That brings up a whole world to me.
Basically, our whole life, the reality as we see it, is a mental construction. Even all bliss, just like horror, mostly exists in our single mind, which considers it its reality.
Have you ever tried to remember precisely, like clockwork, even five minutes of a stringent sequence from your fifteen-year life? None of this can be reconstructed, because five minutes could just as well be a whole light year, as we don't know how one's own life as a teenager had been concretely in those five minutes. Because when those minutes happened, it could have been the same that you were at a party, dancing and experiencing one of your best evenings, while for another fifteen-year-old girl it had been the worst night of all nights. But actually only a few moments count as really happy or terrible, the rest, if you haven't just died, is determined by a changing present.
So thinking is magic at all, because not thinking is impossible and so it is already said that every thought of every human being counts. Because one cannot not think, it is probably a matter of wishing others well and of giving benevolence to those whom one thinks one knows as well as to those whom one misunderstandably calls strangers. Thought stillness or absence of thought would be non-consciousness. But we do not escape day or night consciousness, whether we sleep or awake, we constantly think and interpret, we are the great constructors of our reality. So as a metaphor, "in the beginning there was the word", is to that extent probably correct, isn't it?
That's why we - most of us - don't really understand what it means to wake up. We think we are awake in wakefulness and we think we sleep in sleep. Which one is true cannot be said with certainty.
I agree with you: it would be wiser to assume the probability that my thoughts should be better directed towards wishing the other well being, no matter who it is. We are more united in the universal symbolic language of dreams than in the intellectual language of the day. We think it's nonsense what we dream and our scientists even claim in parts that it's just neuroyal convulsions and the involvement of our organs, that's why the brain is fired with these or those signals. As if we were mere machines (or ameba), a work of electrons that happen to think something, without any reason. The alleged nature scientist, who reduces everything to body chemistry and the randomness of evolution, imagines that consciousness is trapped in the brain and connections beyond that body are useless wishful fantasy. And underestimates that it's the wishes (desires) which count the most in their effectiveness.
Everything is mental construction and man is dependent on the explanation of effect and cause, like apparently no other living being on our planet. Even lucid dreaming is possible.
So I bemoan that people hate themselves too much and think they are without effect. Such an underestimation of one's own life and effect is indeed very dangerous. Just like the opposite. In this sense what one says is true: First you fake reality and then you make it.
Nice to hear from you Erika and also happy to rouse a world in you ;)
Glad you agree with me on sending well wishes to those in our lives and thoughts whom in the past we may not have.
Have been listening to many dreamers speak of their practices and quite a few discuss using either active dreaming or lucidity to change the reality, look for ways in which the dreams are there to heal us, offer medicine and provide scenario's in which we can make the choice of how we'd like to interpret and proceed in our waking realities. I do try to heed these messages, honor them and be open to growth. I suppose at times I struggle a bit too much (wanting to get further faster) and am impatient when it comes to what I think I ought to be learning, over with, doing next. I suppose I could use a bit more self-compassion and also allow myself to surrender more to what's happening in my world. Notice, hmmm, here is this issue again, I see it, I feel it, I embrace it, I interact the best way I know how.
Interesting too that you write about how all is mental and that we as humans seem so hooked on finding an explanation because some of what I've gotten from my most recent studies is that we should try to avoid narrative (an explanatory story) when considering our dreams as once they become a symbol they are dead rather than an image that packs a wallop of feeling. So, I have been attempting to carry the images of the dreams with me throughout the day and be more loose in my interpretations--realize I am not sure of what my dreams are offering just yet and that's why they're coming, to help me along.
Hope this makes sense? I'm a bit tired this morning.
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
Yes, that makes sense to me. With that you are completely on the line of Erich Fromm, one of the great psychoanalysts of the 20th century. Unlike Jung and Freud, he only used symbolic language to understand dreams, not to interpret or analyse them. I see exactly what you mean.
One understands a dream by its very nature, but if one tries to take the individual aspects apart and stick a narrative to them, it becomes too sharp and too detailed and one threatens to lose oneself in the interpretation of the narrative. It is precisely the blurriness of the dream and the underlying feeling that is its message. That's why I need to interpret the content less, for example when I wake up crying, because I know exactly that I'm grieving for something. Since the dream can only be important for this world anyway and my feeling tells me that when I have fearful dreams, it is not about suppressing my fear in everyday life but about encountering it, which I can do quite pragmatically. But as long as I don't have this pragmatism, I will always have an oppressive element in my dream and "communicate" my true feeling. For example, I can construct the assumption that I tend to be courageous and strong, but in my daily reality I am rather weak and hesitant. My dream tells me the truth about me. Especially to the things that I am ashamed of or for which I shame others in my dream. At any rate, I notice that.
Recently I dreamed of giant octopuses that rushed me along a road and finally got me into their slippery clutches and devoured me. Had I already told you this dream? It echoes in me. I have interpreted it for myself in such a way that I have a main theme in my life (which shows itself in many facets) that I feel overwhelmed by and the dream has expressed this well.
In any case, what can also be understood by symbol is the language of feeling, which is universally the same for all people and where there are no cultural differences. This is what is meant by symbol in the sense of Fromm. You should definitely read Frederik van Eedens dreams. I started researching dream interpretation two weeks ago and read a very stimulating book announcement (outgoing 19th century!), but unfortunately it never appeared. It will interest you very much. Here is the link:
http://www.lucidity.com/vanEeden.html
A Study of Dreams - by Frederik van Eeden
I hope to be able to write an article about it, let's see.
Erika:)
P.S. it very much speaks to me how you put it into words. You yourself resp. your use of expressions is dreamlike. I once got myself the compliment about a poem that a reader did not exactly understand the precise meaning of it but somehow grasped the overall atmosphere. That was a great compliment, I found. I feel the same when I read your texts.
About impatience: I guess in times where we can get everything everywhere within short time it is anyway a miracle that we still can come up with at least some patience. :) I train myself being more patient with me, too. Sometimes it not works very well, other times I am "little Buddha". lol!
Yes, exactly, Erika! You do understand me :) I will definitely read about Erich Fromm and his views of dreaming. Thank you.
What images I have when you describe your dream of the octopuses! So many slimy arms attempting to grab me! No, you hadn't shared the dream with me before now.
I will also go and find Frederik van Eedens. I just listened to several dreamers on the shift network and ordered a book Pilgramage to the Rebirth by Erlo Van Waveren, who was counseled by Jung and had many sessions together in which they discussed past life dreams even though the Jungian school doesn't embrace these? Or, so I've heard. Anyway, the names reminded me of one another, perhaps van Eedens and Van Waveren knew one another?
Would love to read your article!
Thank you for pointing out my writings are dream-like. I too have received that compliment and do believe that poetry is more a form like dreaming in which we don't have to readily understand or grasp a narrative, but instead enjoy the flooding emotions for simply what they are.
Impatience might be linked to perfectionism and/or endurance and wanting things just right, enjoying order. At least that is how I see this personality trait in myself--I have a desire to master, learn and get somewhere and never is there enough time in the day to do all that I'd like to. Of course, that could also be my story and this way of being has more to do with the socialization that instructs and instills in us a need to produce and prove our worth?? So much to consider and I'm happy that you get my thoughts going :)
Here's to our being more Buddha and dreaming our way there!
PS--Love that Fromm says this, In modern Western culture, almost exclusively focused on activity in the sense of mastery over nature, the comprehension of symbolic language has atrophied. Dreams are remnants of a legitimate mode of human expression, one well known, now looked up as if they were undecipherable hieroglyphs.
Speaks to the "impatience divide" I experience, and the waking mind that wants to make sense and catergorize the dreaming. Uggh, crazy to think I don't like that when people approach my writings/creativity in such a way, but then I am turning around and subjecting myself and dreams to the same!?
Also, enjoyed Van Eeden and his thoughts surrounding the splitting off of parts of ourselves and how those not only occur in the waking realm, but the sleeping. I think in considering "parts," psychology (Internal Family Systems) that becoming aware of when a part of us takes the lead is easier if we experience I new vision, or changing dream perception just as it happens....for example, when we're listening to someone and suddenly are off in a daydream and have to ask them to please repeat whatever they were saying. It's as if their words have triggered a new one of us coming to the forefront, ie. in IFS language, a firefighter, a protector or an inner critic.