Healing Within the Blur

The following two part dream was a big dream for me, one of a series of dreams during my early years with the mytho-poetic men’s community; during this period I attending many weekend and week long workshops with Robert Bly, Micheal Meade, James Hillman, Robert Moore, and Malidoma Some among others. Locally, a ragtag band of us dedicated ourselves to exploring first hand what we could learn about midlife initiatory ritual process through an evolving collective and personal story enactment model. The dream:

“I am at a grand competition of some kind, like a graduation rite, with lots of people cheering on those who have achieved their goal; the ritual consisted of the graduate first throwing a small ball out as far as he could, and then running as fast as he could to bring it back. This was an individual act, with no attention paid to the time or comparisons with anyone else. Sending him out and welcoming him back, the crowd simply roared in celebration of his achievement, reflected in his level of clarity and intention. This was most impressive, an honor and joy to behold, and the enactment enabled all to witness. I didn’t know how the game worked but his throw was so compelling that I elected to go running after the ball also; Coming from the side of the field, he had thrown it down field in my direction, I dived over and behind a large bolder in pursuit of it, and then heard an urgent warning: “Get ready because he surely is coming after it. It means a great deal to him.” The implication is that his force could unintentionally kill me if I were in his path.

Part 2: Then the scene switched to three of us, two men guided by a woman, working our way up a rocky terrain stream-bed like path. I am in the middle. It’s quite dark and there is a strong sense of wilderness, adventure. We get to a rocky rise and our guide stopped suddenly, pointing to a watery place contained by the stone to a set of large eyes watching us. An archaic archetypal crocodile, huge, was perfectly lined up on us; should we have continued up and over we would have been eaten. She motioned us to move sideways and we looked for a way up while watching for more crocodiles. I saw another one and couldn’t find an easy way up. Calling to her, she had gone up and was out of sight, she doubled back and offered a hand, pulling me up near by, saying “this old VW bus windshield comes in handy.” Working our way along the trail next to a vertical rock face, I got into the lead. As we walked along in darkness a door suddenly flew open, right in front of me, letting a flood of bright yellow light out; with it, I saw something was tossed out; then the door closed just as quickly, leaving no trace. At first I felt anxious about almost being hit or seen, then I was curious about who or what lived in the rock, and what had been thrown out? I sensed some indigenous peoples must be living there secretly.” Pausing, the alarm went off.

REFLECTIONS: At the time of this dream I was wrestling with my awareness that while I felt very serious about my personal analysis, more attention and focus was possible. In the opening celebratory ritual process scene, I noticed my dream ego was identified more with the witness who  jumped into the ritual action from the sidelines, in contrast to the dream figure  who has done the work and is moving into the new life with community blessing. In reality, I was at the time deeply engaged in working through my own childhood near death, initiatory life event with the help of a band of spirit/soul brothers.

In active imagination, I re-entered the second scene, hoping to dream-the-dream-onward and discover more about the origins of the rock dweller and the meaning of the tossed out object. I dialogued with an ancient reptile man-like being, a self identified gatekeeper and light tender who releases the light. In response to my question, “What did you throw out?” he replied they were shards of light, reflections of everything that has ever happened in my (Chuck’s) life. Each shard mirrored a scene of my life. I was to know they existed and seek to gather them all up; this was my path to self-knowledge. Considering the flash of light as an image of enlightenment, the Self shining through, I interpreted this as signaling the importance of doing the work to remember everything fully. The shards would provide every detail in turn.