image courtesy of 123rf.com
On Monday I began a series of posts about the phenomenon of
two people sharing the same dream. I pointed out two types of experiences. One
type is exemplified by my own grandchildren—among thousands of others—who are
closely bonded siblings. There have been repeated occasions when one of them
has shared a dream, only to discover that the other sibling had the identical
dream on the same night.
The other type of experience is one where the imagery came
during the day while the two “dreamers” were awake and going about their normal
affairs. I used the famous example of the nineteenth century composer, Felix
Mendelssohn, and his equally-musical sister, Fanny, who independently of one
another, wrote the same piece of music.
In closing last Monday, I once again quoted the
philosophical cornerstone of my book, Always Dreaming: Whatever you perceive,
is you.
We are frequently flummoxed when life doesn’t follow the rules
that we arbitrarily expect of it. Most of us are convinced that life is an
objective experience, and as such, it should follow a predicable pattern. Often
life does
follow such a pattern, but only when doing so is convenient, given its main
reason for functioning. But when life’s main reason for functioning—which has
nothing to do with objectivity—is better served by doing something that breaks
OUR OWN SELF-IMPOSED rules, it has no qualms about veering in any direction
that suites its purpose.
What is its purpose? As just stated, life is not
primarily a series of objective, logical events. Rather, life is a
communication through metaphor. Everything we perceive through our five
physical senses, all of our emotions, all of our thoughts, all of our intuitive
understandings, in short, anything we are aware of, is part of a perpetual
series of metaphoric images. These images are designed to do primarily one
thing: show us to ourselves so that we can more clearly understand our personal
motivations and self-defeating behavior patterns. If we can learn to understand
these communications—through a process of “translating” the metaphors into our
spoken language—we will discover that there is not a single moment in our entire
lives when we are ignored by a vast benevolent force that wants nothing more
than to assist us.
This communication goes on with equal rigor whether we are
asleep or awake. In fact, the source of the communication uses our false
expectations of an objective life to emphasize important messages it wants to
deliver. What follows is a hypothetical example: A businessman (or woman) takes the same route
to work every day and has been doing so for years. Then, one day, during the
standard commute, this person discovers that an amateur driver of a huge
recreational vehicle has gotten himself into trouble by backing up into an
awkward spot. The RV is now stuck in such a way that it is straddling the road
and no one can get past. The businessman is late to work and has missed an important
meeting.
Is this an objective experience? On one level, yes. But it
is also a metaphor—an important one because it caused a disruption in the
predicted, “objective” pattern of life.
More on Friday.
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Announcement
I am starting an 8-week class in dream interpretation to be
held in Springfield, Oregon. Click on the “EVENTS” page for details.
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