Altercation As Waking Dream: Post #3

I was the witness to an altercation in an airport. When I analyzed it as a waking dream I found that it had poignant relevance for me—all about going easy on myself as I change some long-held attitudes.

Question of the day

The question I want to explore is how life could have put two, squabbling families exclusively at my disposal for the purpose of teaching me. Until the police arrived, I was the only witness to their unpleasant and escalating verbal exchange. The “dream” the conflict offered me was vital and instructive for me. But how and why did this happen?

Theories

When people first begin working with the waking dream it usually creates a shakeup in their accepted view of the structure of life. Certainly, when we have dreams at night, in our sleep, those dreams are easily attributed to the workings of our subconscious minds: We make up the strange images that come to us during sleep. But in the case of a waking dream, I am implying that real life—objective, verifiable, normal—provides the same kind of metaphoric imagery that we can use to study ourselves and to provide ourselves with insights in regard to how we are living our lives.

Oh come on! Really?? Wasn’t it just a coincidence that I found myself standing in front of these ornery people? And anyway, didn’t I just project my own mental state onto the events in life that I watched unfold around me?

The ubiquity of the waking dream

Had anyone asked me those questions several decades ago when I first began working with the dream phenomenon, I would have agreed that what I experienced was just a fluke. This sort of thing could have happened to anyone at random; it was just lucky that my issues happened to align themselves with the altercation I witnessed.

But in the ensuing years, as I have worked with, literally, thousands of dreams, I have changed my mind. I have seen this uncanny alignment—where real life acts out in a mini-drama some conflicted attitude of the person witnessing the “play”—repeated again and again. While many of these plays can be attributed to the witness projecting their attitudes onto life, there have also been others where circumstances conspired to create a play that was well beyond the imagination of the viewer. There have been cases of freak accidents—with automobiles or other mishaps—of extraordinary encounters with wildlife, of the unexpected appearances of individuals fulfilling vital roles when these “saviors” ought not to have been available. Life has literally shifted to accommodate the individual watching the play.

But how can that be? For example, in my case, what about the two families—a total of 7 people before security arrived—who were the players in this drama? Don’t they have their own lives? Were they there exclusively for my benefit? That seems unlikely.

In my final post on this subject, I’ll address that very question. Stay tuned!

If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to leave a comment.

Or, follow the discussion uninterrupted.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page to learn how.