Chapter 48. Pinched

For Jung, as for Freud, dreams are the clearest expression of the unconscious mind.

“Dreams,” he wrote, “are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche…

they show us the unvarnished natural truth.” (Vol. 10. P. 149)

By reflecting on our dreams we are reflecting on our basic nature. 

- A Primer of Jungian Psychology  

You may recall: I tend to try hard, work hard. So also do others; I know I’m not alone. My performance orientation stems from an urge to get it right, to figure it out, to make all things good, to work until it is good. 

So it possibly is not terribly surprising that eventually, after nearly a decade of working hard on relationships and more, a dream comes.

Over the years, dreams have become increasingly significant to me. My theory is that because I have too long tended toward the rational, and have not let my intuitive instinctual self speak, I often need dreams to communicate the deeper truths.

In 2008, when a therapist declares, “You have good dreams!” I begin more seriously to consistently appreciate the bizarre images of my night mind. These dreams that come do NOT make me special, rather they are given as gifts to bypass my daytime mind’s preoccupations. God in kindness beams light through my dense fog of rationality, through that place of “in my head.”

Richard Rohr says that transformation takes place in liminal space "where God can best get at us because we are out of the way."  

I’ve learned to give attention and gratitude for luminous dreams that zoom under the radar of head space and get me to heart. This dream, along with being a truly important one for me, also makes me laugh.

DREAM. November 2008

I'm trying to make my way in a city, riding on an elephant. 

Suddenly the elephant lies down. 

When I say, "Am I crushing you yet?" it says, "To tell the truth, my back is a little pinched."

I journal:

What might the elephant be to me?

First words that come to my mind in describing elephants: hard working, ugly, smelly. 

Going with this beast of burden idea, when counselor Peggy fleshed that out 

- “hard working, pulling a heavy load, only good for work, getting on its knees under the strain” – 

the phrase “only good for work” brings me to tears. 

I’ve put that expectation on myself. There has been a persona/ego that has operated according to this idea of ‘only good for work.’ 

I’ve ridden an aspect of self too hard – this identity of doing and accomplishing and valuing work above most other ways to spend time – that part of me is tired, pinched/uncomfortable, 

laying down.

I realize that I have seen myself as a beast of burden, only good for what I can get done or accomplish. I’ve weighed down that worker part of me (the elephant in the city) with expectations. For now though, the elephant is “grounded.” 

What might I learn in being grounded? Ground is associated with the more base, dirty, shitty, dark, moist, but also it is fertile, Mother Earth, feminine.

What might the elephant reveal to me?

Elephants certainly can do hard work. In the city (the city being the collective, the world we try to fit into, the way I’ve navigated in my world thus far), elephants are put to work, as with circus elephants. 

They can do that for a time, but that’s not their native/natural realm.

 

I’m tired of operating in that work-always, non-natural realm. Time for me to go to my native self, my instinctual or unharnessed self? What are the under-developed parts of my person? My nature? 

What needs to be noticed, asserted? 

Is it time for me to play?

 “The persona is the mask or façade one exhibits publicly, with the intention of presenting a favorable impression so that society will accept him…

 

The role of the persona in the personality can be harmful as well as beneficial. If a person becomes too involved and too preoccupied with the role he is playing, and his ego begins to identify solely with this role, the other sides of his personality will be shoved aside. 

Such a persona-ridden person becomes alienated from his nature, and lives in a state of tension because of the conflict between his overdeveloped persona and the underdeveloped parts of the personality…

On the one hand the person has an exaggerated sense of self-importance which derives from playing a role so successfully. He is “putting it over’ on people…

The persona has to be deflated in order to let the other sides of one’s nature assert themselves.”  

-          A Primer of Jungian Psychology P 45-46

         

A tendency to work hard has served me well in some aspects – I’ve clawed and keep at relationships and I’ve attempted to better me and my world. 

But there are seasons for all ways of being: a time to work and a time to rest.

I want to take a break from pushing myself so hard. 

Want to let life flow, more toward tranquility and presence. 

To move that direction, I’m helped by understanding factors that have contributed to my defaults, such as possibly how my heritage may have contributed to tendencies. 

Before that though, next comes a short chapter as a breather.