In the world of dreams, one’s friends live forever, for they can be present at any time. In this way, I have expected the eventual visits of my close friend, who passed away this fall, in my dreams and in the recollections of him that occur to me.

With the alchemical signature of wholeness [1] of three and one, I present three dreams and a song from my content, culminating in a rejuvenation dream at the beginning of the year. In hopes of processing grief in a healthy way, I wanted to look at these experiences.

Song/Fragment: (the morning after Brian’s death) I woke up with the song, “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” by REO Speedwagon, in my head. Particularly significant was the line, “it’s time for me to fly …”

I remember now that Gary Richrath, the guitarist for REO, died five days before Brian did in September. The song fragment is relevant and connects the two people, in death. The body disconnection in death is symbolized by the line, “it’s time for me to fly …”

In the weeks that followed, 

Dream: I see a scene from one of my pictures, of myself and Brian on the Avalanche Trail (descending Mt. Yale) with Mt. Princeton in the background. I am in the scene, and Brian is saying something. Startled, I wake up.

I had expected him to appear in a dream, so he did. A picture that’s on my wall came alive in the dream. Startled, I couldn’t deal with it. The Avalanche Trail (actually called a route), treacherous in the winter months, is safe enough in summer when we were there, but the reference seemed somewhat ominous. We had done that trip as a loop, which makes the reference symbolize wholeness.

In my experience of dreams, if one can’t make out words of dream characters, taking in the context of the whole scene may convey deep meaning.

Another month went by.

Semi-Lucid Dream: I was with Brian at the high lake at McCullough Gulch. He went over the berm to the lake, and I called him back. I said, “Brian! Come here”, and as he turned and came toward me, I said, “you’re alive! You’re in the Dreamworld!” Shaking his hand, then hugging him, I couldn’t believe he was here. He wore a tan shirt, looked healthy and had piercing blue eyes. He didn’t say anything.

Satisfied, remembering the feeling of happiness, I felt that I had made contact with my friend, rejoicing in the moment. The fairly short and lucid dream allowed me a high level of awareness, which translated to waking right after. I had seen my friend in the dreamworld and that was all that mattered to me (no participation mystique here; I understand that this content is made of projections, not to be mistaken for my friend in the literal sense). The lake is the one featured in my profile picture on the forums.

With the coming of the new year, I had the following dream.

Brian’s Rejuvenation - I look in on Brian, who is lying on his death bed. From the same position he was in when he died, his left eye is open. The eye is all black. I notice it moves. His bald head is elongated, like the Egyptian royalty who had their heads bound to be shaped like that. I go back into another room, pondering this. 

Some other people are with me in the other room, when Brian walks in the door, wearing jeans and a new blue checkered shirt. I greet him, grasping both his hands. He says hello, and he walks to a couch and sits down.

He is talking with a woman who is standing in a doorway (on the west wall) which leads outside, where it is sunny. This woman is very interested in him, and I think, “he already has a girlfriend.”

There is a general air of a party atmosphere, and I am happy. I am thinking that perhaps, during this time he has been deceased, that his cancer may have receded and he has a new chance at life. Maybe he can start to do the things he stopped doing, like hiking.

There is a lot of imagery in this dream. This is January and I was to receive a portion of Brian’s ashes, for the postmodern duty of dispersing that portion on a mountain.This didn’t happen and I was resigned to forget about the possibility of the endeavor. 

The Egyptian myth of Osiris [2] and a show I watched depicting the uncovering of the body of  Tutankhamun by Howard Carter were relevant to events surrounding the passing of my friend Brian, related in my previous blog, Analysis of a Dream Series [3]. In the myth, the recovery of Osiris’ body parts is vital to events in the myth; not so in my outer life but it did in the dream, as an integral part of the myth. To quote Thom Cavalli:

“If the body were not returned home, there would be no possibility for a proper funeral or any chance of resurrection.” [4]

During this time that I had been reading Joseph Campbell [5], dealing with motifs of death, resurrection (or rejuvenation) and rebirth, including the Dying God Motif [6], I had been thinking of the idea of carrying the memory of my friend into the next season as I continue to hike and climb our local mountains here in Colorado.

The Eye Motif of the completely black left eye will refer specifically to an awakening in the unconscious. The elongated head reminds me that Tutankhamun’s mother had this “mod” (result of head wrapping as a child; identity, “The Younger Lady” from tomb KV35), connecting Brian with Tutankhamun again, to continue the theme of rebirth. An elongated head, though not consciously intended by Egyptians, seems to symbolize an enlarged brain and expanded consciousness to me, from our 21st century perspective.

As I have left Brian to whatever is happening here, the scene shifts but to the same room as it was before it was a sick person’s living room. There are people here and Brian walks in, renewed. Hair, new clothes, a new man. We welcome him and he enters. Reproduced in my blog [3], Brian’s dream begins, 

“… at first, with an awareness of the morning sunlight taking on a strange appearance as it shined through the slats of the blinds near his bed.”

Brian’s dream had begun with morning sunlight shining into his sleeping area. On the opposite side, where there is a window but no door in reality, a new doorway appears in my dream, containing afternoon sunlight and an anima figure, who is associated with him. I don’t know why he wouldn’t rejoin his girlfriend, which reinforces the idea that the figure exists in an image with the sun, as archetypal content. She speaks to him from the left, from the unconscious, as he is on the right, within consciousness again. Her words, not heard, are not as important as the context of her appearance.

Looking at the image, I can’t help but think the afternoon sunlight relates to the second half of my life, that his anima figure is perhaps mine, or that the anima appears as she relates to him, as she would relate to me, because after all, it is my dream. He is integrated into my reality and as our situations were similar before his illness, I move into the second half of life as I have planned, carrying Brian, or his memory, with me as I would have, had he lived. Perhaps he stands as a proxy figure for me, as a role model.

A new, numinous doorway filled with afternoon light represents a new possibility for life, a life filled with consciousness, for Brian in one perspective, for myself in another. In his acceptance, he would look forward to a new journey, a new dawn [7]. In mine, to continue the journey which I haven’t completed [8]. 

In Brian’s dream, he faces east, toward the rising sun. In mine, he faces west, toward the setting sun, perhaps my sun. In his dream, the sun “takes on a strange appearance”. In mine, there is an unknown woman within the doorway of its light.

There are lots of bits that relate in smaller ways to myth which I have not looked at or not expressed in this post in the interest of brevity, yet I have included enough relevant material for the continuity of the series. The idea of the sense that death itself may be healing [9] might be looked at closer, for example.

[1] C.G. Jung, CW Vol. 13, Alchemical Studies- Pg. 224, Axiom of Maria Prophetissa 

[2] The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Translator, R.O. Faulkner - 1990

[3] Analysis of a Dream Series

[4] Thom Cavalli, Ph.D., Embodying Osiris- 2010

[5] Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology- 1968

[6] James Frazer, The Golden Bough- 2nd abridged 1994

[7] Marie-Louise von Franz, On Dreams and Death

[8] C.G. Jung, CW Vol. 5, Symbols of Transformation- Pg. 92, Fig 3, The Voyage of the Sun: The Western Goddess on the Barge of Evening Gives the Sun disc to the Eastern Goddess in the Barge of Morning.

“This image contains the psychological root of the “heavenly wanderings of the soul”, an idea that is very old. It is an image of the wandering sun (fig. 3), which from its rising and setting travels over the world.”

[9] Michael Meade, The World Behind the World- The Return of Healing:

“Mythically, the center of one thing leads to the center of everything. Seen that way, the illness of one person becomes the ailment through which all that ails a community can be addressed. The wound in one person can become the door through which everyone can find the center of life again.”

‘The Impossible Mountain Climb’ Dream: My wife and I were to climb or walk up this very steep mountain, using ropes which were provided. We had trouble, so we left and were to try another time.

We arrived back at the hotel/resort type place and parked, walking to the building that was on the edge of a deep ravine. There was a little gully, with a yellow rope that might help us get up onto the deck. I tried the rope and could not lift myself up to get up onto the deck, so I tried to climb the fence, to no success. I gave up and walked up the three steps. I thought to myself, “how will I climb the big hill with the rope if I can’t do this?”

We went in, and I walked to the room, opening the door. There was a hair dryer on the floor, and other mess such as clothes or towels. I quickly walked out and met my wife in the common area, thinking  that I had the right room, #751. That was the number on the room card.

I approached a little sitting area, containing a little bay window that looked over the ravine and the mountain we were to climb later. I looked closely, to see if anyone was gathering for the climb yet. I almost fell through, having a sense of vertigo, and had to pull myself back, forcefully. I felt a sudden fear of falling, and had to get away from this area.

I said that I would try to find the room again, and I went looking. I found a door that led to the hotel area and used my card to enter this big room that housed all the hotel room units. I wandered, looking at doors as I went but couldn’t find #751. Somehow, I had cut myself and had found a tissue to stop the bleeding on my upper right leg. There had been someone in these halls whom I had asked for help, but he was no help.

I was desperate, and I wanted to ask someone, anyone, even the dead for help. I thought that I shouldn’t ask the dead, unless it was really important. I could picture the dead wandering around the hotel bothering people, which would not do, especially if I didn’t absolutely need their help. The image I had was of my good friend Betty, an older lady who had passed years ago, wandering around the hotel, looking for me, or the right room number, to help me.

I was crying, because I felt totally frustrated, my leg was cut, and I didn’t want to take this desperate action that might involve consequences that I felt were too extreme. Sitting on this deck, I notice a man who is crying along with me, saying, “oh no. This is terrible! What are you going to do? Oh, boo hoo!” and saying other things. It made me think that he was mocking me, having a joke at my expense.

All of a sudden, I didn’t feel the same way. I started to feel angry at this man and my tears dried up. As I looked up at him, waited to catch his eye, to make eye contact so he would know that my attitude had changed. He had some contraption on his head, like a helmet. It resembled a stove of some kind, with brass fittings. He swung his head up and around toward me, and noticed my stare. I had begun to look hard at him, meeting his gaze with purpose. Then I said, “you were just leaving, weren’t you?” and he said, “yes, I was just leaving,” and he started to get up. I said, “yes, you were just leaving” and I watched him leave.

I woke up.

Analysis:

The “impossible mountain climb” is a metaphor for my current situation. My closest friend, hiking buddy and colleague at work was to die from cancer within a few months. Upon waking, I immediately felt that the dream referred to this. 

To be stuck in a ravine with no way out described my problem perfectly, because he would not be healed and I did not know when he would eventually pass. As his friend, I had no choice but to face death in a way I never had before. There was no way back and no way forward, even with a rope. There was powerful emotion associated with this situation as it stands.

Within the dream, I was so perplexed that I was mad at the yellow rope which I couldn’t even use to cross the smallest gully. I used the color chart from my book by Robert Hoss, Dream Language: self understanding through imagery and color. The statements for the color yellow that I responded to while visualizing the image were “I am seeking a solution that will open up new and better possibilities and allow my hopes to be fulfilled” and “I need to find a way out of this circumstance”.

Later, I listened to a shrinkrapradio show in which Dr. Dave Van Nuys interviewed Kim Hermanson, PhD [1] who teaches the transformative power of metaphor. Kim conducted an active imagination exercise with Dr. Dave who used the image of a tree and invited the listener to pick one of their images. I used the yellow rope and as I tried to blend or merge with it, I pictured it as a ray of sunlight. These techniques are really wonderful.

Astonished, I immediately felt hope in this impossible situation. Sunlight, representing consciousness and the archetype of the Self [2], told me that I had an ally and that the Self would see me through this, though I must consciously go through it without knowing the outcome. Though the top of the mountain was far away, beams of light had already reached me and I finally had confidence that I could get through the ordeal and support my friend.

The anima figure represented by my wife supported me as she does in so many dreams. Not being able to find our place in the hotel fits because I have no safe place, no sanctuary in this situation. The bay window vertigo incident left me feeling I was too high up, contrasting the opposite of the ravine bottom. I don’t know the significance of the room number #751. The digital root (7 + 5 + 1 = 13. 1 + 3 = 4) of western numerology [3] assigns it a value of 4, symbolizing the totality of the psyche and wholeness.

I was so desperate that I wanted to invoke the dead to help me with this problem of death. I thought this was an extreme measure to take and declined to take the step. Not sure of how it could be done, I conjured the absurd image of my deceased friend Betty, a motherly figure to me, wasting time helping me with my earthly problems. Thinking literally, I didn’t make the connection that this is a metaphor for communication with the unconscious. Without taking this step, there would be no solution. 

Hence, I broke down crying in frustration and to add further injury, my leg was cut and in need of treatment. the personal association is that in the waking world I experienced an upper right leg muscle injury two and a half years ago on a mountain. A survival situation ensued and I lucked out by dragging myself to my bivy tent, spending the night and walking out the next morning after having rested. My leg performed well enough to hike out but it took a year and a half to fully heal it. I learned to find more balance in my life after this scare so I would not endanger myself anymore. I had pushed my physical limits too far. It tells me that I must be calm, wise, and thoughtful or pay the price for it. The blood image with this injury symbolizes libido or life energy being drained with this problem.

The trickster or shadow figure who mimicked my emotional breakdown would have been a perfect dream character with whom to consult but I didn’t interview him. The helmet that  “resembled a stove of some kind, with brass fittings” seems to identify the figure with the Senex, or wise old man archetype.  Mark Sipowicz’s blog post on Depth Alliance from August 17th, “Walking the Talk: Airing Our Complexes and Our Complexity” inspired me to commit consciously to interviewing these figures in the future, because I might have figured out the solution right there. 

I am embarrassed that I felt such anger toward this dream character, because it reflects that I might feel that sort of emotion toward people in the waking world. I suppressed the expression of it but I told him to leave and would not want to do something like that in the waking world. However, a technique of lucid dreaming that I use (I was not lucid) is to suggest anything I choose to dream characters and they usually agree and comply. It may have been habit.

I’ve learned many things which have helped me in the dreamworld, utilizing techniques such as consciously declaring intent right before sleeping. A simple message to oneself as one is drifting off to sleep often influences behavior and understanding in dreams. Regular practice of these techniques embeds them in consciousness and I have now been telling myself before sleep each night to talk to all interesting dream characters, especially provocative ones. 

A month before my friend’s death, I had the following dream:

The Tornado Man Dream: My wife and I were walking through a valley. There were clouds and maybe a hole through them, where a light, maybe the sun was shining through. As we passed a house, there was a brighter light that was bursting through the hole in the cloud. My wife said, “see, I said that was remarkable.” I said, “not like that,” and we watched the light grow, as a ring of lights, spinning, and a wind came down from it as a tornado funnel formed. A man flew out of the funnel and flew to the house, alighting on a deck above.

We went in the house. There was a vacuum on the carpet in the middle of the room. The man said I could put it in a kiosk that it fit into, which was somewhere in the kitchen but I couldn’t find it. Out on the deck, with rocks lining its edge overlooking a valley, I said that many people have camped here over the years, before the house was built. The man was saying that his mother was involved with the problem of individuation. I exclaimed, “I am on the path of individuation!” and felt a strong urge to leave, heading in a clockwise direction around the yard, pulling my car keys out of my pocket, then put them back as I scooted down a slope to go around the house and head back the way we had come.

I woke up.

Analysis:

What is not archetypal about a man flying out of a descending tornado through a brightly lit hole in the clouds, landing at a house in an area that has been inhabited continuously since before it was settled? [4] The conscious communication specifically refers to individuation. My first vision as a young child was of a ring of lights. In the first dream I arrive in a car and in this, the second dream I intend to leave in a car, the keys in my hand. The clockwise spiral I describe as I leave may indicate a move toward conscious action.

The dream reassured me that I was on the “right path”, the path of individuation. I could handle the challenge ahead of me. I continued to assist and visit my dying friend. Brian Moore died September 18th, 2015.

Synchronicity: In the hours before Brian died, I was in a frenzy to sort things, to finally “straighten up and organize my life”. I was also looking for some pictures he gave me, that I had stored but could not find.

Eventually, I gave up. I lit the candle of the camping brass candle lantern that Brian gave me. On the computer was the Egypt series [5] with Tutankhamun, on which the archaeologist Carter, had just uncovered the body of Tut within the third coffin, made of gold. A few minutes later, I received the news of Brian’s passing. My wife and I went to see him one last time and to console his brother and girlfriend.

King Tutankhamun was a young king of 18 years who was cut down (most likely by the leg infection- relating him to my leg injury in the first dream) before his prime, who as a monarch symbolized the Puer Aeternus (eternal child) archetype in many ways. My friend Brian was a Puer type if there ever was one, and if you picture Peter Pan, you’ve got a clear picture of him. Symbolically representative figures of the Self, kings reflect the archetypal journey through life and in this context, the journey through death. The Osiris/Horus myth was represented specifically in Tut’s tomb. [6] Tutankhamun ended the worship of the one god Aten, under his father’s reign, restoring Amun and the other gods to their former stature. Contrast the Puer Aeternus with its opposite, the Senex, from the first dream.

“Spirit and soul rejoice once again in the body which they now inhabit, and the soul, full of joy, hastens as quickly as possible to embrace the body and the soul embraces it. And the darkness no longer rules over it, for it has subordinated itself to the light and no longer permits itself to be separated from it in eternity, and it (the soul) rejoices in its house, because, after the body had been hidden in the darkness, (the spirit) found it full of light.” - Komarios text [7]

Dedicated to my friend.

Sphere of Light- Brian’s Dream [8]: The dream started, at first, with an awareness of the morning sunlight taking on a strange appearance as it shined through the slats of the blinds near his bed. A glass ball appeared within his chest or stomach, exiting his body as it showed him scenes from his life. He commented about the lights within the glass sphere. He was overcome with feelings of positive emotion as it showed him these scenes, which he could not remember later, but the feeling stayed.

Then, the glass sphere moved about the house, going from room to room, showing him things of which he also did not remember. The sphere said, “look at this, now look at this!” in excitement, as it darted from room to room. An eerie feeling started to grow, as of haunting or that otherworldly spirits were present.

When he woke, he was standing by the bed, looking at the blinds, through which sunlight was streaming.

[1] Source: shrinkrapradio.com

[2] Jung, Collected Works Vol. 9 part 1, The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, with emphasis on Self, Anima, the Psychology of the Trickster Figure, the Psychology of Rebirth, the Psychology of the Child Archetype, the Meaning of Individuation

[3] Wikipedia.org Keyword: digital root

[4] Jung, CW Vol. 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy

[5] Netflix

[6] The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Translator, R.O. Faulkner

[7] Marie-Louise von Franz, On Dreams and Death, Final Resurrection as a Reunion of the Psyche with the Body

[8] Reproduced with permission.

The Plenaro Dream

‘The difference between the "natural" individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one that is consciously realized is tremendous. In the first case,  consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case, so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light that shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it’. (CW 11, Psychology and Religion).

The following dream happened about January, 2013. I became lucid at an early stage, which in this case is relevant only in that it helped me to employ a strategy to achieve conscious dream goals, which paired nicely with the unconscious content. Such interactions between the two may be important expressions of individuation. 

Lucid Dream: My wife, my son and I were living in a pole barn on some land. I noticed out the window, the neighbor looking at me. He had a hat and dark glasses on. He was taking delivery of a completed section of house to be added to his house. At that moment, it fell off the truck and rolled on the ground. I thought, we could complete our house this way, buying sections until we had a whole house.

I walked the land, a valley with hills to right and left. Before coming to a large house and yard, I came across two recently filled graves. Tripping a little as I moved between them, I stumbled across the right grave. I walked up the hill a little bit and looked down at them. They were lined with stone blocks around each grave and the earth was turned and black, as if ready for planting. It seemed like very fresh dirt.

I went back to our house, careful not to walk on the neighbor’s property to get to mine. In the house, I immediately saw a ghost. An ephemeral shape appeared before me and solidified as I looked at it. We looked at each other. I said, “stay right there and let me look at you, so I can stabilize this dream and this image.” I did that, holding my arms out at a wide angle to frame him within my direct vision and started to have a conversation with a boy with blonde hair, looking about 10 years old who said he was a soldier in a war.

When I stabilized the image of the ghost, I became lucid in this vivid dream. I definitely intended to deepen and prolong this experience and it worked! I was asking him questions, some of which I now can’t specifically remember. Nobody could see or hear him but me. The neighbor was there, too. The ghost looked down and away from me in a thoughtful manner, not sad, as he told me his story. He said he was a soldier in a war and he had died. Though his gaze was downcast,  and he seemed to be seeing the finality of his life in this memory, he was not troubled by it. There was sunlight streaming down on him from the window.

As he continued his thoughtful expression, he floated back and almost into the cupboard with glass doors. In it was a box and his head was floating almost next to it. I asked him his name. He said it twice as I asked him to repeat it and I still couldn’t hear it. I felt that I had to know his name and in my urgency, I asked him to spell it. He said, “P L E N A R O”. Asking again, I confirmed this name as he spoke the letters again.

He mentioned the box, nodding at it or orienting toward it as he spoke. He directed me to take some gold pellets which were in a receptacle in the large square space on top, put them into another receptacle in the box and something would happen, like I would receive something. I could see that there were other compartments and as I was looking down through the box with x-ray vision, I saw a drawer and in it was a picture. It might be one of the things I could find but may not be what happened when the gold pellets dropped in.

The ghost Plenaro faded away and I couldn’t bring him back, even by calling his name. I woke up.

Analysis:

The archetypal figure of Plenaro must be a projection of the Self. I looked up the name, Plenaro.

1. Plenary, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, means “full. Complete in every respect. Fully attended or constituted by all entitled to be present.” From the Latin, “plenus” which literally means “full”.

    Synonyms: complete, comprehensive, entire, full, grand, intact, integral, perfect, total,  whole.

This person is a “whole person”. I don’t know how I personally could have (unconsciously) come up with this name but there it is. The unconscious mind produced it and I captured it, bringing it into consciousness. Having been killed in a war, still having no regrets, the ghost really seemed like a whole person, who could look back on his life in a satisfied manner, so the name exactly fits the demeanor and attitude.

Plenaro was projected as a boy, about 10 years of age, but the feeling and the sense that I got was that he was only projected this way and was not supposed to be that age. That he was an adult, there was no question. The visual image that I got was of Plenaro as he looked down, maybe on one knee but I’m not sure, with sunlight streaming down on him from the window. He told his story as I looked at this image.

The neighbor, as a shadow aspect of myself, seemed to want to be present for the main action in the dream. I wonder if his participation and presence provoked the vision of the ghost, because I wanted to share the experience and include him in what happened, though he couldn’t see or hear the events.

I think there is some integration of the neighbor as a shadow figure becoming somewhat identified with Plenaro, who also doesn’t do things, or look at things, as I would. Seeing from this perspective, I look at my neighbor and myself in a new way. Myself, my neighbor and Plenaro seem to have much more in common, though the images of us may appear to be much different. 

With his completed sections of house, the neighbor could still be the same person as Plenaro, who would seem so much different as he lay dying on his battlefield, and who didn’t appear to have built anything. Yet, it would please me greatly to live my life in this way, whether I would have a beautiful house to show for it, or to be swept up in circumstances beyond my control.

I have found myself wondering, “how would Plenaro feel about this”, or “what would Plenaro do about that?” (WWPD?) and it has helped me to reign in my focus. Many of the people I’ve looked up to in my life have not lived up to scrutiny, but the image from my dream has become somewhat of a role model for me in the time since.

As Plenaro indicated the box, I seemed to be distracted, more focused on the experience of a ghost than what he might have represented to me, making him spell his name. However, I become focused on the box. In the dream, I see a picture but when I drew the image of it, I put three other items into it. I don’t know the significance of any of them, from the picture in the dream, to the jewel, the ring, and the feather in my drawing. A jewel and ring might be symbols of the self, and would a feather be an instrument used by Anubis in the Egyptian ritual of Horus/Ani? There is a fourness here that may speak to the wholeness of the psyche, for what it’s worth. 

I woke before getting to put the pellets into the receptacle, but I think the action would be a symbolic gesture. The gold pellets may represent what I may have gained from the dream, which can be used to fulfill my goals. I will always wonder what the picture portrayed, so I won’t speculate. The act of operating the box seems to be a possibility for future action, a way to move forward with the message of the dream. 

A note about dreamsigns and lucid dreaming:

We dream of houses and sometimes they are haunted, as mine are. I used it as a dreamsign to overwhelming success, by remembering to reality check every time I encountered one. This time, 

I brought another Haunted House dream to full lucidity. I deepened the dream and the apparition by stepping back, holding my arms back to take in the visual image and watched it fill into crystal clarity. This set the dream in motion, too. Though I forgot some dialogue, I woke immediately after and retained lots of detail for documentation.

‘The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body, and they express its materiality every bit as much as the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body.’ CW Vol. 9 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

In my first blog, I related the events surrounding a transformative dream I had which evoked a powerful feeling tone, its effect rippling out through my life. A series of events the previous day, coupled with reading an S.T. Coleridge poem upon cracking open the first Jung volume I had yet to read, seemingly led to my experience of this dream, replete with a mysterious archetypal projection.

I amplified the image, researched the content to the extent that I was able, but only much later did I make the Coleridge connection.

[from the previous blog]:

‘I searched for this information about “worlds within worlds”. At the time, I didn’t catch any meaningful references through the search engine of my browser. Every time I ran across references to entering worlds, all the obvious stuff, I looked closer. I thought that it seemed familiar but never found anything relating to it.’

Recently, I re-watched Joseph Campbell’s Mythos, season 1, episode 1, Psyche and Symbol. Cupping his hands, he explains that, ‘the elementary idea (read: archetype) is held within the the folk aspect, (local, provincial and popular).’

Joseph goes on to say that the old Sanskrit term for a trail left by an animal is “marga” and has been used in the context of the human, following the path of the Archetypes to the place within, the heart. 

‘At post mid-life, the folk system leaves you, and the path of the marga (archetypes) leads you within, to the heart, or the center of being.’

I finished the Collected Works this week, before watching the episode of Mythos, tonight. Remembering that Campbell’s insistence on the importance of Jungian theory had excited my impulse to read him, I feel that something has come full circle, and that I finally understand the cryptic words of this being with whom I spoke, just a few years ago in a dream.

The meaning of these words to me is that I had an extremely concretistic, or literalistic sense of reality. My freedom was constrained and I was trapped by my ‘weltanschauung’, or point of view. In the years since, I have entered a new world with a much wider perspective, and yes, I was at the halfway point in life.

Synchronistically, the timing is exact. I experienced some number coincidences today, and I had the thought of constellating contents of the unconscious, which just might show themselves in such phenomena, not thinking that the resolution of a mystery was at hand. Perhaps there was no ‘cryptomnesia’, but that I had not yet understood or explored completely enough the meaning of the words, “worlds within worlds”, spoken from within my own center of being.

He looked at his own Soul

with a Telescope. What seemed

all irregular, he saw and

shewed (showed) to be beautiful

Constellations; and he added

to the Consciousness hidden

worlds within worlds.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge- Notebooks

“Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, not deliberately engaging in plagiarism but rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.” -Wikipedia

‘The word was first used by the psychiatrist Théodore Flournoy,[2] in reference to the case of medium Hélène Smith (Catherine-Élise Müller) to suggest the high incidence in psychism of "latent memories on the part of the medium that come out, sometimes greatly disfigured by a subliminal work of imagination or reasoning, as so often happens in our ordinary dreams.” - Wikipedia

On my journey of learning about psychology, I had an experience of cryptomnesia, the meaning of which I am still working out. In late 2010, I had this dream:

The Dream: My son and I had pulled up to a strip mall in my honda civic, got out and asked the people hanging around the front where a particular place was. After we got back from down the way, I noticed the front seats were skewed and damaged. 

 When I asked one of the guys what happened, he didn’t know. He says, “are you accusing me?” I was thinking he did it but I hadn’t accused him. He says, “what are you going to do about it?” and I say, “well, I’m not going to attack you, if that’s what you mean.” He says, “why?” and I say, “because that’s not how I handle things”. He says, “your car will be ready in a half an hour. You can wait in there,” pointing to the store in front (where they were hanging around).

 We go inside and there are kids riding skateboards, people going here or there but not in a normal, commerce sort of way. If they were buying things, it was not evident. I was sitting in this place when a voice says, “there are worlds within worlds”,  which reverberated resoundingly in my head. 

The best way I can describe it, sitting next to me is an eight foot, black, being. “It” was either hermaphrodite or genderless- I’m not sure which. I asked it, “haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”. Non-committal, or no response. I asked, thinking vaguely of seeing my friend C____ (real life person), “did I meet you in Colorado Springs?” Stoic denial of this assertion, a grunt in the negative, maybe a shake of the head. I woke up.

Upon awakening, I was blown away by the intellectual and emotional impact of this dream. Not only had I met a real life Archetype- maybe, but I had the experience after an obvious runaround by a shadow figure if I understood the terminology correctly. Emotionally, I was charged up, excited, reeling from the meeting with this being, the contact of which left me with that “numinous” feeling of having had a mystical experience. I felt that I knew the reference to “worlds within worlds”, or its meaning would become apparent with some reflection.

To back things up a bit, I must give some personal associations to this dream. The day before, I had met an 82 year old black woman, who had shoulder length corn-rows, much like the being in the dream. She was at the bottom of a staircase, and when I gave her directions to the elevator, she stated emphatically that, “if I do that, I’ll die!” and she proceeded to run up the stairs at a trot, full of life. I was impressed, for sure. This happened in the building (see photos on my page here: http://http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=26jrhvn4evjnl) that is full of the imagery of individuation, right under the ceiling mural, none of which I had interpreted in 2010. At mid-life, I hoped I would have that much life in me at her age.

I searched for this information about “worlds within worlds”. At the time, I didn’t catch any meaningful references through the search engine of my browser. Every time I ran across references to entering worlds, all the obvious stuff, I looked closer. I thought that it seemed familiar but never found anything relating to it.

I continued to read Jung and have learned much, even applying Jungian dream analysis to my dream journal of several years, validating through my own experience the concepts I had found to explain my world and reality.

Lately, in August of 2014 I had the good fortune to read The Dream and its Amplification, edited by Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti, from the Fisher King Press, which I had seen advertised on depthpsychologyalliance.com. Several depth psychologists explain the art of dream analysis. Authored by Gilda Frantz, the last article in the book is introduced by this poem:

He looked at his own Soul

with a Telescope. What seemed

all irregular, he saw and

shewed (showed) to be beautiful

Constellations; and he added

to the Consciousness hidden

worlds within worlds.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge- Notebooks

I immediately recognized the poem but not where I had read it. Back to the search engine, the result revealing the poem’s presence in Aniela Jaffe’s introduction to Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Rushing to the bookcase, I opened my copy and there it was, the Coleridge poem, as the very first words of the book. I had bought that book along with Man and His Symbols back in 2010, before having the dream with this reference, completely forgetting that I had read it, even after being reminded of it by my own psyche. Jung’s quote is relevant here:

“Perhaps it may be easier to understand this point if we first realize the fact that the ideas with which we deal in our apparently disciplined waking life are by no means as precise as we like to believe. On the contrary, their meaning (and their emotional significance for us) becomes more imprecise the more closely we examine them. the reason for this is that anything we have heard or experienced can become subliminal- that is to say, can pass into the unconscious. And even what we retain in our conscious mind and can reproduce at will has acquired an unconscious undertone that will color the idea each time it is recalled. Our conscious impressions, in fact, quickly assume an element of unconscious meaning that is physically significant for us, though we are not consciously aware of the existence of this subliminal meaning or of the way in which it both extends and confuses the conventional meaning.” Jung, Man and his Symbols, pg. 27

Flashback to 2010- I remembered reading and appreciating the S.T. Coleridge poem when I first cracked open the book. I remembered that I wondered if I could look into my soul, or mind, as with some sort of tool like a telescope in metaphor, and also find “hidden worlds within worlds”.

Tensin Wangyal Rinpoche, in Unbounded Wholeness, advocates the seeker to find an “inner refuge” that exists within all people, effectively a safe inner world, held within our outer world. 

In its way, the whole dreamworld is an inner refuge; a playground of ideas, fantasies, a milieu for communication with the unconscious for those who have learned to speak the language of symbol and metaphor. Paying attention to dreams, we have access to “hidden worlds within worlds”, as promised by S.T. Coleridge and the projected archetypal being.

Some information about S.T. Coleridge (1772 -1834) that is interesting, is that he is considered by some to have had a special intuition with dreams, a predictor and promotor of ideas taken up by the men who later formed modern psychology as we know it. In his Complete Poems, my initial perusal has turned up very surprising poetic references and insights about dreams for his time, including the anima and other archetypal characters, familiar mythological and alchemical motifs. He wrote the “nightmarish vision” of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

My journey continues and I believe I have not yet found all the meaning in the symbols, as is fitting to their nature. The sublimation of my own conscious contents by the unconscious has given me a personal experience of cryptomnesia, the meaning of which I am only beginning to unravel. Besides having made some references to this dream, I have avoided plagiarizing the work of S.T. Coleridge.