The dream is set in Kowloon in the high-rise area
near the Star Ferry with a panoramic view of the ocean. The city is wind-swept and immaculate after
a hard tropical rain, glowing fresh and new.
I'm
a gigantic person almost as big as the very tall slowly-moving high-rise
skyscraper to which I'm hanging on for dear life by the tips of my fingers.
I'm in an intense state of consciousness and exhilarated by the fear
of falling to my death. My body is flying out in space like a cartoony flag whipped by a great wind. As the building to which I am clinging slowly
approaches other buildings I want to attempt a leap to safety but an intuitive
feeling tells me hang tight. I know
my desire to jump is an illusion and that to follow it would be to die. I am terrified but can see the building slowly
and mechanically gliding along in the direction of safety. It eventually makes contact and I easily step
to safety.
Next
I'm trying to find some destination and get on a bus at the stand next to
the Star Ferry. The bus driver speaks
no English. I meet a an expensively
dressed Tibetan man, Chogyam Trungpa, with his two sons and Western wife with greying hair who speaks understandable but poor English.
The woman resembles my real life lover.
The boys are carbon copies of the father - very wholesome and polite.
The mother is a murky indistinct person who only looks at me briefly
and then averts her eyes. She seems
quite uncomfortable. The husband
and I speak.
The
scene changes and I am now leading two companions on a sight-seeing tour
of the oldest and tallest building in Old London, a kind of railroad terminus. To get to the top we climb over spiked railings
and stair-like places. Everything
is absolutely filthy with excrement, the stench disgusting.
In expectation of a good view we climb up and up over more iron-spiked
fences and eventually reach the top. We
are disappointed. We see only a high roofed-in space blackened
with many pieces of foul-smelling shit.
I apologize to my companions for taking them here.
We
decide to get down and suddenly realize we're incredibly high-up, even higher
than the top of this terminus. We
are frozen with fear. Just looking
down and out over the city takes the breath away and paralyzes the limbs. Movement is impossible without getting contaminated
with shit. The way down is treacherous
and leads over a flimsy gate-like device. The roof is no longer a roof but an unstable
mass of vertical flaking crusty dried shit to which I am forced to cling.
One
companion starts to climb down over the gatelike
device and makes it to relatively safety still thousands of feet up. One false move means instant death. The other takes hold of the hokey ramshakle spit-and-baling-wire device which suddenly breaks. But instead of hurtling to his/her death he/she
miraculously somehow manages to alight on a safe spot. This leaves me alone above clinging to the mass
of flaking dried shit. I hate touching
this stuff but realize I can only descend if I hold on. So, with the encouragement of my companions,
I bravely grab a hold only to discover that it stabilizes and provides a
safe way down. I carefully and skillfully
work my way down to and wake up.
COMMENTS
If you believe in falling in love this amazing
dream is not for you. Or maybe it
is. It occurred shortly after I fell in
love and is the Self’s view of this peculiar ‘high flying’ state of
consciousness. It is a wonderful dream
in so far as it shows how compassionate the Self actually is; It is trying to
warn me about the dangers of a middle-aged love affair that is going to end
badly. Unfortunately, I was not skilled in dream language and was probably too
willful at the time to avoid a love affair based on dream information.
The dream has chosen Hong Kong to represent the ‘in
love’ location because it was the playground for my first big love. The fact that the city is fresh and new means
that the dream is talking about a new love.
‘In love’ is a very unnatural state.
It inflates the ego. To show this
the dream turns my ego into a ‘gigantic person’ on top of a very tall
building. When you are in love it feels
good to be so 'big' but at the same time it is a scary state because at any
moment it can collapse, like a pricked balloon. This dream presages the whole
love affair…which did crash several months later…and the dreamwork
that followed. I had been in love before
so I knew that eventually I would be 'safe' from this dangerous state of
mind. Therefore the dream has me 'hang
on' and I 'come down' safely. I find it
interesting that when you are out of love you consciously want to be in love
but when you are in love you subconsciously want out of it.
In the next scene I’m trying to find my way out (the bus terminal)
of the love affair. My lover, the mother
of two boys, is presented by the dream as a 'murky indistinct person.’ This
means that when you are in love you don't really know what is going on in the
other person's mind. But all is not lost. By having the guru, Chogyam Trungpa, appear (he was
an actual lama who I met once and for whom I had regard) the dream is
foreshadowing the spiritual benefits that will eventually come out of this
disastrous love affair.
In the next scene we see that the affair leads
to the revelation of a lot of subconscious ‘shit.’
Dreams are often repetitive. The Self wants to make sure that you get the
message so it sometimes says the same thing in several different ways, just as
a teacher would give several examples to make a point. In the following scene we have a repeat of
the insane state of mind. It is almost
as if the Self were rubbing my nose in this ‘shitty’ situation.
But in spite of my discomfort I figure something
out and ‘get down’ from this inflated state.
The key to this dream is a very subtle symbol, one that I missed at
first. The dream ego realizes that 'I can only descend if I hold on.’ This represents a deep psychological truth;
there is value in everything, even ‘shitty’ subconscious stuff. In fact, as I mentioned in the introduction
to this dreamwork section of the website, the wound
from the failed love led directly to several years of intense dreamwork which in turn finished my purification work. The ‘companions’ with me on this journey are
the Self. They get down safely and reassure
the dream ego it too can survive this fear.
My ‘apology’ to them indicates the subconscious knowledge that I am
insulting my Self by taking the ‘in love’ state seriously.
The fear of falling out of love is completely frivolous. It is simply attachment to feeling good…which
is what ‘in love’ is all about. Any fool
knows this kind of love does not last forever but this does not stop the ego
from clinging to it.
ith
women flowered.