Sleepless -- But Not Dreamless -- in Glasco

This weekend I went upstate to a convent in a tiny town called Glasco, about two hours north of NYC, to do some dream work.

I've been going up here for over ten years, about once or twice a year, on Dream Analysis Retreats. We -- usually a group of four to seven women of a wide range of ages and life experience -- relate and discuss our dreams in Jungian terms.

Dream work is an extremely important part of Jungian analysis, and is one of the surest indicators of healing and growth. After all, your dreams don't lie, so if you believe you have processed some recurring problem or complex, yet the dream symbolizing it continues, then you know pretty well that your psyche is screaming at you that you are not as far along as you'd like to believe.

Likewise, you know you are healing if the dream transforms....

For example, for many years I had a recurring dream about being chased by the Evil Man. I'd lock myself in a room, yet the door wouldn't close, or the lock would be broken, or the door would mysteriously shrink and he would burst right through to attack me.

So what does this symbolize?

For much of my life my thinking (masculine) and feeling (feminine) selves have been at war, and usually the masculine has won out -- as I have talked and rationalized myself into allowing far too many situations that have ultimately harmed me.

Strange as it may sound, it is the strength of the feminine that is required in such situations -- the wisdom that just knows when a thing is wrong, and that knows and cherishes our value just for being ourselves. It is not rational and requires no justification; it simply loves and nourishes. One need never be good enough for it.

Now, as warm and fuzzy as this sounds, if we live only in this feminine womb-scape we would never grow, develop autonomy, or strive towards our dearest dreams and powerful fulfillment. We would never know what we are. So separation, judgment, criticism is necessary -- but without the feminine to softly protect and care for us, the masculine just runs roughshod over us.

Which is how things have been through much of my achingly self-critical life.

As this dream persisted, my therapist would encourage me to talk to the attacker. A crazy idea I thought, and yet in a dream around 2004 (coincidentally, when I started bellydancing) I successfully locked the door against this animus figure, only to decide to open it and talk to him. Far from the insane marauder I expected, he shriveled into a lanky milquetoast who could barely get a word out.

One of the dreams I related this past weekend involved this figure -- but this time, he was a serial killer locked in the bathroom of my childhood home. In the dream, we call the police (psychical reinforcements) to bring him out, but he won't come out. The cops tell me to call his name -- but I can't remember it, which surprises my mother because "he has been living with us for so long."

So, clearly this problem persists in me -- but it has changed. He is no longer attacking; he has now reverted to pure vulnerable boyish silence. Seems he is more scared of me than I am of him. And perhaps he is not so happy with me for forgetting his name...

So that was the realization I had during the first evening of the Dream Retreat, and went to bed pondering it -- unable to think of anything else, actually.

I started to drift off around midnight, hoping to get up around 7:30 and go running along the beautiful trail up there.

But barely an hour later, a frenzied thumping, knocking, banging slammed me awake. And I had forgotten my earplugs!

And this continued through the night: I'd start to sleep for maybe a half-hour, and then -- WHAM, SLAM, BOOM!!

Around 4am I crawled out to the fire escape to see if I could figure out what was causing this...  I knew the nuns had been having some work done. Was there a tarp on the roof? Some loose cord, cable, rope? (Something I could use to hang myself maybe?!?!)

As the sleepless, dreamless Night of Misery continued, I bargained:  I'd turn off my alarm. If I missed the morning session, then so be it. But if I was still awake when the sky got light, then I'd go out running, no matter how miserable I felt.

The latter won out.

As the sun bleached its way through the venetian blinds, I was a knot of restless anguish -- all the more miserable because I did not have a dream to share. But I dragged myself up anyway and got dressed around 7am.

I'd be OK, I told myself (but I brought my mobile just in case...)

The day was absolutely stunning. A bit frosty, but no longer windy. On auto-pilot, I chugged up the gravel road towards the labyrinth about a mile away. I made a left onto a paved road and hoofed down to the town's main drag, Route 32.

Starting to feel a bit better, I finally came to my second-favorite part of the run: A tight little enclave of McMansions along Joseph's Drive with streets named Canterbury Drive, Lancelot Drive and Camelot Court.

Usually I go straight through on Joseph's, which takes me right back to the convent. But suddenly I was feeling better -- much better -- better than I had in weeks, actually. And those street names were just so darned charming!

So I took a left on Canterbury, figuring it would loop me straight back to Joseph's, but instead I ended up on Lancelot which twisted around, leaving me completely disoriented.

I pulled out my Android, figuring Google Maps would get me out of this. No such luck.

I ran back a few houses, then returned to where Lancelot had left me. I saw a single green street sign to my right. I ran up to it.

And this is what I saw.



"You do realize, don't you, that this sounds like a very interesting dream?" a good friend observed as I related the story some time later.

Yes, indeed it was....

It had all the elements:  Misery, anguish, running, joy, bliss, being lost (and lost among such mythically resplendent names!) -- and finding my way -- yes MY way, at a time -- and in a "way" -- that I had least expected.

Dreaming of 9-11 -- BEFORE the Event

Ten years ago I had the following dream:  Terrorists have blown a huge hole in my office/apartment building; an apocalypse has hit Manhattan, which is covered in a layer of dust. Power is down and I must confront the terrorists alone. 

What is weird about this is that I had the dream on September 6, 2001. What is stranger still is that I wrote the dream down on a scrap of paper which I had misplaced until September 10th. And so, that Monday night, I stayed late in my office typing it up.

In his Sense of Being Stared At, Rupert Sheldrake relates several similar experiences -- during the five days before the attacks, Manhattanites had prescient dreams or other premonitions, most involving planes, buildings  and/or terrorists. And in most cases these dreams were not typical of the dreamer.

"Oh, I bet New Yorkers have nightmares about dust and skyscrapers all the time!" scoffed my hyper-rational cousin. And they may -- but I don't. And I know this because I have been writing down my dreams since 1996. 

A quick word search reveals that this was the only dream of its kind that I have had in the past 15 years, which puts it out of the realm of statistical coincidence and squarely into The Twilight Zone.

In his book, Sheldrake describes "a kind of collective unconscious that allows members of a species to draw from, and contribute to, the collective memory of the species." 

But does how could this apply to future events? 

Well... I haven't the foggiest, other than to consider more strongly that there are, indeed, more things in heaven and earth -- and perhaps those things like to reach us through our dreams.

But you tell me... Submitted for your approval is my 9/6/01 dream, complete with action movie heroics at the end. 

Oh, I am such a product of my culture....

I’m in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan – the Earth’s atmosphere is completely covered in choking dust. (There is also something about a probe that was sent into the deeper reaches of the Milky Way which will soon return bringing either information or more destruction.)  

I go into a one-room apartment in a high-rise (possibly mine), though it seems more like an office building. Scott  is sleeping on the bed. He is remarkably blasé about the state of the world. There is a lot of dust in the room as well, so he suggests that I turn on the air conditioner to clear it out. I am dubious at first, thinking that the air conditioner couldn’t possibly work because teh power is down, but it does.  

As the dust clears, I look out the window and see many office buildings with quite a few lights on. How can there be electricity? I thought there was practically no one left… Are the generators still running? I figure that I should just stop questioning and use the electricity while we still have it. 

A very attractive young man enters the apartment.. The three of us go to the lobby of the building where many other survivors are gathered. Panamanian terrorists have blasted a giant hole in the lobby and are announcing that in this “new world” they are claiming America (and hence New York and all the buildings in it) as a territory of Panama. They have not yet seen me, so I slink up a staircase to an inner balcony overlooking the atrium.  

A little ways in I find an unmade bed and a female friend crouched beside it. The terrorists announce that they are going to tear-gas us out. I realize that even though gas is everywhere it’s not affecting me. Puffed up with my apparent superhuman abilities, I go down to the lobby and tell the terrorists to get lost. They turn their weapons on us and, in true superhuman form, I telekinetically rip their weapons away from them, condense them in a ball above their heads, and then smash the ball into the left wall of the room. Then I blow the terrorists backwards, which sends them out of the building screaming.

Nutshells, Coffee Shops and Scaling Down Area 51

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii

I have been writing down my dreams since 1995.

Sometimes I can go a week or two without remembering a dream; and other times I will have so many that I am overwhelmed, and any attempt to capture their details is paralyzed in frustration.

But for the most part, I try to write them down fairly regularly.

Dream analysis is an extremely important part of Jungian analysis, which I began in 1994. Although some consider dreams simple jetsam and flotsam as the brain processes the day's activities and concerns, the Jungian school holds that they have important information and guidance not only about current concerns, but can point to greater trends and psychological developments -- after all, we can't hide from the truth of dreams.

Granted, we can force gratifying interpretations on them, but this becomes more difficult when dreams reoccur with increasing ferocity and smash our respective nutshells.

For example, I used to have a dream that a terrifying man was chasing me, usually through the upper floors of a house or building. I would try to hide in a room and shut the door against him, but something would always be wrong with the door: the lock would be broken or non-existent or the door would suddenly become flimsy as tissue. Once the door shriveled to swinging-saloon-door size, and my assailant easily banged through.

This we took to indicate a psychological porousness on my part -- especially to judgmental "animus" energies. Sometimes, this could literally mean vulnerability to men -- in particular the criticism of men (which has played out in many relationships), but more often it indicated my intellectual, unyielding criticism towards myself -- which gave the harsh words of the various boyfriends undue power.

About five years ago in a dream, I successfully shut the door on the attacker, only to find myself curious about him. I opened it again and began a conversation with him in the dream. And, as is often the case in life when we see those whom we had feared in a different light, he was not terrifying at all.

I never had that dream again.

Of course, my "animus" issue is by no means fully resolved, but this was good progress.

The night before last, I had another dream where both an animus (inner male) and an animus-driven anima (hyper intellectual inner female) figure appeared.

It occurred at a time when I was struggling with what I felt was very hurtful behavior from a puer-type man whom I had cared for (I'll call him Evan), and who had treated me shabbily the last time we met -- and it gave me some very useful insight and guidance.

So here is the dream in its entirety, followed by a brief analysis:

My friend Yolanda tells me that she has bought some “out there” real estate as an investment, having put $20,000 down on $3 million. She shows me an aerial picture of the investment property, which is of some structures in the Navy Yard near where I live, which is now now ("now" as in "the now of the dream") paved over with nice asphalt paths, similar to those of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Two of the structures are round, and one is kind of box shaped, all are shaped strangely, with unusual borders and cuts on the roofs. It all feels very Area 51 to me, and I am suspicious for Yolanda who -- in spite of being one of the most intelligent people I know -- can also be very naive in some common-sense ways because she is quick to rationalize and justify others’ very f*cked up behavior. (Such is the double-edged sword of intellect.)


So I decide to check out this property for myself. I go to the site, walking along the pristine asphalt paths that allegedly lead to her property, but do not see the structures -- or much of anything, for that matter, except for a largish coffee shop run by an Asian family. I go inside for a cup and while I'm waiting, look at a display arrangement on one of the counters. There are two paper cups with sip lids and a small rectangular gift box -- like the kind you'd put chocolates in. I stand directly over it and look down. THIS was the "aerial photo"!! I run off to tell Yolanda but she doesn't believe me, so I take her to the shop and show her the display. “Who got the $20,000?!?” I demand. The owner of the shop -- a middle-aged Mandarin comes out to see what the fuss is about. Yolanda points to him. “I gave it to him!” she says.


I freak out on the guy. I mean I go completely crazy, furiously bellowing at him about fraud and criminal charges, and demand he give the money back to Yolanda immediately, or I will return "with help". With a relenting shrug, he gives us a check for $20,000. I further warn him that the check had better not bounce, and urge Yolanda to deposit it quickly.

Of course, when I told this dream to another male friend, he immediately thought: two cups and a box = female genitalia. And maybe it does -- as much of this dream illustrates an internal war between my masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) aspects. But it is so much more than that....

With the understanding that all figures in a dream represent an aspect of oneself, I must first conclude that Yolanda and the Mandarin man represent, respectively, the hyper-rational part of my feminine self, and the trickster part of my masculine self -- which often collude to cause me lots of trouble -- and can cost me lots of money, time and energy -- as I make "rational" excuses to justify obvious trickster behavior, and make outsized investments in people/relationships that are ultimately not worth it.

Archetypally, the non-animus-driven feminine can see right through the animus-trickster -- in the same way a mother can tell when her kid is full of crap. In many ways, the trickster in one's psyche plays games partly to show you creative ways of looking at the world, and sometimes he just wants to screw with you to make sure you are paying attention!!

So the trick that I often fall for is in believing a desired thing is worth more than it actually is. This has been particularly true of certain men in my life -- especially if they are achieving in an area where I have aspiration, as was the case where Evan was concerned.

And my psyche beautifully illustrated this with the enlarged (i.e. overvalued) photograph of ordinary paperware.

It is also worth noting that the animus figure is Chinese, and the fake real estate reminds me of "Area 51" -- which indicates that I still tend to see these dynamics as alien and not originating in my personal world. For example, in the current case, I believed that I was hurt more because Evan had been cold to me, and not because I had inappropriately overvalued him -- which I had.

Another important piece of information was the $20,000 on $3 million. Granted, $3 million is a lot of money -- but $20,000 is a miniscule .67% of that -- laughable even by savings account standards.

The lesson from this? That even though I am capable of investing HUGELY in relationships, my actual emotional investment in this particular person was minimal -- so I realized that much of my pain was only from wounded pride.

Why the coffee shop? That probably indicated I needed to freaking wake up about this!!!

And the final lesson? When I got mad -- really mad -- the guy took me seriously and, with a shrug, returned the invested money. Why the blasé shrug? Probably to indicate that the trickster plays tricks because that's just what he does, and so when he's caught, he makes good without regret or apology. But it takes a storm of fury to convince him that he is caught.

Now, I did not take this to mean that freaking out on Evan was the way to go -- but rather it would not be productive -- to him or to me -- to hide my feelings.

And with that in mind, I set out the next day to resolve the situation with Evan.

More later on what happened....