I'm speeding north on interstate 89, flashing my lights at the car in front of me.. I'm thinking: "If I'm too late to eat staff meal I can still grab a bowl of soup from the line later on." I'm thinking: "If I can clear a hundred dollars tonight I can probably make it through the week without pulling money out of savings." I'm wondering if Heather's working tonight...
I'm flashing my headlights at the car in front of me. I'm late for work. I'm thinking: "Why doesn't that idiot in front of me just speed up and get around that truck." I'm thinking: "If we can save five thousand dollars before Ellen gets pregnant we might be okay." I'm thinking: "If there are no more idiots in my way I might be able to make it just in time to shovel down staff meal after all." I wonder if Heather will change in the tiny dressing room while I'm changing and what it would be like to...
I'm late for work. Now I wish the idiot would just slow down and tuck back in behind the truck and let me past. I'm worried about how high the grass has gotten at our place. I told the landlord I'd mow it, but I just haven't wanted to. I'm thinking: "This is what my recent dream is showing me." I'm calculating minutes to arrival. I'm hoping this hard on goes down before I get to the restaurant. I'm planning our next vacation.
I'm finally even with the tail end of the truck. This is taking forever. I'm trying to calculate how many fairytale performances and how many workshops we'd have to book in a year to make a living at it. Shit! Did I remember my bow tie for work tonight? Shit, shit, shit. Okay, okay I can probably borrow one. Shit.
This is what Marc told me to notice. Look at all your thoughts he said. It's crazy. I'm crazy.
I'm doing my homework.
At the end of each session Marc gives us homework based on the dreams we've just worked. My homework for this two week stretch is to notice this race of thoughts in my mind, to notice all the disasters I worry about and all the rewards I hope for.
I'm in my late thirties at this point and I've been doing the dream work for about three months. Here's the dream I'm working from:
Somehow I've won. I have to get to the building across the abyss to claim my prize within an unknown time limit or I'll be blown up by another bomb. Now there's a shift.
A shift is a sudden change in time and location like a "cut to scene" in a movie. A shift may actually occur in the dream or I may simply forget the transition between two scenes. Get set, this is a long and convoluted dream. The kind I used to be so proud of, the kind I thought would make great movies, the kind that make it tough on Marc. Once after I'd just told him one of my whoppers he gave me an exasperated look and said: "When your dreams are shorter you will be cured." He loves little dream snippets that take a sentence or two to complete. No such luck from me. With a dream like this one Marc can't possibly twist apart every symbol and nuance. For one thing there's just not enough time in our sessions, for another by giving me all that information he runs the risk of confusing me or worse, in my case, he runs the risk of engaging my intellectual curiosity. If I look at my dreams from an "oh isn't that fascinating!" point of view I will never be transformed. I'll remain stuck in my old self spinning increasingly bizarre and false stories and understandings of myself and the world. Dream workers often speak of getting out of our heads and into our hearts, into our feelings which have their own non linear intelligence. What Marc has to do with this unwieldy report from the other side is listen for the main thrust, the essential feeling tone, the one thing that God wants me to work on. Continuing:
I'm outside the department store where I must go to claim my prize. I'm still with the woman. I trust her. It seems less likely that the next bomb will be able to reach us in the store. Shift.
Now we're in the store. A female store representative is showing us a series of pictures which represent different departments in the store. It's hard to understand. I want my money. Where do I go? She says I've won 10,000. I wish I could follow her directions to the redemption center. My companion and I enter a large cafeteria. We have to buy something here before we can collect the prize. We're joined by the men from the tank of rushing water. One of them goes to the automaton checker to pay for his meal. She says "several hundred." He pays her. To the next guy she says "Four hundred, I'll charge it to your room like last time." I grab a couple meat dishes, she says "One hundred forty, I'll charge it to your room like last time." I eat a little. We go on. Shift.
There are a mass of snaky rails leading in all directions. People are on these rails. Some rails support standing people, some sitting people. Some rails move, others are stationary. Some move people quickly, others slowly. My female companion goes to one type of rail. I'm on another. I'm afraid we'll be separated. I'm angry at her for not being with me. A line of standing people on the rail next to me are swept off in a flash. Shift.
I wonder if Freud or Jung ever wrestled with anything this unwieldy. I listened to the tape of this session recently. The first few years I saw Marc I recorded many of our sessions. I can hear the poor guy typing away furiously as the dream goes on and on.
I'm with my female companion again at a make up counter. This is the pay off station. There's very little time left. My companion explains things to the automaton make up woman who refers us to another automaton woman. The conversation is very complicated, way beyond me. Finally I'm told I must go into the men's room and pee in a small bottle cap. I have a few seconds to complete my task before the bomb finds me. I run into the men's room. There are quite a few men there sitting in a lounge area at the front of the restroom.. I quickly explain that I have to cut to the front of the line or we'll all die. I'm surprised that they don't seem afraid of the bomb but they let me go ahead. I'm trying to pee thinking "I can't be nervous, I can't be nervous." Finally I'm peeing in the toilet, it's hard to get it in the cap. There are juliennes of pickled vegetables in my urine. I'm afraid I'll have to eat and drink this awful stuff. I see the bomb hovering just outside the window. The pee keeps spilling out of the tiny cap. Finally I get some to stay. The bomb seems to be keying in on my wedding ring. I make it back to the counter. Now to get my prize. The automaton clerk seems stuck, malfunctioning. My female companion feeds her phrases which the automaton repeats. She says I've won one thousand but I had been told 10,000.
Shift. I'm with a friend outside the store. I must have a certain type of gum to chew or I'll be attacked by deadly flying animals. This gum is very valuable. My friend gives me a small piece.
Marc said the bomb will never go off, the animals will never attack and I'll never receive my reward. The disasters I fear and the rewards I seek are equally false. This entire dream is a circus of pathology. There's a lot of dark stuff about marriage; the marriage conveyor belt and the bomb honing in on my wedding ring. It's not clear whether my female companion is complicit with this sick world or revealing it to me for my own good. The only clearly real things in this dream are the unconcerned men in the restroom and the two men rescuing the one from the rushing waters right after the race. The rescued one is me, (often in my dreams I'm watching myself, sometimes unaware that such is the case), The rescuers are Archetypes. They're showing me that I can't save myself, like I'm trying to do throughout the dream. They're showing me that I must look to them to be saved. The lounge men in the restroom are also Archetypal and I don't give them the time of day. But these are mere details, the main thing is to do the homework Marc distills from this dream.
As I said my homework from this session was to notice the parade of wild thoughts in my waking mind. As I'm driving down the interstate late for work, I can't believe how fast and how crazy they are. It's just like the dream, an insane race of perceived threats and rewards. I've been living like this as long as I can remember. No wonder I've taken so many drugs. Who could live with all this noise? I wasn't living, not really. I was just an automaton among automatons, led by my Pathology.
The Pathology is the flip side of the Archetypes. The dark side. The sickness. The seductress from my first dream was pathology as is the bomb in this dream. She manipulates me through desire and guilt, the bomb manipulates through intimidation.
My homework is not to stop living like this. That would be too difficult. My homework is just to become aware of this freak show as it's happening in my waking life.
I'm doing the first stage of the dream work. As Socrates once suggested I'm coming to know myself.