John: I didn’t realize until the end of my dream that it had something to do with getting into life, as your dream did, but in a particularly straightforward way (see Getting Into Life).
I guess I’m too adapted to my environment in that my relationship to it has become established, in terms of my perceptions and the way that I carry myself. I’ve come to adopt a certain way of seeing things.
When it’s like that, life is like a small town with a certain set of characteristics. After awhile it gets so mundane and boring that I lose an inner energetic. It gets to the point where I’m just going along with things – completely uninvolved – because it’s so mundane.
When that state becomes too much, and I no longer want to comply, or go along, with what’s presented, a voice inside says: “OK, change it,” and I suddenly have to take that on as an option.
Just as you were looking at different aspects of the breath – going up, down, and around at different speeds and at different levels – that’s what I started to do, in the form of working with various options. But then I realized that I wasn’t sorting things out very well, because I didn’t know what to change to make things different.
When we don’t know where we’re going, or what’s meant to be, we end up going along with the general flow of events even though we might not necessarily be fully involved in those events. It’s like we’re just observing, but even that becomes frustrating. When we reach the point where we can’t stand it any longer, we feel ready to scream.
And that’s what I tend to do: I’ll reach a point of frustration and have a big reaction – just to see what will happen. Yet all my reactions do is estrange me further from the scenario I’ve been watching, because it generally doesn’t make sense to other people.
For me it might have felt liberating, but in looking at it from the perspective of the whole, it’s really neither free nor a conscious act. In order for something to occur that can be effective, i.e., in order to listen to the voice seeking change, I need to bring in something more: holding back as a watcher or reacting out of outrage doesn’t solve anything.
What I come to realize is that I first need to accept and be able to relate to things as they are. So the dream is suggesting, more or less, that I haven’t actually been doing that and, therefore, I’m holding myself back, or distancing myself, in some way. The image shows me this contrast because I haven’t made the necessary connection; I’m not actually taking in the issue, or the situation around me.
In your dream you were naturally getting more into life than I was, perhaps because of the way the feminine is designed, being more with the spirit energy in Creation. You have the Mystery within your chemistry, and so you started probing and looking for that and experimenting with the various states of your self. You did that by way of acknowledging the importance of the breath.
In that, you learned something that enabled you to make a difference – to be able to work first with one aspect of yourself and then the other, as if you were broken into two parts (masculine and feminine). Yet ultimately you were able to work with both parts.
In my case, because I (masculine) naturally find myself with my spirit energy off the ground, I’m able to sit back as a seer (so to speak) and watch. If I don’t like what I see, I can attempt to change it, but I can’t really change anything if I don’t get into it.
If I just stay ungrounded, what I do may seem interesting, but it doesn’t make any difference. I can scream all I want but all that does is highlight even more that I’m estranged from life. In that state, I’m not able to change anything because I’m not actually in life.
So, I’m dreaming the predicament of the masculine, and you’re dreaming the feminine. You’re discovering that, as you break out of any amnesia, you have an access to what’s necessary to be effective in your surroundings.
I’m finding out that, as I tend to see myself, I can have a perspective about a whole bunch of things, and I can react to what I don’t like, but I’m not necessarily grounded or getting into life to actually make the change. That’s another step beyond just watching and reacting, and involves a higher octave of focus and attention, in a grounded way, which can then make the difference.
