John: To continue where we left off (see Adding Complexity), we see that as your dream unfolds it builds in complexity, beginning with a minimally furnished office in a home, to having an intern and a supervisor, and then two couples meeting in one therapy session, and the request to have Tai Chi in the office. And there is also the balancing of the masculine and feminine between these three opposite-sex pairs.
So you have a dilemma because you are inclined to look backwards and compare how things had been, as opposed to being able to see that it’s flowing forward and going into the future in a way that’s quickly outside of your ability to maintain or sustain it on your own. You are looking around to see where it can extend out beyond you, but you realize that it never really does because you have a certain responsibility that is microcosmic to the macrocosm. So the increasing complexity is something that you continue to keep your attention on.
This was a dream that started very gradually with hardly any momentum, and then kept growing and growing – and what is growing is your beingness; it is being added to. Even though you keep thinking that you would like to break free from it, or keep the different motifs separate, you are finding that as it expands, each plan that you have to extricate yourself, or to change something and set it free, doesn’t quite work. Somehow or other it has to remain and it does remain, still connected as part of your being that continues to get bigger.
It’s a gentle kind of roller coaster ride that takes place, with each new aspect being a bit of a surprise to you, and at every turn something different popping up. And what is different always includes you in it; you may feel that something happens and then moves on, but it doesn’t and it can’t.
The dream is very interesting from the standpoint of our idea of separation: we always think that we leave something behind as things progress, but only in the narrowest sense. From a dense, linear perspective, perhaps. Yet in an overall sense, we just keep extending our umbrella and our container further and further out.
Comments on the process of pulling out dreams: Dreams can be hard to pull out in detail, especially at the beginning. Once you do begin to make the effort to pull them out, a whole new world opens and it gets much easier. It is best to begin by keeping a notepad or book near your bed with a pen nearby. Each morning, or anytime you wake during the night, capture as much as you can on paper. Don’t worry about the fragments – more images return as you continue the process. Once you break that trance – the barrier between you and the sleep state – then the images begin to flow and flow.
