Dear blog friends,
I promised you a second dream study on ecology and here it comes! Last time, I let you with the question: What do dreams advice to save the planet?
An answer to this crucial question can be found in the article that Christiane published on her French blog on 23 october 2019. I can't wait to share it with you, so I give her the floor:
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It's been almost a month since I wrote anything on my blog. It is not that I forget my blog friends, but I have been completely absorbed in the preparation of my two-day seminar, which just took place this past weekend: "Dreams and the Bible" was the subject of study on Saturday; that of Sunday was "The Wrath of God and the Wrath of Christ in the Bible, and in the dreams of the past and the present". It was a rare, intense, exciting and oh so instructive research work!
But back to our blog.
Three weeks ago, I embarked with you on an investigation. Do you remember? I brought up a dream about a burning issue, a dream that dealt with a planetary catastrophe.
We see scientists, institutes, governments all over the world searching, discussing. Opinions are contradictory and the ordinary earthlings no longer know what to think.
In front of this general confusion I therefore asked the question:
What is the position of the unconscious about a cosmic catastrophe? Do dreams talk about it? And what do they say?
To answer this question, I presented the dream of a dreamer in her forties:
"Threat of planetary disaster".
What was it about?
In the dream, an astrologer who studies the planets announced to the dreamer that the earth was going to be destroyed by a missile. The earth symbolised the body of the dreamer, the planets represented the men who appear at night in her life. As for the missile, it designated the tyrannical ideas of the dreamer who refused to enter into an ongoing relationship with a man.
The dream warned the young woman that she had to change her conception of love relationships: in fact, she was putting her life as a woman in danger by refusing to make room for the man, by refusing to engage in a lasting relationship that was not just for pleasure. The dream advised her to learn how to build a bond with man.
The study of this dream led us in conclusion to ask ourselves the question:
Would there be a relationship between the outside world and the inside world?
Could the quality of our outer earthly environment be related to the quality of our inner life, which the alchemists called "our inner earth", whose other name is the unconscious?
Would our outer earth be sick because our inner earth, our unconscious, is mistreated?
And now here's a new dream that may come to give us some more information. He came in 2011 to answer the direct and unambiguous dream incubation question right in the middle of our research topic:
"How to save our planet?"
Maud, the dreamer, had received a long and detailed dream in response. It is now up to me to present this dream and its interpretation. Despite my concern to remain succinct, the study is a bit long, but it is worth reading it through to the end.
Dream
I find myself on a gravel road, deserted, and I turn left. I hear a rustle and see a dustbin. I tell myself it must be a rat. It doesn't bother me. I'm sure it's going to run away when it hears me approaching. I stop in front of the rubbish bin and look for the rat.
Instead of a rat I find a small hole in the planks of the rubbish bin at road level.
There is a tiny elephant in the hole.
How can it be so small? It's a perfect elephant! I am baffled. I can hear the clinking of the chain it is attached to.
I bend down to greet it and touch it with my fingers.
A new creature tumbles out of the hole. What is it? It's a monkey, tiny too. It fits easily in my hands. I can feel its silky fur under my fingers and I'm happy to meet it.
And here comes another creature out of the hole again.
Oh, he's a miniature human. Could it be a gnome, a leprechaun? I help him to get back on his feet, but he doesn't like it at all and he gives me a "scolding".
What is this fairy tale and what does it have to do with healing the planet?
This is the incubation question that we must constantly keep in mind during the interpretation.
Interpretation
I am on a gravel road, deserted. I turn left.
By incubating a dream Maude has entered the natural and solitary path of dreams; she moves away from the right, from the conscious outside world, from its order, its mastery and its conceptions, to move to the left, towards a world of another order, towards the unconscious world that will answer her question: how to save our planet.
The dream then draws her attention:
I hear a rustle and see a dustbin.
First answer: if it is a question of pretending to save the planet, then the dustbin must be taken into consideration. Which is to say?
The dustbin contains everything you don't want, everything that you voluntarily reject because you think it is dirty, rotten or useless.
Isn't this how the dreamer, influenced by the prevailing conceptions, pictures her unconscious?
I will not tire of recalling these words of Jung at the end of his life:
"Sigmund Freud' ideas confirmed most people in their contempt for the unconscious psyche. Before him, its existence was ignored or neglected. Now it has become a moral rubbish dump. This modern point of view is certainly narrow-minded and unjust. It doesn't even coincide with the known facts."
This rubbish bin on the left, on the solitary road, therefore represents in the dreamer what she considers to be her unconscious, which, as some therapists claim, is filled with dirty memories and experiences, traumas, negative rubbish, which we must get rid of.
The dream would therefore invite the dreamer to pay attention to the rubbish that would soil her unconscious.
I tell myself that it must be a rat. It doesn't bother me. I'm sure it will run away when it hears me approaching. I stop in front of the rubbish bin and look for the rat.
- Could the rat, which lives underground, symbolise the male sex?
- It runs around and bites: could it indicate the sexual desires that nibble at the flesh?
- The rat devours and destroys, so it could also represent gnawing negative thoughts, worries and sorrow that eat you up.
Anyway, Maude, who feels strong, is convinced that if she looks into her unconscious, she will chase away this filthy rat, her repressed desires, her negative thoughts.
But the dream shows her something else.
Instead of a rat I discover, at road level, a small hole in the wooden planks of the dustbin.
The assembled planks have come apart and can no longer hold the enclosed contents that will escape at road level.
Why does the dream give this detail: at road level, at ground level?
What the dream wants to show lies neither in the aerial heights of various intellectual conceptions, nor in the spheres of moral ideals or disembodied pseudo-spiritualities. The dream asks the dreamer to look at what is at the very bottom.
If, therefore, she claims to be helping to save the planet, she must first lower her head, look down, humbly, and take into consideration earthly life, the life of the body, the "low" instinctive realities, thrown away in the dustbin.
And what is it that is stirring and making noise in the unconscious bin?
Three beings different from humans appear successively. Two animals and a gnome: they are therefore instinctive vital dynamisms that she has thrown away in the dustbin.
These beings are all three tiny. Why?
Their size indicates that the dreamer finds it difficult to grasp, to measure these unconscious dynamisms within her. She does not recognise their dimension and underestimates them.
Let's take a look at these three creatures.
There is a tiny elephant in the hole.
According to the Buddhist myth that the dreamer knows well, the white elephant is the image of the god Ganesha who was the father of Buddha, it symbolises earthly wisdom.
No other animal has a larger mass of flesh. No other is in such broad contact with the earth, its realities and laws, as this pachyderm with enormous feet is. Its trunk and huge ears indicate that it sniffs, smells and hears the subtle world better than anyone else. It has its feet firmly on the ground, it follows his nose and listens to its intuition.
The elephant thus designates the incarnate spiritual instinct. How then can the spirit be received and experienced in the flesh, if the earthly body is not large and strong enough to receive it?
Yes, but here's the thing...
The elephant is tied up.
The dreamer doesn't even care that she has chained her intuitive abilities, she considers them as rubbish and trash and condemns them to oblivion. But the dream reminds her of their existence.
I bend down to greet the elephant and touch it with my fingers.
Thus the dream suggests to her to recognise this intuitive force in her that she has excluded, to become aware of it, to contact it, to greet it by bending down with humility.
This is the first task to be carried out to save the planet.
Under these conditions, if Maud gets in touch with her instinctive "nose", her intuitive wisdom, then she allows another faculty to present itself immediately:
A new creature tumbles out of the hole. What is it?
It's a monkey, also tiny. It fits easily in my hands. I can feel its silky fur under my fingers and I'm happy to meet it.
Now the dreamer gets in touch with sensations and inner perceptions, she finds pleasure in caressing the body of this small animal: thus the dream reminds her of the reality of the sensual pleasures that her female body can experience.
With the elephant the dream has just evoked intuitive faculties and wisdom. Could these qualities be related to sensual pleasures? According to various current research on this subject, orgasm would make women more intelligent. (1)
Thus with the two little animals, the dream invites the dreamer to rediscover instinctive reactions, everything that is experienced in the body: feelings, sensations, emotions, dreams, precognitions, premonitions, intuitions and inspirations, which are expressed in the inner world.
These are the spontaneous manifestations of the unconscious. But the dreamer, who does not understand and control them, has condemned them on the conscious and rational level and has excluded them in the dustbin.
And here comes another creature out of the hole again.
Oh, he's a miniature human. Could it be a gnome, a leprechaun?
The word gnome is a combination of two Greek roots: genomos meaning "inhabitant of the earth", "earth-dweller", and gnōmē meaning "thought, intelligence". The gnome possesses great knowledge of the telluric secrets, he is the spirit of the earth, he knows its secrets and laws, he knows where the underground treasures are hidden, which he can also give to humans. He therefore symbolises the spirit of the unconscious, whose resources and creativity exceed our conscious intelligence.
He falls into the dust and I help him to get back on his feet, but it makes him angry and he gives me a scolding.
The dreamer thinks she's doing the right thing by helping the gnome up, but he makes her understand that he doesn't need her services. He even gives her a scolding. Why is this?
The gnome, the spirit of the earth, does not need her services, which annoy and irritate him.
So what can we deduce from all these images and this scenario?
Maud asks for a dream that will allow her to help save the planet. An elephant and a monkey appear, coming out of a bin.
These animals show her that the spontaneous and natural unconscious life, both spiritual and animal, has been soiled and rejected. In order to help planet earth, Maud should therefore first take care of herself, welcome her "nose", her intuition, her feelings, and also the pleasures of her sensuality. She should concretely give back to her physical and spiritual instincts their rightful place.
Then the dream introduces her to a gnome, the spirit of the earth, which possesses the intelligence of its secrets and laws. It is he who knows whether the planet is sick or not. It is he who knows what to do if the planet is sick.
In fact, with all her good intentions, with her questioning to heal the planet, the dreamer annoys and irritates him. She disturbs him, she hinders him in his activity. What is she doing here? Why does she pretend to pick him up? He copes very well with his position on the floor. He hasn't asked her for anything. He doesn't need her. Let her leave him alone, he knows what he has to do, he can stand up by himself if he feels like it.
And she, let her mind her own business, let her take care of her own land, her intuition and the pleasure of her senses, let her be aware and respect the instinctive manifestations of her body instead of judging them as dirty and rejecting them.
The spirit of Nature is furious that Maud wants to meddle in its business, the earth. What does she know about the plans and laws that govern it? How can she dare to claim to save the earth when, with her rational conscience, she is not even capable of understanding the intelligence of nature? Has she not thrown everything that is earthly and instinctive into a dustbin?
Do we not again recognise the arrogance of the conscious which believes itself to be omniscient, omnipotent and able to save the earth, thus acting like it is the master of the earth?
And here, as in the previous dream, we come to ask ourselves the question:
Would our outer earth be sick because our inner earth, our unconscious is mistreated?
Conclusion
Don't be surprised if my study does not go in the direction of certain current ideas shared by the dreamer. I have already told you: the dream has precisely the unpleasant habit of drawing attention to exactly what we don't think, what we don't see, what we don't know, which is nevertheless of vital importance. It invites us to broaden our minds and to welcome other ways of seeing and conceiving.
For my part, I loved this dream. It gives relief and confidence. It shows that Nature knows what it has to do and does not need our help, which only bother it. Nature is wiser than we are.
Jung said:
"I'm not one of those people who believe that they have to make sure that cherries have stems.
I stand here, watching what nature is capable of".
And if now it is the cherry tree in the garden that is sick, what can we do to save it? A burning question that a dreamer once asked her dream.
Next time we'll see what the unconscious has to say about it...
Notes
Illustrations
I would like to thank the painters and photographers whose works allowed me to illustrate my blog.
The proposal, a painting by contemporary Scottish artist Jack Vettriano: http://tillart.co.uk/
Healing the planet: http://christinekane.com/
Rubbish bin: https://fr.123rf.com/
"The unconscious is a moral bin": http://koreus.com/
Miniature elephant: http://wadbuzz.com/
Elephant: http://fondecran.biz/
Monkey: http://en.123rf.com/
The two paintings of the young women are the work of the contemporary Russian artist Serge Marschenikov: https://www.pinterest.fr/chris91610033/serge-marshennikov/
Gandalf: http://arwen.undomiel.com/
Jung: http://babelio.com/
Remark
I have taken up here the study of this dream that I published on my French blog in June 2013. Today I have tried to give you the essential marrow of it.
The current version was published on the French blog on 23 october 2019:
http://christiane-riedel.blogspirit.com/archive/2019/10/23/sauver-la-planete-etude-2-3142943.html