Friday, April 15, 2011

Inside One's Armor



I woke up being irritated at my brother for being so dictatorial about the walks we've been taking together. So much so that I put aside the dreams I had last night until I wrote him an e-mail to tell him how I felt. I do remember dreaming of working with a large group of people, some of who I know or have known in the past, on some sort of building site that involved a lot of wooden framing.

I was taking a break with a couple of people who were commenting on some bossy woman they worked with. They didn't say her name, but the way they spoke of her reminded me of this woman who I only knew as a young girl in high school. I said to them, "You sound like you're talking about Imogene. She's the only Imogene I've ever known."

Suddenly, the young Imogene appeared before me, reached out her hand to me, I took her hand in mine, and she sat down beside me on the stack of lumber I was sitting on. We were sitting there holding hands when I woke up. Her sudden appearance in my dream made me very happy.

I talked to my sister-in-law just before she went to work in her flower bed. She has been using the binaural beats software as well. Not as much as me, but some, and I wanted to talk to somebody about the role personality plays in my dreamtime. She tolerated me for a little while, but it was easy to see that she preferred to work in her flowers, and my need to express myself was interrupting her intent.

What I think I'm dealing with in the dreamtime (it's not actually 'mine') is not personality so much, as the lack of it. For instance, if I met Imogene in beta reality instead of the theta state, I can't imagine that she would have been so transparently delighted to see me nor reached out to me to hold hands. Her normal bossy personality would have interfered in order to protect herself against the possibilities represented by our being human. I do, however, think she would feel that way inside her social armor.

To me, that's what the human personality is or amounts to. A coat of armor or perhaps a "coat of many colours". It is designed to protect it's wearers against the ill intents that abound in the world, and in the hearts of men. It's never always enough, there are all those hidden chinks we discover the hard way, but it has to do as it does, because that's all we have got to protect what we consider precious from inconsideration.

It's not only me having to deal with the dreamtime without my gaggle of personalities to protect me, but the other care-actors I am encounters there also. The Earth now has an estimated six billion living dreamers on it at any one time. Each with their own agenda. Every possibility known or knowable to dreamers is always available in the dreamtime, and it's not limited to this one planet.

Without my defense mechanisms available in the dreamtime, I am is as vulnerable as a new-born in the beta state of being, but so is every other entity to be found there. Such a state of being can be terrifying. Not so much in the midst of being there. It's when I wake up and reflect on what I am is encountered there that does the damage to it's projected self. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The final answer on the Jeopardy TV program last night involved the famous Mississippi writer Faulkner who claimed that another writer was a coward because he never used a word in his novels that the reader would have to look up in a dictionary. I thought that was an interesting claim, because some writing teachers say that's a good strategy. I didn't know the winning question, but all the contestants did: Who was Hemingway?

The winner for the second night in a row was my idea of a beautiful woman. I didn't expect her to win her first night. It would be too good to be true. She started slow last night, but damned if she didn't win again. I like it when people win who are easy on the eyes and interesting to look at to boot. Why would I hate people because they're beautiful.