The dream takes place in a strange foreign land more than one hundred years ago.  I am traveling with an unseen companion.  I have been to a doctor’s house and would like to return.  I begin a very long and convoluted journey, one fraught with many obstacles.  I enter a labyrinthine city and have  extraordinary adventures.  I walk along a road which takes me down to another level.  I enter a very crowded old building with many stories and rooms and want to take a bath but the upstairs bathroom is crowded with nude homosexuals so I cannot bathe.  We come upon a heavily guarded fortified house protected by barbed wire where we meet a soldier who takes us to a room full of important people.  I think that I am in the right neighborhood.  We leave the house and follow a road that leads to a freeway under construction.  We pass two blue green mosques or temples and I realize I am in India, perhaps Calcutta.  I think we must be getting to our destination but we aren’t.  Near a crowded transportation terminus we come upon an emaciated and exhausted boy soldier with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a poverty-stricken young woman hanging on his shoulder. He is pointing a rifle at nothing at all.  He has been pointing it for so long he has completely forgotten what he is doing.  I gently lift the rifle and give his tired arms a rest. When I relieve him of his burden he becomes conscious and looks at me with amazed eyes.

 

This wonderful dream is coming from a very deep level of the Unconscious.  I have a strong feeling that it is based on things that happened in the distant past, perhaps long before I was born.  The crowded, convoluted, labyrinthine, complex houses and cities symbolize the Unconscious.

 

It’s theme is the quest for spiritual healing symbolized by the desire to find a ‘doctor’s house.’ I am accompanied by an ‘invisible companion,’ which is obviously the Self.  It invisibly observes everything that happens. The first part of the dream probably symbolizes the period from my birth in this life until my awakening at age twenty six.  It involves the search for something to complete me in the world. I first experiment with fear based (barbed wire, soldier) energies (step down to a lower level) but reject them. I reject sex as unclean.  Although I am attracted to power (the right neighborhood) I pass by it too.

Eventually I find myself on a freeway.   A freeway is the dream’s way of symbolizing the road to freedom.  When I was twenty six I had a powerful epiphany and began to seek God.  This freeway is a religious or spiritual path indicated by the green/blue temples.  Green is well known as a symbol for regeneration and healing.  ‘Two’ in dreams usually indicates an emphasis, something that is very important.  Or they may mundanely simply symbolize two trips to India before my enlightenment.  The healing that needs to be done, however, the healing that will set me free, is clearly stated in the final extraordinary scene of the dream. 

 

The emaciated young soldier and the poverty-stricken young girl is my ego and a lower anima.  The ego and the negative parts of the Unconscious are inextricably intertwined.  The Unconscious veils the Self and as a result one performs self insulting actions in one’s quest for happiness.  These actions clutter the unconscious and the ego becomes convoluted, impure and spiritually starved. 

 

This ego (the emaciated boy) is ‘the doer,’ in this case a negative self idea.  What is that idea?  That life is a threat and the way to respond to it is to point your finger (rifle) at it.  The pointed rifle symbolizes denial, anger and violence, which afflicted me when I was young.  This ‘young soldier’ has been completely exhausted by his fears, by his dualistic view of life.  As a result of indulging his fears he has become unconscious.  It is my job to relieve him of his burden.  It is the primary purpose of the spiritual journey to free one’s mind of the belief in duality and doership.  There is nothing more exhausting than fear and unconscious action.  When I remove this ‘weapon’ there is great relief and the ego wakes up (‘becomes conscious and looks at me with amazed eyes’).