John’s dream reflects many of the themes triggered by Jeane’s dream from the same night (see A Level of Completion), yet here shown from the masculine perspective. Both dreams deal with issues arising in them from what is currently happening in their lives, in waking life, and demonstrate how our dreams can help us understand where we are in ourselves, and what we are wrestling with – from our deeper, unconscious perspective. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: This dream has all kinds of octaves in it, as well as your dream did, because it keeps portraying more and more of what needs to open up in terms of a process and an overallness for you, and in my particular case, because I’m the masculine, it has to do with being able to have a certain speed and succinctness in one’s nature that is lacking.
This is portrayed in that I’m sitting down, it wasn’t my idea to do this, but I’m sitting down to play cards and there are four players. And I’m partnered up with the person across from me and, in this card game, you use two decks of cards and then you deal them all out.
And the first step to begin with is you have to sort them out into four piles, in other words by the hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, which is a bit much for me to be able to do apparently because it seems like almost automatically everyone has this all done, and I’m not finished.
I’m laboring away, one card at a time, having to look at each card before I can put it down and, obviously, they must not have had to even do that because they just boom, boom, boom, it was just all done.
And not only that, but you would think that I should be able to eventually figure that out as slow as I’m going, but I somehow get the eight of hearts in my hand that belongs to my partner across from me and, at some particular point, I have to show her where that pile is supposed to be so that she can then pick it up and get the eight of hearts back out that belongs to her.
At another point in time I have to ask if this one particular card is a spade or not, because it looks different to me. In other words, it’s like the coloration or the insignia changes, or fades, or is a little different, so it becomes difficult for me to know for sure. So I have to ask if this is also a spade card.
Well, the other players seem to be patient. The only impatience was with my partner having to get her eight of hearts but, other than that, they seem to be patient even though I’m taking forever just to get them into my various piles.
All I can do is just keep looking at what I’m doing. They’ve already done this apparently, because after this I have to still arrange each pile that had been sorted out into a particular order from the higher cards down to the lower.
So at some point in time I ask my partner, what is the game we’re playing? And she says it’s called Twist. I vaguely remember having played this game long ago, but I have of course forgotten how it’s played.
But I remembered enough to know that the first thing I have to do when they deal the cards out is I have to sort them out and you put them into some sort of order. I’m extremely frustrated because I know I’m holding the whole game up, and getting more twisted up inside trying to catch up.
If I had the time, if there was plenty of time, I suppose I would eventually get there, but every phase of the game seems to me to be something that I’m playing in a kind of super slow motion compared to what I see in terms of the others who had no trouble getting things straight in their head.
They’re calm, they’re patient, and waiting and waiting, and for some reason I’m having trouble thinking straight as I try to go faster, because faster just kind of disorients you and frustrates you more, and I see myself as kind of an embarrassment.
The meaning has all kinds of characteristics and qualities to it. You start off kind of in the general and then you keep narrowing it down and narrowing it down, just like in your dream. Your thing kept getting narrowed down, and narrowed down, to get to a proper portrayal of the state that you are being shown about yourself.
Now, the other thing about your dream, and it’s true in your dream just like this is true in mine, what you’re being shown is a temporary condition. You’re not being shown a permanent condition.
By that I mean what triggers your dream has to do with how it is that you’re feeling yourself at this moment in time, just like what triggers my dream has to do with a way that I’m beating up on myself at this particular moment in time.
For the masculine it’s kind of more like a beating up on one’s self, because I want something to be clear, and for the feminine it’s more like how she feels her orientation to the Whole. And so this is how it is at this point in time.
It can change, it does change, it can even change from day to day, but this, given what you’re going through, is how you are putting spells so to speak upon yourself in terms of your state. And why do I say you’re putting spells on yourself?
Well, when you’re beating up on yourself and seeing yourself as somewhat confused – in what way are you kind of confused, or in what way are you not quite keeping up, or are you checked out, or however it is? And then the dream is portraying that that for you has to do with recognizing and realizing the greater purpose of it all inside yourself, the great mother in creation.
In my dream, when I get lost based upon the fact that I indulge at such a slow pace, the image that comes straight at me, and the sense that I quickly have to accept, is that I become a long way away from functioning at the required speed and pace. And of course I’m amidst those who are meant to play the game.
I’m the drag in that process, because I’m not able to naturally carry how I’m meant to be with a grace, and fluidity, and speed needed. So as a consequence I’m all twisted up trying to look at things, to sort it out, and when you’re trying to look at things to sort something out you slow yourself down.
They seem to get it automatically. I don’t seem to know how to do that. In other words, by trying to get this thing in an anal retentive way, step by step, or point by point, figured out, which I don’t do very well, I’m given information now as to why it’s like that, just like you’re given a certain degree of information as to why something isn’t right inside of a room, and it has to do with you being able to catch up with the bigger picture of the container overallness.
In my case there is something on the heart level and the expansive quality of the heart level, in that what’s being pointed out is in that regard I’m overwhelmed, and that affects my ability to think or to perform or to act or to just put the whole thing together.
I’m impaired of the consequence of that.
Part II of this analysis will be in tomorrow’s post.
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