2019.03.26 11:30 - Dream Session: Baby, Bus and Trump

Attending were Tura, Zen, Alma, and Riddle. :)

 

Tura Brezoianu: good evening Zen

Zen (zen.arado): Hi Tura :)

Zen (zen.arado): just heard my sister is in hospital

Tura Brezoianu: is it serious?

Zen (zen.arado): chest infection and delirium

Tura Brezoianu: Sounds serious. Best wishes for her.

Zen (zen.arado): they are starting to suspect she has Alzheimer’s

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): hi Zen and Tura

Zen (zen.arado): Hi Alma

Tura Brezoianu: hi Alma

Zen (zen.arado): have a muscle strain in left leg

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): oh dear

Zen (zen.arado): trying to type from electric wheelchair

Zen (zen.arado): hard to get close enough to desk

Zen (zen.arado): I wonder how many will come

Zen (zen.arado): it's not the same without Eliza

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I didn't see a reminder notice

Zen (zen.arado): I think Agatha was supposed to post one

Zen (zen.arado): I can't remember how to do it now

Zen (zen.arado): I would have to work it all out again

Zen (zen.arado): I haven't posted a log for over four or five years

Zen (zen.arado): what you want to do?

Zen (zen.arado): Shall we proceed with just the three of us?

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): we could

Tura Brezoianu: ok

Zen (zen.arado): If we can find enough dreams to talk about

Zen (zen.arado): anybody have any?

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I had an interesting dream a few days ago

Zen (zen.arado): That's great go ahead

Tura Brezoianu listens

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I'm walking outdoors in a place sort of like a college campus. There is a man walking with me. we pass a building that resembles a church. Some flat panels have been set up in front and in back of this building, with scenery painted on them, as if it was being used in filming a movie. Inside the building, a group is carrying out a ritual of some kind. There is singing and chanting. A woman stands at a stairway that goes down to a lower level of the house. She chants in a language that at first sounds like Latin, but then seems to be English. Someone (a man?) walks up the steps from below, holding a baby in their arms. At first I think this baby has just been born, down in the lower level. But then the baby looks like it is older than that. The person carrying the baby comes up to our level, and then goes up another flight of steps, which ends at a door or a mirror (?). The baby has become an adolescent boy, and this seems to be a coming-of-age ritual. The young man is standing right next to me, and the

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): person who brought him up from below has left the room. I feel awkward and don't know what to say or do. I reach out to shake his hand and offer him a word of congratulations. He seems to have some sort of disability. Perhaps he is autistic?

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): [end]

Zen (zen.arado): thanks Alma

Zen (zen.arado): what struck you about the dream?

Tura Brezoianu: hi Riddle

Zen (zen.arado): Hi Riddle

Riddle Sideways: Hi All, sorry late. just got home

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): it seems symbolic, with something being born at a lower level of consciousness and then being carried up. the theme of coming -of-age seems archetypal

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): the baby seems to grow up before our eyes, ending as a teen age boy

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): hi Riddle

Zen (zen.arado): yes seemed a kind of archetype of growth to puberty

Tura Brezoianu: what do you think the significance of his awkwardness is?

Zen (zen.arado): And all the rituals and ceremonies we go through

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I really don't know. just that he seems to have problems relating to people.

Zen (zen.arado): isn't that one of the reasons we need rituals?

Zen (zen.arado): They give us something to hold onto, something to say at very sad or awkward times

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): yes, they structure our interactions

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): give us a form to follow

Zen (zen.arado): yes

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): the ritual implies that there is something special about this child

Zen (zen.arado): makes me think of Confucius and all his rituals

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): even though he is "flawed" in some way

Zen (zen.arado): as we all, I guess

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): it is like he is being welcomed into this group of people

Zen (zen.arado): a lot of religions and societies seem to have some ritual for men around the age where they become a man

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): his origin is hidden in the basement, where I cannot see it

Zen (zen.arado): some of them have hard tests and ordeals they have to go through

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): who is his mother? and who is the one who carries him up the stairs?

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): it leaves me with a lot of questions

Riddle Sideways: Ah, Life. So many questions

Zen (zen.arado): yes perhaps it relates to your own childhood in some way

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): well, I have a brother that I will likely be visiting before long, and that promises to be a very awkward meeting

Riddle Sideways: a dream in prep for that

Zen (zen.arado): I was telling Tura I have just been told that my sister is in hospital

Zen (zen.arado): Tura sorry

Zen (zen.arado): my niece has an autistic girl

Zen (zen.arado): she must be around 13 now and is quite a happy little girl

Zen (zen.arado): you have some figures to work with there anyway, Alma

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): yes, could be interesting to apply the exercises to this dream

Zen (zen.arado): I must admit I never seem to get time to do that

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): same here

Zen (zen.arado): I just seem to record them and not bother much with them again

Zen (zen.arado): I had a dream with Trump in it again

Zen (zen.arado): I can't remember if I told you this one

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala) listens

Riddle Sideways: only remember the first one. /listens

Zen (zen.arado): In Carrickfergus art Club having a discussion about how to sell paintings. Trump was there listening in the background as I explained some ideas. Saying something like we should sell paintings to each other, which is stupid. Sitting painting at a desk with Trump beside me. Scared I'll get some paint on his clothes so I move.

Zen (zen.arado): done

Riddle Sideways: Rich Trump could buy them all

Zen (zen.arado): this was an art club I used to be a member of up to about five years ago

Riddle Sideways: very strange that Trump listens

Zen (zen.arado): yes he always seems very quiet in my dreams :-)

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): that's refreshing

Zen (zen.arado): I'll bet he could sell paintings

Zen (zen.arado): I'll give him that

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): he'd want to put his name on them

Zen (zen.arado): he would certainly get a big cut out of it anyway

Zen (zen.arado): I looked at last week's introduction to the next exercise

Zen (zen.arado): about sensory detail

Zen (zen.arado): but Trump always looks the same except appears on a golf course

Zen (zen.arado): I don't want to know what he smells like :-)

Zen (zen.arado): probably uses expensive cologne

Riddle Sideways: hahaha

Zen (zen.arado): I don't know why I dream about Trump

Zen (zen.arado): probably because he is on TV so much

Zen (zen.arado): I don't feel much anger or hatred towards him anymore

Riddle Sideways: am so glad not to be the dreaming of him

Zen (zen.arado): don't we get the politicians we deserve ?

Riddle Sideways: oh dear

Zen (zen.arado): It's like there was a Trump sized space waiting for him

Zen (zen.arado): we got Theresa May and `brexit

Riddle Sideways: yes, you have your own fun

Zen (zen.arado): which is turning into a worse and worse mess every day

Zen (zen.arado): I was reading about defence mechanisms this week

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I think a lot of people voted for Trump and for Brexit in protest, never thinking that they would actually win

Zen (zen.arado): one of them is about projecting your own faults onto others

Zen (zen.arado): I wonder which faults I project onto Trump :-)

Riddle Sideways: hmmm,

Zen (zen.arado): yes Alma it seems hard to believe what has happened

Zen (zen.arado): anybody else have any dreams or reports?

Riddle Sideways: looking through journal, seems to have no full dreams for the longest time

Riddle Sideways: but do have a joke

Tura Brezoianu: I have one from a month ago

Zen (zen.arado): :-)

Riddle Sideways: in another group: [09:49] Kira Davison (kira.komarov): @joke

[09:49] ecto (ectogram): They're always telling me to live my dreams... But I don't want to be naked in an exam I haven't studied for... [Ectogram Resident/182852]

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): LOL

Tura Brezoianu: !

Zen (zen.arado): :-)

Riddle Sideways: now Tura's turn

Tura Brezoianu: I had hired a bus. I had been on a trip with it, and I could have returned it the previous day, but I didn't. I had booked it from Thursday to Saturday, and it was now Sunday. I had parked it in the car park at work in a large bus bay.

Tura Brezoianu: I was trying to improve how it was parked, getting it closer to the side of the bay (in which it was parallel parked). I was outside the bus as I was doing this, reaching underneath it to somehow operate the controls. Then it crashed into a small car behind it and overturned onto it.

Tura Brezoianu: Then I'm in my office at work, and I start thinking of all the hassle that this was going to cause. I'd have to contact the bus company and tell them what had happened. I needed to tell the security lodge that there had been a crash in the car park, but I didn't have their phone number. I was going to go outside to see them, but it started raining heavily. I was getting a mounting sense of the impossibility of all the stuff I'd suddenly incurred by crashing the bus.

Tura Brezoianu: [done]

Zen (zen.arado): thanks Tura

Riddle Sideways: wow, the pressure building

Zen (zen.arado): seems like an anxiety dream

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): that's the kind of dream that I am glad to wake up from and realize that it was only a dream

Tura Brezoianu: Yes, I have quite a few of those

Zen (zen.arado): the bus must represent something

Zen (zen.arado): some big awkward object in your life?

Tura Brezoianu looks around at RL computer room over-full of Stuff

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): something you used to go somewhere with, but now don't need anymore

Tura Brezoianu: worry about not keeping up with responsibilities, maybe

Zen (zen.arado): Agrees with Alma

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): it was useful for the trip, but now is just creating problems

Tura Brezoianu: Yes, could be.

Zen (zen.arado): could be good to work with the image of the bus? T

Tura Brezoianu: Yes, I think so.

Zen (zen.arado): would seem strange to interrogate a bus

Zen (zen.arado): :-)

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): Magic Bus

Zen (zen.arado): give it a cup of tea

Riddle Sideways: huge big thing that must be parked just so

Zen (zen.arado): but you were using the bus to help people, to take them somewhere?

Tura Brezoianu: I don't know what I had been using it for, the dream didn't fill that in

Riddle Sideways: a rented somebody else's big thing you were responsible for

Zen (zen.arado): It's quite a rich dream with lots of associations

Riddle Sideways: a little somebody else's car that you smashed-squished

Tura Brezoianu: Something I'd taken on, and now wanted to complete and get it off my hands.

Zen (zen.arado): unfinished business

Riddle Sideways: yet more things keep coming up

Riddle Sideways: can't get it finished

Tura Brezoianu: I think that resonates with a lot of my life!

Riddle Sideways: Ah! Life

Riddle Sideways: (again)

Tura Brezoianu: Can't get away from it :)

Zen (zen.arado): it's all such a mystery

Zen (zen.arado): I am really enjoying the Wu Wei book

Zen (zen.arado): it addresses the main problem I find with spiritual practices

Zen (zen.arado): how much we let go and allow things to happen and how much we work at things

Zen (zen.arado): it's a big division in lots of spiritual practices

Riddle Sideways: yes. could have been good to just leave the bus badly parked. instead of working on it

Zen (zen.arado): :-)

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): in Buddhism they have a phrase, "not too tight, not too loose"

Zen (zen.arado): yes

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): they use the metaphor of a string on a musical instrument: too loose and there's no sound, too tight and the string snaps

Zen (zen.arado): yes that's another one

Tura Brezoianu: "You must hold the sword like a bird: too tight, and you will suffocate it; too loose, and it will fly away!"

Zen (zen.arado): yes

Tura Brezoianu: (from an old film)

Zen (zen.arado): Scaramouche?

Tura Brezoianu: That's it

Zen (zen.arado): that's a really old film :-)

Riddle Sideways: 1952

Zen (zen.arado): maybe it's just about learning how much effort we need

Zen (zen.arado): I saw that film when I was a kid and it stuck in my mind

Zen (zen.arado): Stewart Granger

Tura Brezoianu: Me too

Zen (zen.arado): someone murders his brother and he wants to take revenge against the swordsman who killed him but he doesn't know how to fence

Zen (zen.arado): so he goes to a teacher, was it Mel Ferrer?

Riddle Sideways: never seen it. adds it to list

Zen (zen.arado): I can't remember how it ended though

Zen (zen.arado): he probably beat the swordsman and got his revenge

Tura Brezoianu: I've forgotten almost all of it but that scene

Zen (zen.arado): I remember that too, isn't it strange

Zen (zen.arado): well guess I better go and try to remember how to post the log :)

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): just looking at the wikipedia summary of Scaramouche ... it has a very complicated plot

Riddle Sideways: it is easy. like falling off a log ㋡

Zen (zen.arado): is it on YouTube I wonder

Riddle Sideways: yes

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): easy enough to search it

Tura Brezoianu: I see one on YoutTube, but if you try to play it, it's deleted.

Zen (zen.arado): you would think they would let you watch it because it's so old

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): depends on if it's out of copyright and in public domain

Zen (zen.arado): some of those old movies were very good

Zen (zen.arado): they had good storylines

Riddle Sideways: hmmm, wants $2.99

Zen (zen.arado): amazing

Tura Brezoianu: There's a silent version from 1924

Zen (zen.arado): wow

Tura Brezoianu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbotp0iXqtE

Zen (zen.arado): nice to just sit here

Riddle Sideways: yes

Riddle Sideways: no caretakers yet?

Zen (zen.arado): it's because I am at an earlier time

Zen (zen.arado): our clocks haven't changed yet

Riddle Sideways: oh

Zen (zen.arado): this weekend I think

Riddle Sideways: trouble keeping up with everybody

Zen (zen.arado): I have an exercise I can post

Zen (zen.arado): shouldn't take long

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): OK

Zen (zen.arado): EXCERCISE: Sustaining Relationship with an Image by Using the Senses Use the Dream Tending skills that you have learned thus far to bring yourself into a present-centered, embodied relationship with an image. Notice the quality of contact that you experience with this image. Notice how you are interacting with it. How are you in relationship? Most likely, you are watching the image, observing what it is up to. Again notice the quality of your body experience here at this stage of relationship. Bring your attention to the depth of emotion and the range of motion of the dream image. Write about this in your journal. To begin, turn away from the image and spend a few moments awakening your senses. A simple way to do this is to look around the room in a mindful way. Focus your attention on the object that captures your attention with its beauty, its form, its texture, its brightness, or some other sensory quality.

 

Zen (zen.arado): Now close you eyes, quiet down, and listen to the sounds in the room. What do you hear? Perhaps you hear the hum of a fan, the chirp of birdsong from outside, or traffic noise from the street. Then bring your awareness to your sense of smell. What does the room smell like? Can you differentiate various scents? Notice how the flowers or plants have a different scent than that of the carpet or the furniture. Is there a particular odor from the furnace or heater? If a window is open, can you make out the fragrance drifting into the room from outside?

 

Zen (zen.arado): Now open your eyes and notice how you see differently, with sensitivity for color, shades of light, and detail. Notice how much more acutely you hear and smell the world around you.

 

Aizenstat, Stephen. Dream Tending: Awakening to the Healing Power of Dreams (pp. 44-45). Spring Journal, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

 

Zen (zen.arado): that's just the first part – it's a long exercise

Tura Brezoianu: Thank you Zen

Riddle Sideways: Thank you

Zen (zen.arado): it's very like a meditation isn't it?

Riddle Sideways: Good luck Tura, relating to the Bus in this exercise

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): present moment awareness

Zen (zen.arado): Becoming more aware

Zen (zen.arado): I can remember the smell of buses

Zen (zen.arado): when I was a kid

Zen (zen.arado): when we had trolleybuses

Zen (zen.arado): a kind of rubbery smell

Zen (zen.arado): on the big steep steps

Zen (zen.arado): and the jerky motion of the big electric motors

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I remember school buses

Zen (zen.arado): we didn't have those :-)

Riddle Sideways: S.F. has Cable Cars

Tura Brezoianu: I remember than when I was waiting at a bus stop and the bus arrived, as it drew to a standstill an eddy of fumes would blow forward from the rear, and I had to not breathe in at that moment. I think the engines are cleaner nowadays.

Riddle Sideways: and trolley buses

Zen (zen.arado): I remember trams in Belfast when I was a kid

Zen (zen.arado): very noisy

Zen (zen.arado): I better go and do some things before the girls come

Zen (zen.arado): thanks for coming everyone

Tura Brezoianu: goodnight Zen

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): I should get going too

Riddle Sideways: ok, thank you and goodnight

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): bye Zen, Tura, Riddle

Tura Brezoianu: goodnight all

Zen (zen.arado): goodnight

Riddle Sideways: good day

Alma di Masala (almadi.masala): dream well :)

Riddle Sideways: like that