which are its direct exponents, as natural processes to which no arbitrariness can be attributed and above all no legerdemain. (trickery or sleight of hand) Carl Jung “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (MDR) p 161

Apparently my subconscious works on getting me to understand while sleeping. For the nights following the plane dream, it was like I would only feel about half asleep, the other half working subconsciously on figuring things out. I’d sorta figure out parts of things, then semi-wake up to realize it, cement it in my memory. (I’m thinking that probably the subconscious can work better with the rigid, objective mind when it is half asleep.) My interpretation became pretty clear on September 2.

This from my journal:

“I was trying to be admitted to a “foreign land” without the proper “official credentials.” (In real life, I was trying to understand a foreign area—the unconscious…Jung’s psychology) S-country could be Switzerland, Jung’s country. Without the proper official papers—a degree. I was happily confident I would be admitted: it would just require a very small, pleasant, (patient) unruffling delay. Is the foreign land the unconscious rather than just Jung’s psychiatry? The unconscious feels to be the avenue I need to approach now…to see “where” the really “big picture” comes from.”

I may have already mentioned that when you delve into the unknown, time warps, maybe elongates. So I wondered how long the “45 min to 1 hour time” depicted in the dream would take to be “admitted to the foreign country.” Relatively speaking, 45 min to 1 hour delay in Customs didn’t seem too unreasonable. I would later learn that the Unconscious was oft depicted as a ‘foreign land.’

The Unconscious, you may note, has now taken on a Capital “U.” Important.

Is it the Unconscious that is doing the leading here? How long would it take for me to be “admitted” to an understanding of Jung’s psychology? Or would it be the Unconscious itself that would take the time? What is the Unconscious and how does it affect me?

The next synchronicity was just around the corner. I’m driving home from work one day and on a last minute whim, I whip off the interstate to hit up a bookstore. (I remember slashing across two lanes of traffic to make the exit in time.) Whims can be dangerous. This one was worth it. Once inside the store, just browsing, seeing what attracted my attention. I see a sale table. Nice. I like sales. Thumb. Thumb. Thumb through…and there…oh-oh, a big Jung book, “Man and His Symbols.” Hmmm…might as well…if dreams are communicators of the psyche, best to start learning about their symbols, right? And at a sale price!

I would learn that I was neither a singular, nor an anointed case.

No specialty required to get synchronicities or dreams or books dropping breadcrumbs. Jung’s Psychology of Individuation assures that these things happen to anyone who opens themselves up to something bigger than outward appearances. To the hero and heroine who enters the forest on his or her own path to search for the holy grail, their true Selves.

“The Self can be defined as an inner guiding factor that is different from the conscious personality…how far it develops depends on whether or not the ego is willing to listen to the messages of the Self.” Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, (MAHS) p. 162

Jung’s psychology came from his lifetime of having lived all that he writes about… understanding the human psyche, recognizing how the myths that mankind laid down are pathfinders, and following his own unknown leading, In his bio, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections,” Jung tells about his experiences as a doctor, psychiatrist, and scientist who submitted to the leading of his Unconscious.

He writes,

“…my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life.”“…my life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity.” Carl Jung, “MDR”

Aniela Jaffe writes in the forward of the book:

“I often asked Jung for specific data on outward happenings, but I asked in vain. Only the spiritual essence of his life’s experience remained in his memory, and this alone seemed to him worth the effort of telling.”

He retained that which was pertinent to his survival.

Jung’s entire life and life’s work was committed to understanding the human psyche. His early experience with schizophrenics and the mentally ill led him to recognize that many of their delusions were rooted in ancient symbols and myths which he then steeped himself in so that he could understand them. It was his own dreams that gave him answers and clues leading him all the way back to the Alchemists and the Gnostics. This commitment many times caused painful separation from his colleagues, including his break with Freud, but he felt a conviction to stay true to his internal leading. He persevered to provide an answer…that I needed to find many decades later. I particularly loved this line because it plucked a string of my heart and soul, and validated a thought I’d already had in a poem, “Phantom Questions.”

“I also think of the possibility that through the achievement of an individual a question enters the world, to which he must provide some kind of answer.” Carl Jung, MDR, p.318

Be All That You Can Be

Jung’s psychology: The Process of Individuation. I’ve shorthanded it, “the process of becoming whole.” The Army copped it and made a slogan out of it: Be All That You Can Be! (Who knew the US Army was Jungian.) Whole. Becoming Whole. That sorta intimates parts and pieces need to be put together to become whole. Parts and Pieces are next up, but first, here’s why and what the process entails.

“The actual process of individuation—the conscious coming to terms with one’s own inner center…the Self—generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of “call,” although it is not often recognized as such. On the contrary, the ego feels hampered in its will or its desire and usually projects the obstruction onto something external.

Or perhaps everything seems outwardly all right, but beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty. Many myths and fairy tales symbolically describe this initial state in the process of individuation by telling of a king who has fallen ill or grown old.

One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is known. In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless—advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take up a hobby. None of that helps, or at best only rarely. There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.” Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 166

Can you feel the excitement that I must have felt reading those words? The call. Breaking of the heart. Boredom. Turn directly into the approaching darkness. What does it want from me? This was me. This was my life. This was my answer!

I’d been bucking the ‘good advice’ of friends and family in an effort to find my answers. No one had understood my dilemma because it was un-understandable to anyone but me. It was my individual path, my path to find, my path to walk. I had started the Process of Individuation, to become the real me. My first step after ‘awakening, I was learning about and incorporating the animus as one of the parts and pieces to become whole. Would I be led to find the other parts and pieces to becoming whole?

I had lived some distant day into another answer. What amazed me was that, the universal description that Jung gave…it couldn’t have been more personalized exactly for me!

“…symbolically this points to the fact that often the urge toward individuation appears in a veiled form, hidden in the overwhelming passion one may feel for another person. (In fact, passion that goes beyond the natural measure of love ultimately aims at the mystery of becoming whole, and this is why one feels, when one has fallen passionately in love, that becoming one with the other person is the only worthwhile goal of one’s life.”) Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 206

Jaw-dropping disbelief, that shaking of your head back and forth when you just can’t fathom what you’re seeing or reading! Universal. For the ages. For every human. My exact circumstances! Validation. Explanation. Exultation!

Synchronicity led me to the book, “Man and His Symbols,” and it turned out to be underscore, underscore, underscore. The Dots were connecting so fast there was an audible clicking! Breadcrumbs? Listen to this (and I’m going to go bold on the things that underscore what we’ve been talking about):

“The individuation process is more than a coming to terms between the inborn germ of wholeness and the outer acts of fate. Its subjective experience conveys the feeling that some suprapersonal force is actively interfering in a creative way. One sometimes feels that the unconscious is leading the way in accordance with a secret design.”

Whew! And, yes, there’s more:

“…in order to bring the individuation process into reality, one must surrender consciously to the power of the unconscious, instead of thinking in terms of what one should do, or what is generally thought right, or of what usually happens. One must simply listen, in order to learn what the inner totality – the Self – wants one to do here and now in a particular situation.” Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 163

“The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth.”

I had listened to that little inner voice that ran like a sentence through my head and heart. I chose to give my self, without any further design or purpose, to an inner urge that turned out to be growth. It may not be the easiest, quickest road or follow-through, but it is perhaps the most satisfying. Just look at the encouragement you tap into that comes to keep you reinforced, armored up, and excited to get the next clue! To find the next part of You…to become all that You can be…were intended to be…that you planned for You to be!

Parts and Pieces—Getting to Know Me!