Tag: dreams

Dreamwork

This morning I had a vivid work anxiety dream about a profession I left nearly four years ago. In the dream I was a high school teacher working at a new school in a complicated building–it’s a dream setting I’ve been in several times and in which I’ve had similar experiences over the years. Despite leaving teaching completely I still have these sorts of dreams regularly. Class has started, I’m unable to find the lounge where my laptop and schedule and keys are, the corridors are confusing. When I finally find my classroom the students are unsure about the project they’ve been assigned, there are administrators in the room asking questions, the technology is not functioning. It’s type of dream I’ve had since I was a student; can’t find my locker, the locker combination doesn’t work when I do find it, I don’t know where my classroom is and I’m late. Other variations? Trying to board a flight but my ticket/passport/luggage is missing.

There’s a bunch of science about dreams being the brain’s way of processing the days’ events into memories. My dreams are almost NEVER related to daily events, however. They’ve always felt weighty and full of almost-realized profundity. Even basic anxiety dreams are trying to tell me something about myself.

Inner Work by Robert A Johnson is a practial guide to approaching and interacting with dreams and dream materials. Johnson is a Jungian and they are the analytic school I find most interesting when I think about my dreams. As a young teen I often had dreams where different selves would argue, different personalities with completely different wants and points of view. And I’d wake up with their dialogues and discussions still ringing in my head. At times the voices were like a mutiny and I genuinely wondered if I were going mad.

I first read a lot of Freud, and finding his work very interesting but unsatisfactory I moved on to Jung and his school. Jung’s assertion that there are completely autonomous elements of the Unconscious which need to be approached and integrated felt right and made logical sense given the content of many dreams, which I carefully recorded in journals over the decades.

So why would I have an increase in teacher anxiety dreams AFTER leaving teaching? Because teaching, as onerous as I found the job, pushed me to the maximum in many ways. I was by necessity at my creative, innovative, and intellectual peak. I had to navigate so many relationships and so many roles, and was for over 20 years completely outside my comfort zone. Every time I thought “I’m getting the hang of this” some new leadership role or challenging group of students or suddenly having to teach online during COVID would happen. Leaving teaching and opening a small business in France has of course been challenging and rewarding, but I am not being pushed in the same ways. There is some part of my unconscious which is dis-satisfied with this state of affairs and is trying to force me to feed its needs for intellectual and creative rigor. Gardening, lumberjacking, speaking French, and running a tourist lodging business are apparently not enough!

I’m considering using Johnson’s method for a bit to see if I can pin down what is going on internally. He’s actually got two methods in the book–one for interpreting and doing dream work, and another for using Jung’s Active Imagination.

Another feature of my dreams is that I often am left upon waking with a song stuck in my head on repeat for days on end. I’ll wake from a dream hearing the song and then can’t shake it. Recently it’s been “Vienna” by Billy Joel. I decided to look up the lyrics, which I’d never really thought about:

Slow down, you crazy child
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you’re so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid? Mm
Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?
You’d better cool it off before you burn it out
You’ve got so much to do
And only so many hours in a day, hey

[Chorus]
But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want or you can just get old
You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, ooh
When will you realize Vienna waits for you?

I’ve noticed of late a tendency to always be thinking of the things I need to get done instead of just doing what I’m doing. I’ll be petting one of our animals and thinking “oh shit I have to finish splitting the firewood” or “that pipe in the Loft apartment is not going to replace itself” or “am I ever going to finish reading that William Gaddis novel?”

My unconscious is sending me this song on repeat for a reason. I don’t know that I ever really heard the lyrics outside of the chorus until now. So part of the dream is telling me I need a more intellectual, more creative outlet, while another part is telling me to relax:

Too bad, but it’s the life you lead
You’re so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you’re wrong
You know you can’t always see when you’re right
You’re right

Take a chill pill, man. You’re doing fine!

Recurrent Dreams

I don’t simply have recurring dreams in the typical sense that narratives and plot events return again and again. I have rather dreams which happen in the same settings over and over. These settings change and evolve mysteriously over decades, and have recurring characters as well as themes.

Some Examples

A cove at an ocean beach. Was initially undeveloped, then had a house, then a small development. Most recently there was some sort of detention camp there.

An undiscovered wing of my childhood home. It’s impossibly large and far older and more mysterious, and is accessed through different closet or cabinet doors, or via the basement, of the “real” home.

An urban neighborhood of Victorian rowhomes with bars and frequented houses and alleys. The different bars often have the same regulars but sometimes I go to one and not the others, or to all in one dream. Often after the bars I retire to one of the friend’s houses. In these dreams, some friends from the real world arrive, but most of the characters are recurring dream characters, but the dreams are never the same. The bars and houses often change decor and remodel just as in real life, but remain recognizable. The regular customers often greet me as though I’ve been away for a long time.

The bookshop I worked in for 7 years in my 20s. I regularly re-visit it in dreams, and parts of it are closed off or have been reopened. Sometimes it is thriving and others near decrepit. The employees there are dream employees, never the actual colleagues I worked with. The employees have heard about me and my tenure in this place, or knew someone who worked for me or with me ‘back in the day.’

Schools and classrooms from a variety of teaching positions I’ve held. Often the school is unfamiliar from the real world but the classroom is mine, or vice-versa. These schools maintain their structure but alterations are made each time I visit.

Unconscious to Conscious

Often, I’ll have dreams in these settings for years, and life goes on in these dreams just as life goes on in real life. But many times I don’t remember these dreams or these settings when awake until one sudden vivid dream renders it all conscious, and then I’ll wake and have powerful memories of multiple dreams in this location going back many years. I’ll even note that certain characters in the settings have evolved over time, having matured, or aged, or been sick and healed, etc.

“Deep” Dream Settings

Sometimes my dreams seem to happen concurrently and at different settings at different depths. I used to dream regularly of a world that was a sketch of a place, where everything was black except for silver lines denoting walls and roofs and trees, where the characters were simply lights or silvery profiles. I always knew I had “gone deep” when I dreamt in this setting. But at the same time, a different component of my self would be experiencing a different dream, like a typical work anxiety dream.

The same feeling is associated with strange “temple” dreams I’ve had, situated in stone rooms with baths featuring Egyptian tiles. In such dreams I often found gems or minerals or plants emerging from my skin. These dreams are powerful and come from a place beyond the limits of my own experience in this lifetime.

I’ve occasionally dreamt of a room where several people who’ve been important comrades in this life voyage and I are seated and laughing–and in this dream I know we are all just finished one existence and are preparing/selecting our roles in the next existence. We are joking about who played what role and the decisions they made and their karmic consequences for that individual and the whole group next time round.

Recording Dreams

After a long hiatus, I’ve begun to dream vividly again, and have begun recording them in depth when I can recall them sufficiently. I always feel more alive and more creative and healthy when I have powerful and mysterious dreams. Grateful they are returning.

Jobless

It’s been a bit more than 10 months since we arrived in France. We quit our jobs and used 85% of our savings to buy an old mill in a small village in the Correze. We are “jobless,” in the sense that we’ve dropped out of the system which requires you to show up at a place of employment and subject yourself to the whims of an employer for huge swaths of your life.

But we are hardly “not working.” Today, for example, I weed whacked for two hours, I cut down scrub brush and overgrown ivy and dead trees for two hours, I prepared two rental apartments for overnight guests and greeted them and toured them around (in French). My wife and I carted barrows full of gravel down from the street level at our property to the garden where we intend to set up a glamping tent.

Tomorrow we will have to clean the apartments and do laundry and prep them for the next guests. We don’t make anywhere near the money we used to make when we had salaries–but we make enough. We own our property free and clear. We have solar panels. We have a basic and simple life, and I’m starting a vegetable garden. The goal is to have a business sufficient to live a simple and comfortable life without all the rat race BS we faced for decades in the USA. And 10 months in, we are doing so.

Whatever your dream is–whatever it is that you wish you could do, or hope to do someday–do it NOW. Stop buying into the culture that you must rent yourself to a corporation in order to be successful and happy. Get out of that mindset. It’s not easy. The visa renewal process and French taxes are driving me crazy! But–you can live by a river in an old mill in France (or wherever you want) for a fraction of the price of a condo in DC or NY or Vegas. Do it now!

We have two families of four staying over tonight. They had luck with the weather and spent their first few hours here in the garden exploring. They told me how cool our place was and they took many photos of our building and the river, and their kids ran around kicking a soccer ball and having a blast. That is all I need. I don’t need a big salary and retirement. I don’t need 65 hour work weeks and stress.