Dreamwork, Catharsis and Synchronicity?

[forteanajones]

Two weeks ago, I came to understand the definition and value of catharsis as an instrument of and/or opportunity for intense psychological or spiritual transition, via a thread on this message board (http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=000002). It piqued my interest as several members of my family including myself have what I perceive to be significant psychic or psychological blockage and could benefit from this kind of change. I forwarded information to my father, who responded by saying he founded it overwhelming. "If I were a grad student of psychology, I might study this kind of thing."

A week after this I sat next to my (living!) father in a funeral home, experiencing a catharsis of my own for the first time in seventeen years. I have been reflecting on this as well as many related events, and tonight I was shocked to rediscover a very interesting account of a vivid dream my daughter had 3/3/2003 of me dying. I remember now how emotionally spent she appeared as I was getting her up the next morning for school and she related a few details, telling me that I had eaten a "pear that was evil" and died. While driving her to Waldorf I asked her about it and tape-recorded our dialog. She said that the pear made my brain come out and went into even greater detail. At the time I was a bit unnerved, fearing a prediction or a foreshadowing of hers or my own death, and after transcribing it I soon forgot about it. I can share it here if anyone is interested.

One month after this event, a very close friend of myself and my family lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. Mike (the friend) and I had been less in touch for several years ever since my daughter was born. Bachelor that he had always been, I had over a few years begun to feel a distance from him due to my new domestic lifestyle. Two nights before his mother died my kid had lost her first tooth and dreamed that she saw the Tooth Fairy floating outside her window.

Anyway at the time of his loss my own personal depressions and anxieties were at a high point. I was extremely uncommunicative with friends and family, and my behavior towards Mike was so unsupportive it resulted in what I (and probably he) perceived to be a huge rift in our relationship; in hindsight I now believe this behavior was really only an affirmation of a pre-existing rift. I still don't understand what was happening to me at this time.

On 4/19/2003 I read Daniel's interview in Fortean Times and two days later I ordered BOTH from Amazon. The only part of this interview which I recall discussing with my wife was the bacterial overmind idea. The reading of this book, which culminated during a large family group vacation, truly felt like opening my own head. I was unable to get anyone else interested in this subject.

During this period, two reletives passed away of natural causes. On 4/26/2003 my great uncle (father's side) who has the same name that I have, died and on 5/15/2003, on my mother's side, my great-aunt passed away. I did not know my uncle well and he lived far away, but my behavior here towards my aunt was in contrast to all of the above - I feel I was fairly supportive of my own mother and of her own loss during this time. I was able to visit with my aunt the afternoon before. I spoke to her and expressed love. She (unable to open her eyes, speak or move) shed tears as I kissed her goodbye. After she had passed, I felt/heard her presence just outside my office on a few late-night occasions, as I have again tonight as I write this. Also as I was writing this post, my heavy front door suddenly flew open, although perhaps I didn't close it properly.

In June, after returning from the above-mentioned trip, I decided I would need to go inward with the aid of physical and mental tools. I began to acquire what I would need and this included a San Pedro cactus. Over the next several months I continued to gather more SP's in preparation.

Finally, just two weeks ago my good friend Mike himself died suddenly of heart failure at age 56. He was found on that morning by his nephew. I flew up a week later with my father. The Sunday funeral (11/2) sent a powerful charge through me. I could feel my pupils opening and closing as the room became dark, then light, then dark, then light. It was a celebration of his life. There were poems, songs and stories. Over a hundred people were there. Mike's childhood best friend set a CD player on the coffin and played a Beatles song ("All These Friends and Lovers"), and when the song finished, while Frank was stopping the player it suddenly came back to life and started playing the song again, prompting people to laugh at what was perceived to be a practical joke from the Other Side.

I mentioned above that I had a difficult time supporting Mike during his own loss. He was intensely close with his own mother and I personally believe she broke his heart. During that time he had sent me a card which I did not open. It sat on my desk for months. I'm not able yet to fully explain why this was the case and it is painful for me to think about, but when I finally gathered the courage to open it Saturday night my own father, who was sharing my hotel room, casually mentioned that the next day would be Día de los Muertos. The card, unsurprisingly, chastised me for undervaluing or ignoring the bereavement process which was supposed to be, in Mike's words, "a time for cementing existing relationships". In it there were pictures of myself with my daughter, and he reminded me of words I had forgotten he had given to me long ago when she was born: "A father is a creator of the ultimate art. Try to find words for that experience. It is universal but rarely written about articulately. Give it a try."

One last thing. Recently my wife counseled me about recent changes she has been seeing in me. She cautioned me about some aspects of how I am dealing with certain family members and described Le Guin's Ged character and how he had used his own newfound power incorrectly against a young adversary which resulted in opening up a rift, which in turn led to the greater part of the story of his battle with his Shadow. She had no idea that I had recently been reading Robert Johnson's stuff on Shadow. Nor had I yet told her that, at the exact moment I first picked up this book in the book store, a song that was playing said "Shadow".

I apologize for the length and verbosity of this post. Other than my wife and my own writings I do not have a good sounding board for these experiences. Believe it or not but there is actually much more to all of this but I feel this captures some of the more essential elements. My initial and primary motivation for posting it here is my concern about my daughter's dream. There is a part of me that is very worried about eating the evil pear, although at the same time I recognize that an inward journey is going to be the only way through the personal difficulties that I face, as well as the only path to enlightenment. Of course, I guess I really don't have to physically eat anything, but I can't help but focus on what is perhaps a superficial detail as it has in fact definitely been my plan since June. Now I am not so sure how to proceed.

I can't resist adding a few more points, some more obvious:

Between the time of her dream and now, four deaths have occurred
The pear in her dream was picked from a tree in a desert. Tonight when I re-read her dream I realized that I have gathered a small familiy of six San Pedros.
At this time I worried only about her or my own death. Psychaedelics and transformation did not consciously occur to me at all.
The front door popping open signifies, to me, a dreamlike symbol for the breaking open of the head.

[ November 08, 2003, 05:51 AM: Message edited by: forteanajones ]

[gone]

Thanks for putting together this interesting post.

Dreamwork, Catharsis and Synchronicity – there must be numerous books written about this trinity (though perhaps less for synchronicity – the apparent simplicity undermining the obvious resonance in life). And so:

Synchronicity is working very hard at the moment for everyone who cares to look. I’ve lost count of the manifestations in my own life and now just shake my head with a ‘what more do you expect’ smile when more occur. Everything is inextricably connected. We are connected on an obvious level – through google these days I find myself connected to more and more. It’s like an exotic game of that Seven Steps to Kevin Bacon. If I use the BOTH board, for example, as Kevin Bacon, I can journey/connect out into the world via someone else and back again often within those seven steps. We are also connected on a mystical level. I mentioned somewhere else of the orthodox relationship between Jesus and the Father described as the Greek word, ‘homoousios’ meaning ‘of one substance;’ but homoousios may be a more accurate word for reality, for everything and everyone are of one substance.

I was talking about the rampant synchronicity to someone out on the beach the other day. We concluded if life were a mystery novel, we would all complain about the amount of obvious clues. Some Cosmic Reader must be looking down and saying, ‘I can’t believe they haven’t figured it out yet! Look, everything shows the butler did it! Dumb asses!’

I’ve been thinking a bit about the novel Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. This story of 2000 years or so into the future is a full-on trip. The main character is a ‘Connexion Man’ – a kind of shaman in a world where people have forgotten the human story. Through fragments of myth, solid substance and healthy doses of disguised grace this guy draws the connexions between all things and in doing so (harking back to familiar territory) pretty much sings life/hope back into existence. His connexions are made through story (a freaked Punch and Judy show) and the story is the world.

So what’s the point? Others can give you useful interpretations of the Evil Pear and the gathering of deaths. But I think on the whole synchronicity leads us down a positive path – I really haven’t seen people follow it and end up doing bad things. For the sake of a maxim – bad things only happen to people who ignore synchronicity.

[Halfglass]

Gelfer: You're hitting right on it. Synchronicity abounds through all. I have a sense of an even deeper connection. All-as-program. Paradoxical though a program might sound, it may be an open ended fractal blah blah thing. It's intuitable (that a word?). That which is being searched for is that which is searching, so one can't get behind synchronicity to inspect the parts that make it go, because we are the machine. (Actually my working theory now is that we are kind of like probes, pushed out by It through evolution, just now having gotten to the point of making a cosmologist who can turn his telescope back on Itself.) Paradox--history has happened yet not.... Musing on a Sunday morning--up and out for more coffie, later.

[daniel]

Great post, forteanajones

I agree with gelfer: These days, synchronicities are multiplying for those who follow the concrete details of their own lives and lift their heads from the realm of media distraction and abstraction that is the proscribed way of being asleep. I think Arguelles is correct that synchronicities reveal an underlying psychic order of time, and that we will soon be living in "The Synchronic Order," a different model of time for which the current waves of synchronicities are just a timid preparation. It almost seems like we are being instructed how to move toward that new way of being-in-time - by the Creator Spirit, perhaps, or by our own increasingly manifesting unconscious.

If time is something entirely different than our current models, it follows that death is something quite different as well. I think that families - and to a slightly lesser extent, communities of friends - are evolving spiritual organisms. If you make the transformation to a more intensified form of consciousness, you may be doing the work for your family and friends as well - even if they cannot appreciate it or understand it at the current moment, or even during "this life."

There is, for instance, the story of the Buddha going to visit his mother in the land of the dead, to explain what he accomplished, and help her achieve her own enlightenment. Rudolf Steiner writes that it is possible to help the dead by reading to them, intentionally, books on "spiritual science." Do I know for a fact that this is true? Not at all, but at this point, I am willing to entertain the possibility.

[Woodpecker]

Nothing to add to these interesting posts but "aho."

Trying to spend less time on the internet, but endlessly curious about what y'all have to say,

Wpkr

[ November 10, 2003, 04:15 AM: Message edited by: Woodpecker ]

[Em]

Hi guys.

Just a word or three about synchronicity and stuff.

Truly, "seek, and ye shall find".

It would appear that once you start to look for something - anything - clues and synchronicities will appear. Go looking for UFOs, and ye shall find them...fairies at the bottom of the garden -they'll be there...ghosts, aliens, the Others...etc., etc.

My favoured overview is that whatever the human mind can think of, imagine, and an infinitude more, either has happened, is happenning, or will happen (or, to put it in a bit more sophisticated way, Everything is Happening in the Eternal Now). This means that whatever we put our minds to will start revealing aspects of itself to us in whatever ways we are capable of percieving it. John Keel in his excellent account of UFO activities through the ages ("UFOs - Operation Trojan Horse")started finding evidence for their existence more or less as soon as he determined that he should look for them. UFO activities then took on a life of their own, and he started to come across them even when he wasn't looking, or wanted their presence. In a similar way, one of the biographers of Dion Fortune first contacted, and was then pursued by the "powers" behind the "inner planes" manifestations. Etc.

Halfglass,
you seem to have a sound appreciation of don Juan's teachings, including his assertion that we are energetic probes with which the Eagle (presumably) enriches its diet of awareness which is enhanced by their journeys through the universe.
Bit concerned by your encounters with the allies, though; you know, where they are snapping 6 inch thick bits of wood - what if they decide to go for your 6 inches??? smile.gif

Daniel,
as ever, you are on the ball with the many strands of esoteric thinking. I'm just wondering who/where are all these people who are being prepared for a new version of time/thinking/percieving/being? And, come the revolution, what will happen to all the rest, the ones who for whatever reasons didn't manage to be reprogrammed? Will the former, like the "meek", inherit the earth, and the latter struggle through the eyes of needles, etc., and be dispatched somewhere else?
I do mean to be facetious, but not dismissive; man has sought and been given any number of "signs" throughout the ages; and the grand finale, complete with mind-blowing revelations about the nature of existence has either been imminent, or in some vaguely-described point in the future (apparently one of the reasons why it took "them" over a hundred years before they started to write about the life and times of Jesus was because there was a clear expectation that "the end was nigh" right then, so there was no time, and therefore point in writing anything down). The Bible and Nostradamus still sell; and chicken entrails are still consulted - but to what avail?
How are today's prognostications different to yesteryear's?

[Proteus]

Forteanjones: Thanks for sharing that post. Sounds like some profound inner work is going on & that can only mean good things in the long run for all of us. (Or so i now believe.)

Your daughter's dream and the SP connection is interesting. There is, in my experience, a meaningful analogy to be made between death and a next-level trip. Many things that one took for granted die and one can experience a reorientation to the cosmos that is like being born again (only without the polyester suit and alligator boots). Perhaps your daughter's vision points to that more hopeful possibility where you are concerned?

[daniel]

Em: I'm just wondering who/where are all these people who are being prepared for a new version of time/thinking/percieving/being? And, come the revolution, what will happen to all the rest, the ones who for whatever reasons didn't manage to be reprogrammed?

You ask the crucial questions... wish I had perfect answers for them.

When i discuss these ideas, many people respond quickly with the fear that there will have to be a "cataclysm" in which many will die. My response, at this point, is that may or may not be true - I have no control over it. However, thinking in terms of "masses" or statistics is immediately back in the old "mental rational" consciousness structure (what Rene Guenon called "The Reign of Quantity"). My concern is with individuals, not masses.

It is certainly possible that there will be no transformative threshold in 2012. However, I do think that many indicators point toward something major happening at that point. If we look at any strand, for instance, the global ecological situation, or the accelerating human ability to transform matter, it all points to a near-term culmination. The Stone Age lasted for thousandsa of years - Iron Age lasted for hundreds of years - the plastic age has lasted for one hundred years - the information age is one decade - the biotechnology age is five years - the nanotechnology age is on its way. Humanity's ability to transform matter at deeper and deeper levels is accelerating exponentially. Meanwhile, technology progressively shrinks and essentially dematerializes - think of computer chips etc. - to the point where one could imagine a near endpoint where technology and consciousness interfuse. If that happens, it would become crystal clear that all technology was was a temporary externalization or projection of consciousness to then be reintegrated. This would fit with the esoteric view that sees the universe only made of consciousness, with matter only a densified manifestation of spirit.

It may be that in the last period, a number of different "portals" open up to different forms of future evolutionary tracks (The "Gray Alien" abduction saga may be a kind of foreshadowing of one of these, a degraded one). I really don't know. It may be that the communications power of the Internet (or what develops next) will allow instantaneous global dispersion of enlightening and transformative ideas (or more than ideas, proprioceptions?), when they become necessary.

I know that many Apocalypses have been predicted and none yet have come to pass. Yet the ecological situation and global military mentality seem to suggest that this is, in fact, the "Big Time," the real thing. For a Jungian, the Apocalypse is primarily a psychic event, an archetype, that literalizes and manifests itself at a certain moment when the collective unconscious requires it. As I keep thinking lately: The Kali Yuga is a state of mind.

Having gone deep into these thoughts and studies, I strongly suspect something like this - some literalized version of the Apocalypse and then a transformative movement into a different "vibrational" form of existence - is meant to be, but of course I could be totally wrong.

[forteanajones]

Thanks for the wonderful replies. I also feel the "total apocalypse" idea may be a little extreme, although I'm sure the world is going to be turned upside down momentarily in some sense. Many personal acquaintences of mine are more focused on the physical aspects of these changes; how does one *practically* prepare for these? I am personally more fixated on trying to remain as spiritually/psychologically flexible and open as possible, yet am also very concerned about protecting my family against the potential tidlewave.

Synchronistic update: This week I discovered that a children's book I've been reading to my daughter (Magic or Not? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0152020802/qid=1069298373/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-4348762-1655239?v=glance&s=books) by Edward Eager) directly draws from a myth that is described in another book I had purchased on the same day (Johnson's Owning Your Own Shadow (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0062507540/qid=1069298501/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4348762-1655239?v=glance&s=books)). In the intro Johnson paraphrases a myth about magical wells which spring up in unexpected places and inevitably become closely guarded and capitalized on by the powerful and elite (this was supposedly Jung's favorite). The other book centers on a magical well which aids a group of children in unexpected and mysterious ways. Although they are not even 100% sure the well is responsible they 'use' the magic through coincedence and their interactions with strangers to 'heal' the powerful and elite in their own town. I'm sure this is no surprise to the more experienced synchronicity experts on this forum, but just as before I can't believe how long it took me to become conscious of this coincedence.

A few nights ago she had another dream. In it she was in an unfamiliar house and witnessed the ghost of George Washington pacing back and forth in a very robotic fashion, before a crimson curtain. The ghost noticed her and approached her. Her dream self became scared and she awoke. I couldn't get her to talk about anything else for the rest of the next day.

[ November 19, 2003, 05:47 PM: Message edited by: forteanajones ]

[Scylla]

Daniel writes:
Rudolf Steiner writes that it is possible to help the dead by reading to them, intentionally, books on "spiritual science." Do I know for a fact that this is true? Not at all, but at this point, I am willing to entertain the possibility.

In my classes in Spiritual Science, we learned to
reach friends/relatives who have died by visualizing them smiling, happy, and picturing
glowing white light around them. Especially when
the death has just occurred, your thoughts go right to them. It is that simple. I once met
Michael Harner (author of The Way of the Shaman)
and told him of contacts I had had with people
who had died. He said, "Sure, we hear that all the time. It's not just that we can pick up
information, it's that they're Trying to Get Through."

[sire_012]

this is a great thread, forteana much luck and love on your continued uncovering.

daniel:
I think that families - and to a slightly lesser extent, communities of friends - are evolving spiritual organisms.this sentiment has been a dominant player in my path the past few weeks, and, not surprisingly, i've run into friends i haven't seen in a while who are going through this same realm of exploration. for so long i was at odds with my family, my parents, but as i've been privileged to have experiences and supporting friends to faciitate those experiences which have opened my heart and head to itself i can no longer live antagonistically to my parents - or really to anyone for that matter. i now feel, quite sentiently, that i am not just 'me', but actually a continued blue print of specifically my father, inheriting a new body, to continue its exploration and understanding of itself. i know this sounds simplisitic and obvious, however to feel this with one's entire being and thought process is quite different than simply academically understanding you are from your folks seed. this realization, recognition has been quite difficult as there is much in my parents which i simply have no respect for, but to turn away from that now in scorn is leaving a ever widening whole in myself.

i have found that what i struggled with, fought, and disdained in my parents was simply a recognition at fear induced programs that i saw within myself, and, where they had made life choices which i did not agree with, i no longer can view them as thoughtless or banal, but as hurt, hurting and in need of healing. and by healing them, by elevating them, i in turn am elevating myself - because, quite literally, we are the same entity. this organism seems to extend beyond blood as well, into circles of friends, tribes, etc.

i have been noticing more and more people acting on the same general motivations, having shared dreams, shared experiences, groups of people coming together as of late from similar, life long, inclinations. i think the internet was simply a physical manifestation of this process of self-recognition of the intelligene(s) which we are. for example, the harmonic concordance... the internet offered a physical interface, a 3dimensional induction device, allowing people all across the world to share information, to facilitate a global ritual of transformation which has, as yet, been paralleled as far as i know. can you think when the last time in history might have been that people all across this globe performed a magickal ritual with the same intent at the same time in response to an astralogical manifestation? we used the internet - a physcial manifestation of our growing tendancys to communicate empathically - to create an event to communicate telepathically without the internet. quite gorgeous.

every person i see now i recognize as a reflection of an aspect of myself, an arm or a leg or another head of this organism waking up, stretching itself, remembering limbs it had forgotten it had. it is impossible to hate any person without hating myself, although hate can still be experienced.

forteana, perhaps these spikes in mortality are gifts being offered to you, by this organism, allowing you to understand how perhaps we don't die away, we don't dissapear, but through family, through friends, and through their love and support this beautiful organism continues to search and discover and find itself to fall in love again. your friend mike did not stop effecting you, did not stop triggering information shifts in you when he passed away, in fact it sounded like he amped up the communication post mortem. perhaps your daughter, through her dream, is offering an awareness to you of how your quest will effect her, change her, how your spirit will continue through her, perpetuating the seed of your quest long after the tiny vessel you live in right now passes on.

good luck and enjoy it!

[Halfglass]

Sire: Quite right. It seems everytime I "think up" a notion, be it a description of an Other, or, my dealings with ancestor visions and on...somebody else comes along and is talking about the same thing. I know what you mean, about seeing another person and knowing somehow it's you! This organism, like I've said, The It is us. Daniel was musing about enlightenment. I get the feeling it's about discovering one's Itness. (I wonder why the fact that the outcome of quantum experiments, whether light say, will behave as partical or wave, being dependent on if it is being observed by a living consciousness, is still puzzled over, when it seems perfectly obvious that consciousness is tied up in the experiment. There has been a letter sent through the mail by It, to itself, and we are just now opening this letter up.) Em: I'm not sure what you meant about the "snapping of wood" etc. I'm at a place where I don't really concern myself with the don Juan books/teachings. If they're real, I'll never make it by the Eagle because I'm not a Nagual. (And I just get the feeling that I'm spinning wheels with Castaneda, although when I first discovered the books I did nothing but read them untill I had read them all, back to back. I would have rather read more about the little smoke and peyote trips, than the seemingly ever changing "ways.")

[ November 21, 2003, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[forteanajones]

The comments in this thread continue to be extremely positive and helpful. Thanks everyone.

Sorry if it seems I am trying to drag this out but I have a noteworthy update: My younger brother informed me today that he has a non-malignant brain tumor "the size of a jawbreaker". Some time in the next month or two he will have it removed. Going back to the dream, I think it's relevant to note something: in it, my daughter saw two me's, one dressed in gray and one in black. The death of the gray me was not perceived directly and happened quietly. The black me ate an orange instead of a pear and although his appearance was different from my own he was definitely, she felt, me. This me was irreverent towards "the magic words" and experienced a more graphic death.

I feel heavy with the new and strange dimension this adds, and selfish for viewing this up until now as being most significant for my own personal path. Clearly the dream is touching a wide spectrum of people and ideas now although what a child of seven years can do with it all I do not know.