It’s not uncommon to find ourselves in a situation where another person simply cannot hear what we are saying because their personal view, or their emotions, prevent them from the perception. John’s dream image portrays such a scenario: two people on two different wavelengths. What’s interesting is that this happens on an inner level, too. We like to think that we are “of one mind,” but some parts of us will undermine other parts, i.e., the part that wants to go to the gym gets overruled by the part that wants to sleep late. These are real battles that affect what we do every day. That’s why we need to get the whole of us on the same page of what we want. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: I am like a black sheep person that has come to visit my sophisticated family that has a higher sense of self-importance. The patriarch in the family is used to measuring himself against others. He bases his self esteem upon being able to put things into a place that, what it does is it limits the capacity of things that are greater than what he understands.
There was a past time long ago in which I had played this guy a game of chess that he had easily won. To me it was just a game, but for him this had to do with his sense of self importance. In other words, he was caught up in the outcome.
The consciousness and mannerisms of that sort of thing, of that way of being, acted out and so he went through polite nuances and courteousness that was actually fake because he had a self-consciousness that he was addressing, that he was keeping to himself. Deep down he needed, in his own mind, to kind of crush me in order to feel more important in terms of himself.
Because I don’t think like that, this was like a blindside for me so I didn’t get it at the time. And now I’m revisiting him in his very ritzy environment. I’m kind of an embarrassment because I’m not putting on any airs. I’ve come into this place, very simple, and it’s as if I have never learned the way of being in this other regard so I do not know how to conduct myself.
This person lives with an extended family. The family is involved in what he considers to be a very important family expression that keeps him all powerful in his view of life. So, to him, the fact that I am accomplished as a chess player, he sees this as the only thing I have to offer because he sees himself to be superior in all other regards.
In this setting, the home is so over-the-top that I tend to feel out of place. There are even staff members that are part of this household that attend to the family’s needs.
So in the dream we are sitting down to play a game of chess. The pieces are scattered all over the place that have to be sorted out on the board, and I appear to him to be having a hard time just setting up the opening position. Changes have been made to the way the pieces are placed that I am not familiar with as it has been a long time since I last played.
He explains to me why these changes were made. It had to do with taking into account some mannerism in life that had been overlooked. The pieces are also very ordinary and cheap. I would have expected a better chess set from this person who is sophisticated in all other ways and mannerisms that project in the outer.
Maybe I upset his ego in some way, because I didn’t conduct myself with the sense of self-importance he felt he needed to see. In other words, he needed to match himself up against that kind of self-importance to make his own self-importance righteous. That way if he won again, he would have clearly established a superior position in all regards over me, in his opinion, and the first win would have, in his mind, been no fluke.
In other words, he couldn’t have a self-consciousness about him. But my mannerism is so defective, so doofus from his perspective, not even setting up the board right and having to look across to see how he is doing it so I can copy it, and the board having a different alignment than it ever had before in terms of the way the pieces angled in their place.
But this took all the air out of the sport. In other words, how does he get any pleasure beating an idiot? In other words, my reputation doesn’t mean anything anymore because he has to knock it down in order for him to gain some sort of kudos for his self image.
So the way I handle the pieces right from the start he took to be embarrassing. As a result, at one point before the game has even started, he gets up from the table and goes off somewhere as if he has to take care of something, or just take a moment reprieve or something. I don’t know what it’s about.
Except all I know is I’m sitting there thinking, okay, the way to play this guy, because of his mannerism and his attitude, I can’t let him lord something over me because he’s overbearing. I’ll just play a very simple game. I don’t have to play his game according to his way of having to be, I’ll just move the pieces in such a way so that the game is very complicated and unpredictable and that you have to be able to see ahead and go beyond anything that’s bookish, in other words dig deeper in terms of yourself, in order to play such a game.
And that requires the person to not be frustrated, and a person who plays like this has to have a lot of patience. And if you don’t have the patience, then you’re going to fall apart.
Well, maybe he sensed this about me based upon how I clumsily handled the pieces in terms of setting up the board, that whatever I was going to do was going to be unpredictable according to how he needed everything to be predictable, and in a certain place that had to do then with being able to glorify what he needed to have glorified.
And, at the same time, what fun is there playing an idiot that doesn’t even seem to know how to set up the pieces, and doesn’t even realize that the game has changed a bit since the last time we played. However, I know that maybe the pieces are set up a little differently, but the concept of the game, and the way it is played, hasn’t changed.
Well, this person doesn’t come back. He apparently now is acting like he has to handle a very important task that has come up that involves the family. So he decides to lord it over me and crush me in this way in terms of his superiority or something. He sends a person back saying he has been interrupted and needs to tend to a personal family matter.
So I am kind of peculiarized. That’s kind of strange; it leaves a big gap. And then one of his brothers, who doesn’t quite carry that air of being the patriarch of sophistication, he has not quite adopted that yet, seems to wander in and he asks me, “Did he come back for a moment to tell you he had to leave?”
I say, “No,” which I could tell he finds peculiar because that’s very rude behavior even from his perspective. So as I am gathering things up to leave, didn’t even have the meal that I suppose was a sit-down family meal that one would have, I’m even taking the prime rib with me that I never had the opportunity to enjoy with the family.
And I can tell that deep down they all shun me because I am not like them, and do not conduct myself in a way they feel is essential to their way of life.
The meaning of this dream is I am part of a family, although a black sheep stranger, who is unable to conform to their self-images and sense of importance. If you were to take away the self-image, what is left is shallow and disrespectful.
The reason for this dream is that I must take care that what I do is not like that, and that other family members are not pigeonholing me in this way. If this is occurring, it has to do with an inferiority complex and low self esteem. I believe that there is a sense of insecurity in the air and this is what triggered the dream.
They do not have the sight to see what this is really about, in other words, in terms of how I am. And for me, this is a sight I am still catching up with. In other words, people have to try to make sense of how I am and what I do from a perspective that has to do with their senses, that is limited within a field of comprehension that cannot extend more than what they have been able to learn, through their senses, based upon 60 years of life and maybe 2,000 years of history or something.
And, for me, I know that somehow or another I’m not trying to fit in to anything. I loathe the mannerisms that get in the way of catching up with a greater sight, whatever that sight is; it’s like a sight of something of a higher-self that goes back beyond that as its only means of perception.
Such mannerisms that others project like this, which is often called the collective, puts spells on people when they can only see in this regard, and then they only see others in this regard, that keeps others from then seeing and keeps them from seeing. It colors and tarnishes the message from the inner world of my higher-self being.
So I believe I had this dream to challenge such mannerisms, traits, that I may still carry or project even if it is inadvertent or in a blindsided way. For anyone who sees me in some defined way and is unable to see beyond the seemingness of things to the greater importance, or need, that lies beyond that – and how can they because I don’t even see that? The result is, is I am to them a person who doesn’t make any sense in terms of their world.
What I mean by “their world” is I am talking about parts of myself that have yet to catch up with the bigger inner need that is naturally intertwined with all of creation. My reaction, their reaction, it’s all based upon the lower-self quality of thinking that that’s how things are sorted out.
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