Thoughts - "Time and Lucid Dream"

I'm standing in front of a dark-wood antique cabinet with a large mirror and many drawers filled with all kind of random oddments such as hair clips, coat buttons and whatever else one could possibly think of. Something in my mind just clicks, and I realise that I am dreaming. I'm making the mistake of trying to catch a glance of my own reflection in the big mirror. Whenever I have lucid dreams (def. dream where the dreamer is aware of the fact that he is dreaming) and try to see my own reflection. I instantly wake up as if I'm about to get spooked by what I will see. Just like now, I almost get caught sneaking around inside my own dream. And return into its vastness as a puppet in the projection of my own unconsciousness. But I fight back to keep my awareness.

" Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown Waiting for someone or something to show you the way" - Pink Floyd

I set the sight on my palms and focus on how vivid they look because it usually helps to keep the perception of a lucid dream alive. It works, once again everything around me goes from hazy to still. I recognise that cabinet. I am in my grandmother's flat. When I was a kid, whenever I was bored, I was driving her mad about going through all these drawers filled with what seemed to me as almost mystical pieces I could find in there. It's a dream, yet I feel like I was taken back in time to when I was nine years old. It feels like a deja vu but in the reverse course of events. As if I have left myself somewhere in the present and just slid into my Dreambody (def. American therapist Arnold Mindell described it as a mirror connection between the dreams and the physical sensations that we experience in our body in reality), which materialised itself in the form of a my younger self. One theory about time reveals that it flows slower when we are young, because we experience things for the first time. The reason that i can actually tell how old am I exactly, is behind the awareness of the first football World Cup I ever watched. It comes upon me from the depth of the dream in a form of a prophet; on the same day, in the evening I will sit in the front of TV and watch Argentinian player Claudio Cannigia sending the ball past the Nigerian goalkeeper to take the lead in their second world cup game in 1994. Through my Dreambody I don't experience this as a memory, but more like a parallel journey inside my Self. Where the world on the outside merges with the inner world without any expectations from the Ego side. Only then, we can really engage and allow ourselves to absorb the energy without the impression of passing time. These experiences, either good or bad consequently make us who we are. Another theory about time was introduced by Adrian Bejan (Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University). He said that our mind perceives changes in time based on the interchange of processed images. The present is different from the past because our perception has changed, hence the days seem longer when we are young because the mind of a child receives more pictures during the day than the mind of an adult. Our perception of time changes as we get older. Gradually we get to a point when we seem to know what time it is, at any time, without even looking at the clock. We claim to own it in the same way that we own the watch on our wrist. As a consequence, as the time passes we feel as if we have lost something. When we were younger. If anything, we never knew the actual time. And yet we felt, that there was plenty of time to kill every day.

Dreams - "Peacock"

(Vienna - woman, age 27)

I stepped into a flat that I lived in a month ago but I had to move out from there. Now a man who is a friend of mine moved in. There were big windows and as I was looking closely I realised that I didn't take down my yellow curtains but he twisted them somehow with his blue ones and additionally he put another one “sea-green” which reminded me of the colour I had seen in my previous dream (“Blue”).

“An event may be small and insignificant in its origin , and yet, when drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it and irradiates it violently.” - Bruno Schulz, “The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass”

I loved the material of it and I recognise it as the curtain which he had in the flat he previously lived in. I noticed three slices of bread on the window. Took a bite from one of them and it was fresh and tasty. One of them was full of toppings like salami and jalapeno etc. I have decided to leave this one for my friend but at the same time I was wondering why would he eat salami if he is Muslim. He is not that religious but he doesn't eat pork. Then I went to the living room and it was a bit messy. It looked like he didn't completely move in yet and some cleaning was needed. I knew that he was sleeping in the other room so I decided to do some cleaning and throw away a bunch of junk. I was about to hoover the floor and I noticed my cousin sleeping next to the hoover. I didn't want to wake her up so I decided to take a shower. I stepped into the bathroom. On the opposite side there was a room (where my friend was sleeping) and another room with a locked door. I went inside the shower and kneeled down with my head down. I realised that the water was dropping everywhere, it was like raining inside all around except on me. I jumped out of the bath and put a white towel around me. There was a tap without a sink next to the door. I opened it and dirty water started to pour from some random place in the wall next to the tap. I quickly turned it off but it was too late because it already touched my feet which made me feel disgusted and I left the bathroom. My friend who was sleeping in his room opened the door and came over and hugged me. He also had a white towel wrapped around his body and another one covered his head. I told him to cover his “thing” because I said that my cousin doesn't want to see it and he just smiled. He took my hand and took me to the other room, but not through the locked door but through his own room. There was another door which led to the secret room. I came in and I was shocked as I found out that he had made there a bedroom which looked exactly like my grandmother's bedroom with its old furniture and the stickers that my cousin and I put on there years ago. It looked awesome and it touched my heart. I sat down on the bed and asked him where he got the mattress from and he said that it was from his old flat. There was a box on the bed and when I opened it, it occurred to me that this was a package that years ago I had sent to someone to remind me of who I was. There were clothes in the box and I was speechless and when I opened my mouth to say “ I was…” my friend cut in and said “you see, you were such a peacock!”. But he said it with admiration and not like an insult. And I said “I wanted to say I was so young” and started to weep from joy. I was happy that my package (which I forgot about) arrived back to me and all the clothes fit so well like it used to or even better."

Dream interpretation:

The apartment symbolises the personality as a whole. A space where the emotional energy underlies the psychological complexes of the Dreamer. Vienna in her dream comes back to the flat where she used to live previously. Such an inner deja vu evokes the feelings of the past. She is surprised that her friend (new tenant) didn't get rid of the old yellow curtains that were there at the time when she lived in the flat. They are now tangled with the new blue ones that he put on the window when he moved in. These two colours are an interface of two energies where the yellow appears as a form of older energy, hence a colour that alchemically evokes the image of decay and expresses the change associated with time. Yellow materialised in the form of a curtain covering a window may refer to something that distorts the clear perception of reality. Blue is a symbol of a deep unconscious process that does not seem to literally replace yellow (there are two curtains on the window), but to interfere. The new tenant in the flat may be an inclination of the change in Vienna’s personality. Masculine energy and the blue colour that he brings inside may symbolise the rational part of her soul. She also brings an association to the shades of a "sea green"; which appeared in her previous dreams and represented relation to fullness. Vienna starts cleaning, which is in fact a symbol of evaluation of her beliefs from the past, i.e. from the time when she lived there previously. In the process, she gets rid of certain beliefs, but refrains from vacuuming the floor because she finds her cousin is sleeping on the floor, right next to the hoover. The floor can be interpreted quite literally as an actual level of consciousness, while her cousin's body materialises there as a form of blockage in the evaluation (cleaning) process. What is this thing that Vienna does not want to awaken from its subconscious? The dreamer's cousin suggests a family-related mental complex (unconscious ideas or impulses that influence someone's attitudes and behaviour).

Water in the flat relates to the unconscious flow of energy and it's completely uncontrolled. The shower water pours everywhere around but not at the dreamer when she wishes so. The water as the unconsciousness needs to flow and this is an abstract manifestation that questions the actual possibility to clean off from certain emotions. In another example, water that flows through the pipes in the walls emerges as the buildup of suppressed energy. This in the end finds the outlet when she opens a tap of water without the actual sink which symbolically shows that this energy can’t circulate in the natural way and as it bursts out it’s making a mess.

First part of the dream indicated an idea of working on the emotions rather than getting rid of them. It's the dreamer's inner job through associations to reveal what the yellowness refers to. The clue may be found at the window in a form of slice of bread representing the dreamer's intention to nurture the masculine drive in her psyche; she leaves the slice with meat for the man who represents the Animus part of her psyche. The reason for the meat appearance may be related to the fact that he doesn't eat meat because he is Muslim. This suggests that she may experience that projection to be tied by boundaries on a moral level and in order to break through and eat meat he would have to commit a sin. However one should be mindful that ego tends to categorise the objects as good or bad whereas on the unconscious level such a dissociation has no place as the whole self is one. What is seen as dirty could as well be turned into strength once transformed to consciousness. Her cousin who embodies a form of a family complex is mentioned twice in a dream and both times stops the dreamer from doing what she initially intended to do. First, when the dreamer was about to hoover the floor, she could not do it because she didn't want to wake her cousin up. Her cousin's presence also raises a moral conflict in the situation when the dreamer's friend comes out of his room with the intention to hug her. He is wearing two white towels to cover his body. One is wrapped around his waist while another covers his hair as if the Animus projection was essentially filtered from its sexuality and mind strength. The dreamer, having in mind her cousin's presence tells the man to cover up properly because her cousin doesn't wish to see “his thing”. White towels are the shapes of the dreamer's Superego. They form a filter to reject this primal masculine energy. As a result, her Ego finds it somewhat dirty. He and the dreamer hug and she tells him to cover up. On the subconscious level there is no good or bad as it all comes out from the same source; the self. But the dreamer’s prejudices cause repression of some emotions. The question is what is behind the projection embodied by her friend. It's fair to admit that it can only be partially explained in the frame of an Jungian archetype known as the Animus. These complex mechanisms are built up from repressed emotions and the answers can hardly be found in one's mind. To form a dialogue with the unconscious one needs to reach a lot deeper.

Dreams and Jungian “active imagination” allow us to open up the gate through which one can access the fields of soul.

Her friend in the dream projects a masculine energy that once awakened enables connection to her deepest self. It is in his room where she symbolically finds the door to what she described as the “secret room”. At the same time, the door on the opposite side remains locked. She is astonished to realise that the secret room looks exactly like her grandmother's room, yet here all the interior was made by him. This stage of the dream reveals the powerful impact of connection with her masculine energy. As a result of this she can access her grandmother's room which is a metaphoric bridge to her inner wisdom or in other words the Self - the product of individuation process. Content of the box exposes the emotions that she was holding back. Inside, she finds her old clothes and she wants to say “I was so young” when her friend cuts in and says “You see, you were such a peacock” and he brings this analogy in a rather friendly manner. The dreamer's association to this part was that the colour of the peacock is exactly the same sea-green which in this dream appeared on the third curtain that complemented the yellow and the blue one. This colour also appeared in her previous dreams to reveal her desire. Peacock is known for his ability to tackle and eat even the most poisonous snakes without getting hurt. In Hindu tradition the animal transmuted the snake venom into the blue radiant colour on its throat. The same colour symbolises the Vishudda also known as the throat chakra in the human body. The gate that enables us to express who we are. If we were to contemplate this energy centre we intuitively refer to what we say and how we say it. In this dream her unconsciousness brings attention to the other side of that gate and reveals to her that things which haven't been expressed are yet to be transformed and released.

Dreams - "The painting"

(Pascal - man, age 40)

I'm at an art gallery at a meeting with a woman. She is around twenty five. I think she is some kind of student and I am there as a teacher of arts. She is asking me for my opinion about one painting and I have my answer ready and prepared in an envelope and I give it to her.

"The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter." - Sigmund Freud

There is also an older woman with her, her aunt I think. Now I give the younger one an actual painting. It's a bit abstract and covered with flowers. I know that under the surface of this oil painting there was another one; a silhouette of a woman. I remember when I was painting it, I had to make some adjustments because I thought at the time that the woman which I had painted on it would hold a grudge. She will think that her figure is too large so I adjusted her waist and some other parts and this made her look out of proportion. I could still see the original contours and it just looked odd. Then I covered this with the flowers. When I gave this painting to the younger woman, the older one complained and she insisted that I need to add more white paint on. I was not happy with this but I made adjustments and I took the white paint off from another painting where I painted my wife. It's strange but the painting of my wife had no white paint on it and I needed to stick the brush deep and remove other colours so that the white comes out from underneath. I put white paint from one painting on the other one and I felt very annoyed as somehow I realised that my wife is dying and the only thing that woman cares about is the painting.

Dream interpretation:

The first part of the dream reveals the duality of the dreamer’s Anima (Latin; soul). Younger women is a symbol of curiosity and individuation (Jung saw individuation as a goal of the analytical process, when one becomes a separate unity or a whole). Her aunt, on the other side resembles an image of his fixed opinions and unconscious complexes. When the younger woman asks for an opinion about the painting, he gives her an envelope with an answer which he had prepared before the question was even asked. This suggests that the dreamer may have trouble being spontaneous and possibly reveals some compulsiveness. The painting with the flowers is an inclination of something new arising in the dreamer's consciousness. It symbolises access to different perceptions of reality and his creativity. Essentially flowers are referring to the process of dreamer’s self realisation; new consciousness. Underneath the painted flowers there is another layer of the paint, which resembles an inner conflict; silhouette of the woman's figure generates the feeling of anxiety about the way it was painted (too large), and triggers assumptions that she may feel offended by that. This points out his neurotic tendencies. The older woman is a symbol of the dreamer's Superego and it's disapproval of the painting that reveals the inner critic. Such an energy is a materialisation of a depressive aspect of the dreamer's psyche. White paint symbolises a sense of purity which is hidden underneath the thick coat of oil paint. Driven by his Anima-like projection, the dreamer is moving white paint from one picture onto the other. This shows the tendency to please others. His dying wife portrays the change of the inner psychic dynamics revealed in the painting sequence which essentially describes individuation process:

a.) woman silhouette - sense of his identity

b.) adjustments forced by his strong attachment to fixed opinions

c.) flowers as a symbol of new consciousness arising from internal strife

d.) repainting portrays another inner struggle and process of developing consciousness

Frustration in the context of repainting both images relates to the inability to stand up for himself in a counter to collective prejudice.