Spiritual Memoir Workshop Sat. Feb 25th The Duncan Center

Of Butterflies and Mothers: The Numinous Dream

A month ago, I lost my almost 95-year-old mother. I felt that I’d been losing her incrementally, one small stroke at a time as she descended deeper into dementia for the last five years. At the end she was content, docile and sweet, though we had had some rough times in the years before when she was in the early stages.

As she lost her balance, she could no longer walk; as she lost her vocabulary, she would no longer talk. It was a heart-breaking experience for those who loved her and knew her as a strong, independent, beautiful woman for most of her long life. Eventually she stopped eating and drinking and in the last week of her life she was bedridden, her eyes closed to the world. For five days we watched her breath become shallower, her vital signs weakening daily. On the last day of her life she opened her eyes and struggled with her breath for several hours, made a little more comfortable with morphine.

Two nights before she died I had a very short but numinous dream. I am with a group of people outside somewhere and a flock of bright yellow butterflies swoops down upon us and then spirals off in synch above our heads. I think there is a sound of “ooo”ing and “ah”ing amongst us and the sense is that something quite magical has touched us, maybe even blessed us.

According to Wikepedia, the word “numinous” comes from the Classical Latin “numen” which infers the presence or power of the divine. In the early twentieth century Rudolf Otto popularized the word in his classic book The Idea of the Holy. Otto names two characteristics to a numinous experience, a reaction of fear and trembling, or a fascinating attraction. He also suggests there is a very personal response, as if one had had a sacred visitation from the transcendent world. The word sometimes implies a supernatural occurrence.

Many people begin their spiritual journey with a numinous dream. The magical quality of the images and the interaction between the dreamer and something deemed divine leave the dreamer with a lingering sense of having been “touched by an angel.” These are what C.G. Jung referred to as “Big Dreams.”  Even since I began listening to my own as well as other people’s dreams, I have run into this experience only rarely. But these are the dreams people remember forever, even if they do not follow, record and think about their dreams on a regular basis.

I’ve had a handful of these dreams in my life and in some cases they were initiations into deeper searching. In Jung’s terminology, the “Self” is divine. When we put ourselves consciously on a path to “individuation,” Jung’s term for becoming whole, becoming our best selves, fulfilling our purpose, we are moving toward expressions of the Self. Self with a capital S, contains and transcends “ego.” And in Jungian psychology we are intent on going beyond what the Ego knows, suppressing Ego in terms of self-aggrandizement, i.e. anti-egotistical. Usually in our dreams we are observing and experiencing the venture in terms of the ego’s point of view.

But there are often other figures, objects and landscapes that have their own existence, apart from ego, and in dream work we try to make these other ego-alien points of view more conscious so we can know what parts of us are unconsciously expressing themselves. These are aspects of our “shadow.”  But shadow is not necessarily negative. We can have a positive shadow, even a “numinous” shadow where knowledge or understanding seems to come from outside of ourselves.

In many cultures the butterfly is a symbol of the soul. In Greek it is “psyche” which also is a homonym for “soul.”  The overall atmosphere in my dream was infused with a rush of awe. I had the sense that we’d all looked up at the same time, that as the butterflies swooped, our heads raised up to meet them and for a brief moment we were all entrained together.

When I awoke, I immediately thought of my mother with wonder. She had stopped eating but she had done that before and begun again. This time I felt her soul was already in movement toward the other side. Often at the end of praying aloud for her, I had encouraged her, if she saw the light, to go toward it. Though she’d been a fervent Catholic, she looked at me as though she did not understand what I was saying. But I believe the day of my dream was the day she began to surrender.

Dreams that leave us in wonder and move us emotionally into awe, as if we’ve been graced with a transcendent presence, fall into the category of the “numinous.”  Sometimes these dreams may be actual visitations of the deceased, sometimes they are given messages from the unconscious, from other dimensions to which we are briefly given access. These dreams evoke beatific longings and a connection to superconsciousness.

Mine was a healing dream, if only for me. I felt reassured that she had begun her journey. Later I realized the etymology of her name “Stacia” is from “Anastasia” which means “Resurrection” in Greek.

I was comforted by the dream. I wanted her to go; she already seemed to have gone though she’d left her body behind for several years. Yet no one is prepared to lose a mother. It is a primal loss, one that, according to the French writer Marcel Proust, we never recover from. Still, I am so grateful for that numinous dream, the force of, not one, but a whole fleet of winged creatures taking flight, lofting upward to only God knows where mothers receive all the love they’ve given.

The Utopian Dream: The Sixties’ Hippies & The New Age

Last night I watched a special on the  Biography channel about the Hippies of the Sixties. The documentary followed the Hippie movement from Timothy Leary’s discovery of LSD and its Haight Ashbury beginnings, to its psychedelic pinnacle with the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper Masterpiece and Broadways’ Box Office Block Buster, “Hair”, to the sexual freedom within the Back-To-The Land communes, to the flood of Eastern philosophy and spirituality into the mainstream, to the tragedies of the King and Kennedy assassinations, to the darkness of Charlie Manson’s “family,” and the violent clashes of protesters and police outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago in sixty-eight, to the phenomenon of Woodstock Nation and the Rolling Stones’ Altamount Concert  debacle, to the inauguration of Richard Nixon and the CIA’s subsequent secret war on political dissidents, to the protests which finally led to  the end of the Viet Nam War.  Quite the decade.

Of those of us Boomers who came of age during that tumultuous era, many became “Yuppies,” upwardly mobile members of society by the time of the mid to late seventies. But against those who say the Sixties era of Love and Flower Children was ultimately a failure, there are just as many who believe the sixties prepared the culture for the inexorable changes that we are now facing.

It was no accident that the Age of Aquarius celebrated in “Hair” occurred some forty years before “Jupiter aligned with Mars,” but we have only now reached the end of the Piscean Age astrologically. The “vibration” in the zeitgeist was not an artificial trend but rather the first blasting wave of a higher frequency to which the planet was, and is still now, attuning. The new energies rushing in undoubtedly threw people off balance, and the discovery of mind-expanding drugs began to show what these new energies could cultivate on their own. Today we drink more water to keep in balance, today we exercise routinely. Today we meditate without drugs.

Casualties happened as they do in any revolution. Young people became infused with these fevers provoked by certain injustices and hypocrisies they saw in the society, many of which have not yet been eliminated. But the pursuit of equality for Afro-Americans and women, and for that inalienable right, happiness, the goals of anti-war and environmental awareness movements–all displaying a deep longing for a more just, simpler, earth-friendly way of life– were seeded at that time.

Like any passionate historic movement, the era of Hippiedom, went to extremes, lost its power, and faded away. Yet the utopian dream it set up, though it failed from misguided-thinking, immaturity, and poor planning, is slowly coming to fruition in the committed human potential and consciousness movements in this new century– Despite the government’s recession, despite the war on terrorism, despite the near collapses of our most basic systems.

Conservatives can and will holler and may pray , crying for a return to the society of the immediate post-world war era when America led the world in manufacturing, gender roles were circumscribed and the population was naive. But this society will not be returning to that epoch. What lies ahead is the transformation of the West to a society of Service, the distribution of world wealth to a global balance, and a completely new way of living with less waste, zero tolerance for  political corruption, innovations of clean cars and green products and preventative health supplements aligned with a melding model of medical/alternative healing.

The planet Pluto, (healing through symbolic death and resurrection) which moves so slowly it defines each generation, has moved into Capricorn who rules institutions, churches, corporations, banks, schools, government. Pluto will transit through Capricorn for, roughly, the next 16 years. During the passage, the ailing dinosaurs of these institutions will be undergoing drastic renovation. And as they are renovated, we will be a good deal closer to a green and sober version of the utopian dream of the Hippies.

Steve Jobs of Apple Computers was a hippie, and hundreds of other ex-hippie  visionaries  have created companies that are renovating  the traditional work places. The old multi-marketing Amway model has given way to dozens of new companies creating their own residual incomes and separate economies through sharing, consensus and team cooperation, (an Aquarian quality), creating leverage in the marketplace and more free time for individuals to work creatively  in their pajamas over the internet. Technology (yet another Aquarian province) has exploded out of the innovations of the sixties’ generation. The collapse of real estate ownership and the recession we are experiencing is just a symptom of an era whose time is up. Shared property, less extravagant and more ecology- oriented life styles are already on the cutting edge.

We owe much to that crazy decade. It was rich with light, deep with darkness and an incredible, evolutionary passage. It was an introduction to a new 2000 year epoch and the beginning of the end of Piscean energy, which is characterized by the concept of “duality” and “opposites,” “competition” and “winners” and “losers”.

The world being created now is still in its infancy. But the permanent changes that came out of the movements of the sixties and seeped into western culture at large when the pendulum swung back from its extremes to sobriety and moderation–these are the very changes that will allow the new culture to come forth.

Liberty. Equality, Fraternity was the cry of the French Revolutionaries as the blood from the guillotines filled the streets of Paris and several republics rose and fell before an exhausted country settled down again to a nouveau regieme. Every dramatic change of power has its mistakes, its back-slide and its backlash. This new movement will be global and, because of technology and power struggles, it will also be fraught with misinformation.

Some of us can feel with our new senses, heightened intuition, and new visions, recognizing each other and locating through the internet the thousands of organizations and millions of people working for peace, healing, and a more equitable, and yes, peaceful/loving world.

Don’t look back. Only those who are clinging to the collapse will be left behind. Yes, all the darkness and destruction, the strange, traumatic weather, the wars, the dives on Wall Street, are birth pangs for this new world. We are awakening from one dream into another more hopeful and spiritual dream.

Have you noticed the karma is such that all corruption is becoming transparent and exposed?  Stay tuned and stay awake on the narrow path to the New Earth by practicing the laws of reciprocity, forgiveness, and attraction. Pay it forward.

We were given imaginations so as to dream. Surround yourself with upbeat, like-minded people for we are coming into our power to create through thought and visualization. You are what you think. The journey away from paradise has been a long one. Hold out for its return. Unplug from the spinmeisters, the pharmaceutical ads, the politicians owned by lobbyists, and any clergy that believes in a punishing God.

Earth has consciousness and she is evolving. Love your mother. And hang on with confidence,    because, like the sixties, it may be a bumpy ride.

Inception; A Course in the Miraculous

there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go —e.e. cummings

The new movie “Inception” is brilliant in several ways. First, the cinematography is gorgeous, the special effects, highly impressive and the plot line, the plot line is wild—a lucid dream within a lucid dream within . . . well, to the 3^rd

degree—so that poor Mal, (Marion Cotillard), Cobb’s, (Leonardo DiCaprio) wife— or rather the projection of his deceased wife, doesn’t know anymore which reality is true, and believes an encounter with death will wake her up.  Cobb has a only a slightly stronger  grip on which dream they’re in and for how long, and the cast of characters who elect to participate in the shared dreaming do it splendidly as we admire their acuity to stay on mission. Of course, this seems all too fantabulous to believe, and though the film is breathtaking to watch, and an action fan, I am not . . .

I will yield to a “magical” premise, and this film delivers play for the imagination hook, line and sinker in all that is magical about our minds, our intentions, our wills.  Still, that’s not why it engaged me so intensely. I kept having this vibey thrill that writer/director Christopher Nolan may have downloaded from the collective unconscious of contemporary humanity in this day and age, time and place, the challenge that we’re all facing, that is, to understand that so-called “reality” is indeed not real. That we create it and can change it.

As A Course in Miracles fan-addict (no pun intended), I subscribe to the daily task of looking straight into the face of television, into the tragedies that spread and leak and draw us into instinctual empathy, rage and hand-wringing all over the planet, and remind myself that all this is a shared dream. Yes, even the physical pain may just be a phantom limb. I know, I know . . . I feel it believe me . . . but  . . .

If we are to believe the Course, (and I do) we are still in Eden only we see through the glass darkly. We have put on blinders and loped into the desert thinking ourselves cast out. And lo, that is what we experience, what we see around us. Our collective doom-trained minds heavy with a free-floating guilt we can’t name—do what any non-lucid dreamer does—create from projection.  We see the events of the world as if they were outside of our personal egos, when creating something better is all a matter of a shift in perspective. And for many of us longtime seekers who have found our answers in alchemy and ancient texts, obscure poetry, (Rumi, Lao-Tzu, Blake, Gibran ) as well as occult secrets and quantum science, that shift is occurring.

One of the primary lessons of A Course in Miracles instructs us “There is no world.”  Just as Cobb and Mal experience reality in the deep netherworlds of their subconscious minds, we are alarmed at each turn by our own projections. “Inception” is the nifty trick of implanting an idea in an unconscious dreamer’s mind that the dreamer will carry into reality. In the film the dream-schemers are all well aware that if they don’t lucidly perform the steps of their preconceived agenda, they will be stalked and pummeled by the images their fear and anger have evoked. Indeed Cobb’s shadowy figure, his Jungian dark anima, Mal, seeks to down him in her own black hole and she works as any clever, ego-alien shadow worth her salt, to manipulate him to believe what she believes is real.

So here we are, Don Quixotes all, swaying with our swords out ready to strike at the false extensions of our own repressed emotion. Welcome to the dream world. We have journeyed far from our source, forgotten that life is a game, and have, with our own source-power made this video so real we need an ingenious glitch in the matrix to shake us free.

Yet like The Force Himself or Herself, (most likely Itself) we are geniuses all. We are all different aspects of God. Fallen, deluded, confused, no doubt, but our true Source isn’t concerned that we blame him. We made this messy world when we chose to step out of Eden. Adam fell asleep, it says in Genesis. It doesn’t say he woke up.

Yet.

Our job is to accept it all, stop judging, stop spinning the projections, and reset the Course (pun intended) aright. I believe we will. It’s time for a contagion of mutual inception—up and down the halls of time—let’s collectively wake up!  Whoever can see through fear will always be safe –Tao Te Ching. The kingdom of God is within you–Jesus.

Singing My Way to My Stolen Car; A Prospective Dream

Over many years I have had and heard of numerous dreams about cars, taking place in cars, around cars and parking lots, cars with flat  tires, cars going too fast or backwards, flying cars, wrecked cars, and on and on. Because so much of contemporary life depends on cars as the major means of transportations, it isn’t surprising that we frequently dream of them. In some cases they can even stand for the condition of the body, but often they allude to our movement, our modus operandi or particularly established method of getting around in life. We often ask “how’s it going?” In other words, our lives are often about movement, we move towards our goals, or we get stuck and encounter obstacles. Perhaps you’ve had such a dream.

The other night I dreamt my car was stolen. Because the dream is populated with several different friends of mine from different walks of life, all together at a social event, I’ll quote my whole recording of the dream:

Someone has stolen my car. My blue Toyota was parked at my friend Janet’s house where there is a party. The house looks like the home I lived years ago. Everyone is looking for my car. Amanda comes over with her boyfriend and both of Janet’s men, Ron and Dan are there (Dan is actually her husband who, in reality, has passed over). I have to get to a teaching job at the art school and I’m thinking I’ll have to take a bus. Someone finds a set of keys but they belong to Amanda. Another friend, Carlie, is with a girl who has a beautiful voice, she is singing. They want me to sing with them but I don’t want to since I’m preoccupied with finding my car. I’m thinking I’ll just have to report the car gone and deal with it.

On the surface the dream is saying that I have no current means of transportation and it will take me considerably longer to get to the next place I want to go. But as I thought about the dream I see it was presenting me with some encouragement and an idea. Dreams that suggest which way one might go in the future are called “prospective” or future-oriented. In this case the particular car is a blue Toyota I had about fifteen years ago, so I would ask myself how I am moving in my life that might resemble the way I was moving at that time in my life. In fact I was quite over-burdened with work in the years I owned that car. I was teaching an overload of courses at several colleges trying to make ends meet. Currently, I have invested time in independent teach and to some extent still scrambling. I am occasionally feeling burdened because I am in charge of my elderly mother’s dementia care. I don’t feel I can move around as easily because I am living with my mother and to go away means I need to pay extra for her help as she can’t be alone. (My mother is a special case because she tries to walk and can’t remember she can’t walk and she would be constantly at risk in a nursing home where a “seat-belt” or restraint is outlawed.)

The dream also takes place in a house I no longer live in, and it is one I lived in for a period when I felt somewhat “trapped.” It’s true that many good times took place in that home yet it also symbolized a time-span when I was inhibited and did not feel free to fully express myself as a writer. So the dream resonates with the theme of being unable to go where I want to go.

Yet dreams are always paradoxical and this one proves to be so in that the house belongs to my friend Janet and her two men. In actuality one of those men has passed on.  Perhaps they are both there because there is no partner in my life right now and I would like to have one. You could say I have done some time in Deadman Land, as I haven’t been pursuing another relationship. But I certainly would like to find a man like Janet’s current man who is a wonderful person and extremely devoted to her. And by virtue of Janet being in the dream—(she is successful and fulfilled in my opinon)—the dream says I have Janet’s potential.

Admittedly, I also see similarities between my “dead” man and Janet’s passed-on husband in that they were both artistic,charismatic and boyish. Another polarity the dream raises is the car that could help me travel and the car that I have been robbed of. And the question comes up: who has actually stolen the car? That unnamed person is also an aspect of me and it could refer not to a human person but to a fear or a negative habit I may have. For example, the dread of middle-aged dating, or a propensity for perfectionism, hence self-criticism. Surely no one else is responsible for the stolen car but me!

Interestingly someone at the party who is helping to look for my car has found Amanda’s keys. I must think now about the Amanda aspects of myself and I come up with the most recent fact I know about Amanda which is that she is in a new relationship. Wouldn’t I like to have Amanda’s keys! Yes, but the wish is still quite unconscious, as I am not doing much to meet a new partner.

So the dream appears to be about my suppressed relationship-loneliness or longing, and how I am not only not moving in that direction, but I don’t even have the means of moving toward that kind of fulfillment. The dreams seems to be saying I’ve car-jacked my own relationship possibilities. And why? Well, again the feeling of the too-busy-burden comes up. The truth is I do go out though I am not actively social. I go to spiritual and networking events where I can improve myself and/or my online services, but perhaps because I am still not feeling “rooted” in my living situation, I don’t reach out as much as I could. And of course, time is shrinking; there never seems to be enough!

In the dream I am going to teach at the Art school. I used to teach at Massachusetts College of Art but because dreams are seldom about their surface meanings, I think this suggestion has more to do with my teaching spirituality in poetry. I have designed a course on spiritual poets including Rumi, Hafiz and Tagore, older masters of the tradition as well as some contemporary poets but I have as yet not taught it.

The dream appears to encourage me to find students for this course and perhaps I really should be doing more to “move” in that direction. The dream leads me to the idea of an online webinar or teleclass I could possibly organize. It states since I don’t have a car to get there, or an institution to teach for, I am going to use more time and a slower traveling means if I have to get there by bus (indpendent teaching). Maybe I should “get a wiggle on” as my mother used to say . . .

I find the end of the dream to be provocative in that I am asked to “sing” with my friend and her friend who has a beautiful voice. What projections have I put onto them? (I’m always thrilled when a positive shadow figure shows up in a dream, telling me I have more potential in my unconscious that I could put to use.) Well, indeed, Carlie is in a steady relationship and has some newfound joy in her life. It’s also true that in what we call the “real” world, Carlie sings in a choral society. When I ask myself what it means to sing, I think of joy, and a choir and choral singing seem specifically sacred to me. I also think my way of “singing” is teaching and writing poetry.

And yes, I consider myself on a spiritual journey at this phase of my life. The question the dream raises is: can I sing myself into finding my car? Will the singing be the means to move me forward into relationship and more fulfillment? A quote comes to mind by the renowned spiritual poet Rabindranath Tagore: “God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.” The dream suggests there is more singing potential and I should put it into practice.