We went to the cabin in Upper Michigan this week for the foliage, and as usual, got much more. The day we arrived was chilly and windy and rain was coming in. By the next day, the winds had increased and the rain came in nearly sideways, looking like blizzard - snow. And the big lake - Lake Superior - wow! The "gales of November come early" would describe it, whitecaps consuming the coast in an outpouring of frantic energy. And then the next day, peace and sun, the trees so beautiful they made us happy just seeing them.
There are no outside connections at the cabin, so we also read, and listened to a CD on the battery-powered radio/player. It was a book about Apollo 11, and it so penetrated my brain that this was all that I could think about before going to sleep. Sleep was a different matter, however. During the day, I had also been reading a book by Patrick Harpur titled The Silent Tradition of the Soul, and it was this that had burrowed into my unconscious, for it is about the unconscious, and the trembling of our soul as it attempts to speak to the hard daytime layer we often call our selves.
So many things, so clear came the dreams in sleep - portraying both fears and, unusual for me, answers to fears. Not as one might read in a self-help book, but feelings and pictures and events that had me form the answers later, in the words of the awake world.
Last night was no different. In this dream, I was at a meeting of people looking for jobs, mostly men in business suits. I was not there for myself, but for my son, and I was looking all around for him, expecting him in a suit as well, trying to find a good paying job. After some searching, I noticed how odd my suit coat felt on me - and how silly. The others appeared to be at odds themselves, uncomfortable in their suited roles as up- and- coming, or made, people of commerce or certain dignified professions. And then the feeling came - that being here was wrong. At that, I began to wake, and the words came in explanation. They exposed nothing new to the world at all, just as Harpur had talked about in his book. Our glimpses of our inner workings often are not novel - in fact, they are personal stories built on old motifs, or archetypes, as Carl Jung had called them. And so this dream was, simple, yet layered and complex.
The answer that came from it was obvious - I did not want my son in such a situation, even as he is being encouraged to finish college. It was - is - wrong for him, phony, a put-on, this suited world. Then the understanding went to a deeper strata - that our suits, our professions, even much of our persona, form a cover; a suit of armor, really. My first words to myself on waking were, "we put on our shields of invulnerability."
So the dream was layered - at first, about my thoughts on the business world (unfair, I know, but this is subjective and specific), about what I want for my son (something that is more genuine for him) and, second, about the persona, our exterior waking selves. The latter, as far as my inner self was telling me, is a shield to protect our personal and more tender inner workings, what really makes us us - or, one could say, what makes our soul. But in protecting this soul, the shield might also block us from ourselves, make of us people who cannot even recognize ourselves. We become locked in our shields by no longer simply hiding behind them, but identifying with them. We become the shield and, in so doing, lose touch with our deeper selves.
Except in dreams. But somehow, this book spurred more meaningful dreams, as if I needed the nudge to see beyond discomfort and fear. And oddly, there was humor there as well. The kind of humor that says, hey, it's all an act, an act so deeply portrayed that we often stand in anxious horror before it - but still, just an act.
But the fierce waves of Superior have not left me, either. There is something real to fear out there, as long as we are disconnected from the ultimate, as long as we are separate individuals who die. It is, indeed, an intense play we are part of. But there is so much wonder and awe behind it that we should not miss it. We should, it seems to me, use our shields only as shields and not become them; we should enjoy the play a little more for what it is, a temporary play of wars and kings and armor, as then step back now and then - no, often - into what endures, the marvel in the waves and the leaves held not as shields but as intimations of the greatness of our world. FK
There are no outside connections at the cabin, so we also read, and listened to a CD on the battery-powered radio/player. It was a book about Apollo 11, and it so penetrated my brain that this was all that I could think about before going to sleep. Sleep was a different matter, however. During the day, I had also been reading a book by Patrick Harpur titled The Silent Tradition of the Soul, and it was this that had burrowed into my unconscious, for it is about the unconscious, and the trembling of our soul as it attempts to speak to the hard daytime layer we often call our selves.
So many things, so clear came the dreams in sleep - portraying both fears and, unusual for me, answers to fears. Not as one might read in a self-help book, but feelings and pictures and events that had me form the answers later, in the words of the awake world.
Last night was no different. In this dream, I was at a meeting of people looking for jobs, mostly men in business suits. I was not there for myself, but for my son, and I was looking all around for him, expecting him in a suit as well, trying to find a good paying job. After some searching, I noticed how odd my suit coat felt on me - and how silly. The others appeared to be at odds themselves, uncomfortable in their suited roles as up- and- coming, or made, people of commerce or certain dignified professions. And then the feeling came - that being here was wrong. At that, I began to wake, and the words came in explanation. They exposed nothing new to the world at all, just as Harpur had talked about in his book. Our glimpses of our inner workings often are not novel - in fact, they are personal stories built on old motifs, or archetypes, as Carl Jung had called them. And so this dream was, simple, yet layered and complex.
The answer that came from it was obvious - I did not want my son in such a situation, even as he is being encouraged to finish college. It was - is - wrong for him, phony, a put-on, this suited world. Then the understanding went to a deeper strata - that our suits, our professions, even much of our persona, form a cover; a suit of armor, really. My first words to myself on waking were, "we put on our shields of invulnerability."
So the dream was layered - at first, about my thoughts on the business world (unfair, I know, but this is subjective and specific), about what I want for my son (something that is more genuine for him) and, second, about the persona, our exterior waking selves. The latter, as far as my inner self was telling me, is a shield to protect our personal and more tender inner workings, what really makes us us - or, one could say, what makes our soul. But in protecting this soul, the shield might also block us from ourselves, make of us people who cannot even recognize ourselves. We become locked in our shields by no longer simply hiding behind them, but identifying with them. We become the shield and, in so doing, lose touch with our deeper selves.
Except in dreams. But somehow, this book spurred more meaningful dreams, as if I needed the nudge to see beyond discomfort and fear. And oddly, there was humor there as well. The kind of humor that says, hey, it's all an act, an act so deeply portrayed that we often stand in anxious horror before it - but still, just an act.
But the fierce waves of Superior have not left me, either. There is something real to fear out there, as long as we are disconnected from the ultimate, as long as we are separate individuals who die. It is, indeed, an intense play we are part of. But there is so much wonder and awe behind it that we should not miss it. We should, it seems to me, use our shields only as shields and not become them; we should enjoy the play a little more for what it is, a temporary play of wars and kings and armor, as then step back now and then - no, often - into what endures, the marvel in the waves and the leaves held not as shields but as intimations of the greatness of our world. FK
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