What follows is some material to help you study the Edinger text. The experiments will help you to integrate the ideas into living experiments within your own mind. You will learn that you are capable of original intuitions about God, your personal consciousness, and the relationship between the two.

CHAPTER 1: The New Myth

9-11: Today we have no functioning myth. How can you tell? Do you agree? Do you know if you are "contained" within the traditional Christian myth? Do you know what a myth is?

12: The author says that Jung’s myth will become everyone’s myth in the future. Do you see any signs of that becoming true?

` Dream Incubation experiment: To what extent are you contained in the old myth and to what extent is your being grasping toward the new myth? Do the following journal exercise before going to bed, then see what dream you have. Try interpreting the dream in terms of the question posed. Write out a dialogue with God, telling God the role you think sHe plays in your life and what role God thinks you play in His/Her life. Tell God where your are disappointed in him(her) and let God tell you where sHe is disappointed in you. In your dialogue, you and God discuss the idea of the old and the new myth. Which elements of each do you and God prefer?

` 14-15: Try on this pair of contrasting fantasies: (1) Imagine that you are responsible for helping the sun to make its way across the sky during the day, and waiting for it during the night. Allow yourself to experience this relationship and notice how you feel about yourself and your relation to life. (2) Imagine that all your cells and their activity, and all your brain cells and the resultant thoughts you have, are all part of a "clockwork universe" ticking along in a mechanically determined fashion. Notice how you feel about yourself and your relationship to the universe.

Discussion: Why would the author call the Indian myth a precursor to the new one? What aspects of the clockwork fantasy can you recognize as our dominant scientific worldview? How do the two fantasies contrast in terms of how you feel about your self, how you experience yourself and your being?

` 15: Existence is only real if it is conscious to someone. Imagine a world that exists with no one to be conscious of it. What is that world like? Now have your mind enter that world and be conscious of it. What happens? What do you feel about yourself being the element of consciousness in that world? Is there any feeling of responsibility, of loneliness? What else?

17: The purpose of human life is to expand consciousness. On what basis is the author making this claim? How does this claim relate to Cayce’s notion that we are to become "co-creators" with God? Do you agree with the author’s thesis? Why or why not?

17: "...consciousness is somehow born out of the experience of opposites." This is an important premise. Be sure that you understand it.

` 17-18: Consciousness is created by opposites. Find an example from your own life, where one attitude opposes another (eg, I want to be generous, but find that I am "selfish;" or, "I say I want to stop smoking, but yet I continue to smoke;" or, "I love my spouse, but I can’t stand to be around my spouse;" or "I want to grow and change, but I am secure the way I am because I am familiar with it."). Let the two sides dialogue intently (use the journal method from the Dream Realizations workbook) to see what new consciousness arises. You need to see both points of view simultaneously without taking sides. Let yourself be "crucified" to the contradictions before you go to sleep and see what dream you have. Interpret the dream to see what new increment of consciousness has been created.

17: "I understand consciousness to be a substance, a psychic material usually but not always invisible and intangible to the senses." This strange notion is related to the other important point that there is such a thing as psychic reality. Often it is said, "the psyche is real." This notion of psychic reality is the foundation of understanding the meaning of an "inner life." One parallel idea in the Cayce readings is the statement that "thoughts are things."

18-19: Being able to experience both sides of the opposition simultaneously gives birth to consciousness, as symbolized by the philosopher’s stone. The philosopher's stone is a symbol for the consciousness of wholeness. What makes that image an appropriate symbol for consciousness?

21: An ego is needed as a vessel, or container, to hold the opposites. An ego is important to the creation of consciousness. How do you reconcile that statement with the familiar notion that spirituality involves transcending the ego?

22: Note the opposition between the crucified Christ and the meditating Buddha. Develop a fantasy in which you try to play both roles simultaneously, suffering your way through life and at the same time, transcending suffering. What is it like? How do you achieve both attitudes simultaneously? What new consciousness comes from holding this opposition?

23: "Traditionally God has been pictured as all-powerful and all-knowing...." Is this image of God part of your own belief system? Can you imagine an "unconscious God"? See if you can develop a fantasy in which God is unconscious. What is that God like?

24-27: Personal achievements in incrementing consciousness are not lost, but are transferred to a transpersonal realm. When one person grows in consciousness, we all grow. How do you think this might happen? "This will be the modern, more modest version of having an immortal soul." (p. 27). What do you think of the author’s theory? What would be the implications for reincarnation theory?

28-29: Read the dream slowly into a tape recorder, pausing between each sentence. Then practice some relaxation, such as the autogenics, and then play back the tape recording of the dream. Allow yourself to experience the dream fully, as if it were happening to you. Allow your imagination to fill in all the details. Afterwards, note how you feel? Comment on the author’s statement, "It is a collective dream expressing the state of the collective psyche." (p. 29). Use dream interpretation techniques to develop your own interpretation of the dream and compare them with the author’s interpretation.

How is god affected by your consciousness of God’s presence in your being? Try to imagine a situation in which you become aware of God’s presence and notice the effect upon God and upon you. Repeat this process in two specific settings--one in which you might expect to have a religious experience (eg. a mountain top), and one in which you would never expect to have such an experience (eg. a garbage dump), and notice what you observe.

CHAPTER 2: The Meaning of Consciousness

36-: Knowing and being known are the two aspects of knowing the author discusses. Try to state in your own words the difference between the two. Can you find examples in your daily life of both? How is knowing a "power"? What "power" do you have over your friend when you know something about them? How do you give someone power over you when you confide in them a secret?

The author says consciousness requires being able to engage in two "opposites" simultaneously. Explain what he means.

Examine the following affirmation from the Cayce readings and compare with the ideas from this chapter: "Father, as we seek to see and know Thy face, may we each, as as individuals and as a group, come to know ourselves, even as we are known, such that we, as Lights in Thee, may give the better concept of Thy Spirit in this world."

37: "The ego separates...and the act of knowing thus becomes possible." Why does the ego need to separate first before knowing is possible? Is there a "feminine" way of knowing that is not based upon separation?

38: "The ability to turn an unconscious...for increasing consciousness." Here is a statement concerning the crux of having an "inner life." How might dreams, meditation, and the imagination help with this process?

38-39: When we are in a mood, we are in the grip of some unconscious factor. Try lying down and letting the energy of your mood evolve into a fantasy. Let your mood express itself in the images of a fantasy. Look at the images and contemplate their meaning. Use this interpretive stance to come to know the source and meaning of your mood. Note if the feeling of your mood has been changed. "To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into images--that is to say, to find the images which were concealed in the emotions--I was inwardly calmed and reassured." (Quoting Jung on page 39)

 40: Develop a fantasy in which you examine yourself in a mirror. What do you experience? Become the mirror. What is that like? Examine your dreams for a mirror symbol. Interpret that dream with your new understanding of "mirroring."

41: Develop a fantasy of being known--imagine being face to face with a loving, all-wise therapist. Talk to the therapist. After each statement you make, imagine the therapist’s response, "What I hear you saying is..." which shows the therapist knows you and what you are saying even more deeply than you do. allow yourself to experience being known in that manner. How does it feel? What do you observe? Does your own self-knowledge seem to increase?

42-44: Do a meditation-fantasy on the image of the eye. Probe the meaning of eye as a symbol of consciousness. Explore two eyes facing themselves, knowing and being known. The eye is an organ for light, but also implies a seer. (Imagine a remote control camera, with a computer image analyzer, such that it makes an alarm go off when a person passes)--is their consciousness? There is an eye and there is light that is being received, and there is appropriate response to the light images. Imagine a person who has worked out all their conflicts, so they naturally respond spontaneously in an appropriate manner to all that confronts them--they never have to think about it. Here is a fantasy of merging with the world, being almost invisible (the self is no problem)--there is no consciousness here. In both cases, there is a seeing and a responding, but is there a any knowing--the other aspect of seeing in the term sciere.

Practise the meditation of following your breath. Notice that when you attend to it, it seems as if you are controlling it. Can you follow it without controlling it? Your ego gets in the way with a control image. How can you distinguish the experiences of the ego from the effects of an ego?

44: "...the realization that one is not alone in the unconscious..." Consider the relationship between the eye and the snake (and to know meaning intercourse)--how can you relate the two in a fantasy? What would the bite of the snake be? Have you ever feared that certain knowledge about yourself would destroy you to know?

The eye of God, the eye of Horus, wanting to avoid being the subject of knowledge. Fantasy exercise: Imagine an eye hovering over you, examining you--what do you find yourself fearing?

55: Using Jung’s two dreams as a starting point, develop a fantasy about a reciprocal projection--for instance, an eye of God floating in the sky--you are its creation and it is imagining and knowing you, and you are imagining and knowing it. Let the situation sink into your imagination, like it did with Jung, and try to get a feeling for consciousness as a two-way "knowing with."

56: Read slowly into a tape recorder the author’s fantasy. Allow yourself to experience the situation he is imagining. Expand it in detail in your own imagination. See how your fantasy can help you better envision the co-creative process of consciousness he is referring to.

58: The author quotes Jung as writing, "Man is the mirror which God holds up before him, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being." As you repeat this sentence a few times, watch your imagination go to work on it. Imagine your mind as being what is showing on God’s mirror. Allow the fantasy to elaborate itself. What images can you use to explain Jung’s statement and make it your own awareness of the purpose of human life?

CHAPTER 3: Depth Psychology as the New Dispensation

59-61: The author notes that Jung’s Answer to Job will bring about a change in the God image. But this work is not for those who are comfortably contained in the prevailing image of God. What is your God image? Is it based only on what you have been taught by your culture or is it also based on personal experience? Allow your imagination to reveal to you your God image. How would you draw it or diagram it? Try sleeping on your drawing to see if you have a dream that expands your consciousness concerning your God image.

62: Being related vs. being contained--If I sit IN the coffee cup, it holds me. If I hold the coffee cup, then I am outside of it and can reflect upon it, admire it, note its limitations, use it. Where you are "contained" by the cultural God image, you are unaware that you are so contained. Simply by becoming aware of where you are contained, you are no longer contained and can instead relate to the idea or image that once contained you. Can you attempt that challenge?

68: God is what is contrary to the desires and expectations of the ego. What is the author meaning by that? Do you agree? Why or why not?

69: Review the paragraph ("By reliving Job’s experience...), then develop a fantasy whereby by not succumbing to the common habit, you are able to recognize in your own personal experience that God is a phenomenon, and by so recognizing God, you increase God’s own self-awareness and in some way God reveals Himself to you more fully. How does your fantasy go?

69-70: What is the effect upon God of his encounter with Job? What do you think of the idea that Job is elevated above God and now God must "catch up"?

69: "God is a phenomenon and not a man." Develop a fantasy in which you experience God as a phenomenon. What kind of phenomenon do you imagine? What is the significance of the unconsciousness of the phenomenon? What does your own awareness of the phenomenon’s unconsciousness mean for the situation?

70: What is the realization that will take centuries to pass into general awareness? Can you develop a fantasy that will help it to enter your own awareness right now?

70-74: Read slowly into a tape recorder the vision of Ezekial. On page 74 it is explained how this vision pertains to God’s awareness that he needs to incarnate as a man. See if you can find the raw experience that gives rise to the symbols in the vision, can you experience God incarnating in YOU?

75-76: Repeat slowly into a tape recorder the dream of the gorilla. Allow yourself to experience this dream knowing that the gorilla is a symbol for the unconscious god. What is your feelings toward this ape as you encounter him and his plea?

77: The psychologist Erich Neumann gives one version of the culturally contained image of God, "...that what shines only in itself..." Allow yourself to experience this statement as a fantasy, see how you envision the statement. Find out to what extent you agree with it (i.e. are contained in the old myth). Then read Jung’s critique of this statement in the paragraph that follows ("Since a creation without a reflecting consciousness..."). Repeat your fantasy, taking into account Jung’s critique. See if your fantasy changes and how so? To what new or modified version of the God image does your fantasy evolve?

80: Part of the "crux of the matter" is that we believe that we are alone in the psyche, that everything we experience in the psyche we made up ourselves. Explore with your imagination your psyche--do you feel alone? Do you experience every thought, feeling and image as of your own creation? Here we encounter an apparent contradiction with "New Age" philosophies that assert, "we create our own reality!" Jung is suggesting that we too often take this statement in a way that is really the same old thinking in a new form, that is to say, that we are alone in the psyche. He maintains that it was Job’s NOT feeling guilty, as if it were his fault, that allows him to see God. Explore your psyche for a bit and experience everything as God’s own mind at work in yours, experience your mind as being out of your control, passively watch its activity (a form of meditation).

82: "the ego takes responsibility for the evil promptings of the Self in order that it (the Self) may be transformed." From whence is the judgment of evil? How can the Self--the God in us--be evil? What then is the nature of evil? Can you recognize an evil prompting from the Self? What does it feel like to take responsibility for it? How is taking responsibility different that feeling guilty, as if it is your fault? How does a parent feel guilty about the evil the child does? How is that different than assuming responsibility for the child’s evil?

83: Through Christ, God becomes man (as a result of the encounter with Job). How would you describe in your own words the ideas the author is trying to get across? Why is it that he says the incarnation is incomplete? What do you do with God’s dark side? Do you have trouble accepting the idea that God has a dark side? (If you find you are extremely troubled by this notion, but want to struggle with it some more, read Edward Whitmont’s The Return of the Goddess to learn more about the consequences of allowing only the good to be with God and ignoring the dark.)

84: "To the extent that one becomes aware of the transpersonal center of the psyche, the Self, and lives out of that awareness, one can be said to be incarnating the God-image." Comment on this statement. Do you agree or disagree? To what extent is this reality operating in your life?

84: Imagine being Christ’s brother or sister, standing next to Jesus, comparing notes, about how each of you has lived life to the fullest of your own individuality, each a unique experiment. How is this different from how you might ordinarily imagine being next to Jesus?

84-85: It sounds like the author is saying that to be full of God is to be full of conflict. Do you find this idea a surprise? What does the author mean by this statement?

Can you imagine God entering you through the splitting of opposites, making you full of conflict?

85: "The hallmark of individuation is the differentiation of the individual psyche from its containment in the collective psyche." What do you think the author is saying here? Can you give a concrete example?

 Sometimes a person has a dream in which they are taking a ride on a bus, or some other "collective" conveyance. Often the bus is interpreted as a collective value or orientation. Look through your dreams and see if you have any such dream themes. Can you interpret it with this in mind and see if you can find the collective dimension to your awareness?

85: What does it mean to "humanize" the energies from the psyche? The paragraph, beginning with the sentence, "The individuating ego is commandeered..." is very important, especially as it pertains to certain experiences that some people might associate with "spiritual" growth. In the next to the last sentence he writes, "...they are indistinguishable from so-called narcissism and infantile omnipotence." Have you ever, during a particularly creative moment, had some impression of yourself (one you really didn’t want to admit even to yourself because it is sort of embarrassing) as being very, very special, a genius, perhaps even a savior, or someone with an important, pre-ordained fate, an incredible mission that was unique to you? A fleeting feeling, and obviously overblown and certainly not true, but strangely, a nevertheless very real feeling, so real in fact that, in spite of your denial, there is a part of you that still really believes it--it was that real--no matter how faint, fleeting or unbelievable. That is part of the grandiosity of the unconscious self, and at those moments it has been excited. Many people become shy of themselves during such moments, because of fears concerning such inflations. Yet they can be responded to in much the same way a loving and knowing parent might respond to a young infant who was pounding its chest ("I am the greatest") in exuberance after some accomplishment, allowing for both (contradictory) realities.

86: "When the unconscious buffets us most severely with storms of affect or depression, we can also expect to find in dreams and fantasy the healing meaning that rescues." Note the sequence: (1) event and/or reaction, (when the unconscious buffets us--and the unconscious isn’t simply that domain between the ears); (2) image, via dream or reverie (3) meaning of the event (4) an awareness of meaning heals. Note that the author describes healing as a rescue. What does that image suggest to you about the nature of healing?

86: What is it like to want to become conscious, but not quite?

86-88: Consider the dream of the animal skin. Yahweh "manifests through man." Alternatively, we are "shoes for God." Develop a fantasy of your own that expresses this idea, that God incarnates through us, that our being is the mirror by which God sees itself. How do you feel providing this service? What is your attitude? Do you feel any responsibility toward God?

90: The Jewish epoch centered on the LAW, the Christian epoch focused on FAITH and now, the new epoch, the psychological one, focuses on EXPERIENCE. Do you see any evidence to support author’s statement? Do you agree or disagree with the idea?

CHAPTER 4: The Transformation of God

91: What does the author mean when he says that it is impossible to distinguish between God and the God-Image in the psyche? What are the implications of this statement?

93: What do you think of this quote from Jung, "God can be called good only inasmuch as He is able to manifest His goodness in individuals. His moral quality depends upon individuals."

94: "...the ego is given the strength and purpose to stand against the primitive Self through awareness of its sonship with the Self, which confers a sense of partnership in the mutual process of transformation." Note the similarity with the theme in the Cayce readings about our becoming co-creators with God. Note the role of the ego in this partnership.

94-95: Abraham confronting Yahweh about destroying innocent people is reminiscent of President Reagan’s reluctance to fight terrorism by bombing cities--innocent people would be destroyed. Bringing consciousness to bear upon anger feelings is an important part of the transformation process, although it creates a tremendous amount of inner tension.

98-99: God looks for a strong, conscious person to help in transforming the raw anger. In a sentence that goes to the core meaning of "the inner life," the author writes, "active imagination by an ego which is related to a self will help to transform the primitive affects of the primordial psyche." What does this mean to you? Develop a fantasy that expresses this theme.

Here is an experiment in consciousness that bears directly upon the matter of bringing light to anger and thus transforming the raw emotion. It is taken from an idea presented in E. Whitmont’s book, The Return of the Goddess. Begin by recalling a time when you were feeling very angry toward someone, especially a time when you didn’t know if you SHOULD feel angry (like maybe you wondered if the person really intended to hurt you). Now allow yourself to re-experience that anger. Next, allow the energy of your anger feelings to have full expression within the CONFINES of your active imagination. Unabashedly express your anger in a fantasy of revenge and retaliation. What would you like to do to strike back? The more spontaneous the fantasy, the more unrestrained and raw the revenge fantasy, the more revealing to you the fantasy will be. Now stand back from your fantasy and examine it. Treat it like a dream and interpret it. Assume that the reason you are angry is because some basic need of yours was violated, some imbalance was created, and that your fantasy of revenge was directed at correcting that imbalance. Interpret your fantasy with that assumption in mind. Discover what your need was and what you are trying, instinctively, to accomplish through your revenge. Finally, having gained consciousness of the situation, imagine talking to the person, not in anger, but in a straightforward assertion of the facts. Armed with your newly acquired consciousness, can you communicate effectively with the other person to achieve a resolution?101-102: Imagine being a Tantalus. Develop a fantasy in which you are "forever excited and forever denied." Experience the tension of the opposition in the fantasy. What is it like to contain this tension? In your fantasy, continue to contain the tension and see what happens. Is some new consciousness born?

102-103: Imagine being a Sisyphus, "burdened with a task beyond his power to consummate." Perhaps you have found yourself in such a predicament. Develop a fantasy in which you struggle valiantly to accomplish a job that can not be completed. What is the opposition that is felt? What is the effect of maintaining the tension? What happens?

Attempt a dream incubation on one of the opposition themes above as it may be active in your life at this time (a work situation, a family situation, an internal struggle). Before going to bed at night, write in your journal a dialogue between the opposing parts. Empathize totally with each side, but identify yourself with neither side--instead, try to see both sides simultaneously. Hold the tension as you go to sleep and see what dream comes. Interpret the dream and see what new bit of consciousness has arisen.

103-106: "The transformation of God is also the secret and essential meaning of alchemy." What do you understand of this assertion? Why is being "tortured" an essential aspect of this process? The author quotes Jung, "the divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding and ... man experiences it as punishment, torment, death and transfiguration." What experiences have you had that relate to this notion? What have you learned from such experiences?

106-107: Read into a tape recorder the dream of the boy stealing secrets in the father’s laboratory. Play back the dream as you use your imagination to enter the dream, experiencing it once from the son’s point of view, and then from the father’s. Experience the inevitability and unendingness of the process. What does enduring feel like? What comes of it? Note if your fantasy takes over and you find yourself reviewing a similar situation in your own life.

How does civilization’s pursuit of science fit into this theme of stealing secrets from nature? What are the implications?

108-109: "...each new conscious insight carries with it a new responsibility which weighs one down. Awareness is depressing, it buries one in the earth." What has your own experience taught you about this statement?

Develop a fantasy in which the advent of new light, a new awareness, leads to your being buried. What is your response, in the fantasy, to being so buried? What happens? Do you have a tendency to want to "rise above" the situation? Can you appreciate our inclination to take "flight" away from consciousness? Does this have anything to do with why God, according to our text, has some resistance to gaining consciousness?

111: The Leviathan is the yet unredeemed , untransformed God, the primordial psyche. Consider our new passion for whale watching.

Develop a fantasy of watching and then swimming with a whale. What happens? Note the types of urges you experience with regard to the whale. What does the whale experience? Reflect upon your fantasy afterwards to see what it might have to teach you regarding where you are in the process of helping God to transform.

112-113: Read into a tape recorder the dream of the giant bird. Then play back the recording as you imagine being in the dream. What feelings do you experience for the bird? Now read the dream of the black metal ring, then listen to it as you imagine it. How do you feel? Examine the ring and find out as much as your imagination will reveal about it. See what happens when you switch the two images. Put the ring in the bird dream, and the bird in the ring dream. Then, in each case, let your imagination explore the two objects. What is each like? Reflect upon your discoveries, and see what your fantasies add to the author’s life-and-death warning, "an adequate knowledge of the psyche is probably a matter of life and death..."

113: Study the last paragraph in the book. What experiment in consciousness might you try to change your reaction to the text from "an interesting idea" to "a living reality"?

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Experiment 12:

Dream Response to Chapter 1 & Dialogue with God

My dream following my critique and analysis of Chapter 1 was fascinating. I dreamt I was with another woman who was taking care of my younger son. In the dream he was about 2. He had gone to the bathroom but still had about 3 inches of feces hanging out. The woman criticized me and said "Look at this!" as if she was disgusted. Then I watched her furtively eat some of the feces. I asked someone about this later in the dream and was told that there are many people who eat feces.

The internalized mother part of my shadow is examining the young new awareness in me of the acceptance of good and evil. I went to do a natural function in the appropriate place and part of me that is smelly, gross and hidden was visible to the mother-shadow. I had my mother-shadow condemning the hidden part of myself outwardly but she was ingesting what was smelly, gross and hidden with guilt and secret pleasure. I have myself discovering that there are many aspects of myself that ingest this hidden and gross part of myself with guilt and secret pleasure.

This dream clearly represents the struggle going on with my opposites. It is a saga of the way I am handling good and evil within me. Outwardly I denounce the evil but I secretly indulge in it with guilt and pleasure. This is another key to the first work I did in this course on my eating disorder. My eating pattern perfectly represents this conflict.

This dream holds powerful clues as to what extent I am contained in the old Christian myth and to what extent I am grasping toward the new Jungian myth. The mother aspect of myself still operates within the Christian myth. She outwardly rejects the feces, the dark, the hidden aspect of self, but like Judas she compulsively betrays the Christ by eating the feces with guilt and secret pleasure. The child part of myself, the new myth, is doing something natural, in the right place and not hiding it. In fact it is hanging out there for all to see. Unfortunately the mother-shadow shames the young new self for exposing this darker side.

Me: God, my mental and spiritual interaction with you is a major daily aspect of my life. I spent years: reading about You, pondering Your existence and trying to merge with You. For years I feared of Your Will which frequently seems arbitrary and cruel. I feel guilty imagining that You are Judging my thoughts and actions. It is disturbing to contemplate you as an impersonal energy force of good and EVIL. I try to merge with Your consciousness but now I am afraid of the evil and darkness within You.

God: I watch life through your eyes and enjoy it. I see the beauty of my creation in the places you travel. I feel the enjoyment of human relationships which you foster. I enjoy experiencing your children and watching them grow and change. I enjoy seeing you handle the obstacles and challenges in your life.

Me: That is comforting because I imagine You as critical most of the time.

God: That critical function is an aspect of yourself. I am like someone watching a movie. I enjoy the conflicts, the protagonist, the antagonist. I enjoy seeing the plot. I like the character you play.

Me: Don’t you have any compassion for all the suffering you have caused?

God: I react to the suffering through your feelings and I experience what the reaction is between the sufferer and the perpetrator through you.

Me: God, you need to know that this detached attitude is horrible for the hungry, starving, warring, homeless people. Don’t you care how your creation has turned out? You create a being with intelligence and awareness and five senses and then they experience the positive and the negative for Your pleasure.

God: The laws of creation require a positive and a negative aspect in order to create separation. If everything was on the positive pole there would be no separation from Me. The negative must exist to pull out and separate and create the tensions. Then from the opposites come many other created forms. The opposites are the basis of creation. Just as when you cut a cookie out of dough with a cookie cutter you leave the hole in the dough. There is the positive cookie and the negative hole. The cookie separates from the dough, takes on individual shape and is baked but it is still essentially dough and has a polar opposite left on the counter. You have fallen out of creation in the same way. There is a negative hole that you left in consciousness when you separated. The longing you feel to merge with My consciousness is to get out of the oven and back to the dough.

Me: God, You told me once that when Light shines through a window it doesn’t break the window. I took that to mean that you are not doing the action, you are illuminating it and that man was responsible for the bad things that happen. But you originally created the evil that allows bad things to happen you are not guiltless. How do we cope with the bad until we are once again in unity with you?

God: Your inner guides led you to read the Ethics section in Robert Johnson’s Inner Work. Yes, I would like you to become conscious of all the energies within your psyche so that I may become totally conscious through you. I am not only asking you to make them conscious I am asking you to assert human ethics and Love when you do so. This will allow you to follow the Christ pattern as well as to make more of your psyche conscious. There is much which you have repressed thinking that a "good Christian girl" shouldn’t have thoughts and impulses like you do. Yes, you should experience these. I created them all, they are all natural impersonal forces you learn to master!

Me: I find mastering self-control to be very difficult.

God: I think you will find it easier now that you are not plagued with guilt that you have these impulses at all.

Me: Thank you but I am still bothered by all the suffering on earth. Is it really necessary?

God: It is inevitable in the three dimensional world of matter. You are not responsible for causing it but your service to those who suffer is part of Natural Law and you are responding correctly. When it is you that is suffering, ask for help from the unconscious, your guides and Me.

Attitude 1: God is a perfect being. He is a place and experience of complete repose. He is the knower of all knowledge, the compassionate and understanding Mind and Heart. God is complete and whole within Himself. God has a plan for this universe and it’s inhabitants. God created me, my soul, and is my spirit. God is completely wonderful.

Attitude 2: God is evolving. God is a phenomenon of pure energy and Light. God is impersonal and the matrix of all created and uncreated things. God creates multitudes and multitudes of physical objects and life forms as well as objects and life forms at higher frequencies of vibration. Some of the life forms are enormous complexes of consciousness called archetypes. They are reflected in Astrology, mythology, dreams and human behavior. God creates positive and negative energy or has the properties of positive and negative. This is reflected in astronomy (black holes, worm holes), nuclear physics (positrons, electrons), psychology (shadow, negative anima,animus). God is always changing and becoming.

1: God is watching over me and is aware of my soul history and my eventual return to Him. God puts the right people, books and experiences into my path through synchronicity. God is helping me to evolve into a perfectly loving, serving and intelligent being through my experiences on earth and in other worlds physical and non-physical. God sent Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Ptahotep, Mohammed to name a few that were beings that had evolved into perfection over many lifetimes. They were complete.

2: There is no completion. God is ever changing and evolving and I will also continually change and evolve through eternity. There are many, many more experiences that my individual soul will have including becoming part of collectives of souls. God is not "perfect" in the sense that he is a do-gooder. God is perfect because that’s all there is. I am free to express the energies within me in appropriate ways aware that through the Laws of Karma I will get back the reaction of my actions.

1: I do not like the concept of evil. I think of it as immature soul behavior. People are evil because when they are young souls they have natural desires that compel them to act in ways that are harmful to others. As they incarnate again and again they learn that they are hurting themselves when they hurt others. There is a perfect soul that is harmless to all.

2: There is no complete perfection in the sense that some beings have learned all the life lessons. It is not like a college course where you get classes in the consequences of murder, theft, adultery, defaming and controlling others. It is far more complex than that. Those are potential lessons for any soul but there are lessons God has not even developed yet. There are possibilities of life form behavior that has not yet evolved.

1: I have certain plans that I made before I incarnated including the life lessons I was going to attempt. I understand that I will be rewarded by being good, loving, kind, giving, forgiving. I may not even have to incarnate on Earth again. I may become perfected enough that I only have to complete the rest of my evolution in higher planes of consciousness.

2: Isn’t that just your old concept of Hell dressed up in sheep’s clothing? So Earth is Hell instead of a fiery pit being Hell. What’s the difference.

1: I have my plan, my assignment and if I complete it well I will be rewarded.

2: I have a different job to do. I am exploring the consciousness of God through my unconscious and bringing it into expression so that God may experience through me what He can be.

Dream Incubation Results

I did the dialogue with my two attitudes right before I went to bed and gave myself the suggestion to dream about this conflict. The dream was: Gordon, my husband and I are at a public function. After it ends Gordon goes home and I go to Meijer’s with a crowd to get something to eat. I am so surprised to see so many people I know eating there because they only have a cafeteria like a 5 &10 cent store. "It’s because there is a big parking lot and it’s easy to find parking, " I think to myself.

I sit with some people and a guy I know introduces me to this really unusual book. The title is Electrostatic and it is across the bottom of the cover with the E being the beginning of Electrostatic up the side of the front cover. I leaf through the book and it is really difficult and interesting science theory. I really want to get this book.

After awhile I drive two men home including the one who introduced me to the book. They are both extremely intelligent and nice. I am driving too fast on this dirt road and one of them says,"You’d better slow down the mud is turning to ice."

I slow down but I don’t see that some child has made a train of baby doll buggies across the road and I swerve to avoid them. I feel embarrassed.

When I arrive home my husband asks me if the group did the venipuncture electrostatic test and he seems upset that he may have missed this. I tell him they didn’t but I told him about the Electrostatic book. He asked me how I liked it and I said,"It’s really interesting."

I have myself and my healthy animus attending to some easily accessible information in the collective unconsciousness. My animus returns to its normal place in my psyche while I pursue the next phase of the group mind set. It is a common belief system that is easy to access. This is a mind set of lower quality (Meijer’s is a discount store).

ATTITUDE 1

I have myself approaching an analytical, intelligent male aspect of myself who introduces me to new ideas about the natural laws of positive and negative. The positive and negative form half of a cross. I flip through these ideas and find them difficult to understand. I am interested in them, they have a numinous quality.

ATTITUDE 2

I return two intelligent aspects of myself to their normal place in my psyche but on the way one of them warns me I am on thin ice. I am about to collide with my inner child’s carefully constructed belief system which she has lined up. I swerve to avoid crashing into my child’s train of thoughts and beliefs.

When I return to my usual mid set my healthy animus is worried that he has missed the proof of the life blood of the theory on the positive and negative. He thought there would be a test to discover the origin of creation, our life blood. I tell him he did not miss the test of the theory but I found the collection of ideas interesting. I let him know that I am receptive to learning more in the future.

I conclude from this dialogue that I did create consciousness within myself that I have Attitude 2 within me now beginning to take incorporate into my beliefs and mind set. I want to pursue learning more about it. The implications of the dream are that there are two psychic elements helping me learn as well as guiding me carefully through the new awareness this work is bringing so that I don’t crash and hurt myself.

Edward Edinger shares an apocalyptic dream that has powerful imagery. He believes that this type of dream has universal significance. To him, it proves that "our age is a time of death and rebirth for a central myth indicated by the dreams and upheavals from the unconscious of many individuals." (p.27) It is only one example of the inner turmoil we as a society are experiencing.

Using the autogenic relaxation techniques learned from Mary Watkins in Waking Dreams, I read the dream into a tape recorder and then listened to it from this relaxed state. The images were very disturbing to witness and I empathized with the dreamer’s experience. However, I did not feel directly involved, but played more of an observer.

The overall feeling I had after experiencing this dream was that the dreamer had confronted some influential imagery that could transform his growth towards self-realization. It seemed to be a dramatic synopsis of his individuation process up to that particular point. It brought up fears, yet enabled him to feel his own power in facing his perceived enemies.

After this experience I began to analyze the content of the dream in some depth. It was fascinating to plunge into these strong images and begin to translate them into potential themes that could relate to the waking dreamer. Going through the dream, step by step, allowed me to explore each dream image and its possible interpretation, both universally and for the dreamer more specifically.

Finally I went back through Edinger’s comments on this dream and compared his findings with my own. Surprisingly, I did not agree with a majority of his summations. I felt his analysis was too fatalistic and universal. It did not seem to take into account how each dreamer has their own vocabulary for symbols, even if some of the images could be viewed on a more collective level. Being the eternal optimist, I found great hope in the dream. The dreamer was able to face his greater fears, and by coming into contact with them, he was transformed.

It was easy for me to delve into the dream on an experiential level. I could vividly see the destruction and the progression of the dreamer’s journey. Rather than experiencing it as my journey, it seemed like I went along as an observer, not personally feeling the fear or perspiration. Because I was an observer, it was easy for me to remain objective in spite of the destruction witnessed.

My first and main reaction to this experience was that the dreamer was going through a major shift in his life, a shift in consciousness and spiritual evolution. It was exciting to feel this transition with him. I applauded his bravery in accomplishing his appointed task. Overall, I sensed the confrontation with his greatest fears (personally, conscious or unconscious, as well as the collective unconscious) allowed the dreamer to be deeply affected by the experience. I ended my visual reverie feeling great hope for the dreamer’s growth in self-realization, which in turn would influence the development of the collective unconscious.

I would like to break the dream down as much as possible to examine the various details and their potential meaning, and then go back and give my overall view of the dream.

The first thing that stood out about this dream was that the dreamer was moving. Several places throughout the dream he talks about walking: "I am walking along," "I am walking with," "we are being led," "we walked for an extraordinary long time," [I had to] "climb up this staircase," and "I started climbing." The impression this gave me was that the dreamer was really moving, really making headway along his life path. Whether that symbolizes the progression of man along his life journey as a species or simply this dreamer’s development along his course of individuation, what seems significant is that there is advancement being made.

Along this path he encounters many traumatic and reality-shaking experiences. The dreamer must observe the destruction of his society and must come face to face with his perceived enemies. Growing towards enlightenment, spiritually and psychologically, can be very unsettling at times. There are stages of what appears to be destruction of known reality and expectations. Ultimately, however, the outcome of the dreamer’s plight is really positive and growth producing.

Another point of affirmation for growth is that the dreamer is not eaten. The dreamer is not harmed by all the destruction happening around him. Instead it seems to lead to greater understanding and insight about himself, his emotions and his own development. He confirms this when he states, "this was the special occasion and the extraordinary feeling I had."

New York City could represent the heart of man, i.e., the center of the industrial/material revolution within the United States. Not only is it the center of activities and art, it is the den of iniquity where the worst in people is expressed. NYC could represent the best and worst in man, especially Americans. Naturally this destruction would take place in such a center.

One impression I had from this perspective was that the dreamer could possibly be coming to terms with his own material values and priorities. If the dreamer is indeed making his transition into the second half of life, as Jung called it, along his path of individuation, then he would naturally be at the stage where he really questions all previous goals and gains. The destruction of NYC could represent the breakdown in his values from a material perspective. He could be understanding that his spiritual (i.e., giants from another planet) and psychological longings are greater than any material aspirations.

This transition could be overwhelming to some individuals (i.e., his recognition of others who are eaten up by the giants), yet the dreamer is able to successfully undergo his trials. What saves him is his "slightly high blood pressure (hypertension)." This could represent his awareness of feeling pressure (tension) from the inner callings to a higher way of life. He doesn’t have high blood pressure like some of the others, possibly translating as those who are too high-strung about their lives, whether materially or spiritually (ex: the Wall Street crook or the self-righteous evangelical). He operates out of a more moderate way of thinking and feeling, yet with enough tension to slightly elevate his awareness.

"Blood pressure" could also be viewed as the functioning of the dreamer’s life source. Blood is the life fluid, and blood pressure allows the body to function appropriately. The dreamer could be coming to understand that his slightly high blood pressure is his elevated awareness of the life source within him. Rather than being a detriment to his life, it ends up being the very thing that saves him from destruction. He won’t be consumed like the others. This hypertension could be literally manifested physically in the dreamer in waking life. It could act as a waking reminder of the lessons he has learned in his dreams.

These changes can seem to be gigantic, symbolized by the giants. They can appear overwhelming and negative. Yet, in the end, the change brings new growth and realizations. The giants, eating their harvested crops, are nourishing themselves, as well as celebrating the wedding feast. The dreamer gains new insights by observing this and by his encounter with the royal couple. He is changed by this journey. By the end, the dreamer’s growth towards enlightenment will enable him to help others. His guide tells him he will become a "saver of souls." His insights and growth will affect others.

From a Jungian perspective, the characters in the dream could be broken down into specific Jungian terms:

the dreamer = the ego self; the persona the waking man most identifies with; those personality aspects named "I".

the woman companion = his anima; the feminine characteristics within that are still projected onto an "outside" other; the woman is a friend, yet still unknown to the dreamer; the yin energy that journeys with him.

the guide = the Self; the self-realized potential within that has become the "saver of souls"; his Higher Self that recognizes the universal salvation available to all if they will follow their higher leading.

the giants = the Shadow elements; those unclaimed negative features that are still projected on an outside "bad" figure; the larger than life (probably due to the energy accumulated by not recognizing those aspects as coming from within) that are potentially destructive; this energy is both masculine and feminine.

the king and queen = the realized integration of the masculine and feminine energies uniting (i.e., the marriage feast) within the dreamer; the higher forces that are celebrated by the union of opposites within; the potential great (i.e. giant) ruling power available when these two forces join.

The components of the dream are very alchemical. The destruction of the world could be viewed as the breakdown into primitive elements (the act is rather blind of consciousness, primitive-like). Then the destruction leads to fire which is the basis of most alchemical processes. The blood represents the life force and essence of man. The journey of the dreamer is like the mythical hero’s journey. Coming "face to face" with these energies allows the dreamer to come to some combustible insight which will enable him to carry on as "a saver of souls." These aspects are all very universal and explored in much detail by men like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.

The giants were an important symbol in the dream and I felt that they could represent something larger than life to the dreamer. Not only their size, but the reference to the golden throne made me think that the dreamer was personifying his image of God within the dream through the use of the giants. The giants had an almost oblivious destructive nature which made me wonder if the dreamer had been educated with the image of Yahweh, the wrathful God in the Old Testament. This could be a symbol of God who is larger and greater than the dreamer. God is also to be glorified (i.e., the golden throne and steps leading up to this lofty place), and one must travel long and hard, facing fears, in order to come face to face with the deity. The nice element added at the end of the dream to this image of God is the marriage between the king and queen. Translated into Christian terms it could represent the union of the king (Jesus) and his bride (the Church).

Another description of the giants is that they arrive in flying saucers like fireballs from the sky. This could represent the dramatic energy changes that can come during spiritual enlightenment (i.e., the kundalini energy rising up the spine like a fireball). This encounter can seem very "other worldly," as if enlightenment comes from the heavens.

The ordeal of climbing the steps to the royal couple clearly shows how coming to terms with one’s own spiritual and psychological nature is a monumental task of going ever higher and higher within (i.e., from the physical to the mental to the emotional to the spiritual ... steps to contacting one’s Higher Self). This journey is long and difficult, and requires the heart (i.e., the intuitive or emotional side of the self) to work. The dreamer states, "my heart was pounding very hard." He also states that even though he was frightened, he knew he had to accomplish this task. Great encouragement and understanding is seen within the dreamer by acknowledging that this journey is very necessary for his own individuation.

Finally, the dreamer realizes that the destruction of the earth is part of the wedding celebration. In alchemical terms, one must go through the fire of destruction before one can rebuild or transform into the gems of life. This breakdown of the material is a necessary process for the dreamer’s ultimate celebration of the masculine and feminine union within.

I could see how this dream would be very individually specific to the dreamer. If I could interview the dreamer personally, I’m sure we could clarify and further define the various symbols in the dream. The giants, for example, could have extremely individually specific meanings to the dreamer that I could not be aware of without some interaction with the dreamer. This probably is true about the dreamer’s experience in/with New York City as well.

On the other hand, the dream does have many elements that make it universal. Being able to easily classify the dream components in Jungian terms leads me to believe that the dream is representing universal or collective unconscious archetypal images. However, I believe that each individual would bring their own personal images and histories to vary the dream content itself.

My apocalyptic dream had some similar elements as this dream, but it was presented in a completely different manner that was individually specific for me. My trial by fire was specific to my journey towards individuation and was not necessarily the same precise path that this dreamer encountered. The ultimate end may be the same, but the scenarios along the way are different.

I agree with the author that this type of dream is representative of the collective new myth indicating the current times of upheaval and change. Our society seems to be undergoing great disruptions and recognizing these turbulent times is necessary for the potential change and growth of the collective.

The destruction we have done worldwide to our earth (the physical eating up of our resources compares to the dream giants eating up the people without regard to their worth), as well as the psychological and moral damage to the individual (the lack of self-esteem apparent as a whole, as well as the breaking of spirits seen in the homeless and the poverty stricken) results in the rape of our society (with environmental destruction on the one hand and elevated crime on the other as prime examples of this deterioration). As a whole, I think that people are becoming more aware of the abuse apparent everywhere. One way this knowledge is being brought to the surface is through our dreams. It is a collective problem and collectively we are being besieged with the same message. The current situation in the world is not one person’s fault; it is the responsibility of all.

The author compares the dream’s destruction to the reaping of the harvest in Revelations. I agreed with his initial association that the dream has a universal theme of destruction and renewal. However, the author then goes on to elaborate this idea by stating that the giants swallowing the people "means that one has been swallowed up by archetypal, non-human dynamisms. ... For the individual this means either psychosis or criminal psychopathy." I couldn’t agree with this perspective, for to me that seems too fatalistic and negative. I would prefer to see this destruction as a transition, especially for the dreamer, rather than an end in itself.

Although the dreamer vividly experienced this destruction, the ending overall feeling was an "extraordinary" one that seemed to positively influence him. The destruction witnessed prompted the journey for the dreamer. It directly led to the transition for the dreamer of experiencing his journey, the movement toward and confrontation with the giants.

Another point of view that I didn’t agree with was that this dream "is not a personal dream and must not be interpreted personalistically." From my experience in working with my own dreams as well as with others, I find it extremely helpful to be able to view the dream from many different perspectives, collectively and individually. The author could be short changing this dreamer by not interpreting the dream "personalistically". What harm could be done by taking it as an individually specific dream?

It seems there are many instances within the dream (the hypertension quality shown within the dream, as one example) where personal interpretations could be beneficial for the dreamer. This could enable the dreamer to see that the problems "out there" are also difficulties inside. It could facilitate the integration of these dilemmas and their potential solutions within his own life and circumstances. On the whole, viewing the dream personally would enable the dreamer to begin taking individual responsibility for his life. He could move from simply being a victim, to being capable of enduring any kind of testing, whether physically, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually.

The author did point out that, "It is Ôcorrect’ for modern man to be disturbed, to have slightly high blood pressure. It indicates his inner alarm system is still intact and there is some chance for him. His anxiety will spur him to reflection and effort that may be life-saving." I thought this position was very important. The dreamer could identify with this internal alarm system and it might prompt waking movement towards change and integration. The dream has the potential of waking up the dreamer through it’s use of violent imagery. This awareness could compare to the dreamer’s hypertension.

The task of climbing the stairs to face the giants could be symbolic of reaching for a higher perspective of the destruction that occurs below. The author states, "Psychologically it refers to the process whereby personal, particular problems, conflicts and happenings are understood from a height, from a larger perspective as aspects of a greater process." I agreed with this position. The giants seem to represent the larger perspective or viewpoint necessary for understanding and integration. Sometimes a broader outlook can give one the necessary objectivity to understand how a particular situation is being played out for the highest good for all concerned.

Overall, I felt that the author approached the dream with a realistic comparison to the universal theme of destruction and conflict. However, ultimately I disagreed with his apparent fatalistic attitude. I prefer a more optimistic view that death and destruction are transitions rather than ends to themselves. I believe the dream, whether taken on a collective level or on a personal basis, points to the progression of understanding and integration.

Edward Edinger believes that it is important "to perceive experience as a mirror that provides an image of meaning rather than as chaotic anguish." (p.39) This mirror acts as the process of coming to terms with qualities within the individual and the circumstances that are then created in response to these beliefs.

In order to more fully understand how symbols, people and circumstances are used as mirrors of internal activities, I tried several different mirror exercises. (Please read the attached material for a detailed account of these exercises.)

I began with the fantasy of examining myself in a mirror. The results were quite surprising. It did not seem like I was standing in front of a mirror looking at my image. Rather, I felt I had left the physical body in front of the mirror and floated up to view the entire fantasy from this higher perspective. The fantasy was rich in imagery and had powerful meanings for me to recognize and then try to integrate in my waking reality.

This fantasy prompted my actually looking at myself in the mirror. I spent some time just staring at my image. This brought up a variety of emotional reactions, the most outstanding of which was criticism of my appearance. Because I strongly sensed this, I was able to come to terms with the self-perception of my body and how I warp my perspective of how I look. I cannot continue to compare myself with others. I need to accept and love myself as I am!

Then I went on to review a similar mirror exercise that I had done several years ago. Reevaluating this process, I was reminded of lessons I had learned and forgotten from my previous experiences. The main theme was to love myself and to recognize that the essence of who I am is found within, not merely the physical form.

Finally, I reviewed my recorded dreams over the last year. To my surprise, I did not have a single mirror image in any of the dreams. However, it encouraged me to consider what other symbols act as mirrors for me in my dreams. The most obvious and numerous image was of the theatre and/or film. I elaborated on my philosophy as an actress, recognizing my responsibility as a full creator in my waking and sleeping dramas.

Overall, the entire process enriched my understanding of the multiple uses of mirrors in my life, both internal and external. I agreed with Edinger and his examples from Jung, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Shiller and Nietzche, that mirrors help "redeem man from the destructive horror of raw being." (p.40) My life is balanced and enhanced by recognizing the mirrors around me.

I. Mirror Fantasy:

I began my mirror fantasy by using the Autogenic Technique from Mary Watkins, Waking Dreams. Then I focused on my breathing until I felt completely relaxed and centered within. I was ready to begin.

I imagined that I was standing in front of a large mirror where I could see myself completely. This mirror was a magic mirror, like in Snow White, and would answer with only the truth.

"Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Tell me, Mirror, what you see."

I continued to focus on the mirror waiting for it to respond. All at once I floated up out of my body and could see the entire world below. It was like I had entered the mind of God, omniscient over all, and the mirror was the eye of God showing the truth in our worldly reality. I was no longer associated with the body of Melinda who stood before this mirror below. I was part of the universal consciousness and understood the true workings of the mirror.

As I watched, I saw the mirror disappear as Melinda walked out into the world. The people she came into contact with were actually reflections of this mirror ... so, in effect, she still stood before the mirror even though it appeared she was out in the world.

As she connected with others, it seemed that their meeting sparked a specific color in each one. For example, when she approached one person, a vibrant blue color emanated from the other person. As she reached that person, the blue color within her began to radiate as well. The colors became even more intense the longer they were in contact. It was as if the colors fed on each other and became more brilliant by this interaction. Each encounter she had with another seemed to resonate with more and more colors, until by the end of the associations with others, she glowed like a rainbow full of dynamic shades.

I immediately understood that other people were mirrors to her, shown through this color, illuminating her own nuances within. She had all the colors of the rainbow inside of her, yet her associations with others allowed those shades to be brought to a fuller hue. Other people were sparks to her for her own enrichment of this rainbow.

Then I saw how the same encounters could be viewed through animal images instead of color tones. For example, as she approached one person, she became a bird. The individual she met was a robin, so she became a robin and they sang ever so sweetly during their time together.

Then another character she encountered was a cat. However, she felt a bit threatened by this person, so she not only embodied a cat, she became a cougar. This made her of the same family, yet allowed her to feel more powerful and in control. With each particular soul she met, she became a different animal. She was able to personify the entire spectrum of animals.

I understood that these animals represented personas and personality characteristics which would surface with each meeting. These others mirrored back to her the specific energy she was feeling within. In return, she mirrored their energy to them as well. I got the clear message that because we cannot, or do not take the time to really "see" ourselves, we need to see ourselves in others. This mutual mirroring enables us to better know ourselves.

From this scenario, my fantasy changed slightly and now I was observing a House of Fun. I saw Melinda enter the Hall of Mirrors. With each individual mirror, she focused on one specific aspect of her body. In one mirror, her thighs looked flabby. Yet when she moved to the next mirror, her thighs looked fine, but her stomach appeared quite fat. Subsequently, the next mirror showed her thighs and stomach in fine appearance, but her face was grotesquely bloated. It was as if each individual mirror showed her the various prejudices she has against her own body. The last mirror displayed her true self, beautiful, whole and unique.

The strong message I got from this experience was that by focusing in on the individual aspects of the body seen in a mirror, I won’t be able to see the beauty in the wholeness of my body. This constant criticism of each part of my body, prompted mainly from continual comparison to others, warps my view of the grace and perfection within my form. Mirror watching, used as a method of attractiveness comparison, is a harmful habit. If I can move beyond looking at each element individually, I will see the loveliness of my physical frame.

The final segment of my waking fantasy involved the observation of the daily mirror "check-up" that Melinda conducts. Everyday she looks into the hand mirror, the make-up mirror, and the full-length mirror before leaving the house, and then uses the windows or glass encountered as another mirror to check up on the way she appears. It was as if she were constantly evaluating her presentation to the world.

From this examination of a common habit, I understood how each interaction with another, encounter with circumstances, and experience with the riches of life found in art, theatre and literature, acted in the same way as this mirror check. She could compare, survey, and integrate her own personas and projections. The world was a constant reminder of the need for daily introspection. These confrontations act as "living meditations."

I felt wiser and more connected with Melinda by this experience from a greater, more objective viewpoint. The exercise itself was a true mirror, enabling me to see the various uses of mirrors in my daily life.

A. After this first exercise using fantasy to examine the use of mirrors in life, I felt prompted to actually look into a mirror to see what I could observe. I stood, and then sat in front of a full-length mirror for about 15 to 20 minutes.

The first thing I became aware of was that I focused on individual aspects of myself. Like in the Hall of Mirrors, my first instinct was to break my body down into specific sections and then evaluate (mainly criticize) each feature. From this narrow viewpoint, I realized that I was losing sight of the whole. I did not feel comfortable dissecting myself like that when I knew that the sum is always more than the individual parts.

So I switched my focus to my eyes. The amazing thing was that if I focused only on my eyes, I was able to see my entire body. By keeping my vision centered on my eyes, the mirrors to my soul, I was capable of seeing the completeness of my being. The eyes were the key to perceiving my wholeness.

As I continued to focus on my eyes, I felt like I fell into my soul through my dilated pupils. The face and the body didn’t seem to matter. I could experience my soul through my eyes. Falling into my soul this way was an exhilarating experience.

B. When I came out of my reverie, I remembered that I had previously been assigned a similar "mirror watching" exercise. I had taken a series of classes that took over a year to complete. During one segment, we were required to spend 20 minutes a day watching our faces in the mirror. I was quite disciplined in this practice.

During this "face focus," I observed many interesting elements. We were told to focus on our third eye. What I experienced was that my eyes began to pulse and eventually would blend together creating the impression of a physical third eye. This seemed to be what different religious practices called the spiritual third eye found on the forehead between the two physical eyes.

Another incident was getting the impression that my face was physically changing shape. I thought that this might be a reminder of how our physical bodies undergo tremendous change every day and how we have a "new" body every seven years. Also I wondered if this might be encountering different physical personas that I had from previous lives. This exercise might be enabling me to see how I possibly looked in past lives.

Other observations noted during these meditations included the awareness of physical flaws. I noted how uneven my face was. One side of my face did not match the other. Then I realized that this was true of everyone! We all are made of combinations of features that don’t necessarily match.

A big lesson from this realization was that until I learned to love, accept and respect my physical body, nothing would change. I wouldn’t seem more beautiful or thinner (or whatever) until I saw myself as lovely and complete as I am. This was very powerful for me and I need to be continually reminded of this important lesson.

Finally, I noted how I had the best results with this activity when I did not wear my contacts or glasses. The clear physical vision possible with these seemed to get in the way of my seeing who I truly was. Slightly unfocused I could better "see" the real me.

Both exercises, from the past and present, seemed to reiterate the same message: who I am is inside, not outside. By internally focusing, I will be able to encounter the beautiful truth of who I really am.

I reviewed my dream journal over the last year and surprisingly did not have one literal image of a mirror. I believe that is due to my awareness of projections and how I can easily recognize how different dream characters are mirroring my own behaviors and expectations. Thus I can identify and integrate these qualities within.

The main imagery, used over and over again in my dreams, was theatres and films, both observing and participating in them. I’m sure this is largely due to my being an actress and how this is a daily part of my waking reality. However, I also believe that these images represent my philosophy on spiritual growth.

I consider theatre (stage and film) to be the temple for modern man. I think that people go to see theatre and films for the same reasons they used to go to church or temple. [I also think it no coincidence that the church used to employ plays (i.e., the passion pageants).] The audience is able to view, evaluate, emotionally react and sometimes experience a catharsis by experiencing these performances. The plays act out the best and worst scenarios so that the audience may learn through observation rather than living out these dramas. Actors, whether they are consciously aware of it or not, operate as the priests and priestesses in this temple for contemporary society. Just like we idolize saints and spiritual leaders, we now do the same to our "stars."

My dream images, utilizing the scenarios of shows, remind me of my responsibility as an actress, the new priestess. I am able to more easily recognize my own projections and the dramas I create in waking reality by viewing my dreams as a theatrical production where I am the producer, director, writer, technicians, and entire cast. I acknowledge how these dream characters are my own mirrors. This conscious recognition and integration then enables me to perform as an actress from a more pure position. It is my method of taking the responsibility to share my talents more consciously in order to enrich others’ lives.

Contemplating the development of my talent, I compared my career evolution to Jung’s path of individuation. Jung postulates that the first half of man’s adult life is spent acquiring power through relationships (sex) and family, career and money. The second half of life is focused on spiritual understanding and psychological integration. This theory seems to fit my feelings about my career progression. I have often thought about how I would like my career to advance, gaining status and wealth in order to then pursue more artistic projects and have the opportunity to create more freely. My dreams also mirror this. Thus it seems that theatre images in my dreams are mirroring my individuation development, updating me on my psychological and spiritual advancement.

Finally, I thought about another dream image that I could easily correlate as a mirror in my waking life. That image is of my best friend (now my sister-in-law), Melanie. If there is such a thing as twin flames, that would describe my relationship with her. We are of the same energy, two sides to the same coin. When Melanie appears in my dream, it is easy for me to associate her with myself. For example, it would be confusing to have me, the dream ego, do something and then have me react to that. It is easier, from a dramatic standpoint, to have Melanie play the character who reacts. When I awake, I can understand how Melanie is playing out another part of myself. She is mirroring my own actions and reactions. It is a bit more difficult to remain this objective in waking life; however, I still recognize that she is acting as my mirror.

I began doing progressive relaxation and getting comfortable. I pictured the eye of Horus but some time passed before it appeared to be an eye with consciousness behind it. When I sensed consciousness I did become immediately fearful. I felt completely exposed. This eye could perceive my motivations, my character and my thoughts. I felt analyzed by this eye of consciousness. My fear was that I was being judged. I feared that I was inadequate to the expectations of this conscious eye. I felt small and easily intimidated.

My emotion turned to anger when I began to feel intimidated. I took a spear and stabbed the eye but over to the left perpendicular to the eye I had stabbed the eye appeared unharmed. I felt frightened when I experienced that it could not be destroyed and that it watched me try and destroy it. I did not experience that the eye was angry or hateful because of my attempt to blind it. I sensed that the eye was amused much like a big teenage brother would be if his six year old brother tried to beat him up. I felt frustrated and slightly humiliated as well as overwhelmed by its power.

I began to wonder what the face looked like that went with this eye. Images began flashing immediately. First the eye was in a primitive man, then an alabaster face appeared with a very high forehead and I thought to myself this is what I imagine the extraterrestrials look like. The face changed again into a sinister gangster facade. Seeing the multiple faces of the eye relaxed me.

I felt more comfortable to be examined and seen when I realized that the eye had multiple dimensions of character which included what I think of as character flaws. I allowed myself to be known. When I let go and surrendered to its examination I perceived that it saw my sadness. I identified it and the image of a huge cavern within me appeared. It was a place inside my consciousness that was the sorrow and hopelessness within me. I stayed with the feelings for a period of time. The eye had disappeared I realized. It had shown me a part of myself that I was previously unaware of. I got up and drew mandalas until I had spent the emotions.

Research on the Eye of Horus

My experiment piqued my interest in the origin of the eye of Horus. My friend introduced me to an author, Zecharia Sitchin and I found some of his books right around the same time I was concentrating on this experiment. My friend had no idea that I was working on this eye of Horus project and I was impressed once again with the synchronicity of events when I found that his books contained his theory on the origin of the eye of Horus based on his translations of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek texts. I then actively searched for other authors with a similar theory to his to see if others had validated his findings. I was pleasantly surprised and will summarize some of their interpretations.

In my own experiment I saw what I believed to be an extraterrestrial. Sitchin’s theory ran along this same line. Briefly he has found evidence in the texts mentioned above that about 400,000 years ago the Nefilim came to Earth from their planet Nibiru which is in our solar system but has an orbit around the sun of 3,600 years. It’s orbit comes very close to earth when it is at the apogee of its orbit. The Anunnaki was their landing party who explored earth and stayed to mine the southern caves of Africa for gold which they needed in their technology as a shield from radiation. After many years the Anunnaki rebelled and the Nefilim held a conference with them to hear their concerns that mining was back breaking, unpleasant work. The decision was made to make a species of workers by doing gene splicing with their genes and introduce them into the ape-men currently roaming the planet. The experiment took many years to complete but eventually was successful and they created the Adamu (Adam). These Adamu could not reproduce just like hybrid mules and the ova had to be gestated by the Anunnaki women. The next step then became to create a woman Adamu who could bear children. This was done by removing the rib of one of the Adamu males and making a slurry of bone marrow, blood and other medium to do the initial gestation of the ovum, it was implanted and a baby girl was born, Eve who could reproduce with her own kind. She was the original mother of all of pure humankind.

In Sitchin’s five books he goes through detailed research and pictures from the tablets that describe the history of the genesis. But to make a long story short these Adamu were broken up into two groups led by two Anunnaki and one of them migrated to Sumer, the garden of Eden. Here the Adamu were taught to domesticate animals, create species of plants to eat and cultivate. They learned writing, language and set up government and religion modeled after their God, Eniki, the Anunnaki who had transported them to Sumer. This was the beginning of human civilization under the guidance of the God.

Fast forwarding to early Egyptian history, the Anunnaki were still guiding humankind directly and were intermarrying with humans. The major leaders, however, kept their lineage pure and were the first pharaohs of Egypt. They combined the role of government and religious leader. They built pyramids for landmarks for the landing of their crafts as well as silos for some of the spacecraft. Later pyramids built after they had removed themselves from participation in the human drama of which we are aware are of a much inferior quality and not built at as steep of an angle. They had a technology that we are beginning to understand and create in the 20th century. Horus was an Anunnaki. His mother was the Anunnaki goddess Isis. Horus’ father was Osiris although Horus was conceived from his father’s semen after his father had been killed. (Sperm banks?) Horus and Seth were brothers who fought over the right to rule Egypt. In one of their battles Seth "shot a beam of fire" (lazer?) and put out one of Horus’ eyes. In future rites of burial and entombment the "Eye of Horus" that he lost in that battle was invoked as a celestial ladder to the afterlife. The symbol of the eye was gradually replaced by a boat which the pharaoh took to the afterlife. William Bramley in The Gods of Eden discusses similar findings but brings our relationship with the Anunnaki up to the present day. The Eye of Horus is a symbolic reminder of us being watched by the Anunnaki. The Eye is found on the one dollar bill in American currency to this day. This coincides with my experience of an inferior being watched by a superior.

Carl Jung described the UFO as an unfolding mythology. This was not an insignificant statement since he perceived the archetypes as being real and having their own identity. The Anunnaki, according to Sitchin and Bramley are telepathic and from what many people may have seen in the 20th century they have mastered the ability to move from the seen to the unseen in an instant. Keith Thompson in his work Angels and Aliens discusses at length Jung’s perspective of these archetypal figures and how they may be what we observe as UFO and aliens. He does a masterful job of tying in the life transformation that occurs following an encounter with Self that is greater than self and describing how these encounters are documented throughout our history ( Mary being impregnated by an angel, Ezekial’s vision of the wheel, the famous Fatima sightings). I propose that the Anunnaki/ archetypes are not aliensÑ they are our parents Ñ symbolically and possibly actually and as Thompson points out they are an evolving God-form just as we are. Jung, himself, stated that this [UFO’s] obviously complicated phenomenon had an extremely important psychic component as well as a possible physical basis (as quoted in Angels and Archetypes)

"In one dream, which I had in October 1958, I caught sight from my house of two gleaming disks, which hurtled in a narrow arc over the house and down to the lake. They were two UFO’s. Then another body came flying directly toward me. It was a perfect circular lens, like the objective of a telescope. At a distances of four or five hundred yards away it stood still for a moment, and then flew off. Immediately afterward, another came speeding through the air: a lens with a metallic extension which led to a boxÑa magic lantern. At a Distance of sixty or seventy yards it stood still in the air, pointing straight at me. I awoke with a feeling of astonishment. Still half in the dream, the thought passed through my head: ÔWe always think that the UFO’s are projections of ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections. I am projected by the magic lantern as C.G. Jung. But who manipulates the apparatus?" C.G. Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

In 1987, Ed Walters a resident of Florida took Polaroid pictures of an unconventional aerial craft resembling a Japanese lantern. Keith Thompson describes many UFO sightings around 1958. Was Jung’s experience a vision in the subtle realm of what Ed Walters saw in the physical realm? Was the lens on the magic box another modern day eye of Horus? UFO abductees claim at times that they are examined by an apparatus that scans their body, the scanner looks like an eye.

The eye of Horus may have been an ancient Egyptian symbol that came from a vision, a dream or the mind of an Egyptian artist conveying being watched by the imaginary god, Horus. It also may be one of the symbols which unlocks the mysteries of our origins and current collective unconscious, that which dwells in the fourth dimension.

I began my experiment by imagining ascending into a temple that had all the psychic archetypes on the ceiling much like the Sistine Chapel. I imagined sitting for meditation. A statue of Buddha appeared on the altar at the front end of the room. I saw him come to life. At first I struggled with this vision because I was concerned that I was "making this up" so I tried to put him back as a statue but he insisted on coming to life so I let him. He approached me and put a mantle of purple satin on my shoulders. I couldn’t see him clearly so I asked the Light to illuminate him. He was grinning impishly with many smile wrinkles. I felt amused and happy and was enjoying being in his presence. He had returned to the altar, when I realized I wasn’t being very respectful so I bowed to him on my knees with my heart above my head and radiated a red light from the back of my heart chakra toward him.

I returned to my meditation posture when Swami Nityananda appeared. To give some background on him Swami Nityananda was the guru of Swami Muktananda a guru that I studied with for 10 years. Nityananda had taken mahasamadhi ( he had died) by the time I met Muktananda and was a legend! He only wore a loin cloth at all times. He had no possessions. He apparently possessed astonishing yogic powers. One story about him that is indicative of these is when he was a young man he was being questioned by local authorities for some reason. He turned and dove into a crocodile infested swamp and returned to the surface holding stacks of rupees. An entire town built up around his hut in India called Ganeshpuri. I visited there once and the town had developed from his devotees settling around him. He was an enormous man by Indian standards with a huge belly much like Buddha. He rarely ever spoke, was quite indifferent to people and his surroundings and had the reputation of being quite fierce.

Nityananda appeared to me and I immediately thought of the "Mr. Clean Archetype" I had seen in my first active imagination experiment. His chest was bare and he exuded a power that was intimidating. I did not feel comfortable, I was scared of him. As I approached he took a big stick broke it and lit it as a big torch. I felt threatened in some inexplicable way. Then Buddha appeared again next to him and I was struck by the contrast of my feelings. With Buddha I felt safe and loved. He was a role model of kindness and generosity. With Nityananda I felt fearful and uncertain. I felt no love from him or for him just awe. I saw myself enter the scene in a new way . I was a 15 year old devotee wearing white shirt and pants with a long braid down my back. I broke down crying and sobbing that I no longer understood God. I had formulated my own concept as an adult of an energy of love and light such as what people report they see in a near death experience. How could I reconcile the very different beings who stood before me who had both "realized" God in themselves. I have rejected the powerful indifferent aspect of God. I have further rejected the evil aspect of God. I felt such angst it seemed unbearable.

The two Great Ones disappeared and I was left pounding on the walls like a lunatic crying from the depths of my soul. As I began to calm I had a number of realizations. This set of opposites was similar to what I experienced with my mother and father. This has been an enormous psychological problem for me. I saw my own projection of my parents onto God and I rejected the energies I felt from my father because he had been cruel to me in the same way I rejected the dark side of God. The phrase Dark Night of the Soul came to mind.

I returned to my sitting meditation posture in my imagination. I was struck by a deep inner confidence that there was a solution to this and that others before me had found it and so can I. I returned to normal consciousness feeling reassured.

My interpretation of this experience is that I saw 2 opposing types of beings who I symbolize as one with God. I am suffering sadness and anger as my consciousness of God expands and my belief systems are cracking apart. There is inner world help reassuring me at the time I feel this angst. I know that I can change my myth and survive.

Creating a fantasy of the Eye of God observing me and then incubating a dream to further expand on this idea actually was a very positive experience. Unlike the expectations I had from reading Edinger’s text, the Eye of God was not a horrendous uncovering of ugliness that I was afraid to face. Edinger states, "The experience of being a known object, being seen by the Eye of God, can be a fearsome experience." (p.44) This did not compare to my encounter at all. My conclusions, on the other hand, were uplifting and inspiring.

The first thing I faced when I encountered this Eye was a great sense of disappointment. Ultimately I understood this disappointment and judgement to be coming from my own ego sense, and not the Eye of Love. From the super being I sensed only encouragement and a gentle reminder of who I really am: part of the Universal Oneness that is Love. I had a couple of profound visions that reinforced this lesson. I am but a portion of the unconditional love that makes up the universe, and self-afflicted judgments and criticisms only inhibit my development towards enlightenment.

Contrary to Edinger’s expectations that being known somehow threatens the ego, I found the experience of being observed by the Eye to be of comfort. It was nice to know that I was not alone. I was encouraged by the reminder that I have the Greater Perspective accessible to me. My petty perspectives and opinions can be overcome through the unconditional love available.

Desiring further insight I incubated a dream requesting more information on the Eye. The beautiful image that was relayed through my dream was that of the "eye of the camera." The camera lens can focus the audience’s vision onto specific elements within a scene that might otherwise be overlooked. It intensifies emotions and effects the viewer. By focusing the audience "eye" on a particular element, the director (or the Eye of Love) can change the viewer. One leaves the theatre somehow influenced or altered. Even if one continues on the same path, this interaction will somehow affect the growth of the individual.

The message from my fantasy and dream was that unconditional love must be expressed exuberantly in my life. I need to allow this joy and enthusiasm to pour forth, not worrying about what society or my inner parental voice may say. My optimism and delight in life is a gift to others and myself.

Having meditated early in the evening, I felt ready to begin my fantasy of having an eye, the Eye of God, observe me. I was relaxed and open to experience this potential scrutiny. I closed my eyes and imagined a large eye above me. Perhaps because of the reference to the eye of Horus, the eye above me looked like an Egyptian eye:

At first I was quite self-conscious. I wondered what kind of evaluation was taking place. Was God disappointed in me? All at once I felt this overwhelming sense of disappointment, almost as if by merely thinking of this word the emotions came flooding out. I felt great disappointment in my progress. It was like God was sad that I had not advanced very quickly on my path of enlightenment.

I got the strong message that I had allowed fears to affect my own development. I remembered the story from Emmanuel’s video tape about the person who let the child, "Fear," follow her around and the more she associated with Fear, the more Fear grew until finally Fear was bigger than this person. Then she felt intimidated by Fear and would do whatever Fear said. She had lost sight of the fact that Fear was really a small child needing direction and an adult perspective to guide it. Fear wasn’t bad, just unruly and undisciplined. A little Fear wasn’t negative. It was only when Fear was allowed to overgrow that it became destructive. I was like this person, allowing Fear to intimidate me and influence certain decisions I made. I sensed that the Eye of God was disappointed in this digression.

I knew that I had forgotten the truths of who I am which caused this feeling of disappointment. I was one with God, part of the Universal Oneness, and somehow I had allowed Fear to influence my memory of this. In spite of the various reminders that came into my life showing me over and over again that I am part of the All, I still permitted Fear to color my perspective.

Then my guide, Ariel, came to me offering comfort. She sensed that I was about to "blast" myself for this disappointment. She wanted to show her love and support of me as a soul, perfect and complete as I am. She reminded me of her ongoing commitment and willingness to prod and guide me. Ariel was there to help me and I need only to allow her to assist my growth.

Slowly I sensed that the disappointment and covert wrath I felt was coming from myself, my ego, and not from the Self. The Eye of God felt no vengeance towards me due to my disabled progression. The judgement and negative "arrows" being slung my way came from the little I/eye within. With this realization, I immediately saw a vision of this little eye (I) within the larger Eye (God Self):

Then the vision expanded and I realized that there are many eyes within the Eye of God. It became this clear image, confirming how we are all one, all part of the Universal Eye:

Cosmic Oneness

Universe

World

Society

Family

I

From this vision I understood how man projected hostility onto God. Perhaps this innate sense of judgement that man experienced was really his own projection of God as some judge and jury pronouncing a verdict on his every action. I felt that ultimately there is only Love and Love does not judge. The process of understanding this could be the creation of consciousness in man and his "God" that Edinger refers to in his book.

Operating from the Eye of Love, I could gain greater clarity, perspective and wisdom. Since I was ultimately part of this Love, these positive attributes were available to me in my daily life. I need not be drawn down into a petty focus on everyday circumstances and limit my thinking to such narrow confines. I could see all circumstances and relationships as benefiting my highest good and development towards enlightenment.

After the fantasy concluded, I still wanted more information and clarity. So I asked my dreams for their input.

DREAM INCUBATION: "Please give me any further insight into the Eye of Love and how it effects my life."

DREAM: "The Eye of the Camera" May 26, 1990

"An older woman (in her 70s) was extremely attracted to S. B. (a young man I know). She wasn’t able to catch his attention, so one night she got quite wild and crazy. They arrested her for being too boisterous, possibly drunk although they couldn’t prove this. She was just Ôhigh on life.’ They put her in a holding cell. The cop who was in charge (he was only on duty on the weekends) was quite intrigued with this woman and her case. He wanted to find out what made her behave this way and exactly why she was in jail. So he watched her every movement.

The first thing she did was to make her one call to Steve. He quickly showed up to bail her out. (When he first got there he looked like the disheveled Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future, but later looked like S. B. again.) He was distraught that she could have done something to get herself in trouble. Didn’t she know better?!

She explained to him in rather blunt terms that she was there because she was so enthusiastically crazy about him. She had gotten so boisterous over him! If he would come inside her (sexually), she would be the happiest person! He was shocked by this and didn’t know what to say.

Then the cop returned this small teddy bear to her. She told Steve that she had named the bear after him, and it was the part of him she could hold and caress. While Steve watched, she gently caressed the bear’s face and whispered how much she loved him. Tears streamed down her face; she was filled with such rapture. S.B. was touched by this and he knew they would be together. They walked out of the station together. Steve’s arm was around her shoulders. The cop gently smiled.

Then the director yelled, ÔCut. That’s it!’

It was a film! I played the old lady! My husband came up and told me what a good job I had done, especially the ending scene where I cried.

The director yelled for everyone to clear the sound stage and go on to the closing party. My husband and a close friend helped carry out some equipment and then they drove off in my husband’s his old car. I went with S.B. and this other woman who had been helping with the film in the Mod Top Barracuda (my mother’s favorite car, a wild 1968 yellow car with flowers on the roof!). We would meet at the party. I was sad that the filming was over. What a wonderful experience it had been!"

FEELINGS AND IMPRESSIONS UPON AWAKENING:

My strongest impression when I woke up was that the camera itself was the Eye of God. The whole film had been about expressing love, which is why the Eye of Love, the camera lens, could so eloquently capture the essence of the love for S.B.

ANALYSIS OF DREAM:

Since the overall impression from the dream was the comparison of the camera eye to the Eye of Love, and because I had specifically incubated to gain more insights into the Eye of Love, I felt the dream specifically addressed this issue. I was very excited about the analogy of the camera eye to the Eye of God. This eye watches all and captures the essence of the story. Where the normal observer may overlook certain aspects to a scene, the camera focuses the picture to specific areas for the benefit of the viewer. For this reason alone, films can be extremely powerful for the audience. Films enable the viewer to examine certain situations that are emotionally potent and thus allow them to experience these sensations in a safer environment. (This supports my previously discussed philosophy on acting and the importance of such a medium.)

In the case of the dream, it seemed important that the spectator be shown the intensity and power of the older woman’s love for this young man. It was heartwarming to see her unconditional, profound love for S.B. The viewer was able to be affected by her love in the same way that S.B. obviously had been. Even the cop was influenced.

Going back through the dream, after knowing the ending to the story, was powerful for me because I played the part of the older woman. (How much more specific can I get in stating that all the characters in the dream are me than to actually realize that I portrayed the older woman?!) I considered all the elements of this woman and correlated them to aspects within myself. It seemed apparent that this woman had been around for some time and was filled with enthusiasm and joy. I took this to relate to the long-standing quality within me of joy and enthusiasm.

Sometimes this zeal and excitement can be misread and thus get me into "trouble." This "trouble," which puts me in "jail," tries to contain that unbridled elation. It’s as if the authority figure (the cop) within me, which could be parental and societal expectations of appropriate behavior in public, is trying to somehow understand this energy. I know that when I become so exuberant, my "top dog" authority voice questions the properness of my actions and feelings. "Aren’t you overreacting or getting out of control? You can be so silly! Really! Contain yourself!" Others sometimes view this emotional excitement as inebriation. They don’t understand that I really can get "high on life;" I don’t need external sources (drugs of any kind) to get high.

I considered the possible associations with S.B. The first thing that came to mind was my attraction to another fellow, S. C.. I’d had previous dreams about S. C. and his mutual optimism sparks great joy in my life. Somehow my husband’s obsessive pessimism drags me down emotionally and I crave the enthusiasm from others who are like me (i.e., S.C.).

S. B. (the S. from this dream) is a young (24 years old; S. C. is 23), cute guy from my class. There was definitely some sort of attraction and affection between us. However, the class is over for the time being and I haven’t seen S. B. for several weeks. He could represent that element within me that is young (i.e., youthful), enthusiastic (he is very optimistic about his career since he is just starting out and hasn’t been affected by any cynicism yet), and open (he has that same open energy that I associate with people from Colorado, really down to earth and natural).

S.B. appears like Christopher Lloyd when he first arrives at the jail. I thought this might mean that my joyous partner (i.e., the masculine enthusiasm acting in the world) is disturbed by the possibility that I (i.e., the dream ego, the feminine energy I operate from, the intuitive joy within) could be in trouble. It was almost as if the concern was over the confinement of this joyous energy. He wanted to bail me out, free up my energy to be expressed more completely in the world.

I think S.B. would be surprised if I openly shared my feelings of attraction to him, just like he was surprised by the older woman in the dream. After all, I am an "old, married lady," which is as confining as "jail." Yet, in many ways I do desire this energy, represented by both S.s, to come (explode) inside me. I am not sharing this joyous infection with my husband; therefore, I feel the need to look outside my marriage for this interaction.

The teddy bear seemed to represent an acceptable device for expressing the joy and boisterous loving energy inside. If it isn’t "appropriate" for me to express my love and excitement towards S. (either S.), then I can transfer this energy onto something more benign. Sometimes I "pet" S. C., in front of my husband, and S. reacts like a cat, purring away. This is "cute" and acceptable within the confines of my being married. However, if this emotion were expressed more enthusiastically or sexually (which is what is desired in the dream), then it would be shocking, to S. and to society. This energy needs to be confined or imprisoned somehow. Once I am released from this cell, I get the message of how I "should" (i.e., the cop gives me the teddy bear) express this energy and therefore focus it onto a representative of the person (i.e., the teddy bear) with whom I wish to share this love.

The act of sharing love, which is really unconditional affection and regard, brings tears to my eyes. I am filled with emotion and the overflowing of this feeling effects those around me. It softens the heart of the cop, the authority figure within, and draws in the object of my affection, S. We (the masculine and feminine energy) then go off together. This honest expression and enthusiastic display of emotions is the climax of the film (i.e., the strongest message from the dream).

Then the director, the conscious element directing the camera’s eye, acclaims the completion of this story. My husband, who represents my opposite, recognizes and commends me for my true and touching performance at the end of the film. It is as if the pessimistic component (also operating within me, not merely in my husband) acknowledges the value and importance of expressing this love and enthusiasm.

Then off we go to the closing party. There is a sense that each aspect within the dream/film is concluding and integrating the lessons learned. From here there is movement (i.e., we all get in our cars) and growth is promoted. My husband goes off in his car (i.e., maintains his old way of approaching life accompanied by his friend who is similar to him). I go off with S. and another woman who helped (the behind the scene feminine energy, possibly my intuition) in my mother’s car (which represents the loudest, most boisterous physical example of enthusiasm without regard to society’s expectations that I can think of!). I feel sad to be concluding this scenario, as if by moving forward I will somehow lose this sense of eagerness in my waking expression.

Overall, the dream seemed to be reminding me that the Eye of Love wants me to fully express my enthusiasm and joy for all of life without regard to any voice of criticism from society. Unconditional love needs to be shown with great zeal! By expressing these passionate promptings, I will affect others in a profound way, whether I do this through my acting performances or in my daily life.

My experience with the Vision of Ezekial was two-fold. With the first segment of this exercise, I allowed myself to experience the imagery of the vision directly. I had taped a reading of the vision and listened to it from a meditative state. The images conjured up for me seemed to imply that somehow Ezekial had witnessed some type of futuristic vehicle. This could possibly have been a UFO encounter, watching the filming of some space-type movie, or observing any number of scientific instrumentations.

My impression of this vision was that Ezekial had seen something for which he had no vocabulary to translate it to in his waking state. Naturally, he tried to communicate this incredible experience in words his contemporaries could understand. Trying to imagine what exactly this vision might have been was very difficult. We do not have a common denominator for terminology.

The next segment of this experiment was my analysis and comparison of the vision to Jungian terms. I tried to relate this vision to Ezekial’s path of individuation. The symbols he envisioned, I translated into archetypal labels.

The overall impression I had from this application was that Ezekial was experiencing his mid-life crisis and needed to come to terms with his own development. There seemed to be several emotional issues that needed to be dealt with, symbolized by the frequent image of fire. The ending image was very optimistic and encouraging for Ezekial’s ultimate enlightenment.

Comparing the vision of Ezekial as being a representation of God’s incarnation, I tried to be open to the experience of God incarnating in me. It is easier for me to compare and categorize this experience in Jungian terms. According to what Jung asserted, I can understand and acknowledge my own path of individuation which encompasses the confrontation with emotional issues. There is great power held within suppressed emotions (like the fire in the vision), and I have consciously tried to uncover and work with these emotions in therapy and in my acting. I am continually striving towards greater growth and enlightenment along my path in life. I try to benefit from others’ successes with their struggles for individuation.

In summary, I believe that my development and progress towards enlightenment affects the collective unconscious. I am trying to take personal responsibility for my growth, which in turn will benefit the whole. I suppose this could be analogous to God’s incarnation within me.

I. My Personal Experience of the Vision:

Using the Autogenic Relaxation technique from Mary Watkin’s, Waking Dreams, I entered a deeply relaxed state of being. Then I listened to a pre-recorded reading of Ezekial’s vision. As I listened, I opened my imagination up to experience, in as vivid detail as possible, the vision in all its glory. Once the reading was finished, I allowed myself to remain in this frame of mind and tried to elaborate on the images. I wanted to gain clear insight into this magnificent vision, to experience the imagery myself.

The overwhelming impression I got from this exercise was that Ezekial had been privy to a vision from the future. Without the vocabulary to define what he saw, he decoded the images into pictures from his daily life. When he saw certain images, he could only translate them into his own imagery. He did not have the terminology to decipher them, so he interpreted them into concepts that could be understood in his day and time.

The strongest vision I had was of an advanced helicopter-like machine. It was able to move in any direction without turning. It might have looked like a "monster" to Ezekial, but since I have some "high tech" knowledge, it just looked more advanced than the normal helicopters I see every day. I wondered if Ezekial had witnessed a machine of the future, and since in his day there were no "flying machines," he would naturally associate this image to that of a god. His vision was remarkable in that he observed something from the future. Without the terminology to clarify these images, he would naturally feel that he had seen a miracle, the face of God.

Then in a waking state, I went back through the specific images of this vision and translated them into my twentieth century vocabulary.

1.) "As I looked, a stormwind came from the North, a huge cloud with flashing fire, from the midst of which something gleamed like electrum."

I could see the helicopter zooming down from the North. The powerful whirlwind created by the chopper blades would create the impression of a huge cloud. The fire in the midst could be the fire seen from the exhaust of the machine as it lands. (The images that come to mind are the fire seen as a spaceship lands, fire spewing downward, and the fire seen as a military fighter plane takes off, the fire spewing out of the exhaust pipes.) [Even I don’t have the correct terminology for these machines and I can see them all the time. How confusing this must have been for Ezekial who had no comparable language to describe this vision!] Many military planes appear to have a bronze surface, similar to electrum. If the sun caught this covering, naturally it would gleam, brightly reflecting the sun’s rays.

2.) "Within it were figures resembling four living creatures that looked like this: their form was human, but each had four faces and four wings, and their legs went straight down, the soles of their feet were round. They sparkled with a gleam like burnished bronze."

The first thing that came to mind when I read this description was wondering if Ezekial had witnessed the filming of a Star Trek movie. The machine itself might be the camera crane which can move in any direction in order to capture the right angle on a scene. Also, the spaceships created for the movie might be seen with many different character types in it. (Star Wars also incorporates many different animals and other worldly creatures that act like humans. The description of a human form that had wheels for feet made me think of R2D2 and C3PO. Perhaps this image was of an android or a robot.) Using the helicopter image or a spaceship image, it would be possible to see four different types of forms within the same structure. The helicopter isn’t animated, but the people inside could be seen as part of the machine itself, rather than simply being transported inside of it. The description of the legs that went straight down and had feet that were round made me think of the landing gears on an airplane. They go straight down and have wheels on the end. They could also be made out of some type of bronze material.

3.) "Their faces were like this: each of the four had the face of a man, but on the right side was the face of a lion, and on the left side the face of an ox, and finally each had the face of an eagle."

This description made me think of Halloween masks that have one face on one side and another face on the other side. This could be just an expanded version of this type of mask which had four sides, not two. It could also be some type of hat, where the front is the person’s face, one section of the hat could be like a lions (which reminded me of the makeup and headgear worn as a costume in Cats), one section could have a horn on it (which made me think of some of the headgear worn by punk rockers), and touched off with some feathers like a bird (which is very common on hats). This headgear could be seen as actually being part of the person observed. Or another image could again relate back to some type of futuristic persona created for a movie. Theatrically they come up with some amazing special effects that make the viewer think the person really looks like that.

4.) "Their faces [and their wings] looked out on all their four sides; they did not turn when they moved, but each went straight forward. [Each went straight forward; wherever the spirit wished to go, there they went; they did not turn when they moved.]"

Again this made me think of some type of crane-operated mechanism that allows the machine to move in any direction without turning. This could also be some type of enclosed glass elevator/unit where the people inside would be facing in different directions, yet the machine could move in any direction. (The glass elevator/flying bubble from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory immediately came to mind.)

5.) "Human hands were under their wings, and the wings of one touched those of another. Each had two wings spread out above so that they touched one another’s while the other two wings of each covered his body."

This image made me think of hands operating the gear shaft of a helicopter or plane. The blades of a helicopter could be viewed as wings seeming to touch each other because of their speed, and the human hands could be seen operating the machine. The wings covering the body might be some kind of visual illusion of the helicopter blades wrapping around the body of the plane. Thinking futuristically for a film, it might be that some kind of "high tech" plane was created to look more like an actual bird with wings. (The image I thought of was like the flying machine the man dreams about in Brazil. Those wings act more like actual bird wings and he could wrap them around his body.)

6.) "In among the living creatures something like burning coals of fire could be seen; they seemed like torches, moving to and from among the living creatures. The fire gleamed and from it came forth flashes of lightning."

The first impression I had with this description was of the fire bin in a coal-run train. It has a belly that spews forth fire and every once in a while it flashes out fire like lightning. This could also be similar to the above mentioned fire from a spaceship or an airplane. The torches observed are actually the gasoline (or whatever fuel is used) lighting up. The intense heat and fire that emanates from it could be compared to lightning. Another comparison for these torches coming from the living creatures would be to cigarettes. They are "torches" that gleam fire back and forth, from hand to mouth, that seem to come from the creature, and they shoot off sparks of lightning as the ashes fall to the ground.

7.) "As I looked at the living creatures, I saw wheels on the ground, one beside each of the four living creatures. The wheels had the sparkling appearance of chrysolite, and all four of them looked the same: they were constructed as though one wheel were within another."

Again, the image of the wheels makes me think of landing gears or the wheels on some type of robot. They appear shiny and like chrysolite, which is a gem with a green tint. This could be some futuristic use of crystals or it could be anything man-made that is green and shiny. The wheel within the wheel image made me think of the spiral effect of seeing the tailpipe on a plane. It looks like it has a wheel within a wheel. There are many images of a wheel within a wheel in different machines, such as a blender, a camera lens or the wheels on a train. There are many scientific instruments that I’m sure have similar features. It’s hard to tell more specifically what he might have seen from this description.

8.) "They could move in any of the four directions they faced without veering as they moved. The four of them had rims, and I saw that their rims were full of eyes all around. When the living creature moved, the wheels moved with them; and when the living creatures were raised from the ground, the wheels also were raised. Wherever the spirit wished to go, there the wheels went, and they were raised together with the living creatures; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels."

One image of the eyes within the wheels I had was of a computer. When you look at certain floppy disks or certain larger computers, the wheels that run the machines seem to have eyes. Another image (although this seems to be stretching it a bit) was of wheels on a wheelchair. The spokes could appear like eyes and it looks like a wheel within a wheel. Another image of the eyes along the rims was of an outer spaceship. The picture of a 1950’s movie embodiment of a Martian’s ship looks like a rim of eyes whirring around. (The image that pops into mind is the spaceship on My Favorite Martian, and the way the ship moved was like a wheel with eyes moving within another wheel.) Perhaps Ezekial encountered a UFO. Spaceships, described as UFOs, have that ability to move in any direction without turning. The shape could also be likened to an eye. This would also explain the variety of creatures seen in the machine (harking back to my Star Wars idea). The allusion that the spirit of the creature was within the wheels also made me think of UFOs. Like in Close Encounters, when the spaceship lands, the creatures come out of the base of the ship which resembled eyes opening up and the creatures (the "spirit" of the ship) came forth. Also, the images of these extraterrestrials had faces with elongated eyes.

9.) "Over the heads of the living creatures, something like a firmament could be seen, seeming like glittering crystal, stretched straight out above their heads."

My first impression of this description was that Ezekial was seeing the auras of the creatures he was observing. The glittering energy arching upward from their heads could be compared to a halo seen in many Renaissance paintings of holy men and women. This also made me wonder if somehow he were seeing the sparkle of light off a beautiful crown made from diamonds, which are similar to crystals, and they have their own aura as well.

10.) "Beneath the firmament were their wings stretched out, one toward the other. [Each of them had two covering his body.] Then I heard the sound of their wings, like the roaring of mighty waters, like the voice of the Almighty. When they moved, the sound of the tumult was like the din of an army. [And when they stood still, they lowered their wings.]"

The energy between the wings could be a visual effect of there being something solid stretching between the blades of the helicopter, although they are not actually touching each other. When it stops, the "wings" or blades appear to come down a bit to the naked eye. Again, this description made me think of a helicopter or a plane. The noise from either of these is like the roar of waters or the din of an army. The volume is incredible!

11.) "Above the firmament over their heads something like a throne could be seen, looking like sapphire. Upon it was seated, up above, one who had the appearance of a man. Upward from what resembled his waist I saw what gleamed like electrum; downward from what resembled his waist I saw what looked like fire; he was surrounded with splendor. Like the bow which appears in the clouds on a rainy day was the splendor that surrounded him. Such was the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord."

The image of the throne made me think again of the movie crane. The director sits on top of this contraption like a throne and is able to move in many directions. Another possible comparison would be to a fighter plane. The bubble on top of the plane could appear like a crown, the pilots could be seen like they were on a throne, and when the sun hits the plastic it could reflect "splendor." It could also be a description of the space movers (power jets) where one appears to be sitting on a throne and yet when it "blasts" off, below one sees the fire. The splendor and aura surrounding him could be the heat waves that emanate from such an intense fire. This is a visual illusion similar to a rainbow, where the heat could radiate the colors in the spectrum.

Overall, I believed from my experience of this vision, that Ezekial had witnessed some futuristic scene. Not knowing how else to describe what he had seen, he translated his experience into terms that would be understandable to his contemporaries. I did not feel clear as to whether this vision was of something like a UFO encounter, a movie, modern air machines, or some other scientific instrumentation. What seemed significant was that Ezekial was able to foresee something out of his normal realm of existence.

II. Analysis of the Vision as an Archetype of the Self:

I would like to Explore the idea that Ezekial’s dream is a vision of the archetypal Self and thus depicts his own path of individuation. Going back through the vision step by step, I will try to share my ideas of how this could be viewed from a Jungian perspective. This is only an attempt to compare the vision within Jungian terminology and may not be accurately based on Ezekial’s true psychological development. (I admit I may be stretching the point at times!)

1.) Sometimes the onset of a change in the psychological development of a person can be experienced like a whirl