Thoughts: "self-help ≠ Self help."

I bet everyone at some point of their life has been fixed back to the ground by the reality, and watched their plans for the future fading away; relentlessly. Especially my favourite: "New Year Resolutions' '. Have we not all been there? Focus on what you passionate about, start exercising, stop gossiping, start reading, and so on and over again, ideas appear in our head and... "houdini their way out". They disappear so smooth and casual, just as such an order would be in the nature of things. We may want to change something, or do something differently. For example inspired by a friend, we decide to join the gym and exercise regularly. But soon we realise how damn hard it is to live up to such commitment in the long run. We tell ourselves: screw that, this is not for me… The idea of a change sounds promising, but when its shapes become real, in other words when we start behaving in a way that we are not used to, we back off. We don't allow to ourselves to go some places within ourselves because we feel that we are losing control. Fucking uncomfortable. Paradoxically, when the Ego comes to voice we are convinced that we know who we are really. In metaphor, we are just like a scared turtle that pulls its head out to see the world as it is. We pull our Ego out of the shelf made out of beliefs about who we are, what we can and cannot do. Only when we do that, we are able to see and experience what happens around. And is isn't that's the only reason why we live. But then we may get anxious and quickly, before anyone notices that we are... (just be creative and make some-fucking up), we slide back inside our shell, where we can feel in all the same as we have been taught to feel long before we knew there is a way out. Yet still, even if inside we suffer, we prefer that, rather than the anxiety of being exposed. To put it otherwise, we may after all be fucked up; lets not fool ourselves. But how fucked up we must be to choose to get fucked, rather than fucking (things up)?

The reason why most self-help books are rather lousy help is the fundamental difference between the conscious part of us (i.e. Ego) that demands change, and the, unconscious part (i.e. Self) which in fact would have to make that change happen so we could reach the things we desire and make them part of our lives. The latter part articulates our story, it defines how we perceive the world that surrounds us and, eventually, who we become. It is not something that we can rearrange according to the book and depending on what we want, but something that we can embrace in order to take us where we belong. F.Perls said once, that "we live in the house of mirrors and we think we are looking out the windows.". On the tone of that thought, if we were up for the real change i.e. tackle addiction or depression or stop being a lazy arse and start getting things done, we would need to be able to tell the difference between the mirror and the window. And find that one window inside yourself that would allow you to see the things about yourself that no one was there to tell you, while you were being put in a wrong in the first place, as a matter of fact mostly by your parents. For me, one of the ways to open such a window is to understand the dreams. We cannot see the Self, we cannot touch It, and above all, we cannot work on It in a way instructed by the self-books. In fact, we are "It", so what we essentially intend to change is part of a whole that we cannot grasp with our senses, because it gives us our existence. While we are wishing to change our fate and devour books on wealth or happiness, we fail to realise that we are doing it "inside out". To put it differently, if all it takes is to just follow instructions, it is just the same as in metaphor the tail would be trying to wave the dog, not the other way around. And if that's what we are trying to do, then how can’t we see that, we are breaking all possible laws of nature.

Dreams: "The crater"

(Pascal, man - age 40)

Dream:

"Myself and my very good friend, are in the middle of the desert. In a dream, we are both children and on vacation. We feel very excited about the upcoming fun. We are inside a huge crater, it is hot and sunny all around. I decide to climb to go up to the top of this crater. I leave my friend and alone, walk up a very steep slope...

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” - F.Scott Fitzgerald

When I get to the top It's hard to explain but I feel like I have fallen into something bad, like taking some drug or getting involved in some shady business. I come back completely bumped up with a stings of guilt on my shoulders. The visit to the top of the hill seems to have irreversible consequences. I feel very bad when I come back to my friend, as if something irreversible happened to me over there. My friend is still excited about the vacation and everything, but now, I can't help but feel terribly concerned. And I am not quite sure why? I can't remember what exactly happened and what is the source of all these disturbing feelings, but i just feel awful, it almost feels as if someone just fucked me up there. At this point, the plot of the dream changes, now we both are older, and of our normal age. A friend of mine talks about how time flies and he seems very serious on this matter. His reasoning is that our childhood and vacation that were in the first part of the dream have passed as if in the blink of an eye, and we inevitably move towards the soon death. I try to cheer him up a bit and I say that we can frame the same situation in a positive manner. I try to explain that now ,we are exactly the same age as our parents were at the time when we were on this vacation in a dream we just had. And I say that, if we look at it that way, we may as well see another life ahead of us, which for some reason, and may sound odd, but in a sense, is the life of our parents. At least that is how it feels at the time I say it; just as I live someone else's life. At this moment I realise that I can either follow this reasoning, or turn it around and decide the future myself despite the past."

Dream interpretation:

The idea of upcoming vacations refers to the dreamer's childhood and unveils the feelings of anticipation and innocence that he must have felt at that time. For some reason these emotions become repressed and kept closed inside the subconscious mind (inside the crater). The dream is parallel to life itself, it doesn't give away one explicit memory nor the reason for its repression. However these emotions came from the depth of the subconscious mind to the dreamer’s attention. What the dreamer experiences when he arrives inside the crater could relate to the singular repressed memory, or it could be a story made up by the subconscious mind in order to represent a certain mindset from his adolescence. Upon interpretation, we should not confuse what's made up with what is not real. In fact, in the light of the subconscious mind the so-called “made up” emerges as the essence of the real. It evokes experience as pure as the rough diamond, unblemished by any hasty conclusions that one's mind would prompt to attach to it, depending on the stance of its Ego. Isn't that exactly what I am doing now?

The dreamer finds himself to be a young boy again. He is accompanied by his childhood friend and they arrive for vacation in the middle of a desert. The crater symbolises the essence of the dreamer’s childhood, a place where he can feel safe. Inside the crater, he is protected from the depth of the desert which in turn symbolises the unknown features of the upcoming life, or in the paralell of the analycal psychology his own subconcious mind. Nonetheless, the dreamer decides to go up the hill. Such a journey may be a manifestion of some forgotten memories that turned to be overwhelming, yet left an imprint of coming out of age. Whatever happened upon the top of the hill in the dream, resonates with memories that were pushed back into the subconcious, and may have had an inevitable consequencess upon his childhood and perhaps his life - "I almost feel like someone just fucked me up there" - such a load of aggressive emotions comes from a deeply anchored animal instinct that came to the fore when the plot of the dream touched the emotions pushed into the subconscious. In other words, the trip up the hill reveals the loss of childhood innocence.

The dream consists of two separate parts. At the beginning Pascal is taken back to his childhood, where he gets in touch with the memories that appear as the personal recollection of the feeling of freedom, and an almost electrifying excitement of the libidinal force that he must have felt at that time. The second part of the dream, in contrast, resonates with the grown up parts of himself. Where he is at the task of realisation of the meaning behind dream. We could say that the first part relates to the dreamer's emotions whilst the second with his conscious mind. What he described as the crater, is in fact a place that still exists in his subconscious mind. Just like the land of mythological Kairos it consists of the essence of pure nature framed as the singular moment caught in time i.e. the childhood memory. A moment of anticipation for an upcoming vacation that was cut through something that forced him to suppress the whole memory and now comes back to him in the dream.

In the second part he comes to the dialogue with his friend when both men are adults. The dialogue about the passing may resonate as the parallel of the mythological encounter of two Greek Gods of time. A moment ago a young boy, and now an adult man can represent a mythological Kairos who faces the Shadow-like figure of his friend. In the frames set by the dream scenario the Shadow consists of the features of the first Greek God of time Kronos. Who was Kairos's father and in the dreamer context personifies his own Shadow. During a short dialogue, his friend unveils the deep fear of death and sets the narration for what we previously defined as the ”lost innocence", in a devouring sense of being consumed by what in turn might be described as an adulthood. Thereupon, the dreamer (i.e. Kairos) comes to the very important realisation that in spite of the fact that the cycle of his life essentially relates to his parents, there still is a way (and the need) to come out of this circle.

Dreams: "The game"

(Pascal, man - age 40)

Dream:

"A dream begins as if I am inside of a video game. I jump from one building to another, just like a character in the game I remember from my childhood: "Mario Bros". At one point I completely broke off the ground. I am floating up in the air as if something was pulling me towards the source of the dream itself. It's fun. I keep on flying over the buildings until some force almost swallows me inside one of them. The building looks a bit like the old tenement house that I spent my childhood in. As I enter, I notice that the interior looks just like the theatre. The force that was pulling me all the way here grows stronger as I get closer to the stage. I realise that the stage with the huge red curtain is the essence of part of my Self that wanted to see me. Just as in a flash, the red curtain absorbs my dreaming self behind the curtain...

“Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

What I find inside is another stage, just as if the red curtain was a mirror and it reflected two scenes on each side. The front stage and, an internal stage. While I find myself on what seems as a back stage, I see an audience and realise that everyone is there waiting for me to join in. I take part in some strange contest, like in a TV show. The show, is about to start and my part is to compete with another boy who I recognize as my best friend from childhood. Yet in the dream, we are strangers to each other. While we get out time to prepare for the first challenge, I start feeling anxious, as I have no idea what to expect. Each of us gets a huge plastic tube, such as one for swimming underwater. Both of these tubes are extremely large in size but differ from one another in shape. The other boy's tube looks pretty much normal, but mine on the other hand appears weird by its shape, somewhat horizontal. This is both puzzling and uncomfortable at the same time, as I expect water to flood us at any moment. At this point, I am starting to worry that I may actually drown underwater. However, afterall it turns out that there is no water flood. Instead, our task is to climb a very steep mountain with the help of ropes hanging from the top. I am trying to climb to the top, but for various reasons I cannot do it. Either the ropes cry or when I try again it turns out they are not attached to anything on top and they fall off. Eventually I find a rope that seems to be attached to something at the top and try to hold on to it. With difficulty, I finally manage to start climbing up."

Dream interpretation:

The dreamer associates the opening scene to the video game. The game in turn resonates with his childhood wich suggest a sense of disconnection from the grounds of reality in just a similar way he used to avoid unbearable emotions in the past. Floating above the ground level in the dream resonates with the awake state of his mind and flying itself reflects his dissociation from reality. While he is drifting away into the childhood fantasies, the plot of his dream takes a twist. Pascal's dreaming Ego gets devoured into the realm of his psychic complex. The theatre stage features as his Persona. And such an act of being swallowed via the the curtain into the rear stage, symbolically regresses the dreamer back to the sphere between his Persona and his subconscious mind. His dreaming Ego finds itself beneath the mask, that he puts on his Self in the walk around world of reality, and at its other side the core of his Self. There, in between is the space of the dream, the inner game is being played.

Whilst the front stage can be interpreted as the dreamer's Persona, the game that is to be played behind the scenes, is an act of the psychic complex that pushes the dreamer to compete with the dissociated part of his Self personified as the other boy at the same stage. What he finds behind the scene i.e. the rear stage, symbolises a hallway to the core of his subconscious mind. As the dream shows Pascal plays two games simultaneously. On a daily basis, he jumps through the daily tasks, whilst not being quite in touch with his deeds. The real game however, is played in parallel to reality. The red curtain that swallows him behind the scenes, is just like a double-sided mirror. On its front side it reflects the escape in the video game, a form of disassociation from his own worries taking place beneath the mask of his Persona. Whereas as the dreamer's gaze shifts inwards the same surface on its inner side reflects a psychic complex. The dreamer, just behind the Persona mask, Pascal is being put on the spot in order to compete with another boy. The other young man as an inner challenger represents the dissociated part of his masculinity. The breathing tubes refer to what is known as a phallus in psychoanalysis. While they in fact represent his manhood and personality and indeed are intended to serve as a means of expressing his individuality, they should not be confused with the anatomical meaning of the word. Water seen in the dreams often symbolises one's consciousness; a sense of being. The very thought of the water that could fill the room anytime, filles Pascal’s mind with anxiety. And consequently, there may be something that in the very similar way inherently streams through the dreamer's mind, and overwhelms him with the same sense of worry about his own thoughts and feelings. The interesting element of the puzzle posed by his subconscious mind in the dream, is the actual tool that he is given to protect himself from what is to come (the flood of water). The huge breathing tube. What use could possibly be made of such a strange breathing pipe in the realm of his life awake? And how could such a pipe materialise itself as in reality?

Pascal's dreaming Ego seems to be puzzled by the unusual shape of the tool he received in contrast to the one that the other boy was given. A dreaming Ego can't help but compare the object as it is to what appears as more normal. Such a reflection may resonate as the realisation of his own individuality, and poses a question about the way such a peculiar tool may shape one's personality? In a dream, the water never comes, instead it climbs the ropes trying to get away from the realm of this inner struggle. The ending sequence symbolically closes the circle of the dream plot. The dreamer, in his determination to climb up, yet again dissociates himself from the inner conflict in order to run away into the realm of daydreaming.