Curiously, on the same week that I joined the Depth Alliance, I had the most prophetic dream of my entire life. I'll try to make it brief. It is absolutely worth your time. I am still shivering over it. Here is the dream. [Note that my father died some 45 years ago]
| I had this dream last night that my father was staying over at my house. He was planning to leave, but I decided to finally ask my father where he was living, now that his is living without my mother. He was reluctant to give me his address. I said, why the reluctance? He said he couldn't find the street address. We looked for his driver's license. I said its obviously on your drivers license. Again, he couldn't find it, and I said to myself he was being passive aggressive. He didn't want my brother Jim and me to know where he lived.
I said where is it? Is it in Michigan? He said its in the "Midwest," a peculiar response from my father. I said "can't you do better than that? What's the zip code?" He could only remember the first three digits 625, and I said 625 what? Finally he said 62510.
I woke up from the frustrating dream at that moment and kind of wondered why I didn't try to get the entire addres from him. Then I suddenly realized my father is dead and has been dead for a long time.
So that was the frustrating dream, but after I woke up from it I decided to look up where the 62510 zip code is.
Its in the Midwest, all right, and it is at Assumption, Illinois.
If you check Google for 62510, you get Assumption, Illinois.
I was raised Catholic and I remember the "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin," a feast day for the time that Mary went to heaven (with her body).
From Wikipedia about the religious significance of the Assumption: "In religion, an assumption is the bodily translation of an individual person, either living or dead, from earth to heaven."
Freaked me out when I read that.
In other words, my father informed me that his address was in Assumption, Illinois, the place where a person goes from earth to heaven.
The fact that I had never heard of Assumption, Illinois, plus the fact that I had never ever looked up the zip code to that place (population 1100), indicated to me that this information came from outside my skull. This is either to most incredible and improbabe coincidence, or this is information that came into my psyche from some source OUTSIDE my psyche.
A genuine paranormal experience. A genuine spiritual experience.
I just finished writing a book entitled Psyche's Exile: an empirical odyssey in search of the soul. (On Amazon, Kindle, Nook, etc). I wish I could have included this dream in my book. This is entirely revelatory.
I'm new to Depth Alliance, so I hope I am sharing this intimate experience with the right people. Staggering!
Jerry Kroth, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Emeritus
Santa Clara University
|
Replies
This is what dreams do, surprise and challenge our understanding. I didn't see any commentary about why you dreamt this in connection with joining here. Was your joining here the result of a longer reflection on dreamwork or depth psychology? or was it related to a major challenge in your normal life where depth psychology may have become a key?
Assumption Jung understood as indeed overcoming the limitations of the 3 (the dynamic aspect of the person) when the absent feminine is incorporated (in body), thus elevating the body what has been neglected as vile and dark into the conscious sphere. thus assumption means progression towards a more complete personality.
The condition of virginity which is implied in your connection of assumption via the zip code, is very interesting also. A very meaningful connection is meister Eckart's 24th sermon. [This is the essential intelligence of God: the pure and unadulterated power of the intellect (intellectus) which the masters of the spiritual life call "receptivity".] . In his view "Abegescheidenheit" is what virginity stands for (letting go or detachment). This becomes key in terms of receptivity of the Divine truth and becoming one with God (unitas indistinctionis). [see http://www.spiritandflesh.com/textMeisterEckhartSermon.htm]
Virginity thus means a preparation for understanding your greater task in life, may be you are in that 50-60 year old period?
Now what can that task be? what it looks like for you only you can know, but it likely connects to the times. Jung saw it as the most important spiritual event of the recent centuries when Rome assumed this as dogma. For Jung this was no simply administrative process but the manifestation of a long evolving dream of the ascent of the feminine, which had gone dormant since the 12th century.
On a larger scale, the Assumption then asks for parallels to that 12th-13th century when Eckhart was living. A very interesting account here [http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/drazenovich-eckhart.shtml] - look for the references to virgin and how this led to The Beguines movement, not very different to the movement towards communities, transition towns, etc - all based on the emergence of the feminine.
In Eckhart quoting from the referenced text "letting go is not a passive disposition leading to withdrawal, or resignation. On the contrary it forms a pointe vierge for action. For medieval women and monastics, virginity, properly understood had less to do with physicality than it did with disposition. The narrow sexual resonances that we associate with the concept of virginity in our modern era, spring as Andrea Dworkin writes, from a male frame of reference which sees virginity as "a state of passive waiting or vulnerability; it precedes and is antithetical to wholeness." But in the women's frame, "virginity is a fuller experience of selfhood and identity. In the male frame, virginity is virtually synonymous with ignorance; in the woman's frame, it is recovery of the capacity to know by direct experience of the world." [52] It is in this positive, spirit affirming perspective, that Eckhart speaks of the "negative" concept of abegescheidenheit. Eckhart's feminine conceptions and practical applications of his theology was shared by Beguines such as Mechtild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete who echoed these themes."
Jerry
The major confederacy of tribes making up the prairie land now designated 62510 were called Illinwek, sometimes shortened to the "Illini" and "Illinois" is a french version of this. The major tongue of this confederacy of prairie "people" -that is what Illinwek means- is Algonquin and it may be that Tacusah belongs to this tongue. I cannot find evidence of this, however, so just keep it in mind as a working hypothesis.
Along with the lovely image of "heartland" is your own of "homecoming" linked by mention of your recent book, a re-visioning in soul-making perhaps of odyssean sort; the revisiting with your dream ancestor, your "father" is like that moment Athene (in the form of an older man, Mentor) gives Telemachus this assignment. "Go and find your father." /That fathering, is polutropos, of many turns, which is what the name, Odysseus
means and why the O-word is never mentioned the first 21 lines of the Odyssey.
There is wonderful work on homecoming done by Robert Romanyshyn, who is also a member here. And also here is a link to the scanty account of the beginnings of "Assumption" rising out of the "Native" native tongue the founding "father" preferred. You may note another discrepency here. namely that this account by the founder says he came from Assumption Parish, Louisiana whereas railroad logs indicate settlement derives from Assumption, Canada. No wonder great spirit of father, spread upon the one earth was confused about the address of the living!
What makes me so grateful is that people like you help thoughts move forward. You expand my own interpretation into richer and richer areas. Thank you for your creativity.
So nice to move things forward than to hear criticism. As Norman O. Brown said, "The proper response to poetry is not criticism, but poetry."
If you ever read my book (Psyche's Exile) on Amazon, I'd love to hear your reactions.
Jerry Kroth
Jerry! Wow!--I have goosebumps reading your dream. Thanks for taking the time to share it. For some reason, it reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Jung, when he wrote at the end of Memories, Dreams, Reflections (also the end of his life, of course): "There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being". (p. 358). This underlying solidarity and continuity--we might even call it the Unconscious?-- is something I relate to from my own numinous dreams and experiences.
There is one other aspect which you are probably aware of as well. Jung wrote about the assumption of Mary in "Answer to Job" and was quite happy to conclude the Catholic Church's acceptance of the "event" in 1950 translated into a symbolic acceptance of the emergence of the feminine into contemporary culture. I would never presume to tell you what your dream means for you, and I think you've done an amazing job of conveying it--but whether we look at the feminine as Mother Earth, feminine values and ways of being in the world, or a combination of both, or the Unconscious, your dream may also have further implications for you--and for all of us--of the power of the feminine showing up in the American midwest. Couldn't be a bad thing! This is all a testament to why I love depth psychology so much--a powerful way of interpreting and making meaning of our being in the world. Again, thanks for letting us all share your experience--and good luck with the new book!
I used to teach in the graduate division for marriage, family, child therapist training (Counseling Psychology). Taught a course called Dreamwork and Depth Psychology (a Jungian approach to dreams). Thanks for sharing your stuff.
Jerry
Thank you for having the courage to share your most remarkable dream. Amazing as this dream is, there is surely no coincidence. As someone raised Catholic myself, I can fully appreciate the import of the dream, and as a recent but serious student of Jungian psychology I have no problem believing in the transpersonal, paranormal aspect of it. I myself have had many dreams where specific textual elements (such as your zip code) were trying to introduce themselves at the edges of my dreams. In some cases, I have seen in my dreams what seemed to be beautiful poetic fragments in a style completely not my own, and of a quality that I can not aspire to reach consciously. Although I have never been able to preserve them upon waking, expect in single words or phrases, I have little doubt that like Colridge's Kubla Khan, they really were there. What impesses me about your dream is that you recalled the zip code in its entirety. In this respect you should regard yourself as fortunate indeed.
Out of curiousity, may I inquire what you taught at Santa Clara? My own father and mother attended that university I took a run through campus just last week when I was visiting my grandmother who has been ill. Odd bit of coincidence itself.
Best wishes,
Matthew