An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 34 February 3, 2012
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Last night I saw a couple of really bizarre movies. The movies I saw had neither title nor understandable story line, and as usual, like a French film noir, they left me feeling down and confused. The movies I saw last night, like every night, were my own dreams. Sometimes I like the films played on the projector screen inside my head, but most of the time I leave my own theater in the morning puzzled to say the least. I used to read books on dream interpretation, but I arrived at the conclusion that they were all about other people’s private movies, and I returned to just feeling puzzled with my own private, bizarre film collage.
It wasn’t until I began to practice regular crying and grieving when I awake in the morning that I began to understand and appreciate my dreams. I learned that my own private projector room in my mind is my own private projector room in my mind, and the dream interpretation people have never seen any of my own private screenings. I realize now that we all have similar architecture and interior design, and even similar hardware to screen our unconscious films, but I am sure that our own software and the meanings they represent are distinct to each one of us.
Similar to daytime films at the cinema, dreams are an emotional experience. If we were to go to the hospital and have our emotions removed like we have wisdom teeth removed, we would all sit there looking at the screen like big couch potatoes. As a matter of fact I have seen myself in the mirror during Hollywood film viewing, and even with all my emotions, I look just like a big couch potato. Sometimes I look like a big potato with tears welling up in my eyes, sometimes a potato with my mouth gaping open like I’m trying to catch a fly, and other times my big couch potato eyes are wide open with surprise or fear.
When I awake in the middle of the night or in the morning I try to memorize my midnight bed potato feeling. “I am scared”. “I am trapped”. I am worried”. “I feel nostalgic happiness”. “I am powerful”. Then, if I have the time, I just lie there and dwell on scared or happy or powerful. If I dwell long enough inevitably I begin to hear words from my inner voice. I think how terrified I felt in my dream, and the terror returns. I stay with the terror, and my voice might say, “I’m all alone”. I then say over and over “I’m all alone”, and the terror increases even more. Then another word or phrase comes to me, and I say that. Soon I’m able to escalate my morning post dream time, and inevitable I begin to scream, or cry, or laugh, or just bask in happiness. Finally images begin to come to me of very old memories, or memories of things I had long repressed. At that time I enter into the conscious awareness of the issue or need, or trauma that I experienced unconsciously in my sleep. If I am able to consciously grieve or process and then integrate the dream experience into waking consciousness, I have then perfectly orchestrated the need and purpose of dreaming.
Each one of us is a beautiful shining projector light. Our light comes on when we are conceived, and our light stays on until the moment when we die. It is impressive indeed that it is commonplace for human projector lights to stay on for 80-120 years, and our bulb never needs changing. Our projector lights are visible during the day when we are awake, and we are called “conscious” of ourselves. When we fall asleep to recharge our batteries our projector light stays on, and instead of being aware of our own lights, we invert, and the inside of our minds, or our unconscious selves, project onto our own private dream theater.
Our unconscious mind is not supposed to be a mysterious place. If we were able to gestate for 9 months in the wombs of our mothers in ideal bliss, and birth and grow our whole lives in absolute perfection, we would have only one single mind day and night, and we would be “enlightened” full time and all the time. Our unconscious mind is our impregnable safe, locked in our deep freezer, and hidden behind a million defensive doors so that we may survive and grow up to function. Our unconscious mind is our own private dumping ground place where we can safely sweep our traumas and deprivations and unmet needs under the carpet so we can be safe and function on the outside.
I imagine my unconscious mind to be like a prism. Everything that has ever happened to me that I dare not know or remember is in my unconscious prism. All of the tragic scenes of my gestation and birth, all of heartbreaking abuses and little boy sadnesses are in my unconscious prism. When I fall asleep at night my own personal projector light shines through my prism and the light of me is refracted. Instead of all the pretty colors of the spectrum, what shines out onto the screen in my sleeping mind are refracted and distorted emotions, tied to repressed memories. In my unconscious, impregnable safe mind, deep frozen behind a million labyrinthic doors, I can now view my sorrows, I view my terrors, I view unfulfilled hopes and dreams, and I view the issues that are safely hidden from me during the day. It is no surprise that I receive disjointed collages of distorted emotions to make any film noir director envious. There are thousands of scenes in my and everyone else’s minds that are noir indeed.
So I know now that my dreams are me! My dreams are my own call for knowing, my own call for healing, my own call for once again becoming whole. The beautiful light of me that refracts through my hidden unconscious prism into dreams is as sign from below for me to continue to crack my own safe code, to continue to pull myself out of deep freeze, and to find my own wholeness and truth in hidden maze of me. Sometimes I go to bed at night distraught and miserable, and I dream of flying as a child and visiting all the people I miss. In the morning I cry for them and for me, and for the hope of my own child that never ever forgets what I used to dream about. Sometimes I go to bed smiling of gratitude for my good life that has been hard won, and I dream of icky monsters and running for my life. In the morning I scream and run from my fears wide awake, and eventually convulse in angry tears directed at so many people that would shell shock a child who only wanted to love and be loved.
I really love and hate my dream process, just like I so often love and hate my own me process. I wonder what I am going to dream tonight? I wish I could predict it. A comedy or a sweet tear jerker would be nice. I keep asking my unconscious prism projector room for titles and credits and a story line that I can follow, let alone a cheesy Hollywood ending. But I always get the same answer back. I have to wait until morning when I awake, and face myself with all brand new scenes and experiences to add to the overall film of me. I hope I never stop dreaming.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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