Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Process of Convergence in the Ethereal



An interpretation of dreams

               A few days ago, I had a dream. I woke up, my back aching from either the rigorous exercise regime forced upon me by the imperative of lowering government health care costs or some other physiological condition. The dream itself wasn’t important, simply my subconscious justifying sensations of my conscious. However, conversing first with my sister, and then Simona (my wife), I realized there were similarities in all our dreams, experienced at approximately the same time. Since it seemed a little strange for coincidence, I examine several similarities and apparent themes and thought I’d write them down. I know admittedly little about the interpretation of dreams and capitulate that this may just be another huge helping of my characteristic confirmation bias.

               In my dream, I was going somewhere. I was with a few others I didn’t know. We were compelled to depart our meeting place, I vaguely remember, to alert another household of something. Time was of the essence, so we jumped into a beater American pick-up. An older model made of steel. We were careening down a gravel road in a sparsely settled outpost, one not unlike the skeletal remains of mining towns in the Rockies on I-70 west of Denver. As we rounded a corner, the back end slid out and I apologized as we, first slipped, and then tumbled down a hill. I woke up after acknowledging that I and my comrades had survived relatively intact. Just a few scrapes and bruises, and my twisted back.

               Simona also had a dream with an automobile as the focal object. In her dream—details, of course, less vivid in translation—she was driving down a stair case. As she approached a landing, another car obstructed the path. She hit the gas and wedged herself between the wall and the impediment, badly damaging both, but succeeding in her passage.

               My sister explained that she, and I and others, were the prey of a vicious serial killer. She spent most of her dream trying to avoid a certain death. However, she confronted this menace on more than one occasion. When she did, it transformed into a mouse that resembled Brain, the comical menace hell bent on conquering the world, a quiet genius of dubious motive. 

               She also explained that her life-partner had a strange dream of his own. In it, he transformed periodically, under what conditions he did not disclose, into dog. And every time he strutted off to his own rhythm, he would encounter more and more dogs until, together, they formed a formidable pack.  

               Now, If I had to employ speculation in the interpretation of these dreams—and in hearing of these second two from members of our tribe separated by the expanse of the continent, I determined there must be some story of which these comprise chapters—I’d give them a revolutionary twist. And I would order the pieces into a narrative as follows.

               *We are being pursued by an evil force that seeks to destroy us. But when it is exposed to light, those that cannot chisel the façade see something smart. Capitalism seeks to consume us and we are made ignorant by the myths of efficiency, progress and inevitability.

               *To fight this menace, we must seek those who share our passions, our ideologies and our vision for true equality through transcendent love. We must build our army from these volunteers and we must embrace the fierceness of wild dogs. 

               *On our road, we must make hard choices. We will certainly have to choose sacrifice, of our possessions and of our comfort in maintaining order through easy choices. It is, after all, our own fear and inability to act in faith that has thus prevented our congealing into a coherent revolutionary force. 

               *Finally, we have little time. We don’t know when the bend in the road is going to be too tight for the speed at which we must move. We don’t know if we are going to make it to the future unmolested. However, if we can fall back onto the resilient communities (this is how I interpreted an old steel pick-up truck from the age of good craftsmanship)—our families, churches or whatever institutions we find most humanizing—we will have no trouble crawling from the heap of a mistake and continuing on toward the journey. 

               Reading some words of Emma Goldman the other day, it occurred to me that my own growing interest in the spiritual mystery teachings and anarchist political thought and practice are really two sides of the same coin. 


               The mystery teachings and anarchy are not ends, but processes of learning and love.    



 

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