Through a Jungian Lens

Introspection About Dreams and Reality

My mind has been busy of late even though I have spent a lot of time away from my computer and those things that often feed my mind with all sorts of data. Rather than a focus on books, my mind has been occupied with sorting through sensory data that has been flooding in due to “engagement” with face-to-face life. Taking two weeks off from the “process” of analysis and leaving Calgary in order to spend the time in my home in Saskatchewan has given me an opportunity to break through the routines that somehow shift a person into a more “unconscious” way of being.

One of my latest dreams highlights the need for being “real,” whatever that proves to be. I called the dream “Haqiqia Boots” because in the dream the word “haqiqia” was both heard and seen. In the dream I found myself in a cold, wintry scene without winter boots. The dream was a positive dream in terms of tone and feel, with the main concern whether or not I should have my real winter boots sent to me or if I should buy some new ones.  The dream’s location seemed to come out of my distant past where I began my career in education, but with a corresponding resemblance to the relatively recent past where I was still engaged in teaching in China even though I had officially retired, a blend of the two.  Just a little side note to add; I was given a “real” traditional pair of winter boots the day before the dream.

Of course, the dream of winter boots is easily explained due to the event of being given the pair of boots. Winter boots require a winter scene. The fact that I used boots similar to these boots while living in Canada’s far north where I began my teaching and school administration career “fit” with the idea in the dream of teaching. But there, common sense came to an end.  Why the reference to China?  Was it because China was my most recent experience of teaching? It didn’t seem real to me at that point as the urban Chinese experience didn’t fit the location. Looking for something to make the connection, I hoped that the word “haqiqia” would fill in the gap of missing knowledge, missing information that would allow the dream to “talk” to me.

I began to wonder if the word “haqiqia” was a Cree or Dene word, or even a Chinese word given the sense of both Northern Canada and China that was being evoked. Curious, I did a “Google” search and found thatI began to wonder if the word “haqiqia” was a Cree or Dene word, or even a Chinese word given the sense of both Northern Canada and China that was being evoked. Curious, I did a “Google” search and found that the the word “haqiqia” was actually an Arabic word. Using both “Google Translate” and “Babylon Translator” I came up with the same definition – “real.” was actually an Arabic word. Using both “Google Translate” and “Babylon Translator” I came up with the same definition – “real.” Now, I was really confused. How could I know an Arabic word (this has happened on a previous occasion in a dream in 1998, the appearance of an Arabic word)? How could I explain “seeing” and “hearing” this Arabic word in relation to a pair of winter boots, real winter boots?

Now, to go further into the dream work, I had to look at the recent emotional situation of my life allowing for resonance and feeling tones to help discover the intention of the dream. But rather than go further into the dream work here, I want to return to  the word “haqiqia” as this was the dominant aspect of the dream as I felt and understood it at the time of the dream and afterwords. “Real – haqiqia.” Out of curiosity I then did a wider search and found that the word “haqiqi” is an Urdu word that means “true, real.” I knew that Urdu is a language spoken in India and Pakistan so I wondered how this could match up with the Arabic word so perfectly. A bit more research and I found that Urdu was a language that came with the Muslim migration to southern Asia. Was all of this taking me further and further from the dream? I was beginning to think so until I realised that the word “real / haqiqia” was being confirmed as the “core” element of the dream, that I shouldn’t be distracted by the surreal aspects of the dream, that I needed to come to grips with “reality,” to be “true” to my “self” on my journey that bounces between Calgary and Saskatchewan.

Mondou Hills cactus

The Mondou Hills surround a non-existent Mondou Lake, a low flat area now filled with wheat and canola fields.  The lake has long ago disappeared and the hills are semi-desert grassland in which all kinds of cactus plants can be found such as this small, but colourful little plant.  It is easy to forget that such a delicate blossom can be found a plant that has built-in armour.

In looking again at this image, I begin to think of relationships, especially the relationship with a significant other.  When we catch awareness of the other person and somehow feel a sense of magical connection, we are seeing the beauty of the flower.  The beauty exists objectively, we aren’t making it up in our minds.  Our relationship to that beauty, that sense of falling in love with that beauty is a different story.  We project something else onto the flower, onto the other person and create an other that is totally born out of our own need, our own inner spaces.

I think also of how people attract each other, how the choose each other and mate.  Both project their own denied attributes onto each other and both are ripe, ready to be hooks to catch the projections of others.  Of course, I am talking about the phenomenon of falling in love here, not about the calm, well thought out and deliberate choosing of a mate from a narrowed down subset of possible mates.  Falling in love with another person is all about projections and hooks.  There is no weighing of personality, characteristics, probable future security, genetics or social suitability involved.  Reason is not involved at all.  The truth is, when we fall in love with a person we don’t know, we are not falling in love with the person at all for we know nothing about this stranger.

Does this person believe the same truths as we do?  Does this person enjoy the same activities as us?  Will this person ever get to know the real you?  Will they like the real you?  Will you care for the person you discover eventually when projections are withdrawn?

Under the projections, a real person exists just as the real plant exists once the fragile blossoms are blown away in the next wind.  Beneath the projections are thorns, spikes and of course, a moist and vibrant life that is ready to create more life.  As time goes on, many relationships are broken because of the barbs that come out in self-defense.  For each of us does engage in self-defense when the stranger beneath the projections begins to emerge.  One says: “Who is this stranger?  Can I trust this stranger with my own truths?”  Sadly, the response to self-defense mechanisms is a reciprocal building of walls as the other also feels at risk as they are challenged and even denied.  Confusion exists within both as the other bemoans the fact of the other’s dishonesty, a dishonesty that doesn’t exist except in one holds the projections as the truth.

Looking through the photos taken last week for a photo to go with today’s post, this photo jumped out at me.  I took this photo for my grandsons who had come to visit last time I taught in Changzhou.  This is a scene from China Dinosaur Park, a new section added to the park since their visit.  The scene makes me think of what “Hell” might look like.

There is no doubt in my mind that as doubt comes, the loss of certainty opens up a path to the repressed unconscious, and to depression.  It is about loss, at least it was for me.  I lost the certainty of structured religion.  With the turmoil of being a youth at the time, the loss left me in a dark place.  Of course, there were other factors as one would expect.  The things in one’s life are interrelated.

“When and if faith as fanaticism is overcome, the results are not always unqualifiedly beneficial.  Patterns of depression and emptiness can follow the loss of whatever solace was previously offered by the so-called faith – though paradoxically the depression may be accompanied by rage at the sacrifices made to the dubious God of such faith and his strident moral demands, now felt to be hostile to fuller expressions of human life and spirit.”  (Dourley, The Illness That We Are, p.18)

When one puts one’s trust in a religion and then begins to become a more conscious being  as he or she works hard to honour the symbols and promise of the religion, and in the process becomes aware of the darkness of that religion which translates to being betrayed, anger is a natural response.  But the anger demands action for resolution.

“Victims of “sacrosanct unintelligibility” are thus often faced with “no-win” options.  They can grit their teeth and cling fanatically to a burden of “revealed truth” which finds no experiential resonance in themselves.  This splits them between the demands of their faith and the demands of their humanity and potential maturity.  Or they are driven, often by inner demands for a fuller and more balanced life, into patterns of denial.  In the language of their own impoverished theological options such denial is described as “atheism.”  Not infrequently this carries with it a lingering guilt for having abandoned what may have been, after all, the one true revelation – all the truer precisely because of its unintelligibility.”  (Dourley, The Illness That We Are, p.18)

It is as though one is damned of one does and double-damned if one doesn’t stick with one’s religion.  Either way, one is effectively trapped in a hell.

“At the hour of dawn, before the sun’s rising from beyond the horizon, I sat in the middle of a field communing with Nature.  At that hour filled with purity and beauty I lay on the grass, what time men were yet wrapped in slumber, disturbed now by dreams, now by awakening.  I lay there seeking to know from all that I looked upon the truth of Beauty and the beauty of Truth.”  (Gibran, “Lament of the Field,” A Tear And A Smile, p.66)

Before putting Gibran’s book aside, I decided to read a bit more.

“And when my reflecting had set me apart from the flesh, and my imaginings lifted the covering of matter from off my inner self, I felt my spirit growing, drawing me near to Nature and revealing to me her hidden things and teaching me the language of her wonders.”  (ibid)

As you may well guess, I took a significant pause after writing these words of Gibran’s before daring to add my thoughts to this post.  All that comes up for me is to finally be still with the moment and let the image and the words do their work of talking to my soul, and like Gibran, “set myself apart” in order to allow the spirit to grow.

With mirror images such as this scene from a bay of Lake Athabasca, the eye and the mind are often drawn into the fuzzier version of the image, one that because of its fuzziness or numinosity hints at something more.  One learns that life is not always what it appears to be on the surface.  The concrete realities presented through the senses of sight, touch, taste, feel and hearing often deceive more than they illuminate truths.  Perhaps it is because of our experiences of being deceived that we either retreat into money, numbers or words as the ultimate truth; or we begin to search for a fuller truth by looking at the fuzzy edges, one that is more satisfying to the soul.