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May, 2009

3 6 9 23 25

Since one of the recent dreams - "Off with My Toes!" - was apparently about my problematic relationship over the past 3 months or so with Wendy, she provided me with important coaching (especially about removing the "hook" I had put into Wendy, i.e. the implied criticism in showing her I felt her dealings with the group's e-mails had not been adequate and that I could handle them better) and rehearsal concerning the upcoming meeting (yesterday) with her. That the meeting went well and had a good outcome, after a number of weeks of emotional turmoil till then, was significantly due to specific guidance from Sonya.

In addition, she or my friend Janet had the following interpretations or advice, based on both that dream and the immediately subsequent one, "A Caring Profession:"

• The feet have to do with one's stance, so removal or the threat of removal of part of the feet means danger of losing one's stance, principles, or position vis-à-vis some important issue(s) and/or relationship.

• The toes and the balls of the feet adjacent to them represent grounding as well as one's poised, balanced preparation for the next steps forward. So, losing these "needed parts" would mean losing the ability to metaphorically move forward (in life) in a normal way.

• The period of recent transition is imminently coming (or has come) to an end. Now it will be time for a new type work. This may be strictly an inner project or, more likely, will be reflected as well in new initiatives or opportunities in the ordinary waking reality.

• The issues in the "Off with My Toes!" dream are partly to do with family stuff, for instance with a sense of a great weight of abuse from my father, that just pressed "down from the top." Such family issues may play out in one form or another through the rest of my life. If I continue to have an acquaintance with Wendy, rather than severing or "cutting off" that relationship, then I shall be able to work on those issues from childhood, or from ongoing matters with my relatives, in a more neutral, a safer, and potentially a more positive way.

• Sonya sees the "A Caring Profession" dream as consistent with, and a hopeful indication of, my readiness for a volunteer role in a helping or healing vocation.

• Janet sees the recent series of dreams as indicative of my now being in a very good place. Hope she is correct.

5/6/09 - Title: "Too Long a Navel vs. Too Short a Gut"

I have had an operation in my abdominal area and have since healed. I have a navel that is now over three inches long (deep) inside my belly, long enough and broad (thick or wide) enough that I can stick a finger all the way into it. I have gone back to the surgeon to see about this. He confirms it is longer than expected. He says he had also made my penis a little longer while he had the opportunity. There is a question whether to do a new operation to shorten my navel.

[It seems there is a risk that in shortening my new navel, by putting a sphincter in it about halfway down or a few stitches in there, closing it off, my gut (intestine) may also become obstructed in much the same way. The operation has not yet been decided on when I wake up, but things are left in limbo. I believe it needs to be done, but am worried about unintended consequences.]

Title: "Seeking What is Not There"

Three wild young men are tailgating me, driving fast right behind me in my car. I turn off to the left, toward a shopping center, and leave them behind. (They do not follow).

I still have the too long navel.

I walk toward the shopping center with an empty shopping cart. The area surrounding the shopping center is overgrown, as though it has not been tended in years. Thick adjacent (to the shopping center that I am heading toward) dry weeds or wild dry shrubs are everywhere, up to about three feet high. Because of them, I do not first see an edge to the concrete walkways (that surround the shopping center), but then suddenly it is there before me. Another step or two, and I and my cart would have toppled down a cliff into an area several levels or stories below. I think that down there is where the new shopping center must be.

Next, I am inside the shopping center, but it is obviously the abandoned one above. There are vast empty halls and alcoves where the shops were before. I cannot figure out how to get from this one to the lower one now in operation.

I encounter a sweet, attractive young woman at an otherwise empty counter or shop. I have a greeting card I try to give her. It says something about my feelings for her but also about the long navel. An older woman is there too. She leaves us alone. I gently hold and caress the young woman's hand and try to get her to go with me. I can tell she likes me and wants to go with me, but she is cautious and says she will not. I think I just need to find a way to persuade her, and then she will willingly come.

Meanwhile, I am wanting the needed operation and so am waiting in the hall, lying on my back and feeling too ill or weak to be up for long. If the young woman cannot be convinced to go with me, I think I shall try on my own another stairway with the cart, pushing or dragging it along too, to see if I can find the still active shopping center that way, but I feel lost in the confusion of empty levels and stairways.

[I wonder if the business about a new navel has to do with a rebirth. 3 is repeated in several ways, indicating transformation. Three young (Jung?) wild shadows are chasing me. Why are they in this dream? I am here to buy (and be sold) one or more things, but cannot find the right places for buying and selling. Two animas indicate dawning awareness. One wants to help, and we are attractive to each other (suggesting integration is possible), but she is cautious. The long navel reminds me of an energy vortex and is shaped like a tornado, widest though at the top or belly surface and narrowest a few inches inside the belly. What is this empty cart I keep with me, even up and down stairways? Stairways must be ways of seeing. Cart is trac backwards, but I am not yet getting anything from that.]

5/9/09 - Title: "No, Really, I'm Fine! I'm Just Not Quite Myself"

My answers are a little off or muddled, as though I am having a lot of forgetful or senior moments, not all the time, but enough so that some people in the work setting or classroom around me think I may have had at least a mild stroke. They are, with the best of intentions, trying to get me into a hospital or a nursing home-like facility. I am trying to convince them I am just having a small problem with communication or with getting my thoughts organized, as though I only need a cup of morning coffee or tea or to catch up on sleep to be back to normal, but I am still making slips of the tongue as I try to explain, and so they think I have a more serious problem and ought not to be believed when I say I am alright. I'm trying to make light of it. However, for my own good and against my will, they are planning to have me taken away.

[The ego may be redundant or need to be taken away. From his point of view, it is because of problems organizing his thoughts or getting the right words out. Others think I have had an honor, recognition (a social stroke, as in E. Berne's Transactional Analysis) that I did a good job interpreting a couple recent dreams for Janet, demonstrating, at least in writing, quite good communication skills and organizing of my thoughts. In fact, I am having a lot of moments of real maturity (senior moments). The setting is one of growth (work) and learning (a classroom). Other aspects of my larger self seek to get proper health care for me and to return me to that true self which I had forgotten.

On a more straightforward level, the dream might reflect concern with my too cholesterol intensive diet, which might if continued eventually result in a stroke, or it might indicate real concern for mental lapses that could be reduced significantly by getting more sleep and eating foods that have vitamin B-12.]

5/23/09 - Title: "A Difference Without a Distinction" or "Don't Get On Your High Horse - Just Show Me How to Know the Difference and to Fix What Was Done Wrong"

I am in a new place. I am as yet unfamiliar with its ways. I have apparently done something wrong, not knowing any better. Two or three others, at least one man and one woman, are concerned that I have gotten new things mixed up with the old ones. They look just like the correct or original ones. I have been moving square-shaped pillows that looked like they should be put away, but in the process the ones I have been handling became confused with identically appearing ones here already. The others act shocked or self-righteous at what I have done. I am not feeling guilty or repentant. I accept what they say, that I got things (the pillows) mixed up and they should now be separated again, but their self-righteousness does us no good. What is needed is for them to make it clear how to tell them apart so we can rectify the situation. They ought to have supervised and let me in on how to tell them apart before, not blame the new guy for failing to see the difference afterward. Indeed, even now, why don't they stop the blame game and just show me how to tell them apart?

[The pillows remind me of meditation cushions.]

Title: "Deja Audio"

I am awakened by hearing Fran, having just returned, open the garage door in preparation for driving her car into the garage. (I then expect to hear the car being driven in and the garage door being closed, but do not until around 20 minutes later, when I am again awakened by hearing Fran, having actually just returned, open the garage door, in preparation for driving her car into the garage. This time, the car is promptly driven in, after which I hear the garage door being closed.)

Fran, my wife, is amusing, competent (with many talents, including being a good teacher), and at times seeks to assert herself as the more dominant one in our relationship.]

5/25/09 - Yesterday afternoon, I went to Sonya's dream group. Among others, we discussed my "A Difference Without a Distinction" and "Deja Audio" dreams. Highlights:

• I am in a new psychological or larger self "place" or state.

• I am still getting used to how to be and what is appropriate to do in this new place.

• The mention of 2 suggests dawning awareness.

• The mention of 3 suggests transformation.

• In this new place, the differences are more subtle, less easily discernible.

• Other dream characters may help in making these distinctions, or they may just represent a latent contrariness, ego-type clashes or oppositional stuff in general, power struggle issues, the "Gotcha!" kind of blame game, etc.

• The square pillows that remind me of meditation cushions may represent different ways of sitting, i.e. either adjustments to subtly different situations or ways of seeing, relating to, and dealing with things (based on subtle variations in outlook or awareness) as a result of how I am meditating or different things I have taken from the meditation.

• The pillows can be seen as either head rests (for resting the otherwise ever "chattering" head; places of sleep or physical rest; the avenue to dreams and their insights and hence doors into the intuitive; etc.) or meditation cushions, by which (in this other way) one may attain greater insight and connection with the intuitive.

• The day's dreaming reminds of some recent meditation group issues, controversies with Wendy, that group's leader, over just how things will be handled in our little meditation organization.

• The 4 in multiple 4-sided square pillows suggests manifestation is reality (like a 4-legged, and hence more stable, table).

• Others in the dream act shocked or self-righteous, i.e. coming from their (my) "superior," right-eous (from the right side, in Jungian analysis terms meaning rational or logical, thinking as opposed to feeling), or on one's high horse mental orientation.

• Besides simple control issues (suggested further by my noting that for the garage we have no remote [control] for opening and shutting it at a distance or in a distant way, so it must be handled [manipulated, controlled] manually), there are time-related control factors, i.e. things that are from before (earlier or in front of other things), and hence customary or conventional, are considered subtly better than new things that seem just the same except that they came slightly later in the chronological time queue. They may be distinguished only by having before or after event designations, so these distinctions (like many we make in ordinary relationships) are often rather petty and arbitrary.

• There are at least 3 senses represented in this pair of dreams: visual plus tactile (the pillows, which look the same and are handled) and auditory.

• All 3 are used to demonstrate the near sameness of things, based on (or but for) certain preconceived notions about them.

• Fran is, in the "Deja Audio" dream, assumed by the ego to be about to drive (and thus part of the dream is about motives or drive) into the garage and park there and to then close the garage door. Thus, the expectation is that things will be closed off and parked, and so the options or potentials are assumed by the ego to be about to be cut off, as (in the conventional view) we too often perceive is the case when our spouses return and again are major or dominant factors in our lives to be engaged or dealt with.

• What in fact occurs in that dream is that a 4-sided door is opened, but Fran has not yet returned, and so there is simply a new opening manifest in reality without (in the dream, at least) the expected closing off or parking of options, potential, drive, motives, etc. That short dream is thus a very positive one.

• The content or situations in the two dreams, both as seen separately and together, is actually ridiculous, ironic, silly, foolish, laughable, etc., and therefore reminds of the "laughing yogi" means to transcending control issues, anger, or more limited views, and so means to glimpses of reality, or enlightenment.

• The second dream's title reminds me of my meditation group's teacher. She is a positive anima whose presence in the dream interpretation represents for me warmth, nurturing, listening to (taking in) her aural teachings (or audio), genuineness, clarity, advancement in meditation practice, and yet also a bit of touchiness or anxiety over whether she is presenting herself in a sufficiently good light and so impressive enough to others that they will take her seriously as a meditation teacher of authority (and thus in part the dream presents control issues again).

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