Memories, Dreams, Reflections

For the first time in a long time I'm dreaming on a regular basis, and I'm seeing a certain concantination threading them together.

I have always had a turbulent relationship with Nature - both the primal, primitive man inside me, the unconscious, ancient, prehistoric instinctive side of my psyche that emerged from the womb of the earth and remained undifferentiated from her, shaped by her language.

Humankind became irrevocably riven upon achieving consciousness, a tearing away from Earth's Naval, submerging the instinctual archaic man into unconsciousness, the Earth left to communicate to us through those same primordial images, or archetypes, impressing them through dreams when we retreat back into that twilight state of undifferentiated communion with our Mother Goddess.

In waking consciousness that tormented relationship has manifested itself in both the supernal spiritual interactions with the mountains surrounding BYU in which I have felt my skin disappear and an overwhelming sense of a unifying sameness with my environment in recognition that the same life force granted me animates all matter and living things - the collective soul of the world.

These moments of sublimity have been balanced by harsh confrontations with the incontinent savagery of those same mountains, with the absolute and terrifying otherness of the natural world, the profound power of the elements that I am subject to. My life has been in danger and my mind thrust into solipsist despondence equal in violence to the enjoyment in transcendence I've felt.

This is a reflection of my disposition proper. I have always been a polarized person, displaying compassion and connectedness in one moment and unfeeling indifference in another, a blessing and a burden to those I'm close to. Perhaps all are this way.

In such moments of abrasive reflection the words of Carl Jung come to mind:

It can never be established with one-hundred-per-cent certainty whether the spirit-figures in dreams are morally good. Very often they show all the signs of duplicity, if not of outright malice. I must emphasize, however, that the grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never know what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by enantiodromia, and what good may very possibly lead to evil. Sometimes the probate spiritus recommended by John cannot, with the best will in the world, be anything other than a cautious and patient waiting to see how things will finally turn out. [probate spiritus = test the spirits, Latin phrase from 1 John 4:1.]

My dreams center around this enigmatic duality - figures who seem malicious may presage some ensuing transformation, as the body aches as it passes through puberty and growth in the process of maturation, or as it experiences pain in the process of healing.

The world has always been more accessible to me seen through archetypal, or primordial, imagery. I believe I suffer, and concomitantly am blessed with, a positive mother complex (a Jungian term), an over-development of my feeling of connectedness to the earth and a recognition of the language of the unconscious - untempered by a well developed rational and logocentric ego. This also subjects me to the capricious forces of Nature (the ultimate mother archetype), cruel and warm to excess.