SORRY, THAT IS NOT MY GARBAGE!

I'm on my small boat anchored in a safe ocean estuary. A mess of garbage has washed up on a neighboring boat which belongs to a brown-skinned Asian woman, an ex-girl friend. She accuses me of dumping it on her boat. I give her the following explanation: these ugly things accumulated when I was ignorant of who I was. But they no-longer belong to me because I am the Self and not the person I formerly was, the one who created the mess. She is satisfied with this explanation. We walk off together arm in arm though a city square. She goes ahead and when she turns to face me she is no longer a brown Asian but she has become a white European. She slowly begins to dance, her arms waving gracefully like the tentacles a sea anemone.

COMMENTS

Vehicles often signify the ego, the vehicle through which the Self functions in this world. In this case the dream presents the ego as a small boat. It is ‘small’ in the sense that it is limited whereas the Self is vast and limitless. That it is ‘anchored in a safe ocean estuary means that it is solidly centered on the Self. The Self is a safe haven from the ever-changing sea of life. The neighboring boat is the Unconscious mind. It is a ‘neighbor’ to the Self in the sense that it is the most subtle manifestation of the Self. It is captained by a mature brown-skinned woman, an old girlfriend. The Unconscious is commonly symbolized by a woman. It is almost always associated with darkness because it is hidden from the conscious mind. Therefore the brown woman. She accuses me of dumping my garbage on her boat. This is very reasonable because the Unconscious is not only the source of all positive energies but it is the storehouse of all negative tendencies as well.

The question that the dream raises is: to whom do these negative tendencies belong? Do they belong to anybody? It is an important question because a person who identifies with them is bound to suffer. On the other hand denial causes suffering too since they will not dissipate until they are acknowledged and accepted. So how does one insulate oneself from them so that one can live a happy life? In the dream the dream ego says that these ugly things accumulated when I was ignorant of who it was and now it has realized it is the Self and not the one who made those mistakes.

The dream does not continue with this line of reasoning but it is reasonable to mention that a Self realized person will not act in a selfish egoic way and therefore over time the negative subconscious tendencies will exhaust, reducing psychic ‘pollution.’ In fact a Self realized person behaves beautifully and his or her Unconscious eventually become luminous...as the good impressions slowly replace the unholy ones.

This process is suggested in the next to last dream symbol. The anima, which was formerly brown, turns white. This is a transformation that is spoken of in the alchemical texts. Self knowledge transforms one's relationship to one's negative psychological stuff. The dark cruicible of the Unconscious put on the fire of spiritual work (self inquiry) purifies (turns white) as the base metals (one’s psychic ‘stuff’) cooking in it are transformed into gold (wholeness, happiness).

In the last segment of the dream the anima and I walk off together through a ‘public square.’ This means that when the Self and the Unconscious are in harmony one can live happily in the world. Life becomes a beautiful ‘dance’ when the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious is healed. In the dream there is a wonderful feeling of happiness and when I wake up I feel that I have understood something important.