Dreams unlock that which sits out of reach during waking hours. At night a spring of unconscious material wells up. Strange, chaotic, the flow washes around us in swirls and eddies, buffets and submerges until a dawn of wakefulness casts us surprised and perhaps relieved upon the shore of conscious reason.
It can be a bleak journey. The way can be cold and wild as the mountains at the onset of winter. The trail can be long, the paths friendless, and the nearest hope of a welcome distant.
I dreamt about impending execution for a baseless charge in a society where this was accepted as normal. Then I dreamt about flight from perilous exile where all sign of my life and work had been erased. Finally I was presenting evidence in a court showing how another had abandoned friends to their demise.
Why does this emerge? Life is not unhappy now. Yes, I know that I am unusual, however persecution is absent. What disturbance is circulating in the cauldron of the unconscious?
Focus on erstwhile exile is getting old. I've left. Simply through ageing I could not go back to that job. Why the inner fascination with that which has passed beyond reach?
Glimpses of the arbitrary taking away of life are less surprising. The early ending of a life has shocked me. But that too is a fact that must be accepted. That life is over: now what to do with this one?
Why, when I seek to move on, does the inner part linger to play with a past that has gone?
Out on the trail there is beauty everywhere. Sometimes there is more, other times less: but always some. That is why I loved being out, and still do. The dream world has shown me too little beauty of late. Is it telling me that my conscious self tries to rush on ahead, exposed on ill footing? Perhaps those inner machinations will yield a good foundation, one proof against life's tempests? But they frustrate me. Where is the dream where I rode through lovely woodland? What of the vision of riding up a green hillside exploring?
Or must I seek real woodland and actual hills whilst turmoil is worked out nocturnally within? Now real life is peaceful and often predictable. Problems lend themselves to solution. It was not always thus. Things demand their opposites: Enantiodromia. Stable life causes internal turbulence. Those beautiful dreams came when life was hard. In bad times the unconscious calms. In good times it pushes and shoves and provokes. This is the terrain of neurosis. In that case here's to the growth that waits to be embraced.
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