(My post in the New Jungian Book Club Group, Jan 14, 2020)
I apologise for the length, but this has been immensely significant for me, and I share it to help you understand what Jung means when he advocates thinking symbolically.
I had a dream that I will not go into except to say that in it, I announced that I am pregnant, but all that was felt was a small hard object low in the body. So that morning, wondering what this was that felt dead but wanted to be born, I used Jung's methods of dream analysis and Active Imagination* to explore the dream further.
First part: Title: Invitation
Sinking into the dream while awake. First a dragon ghost swirled up and away, like a stream of smoke, and I saw a small dirt-coloured man, something like Star Wars' Yoda but with cow ears and a beanie on his round head (same dirt colour), and a younger, friendly face. (Reminded me of Eckhart Tolle), with very scant facial hair. It seemed such a cheerful image, when Jung's were strange and sometimes hostile, but I remembered reading that you perceive that reality that matches your energy vibrations, and I feel quite happy these days, and was playing peaceful music. When I ask who he is, he smiles gently, compassionately.
"I have grown old waiting for you to come to me, and I have lost all my fierceness. Let us therefore befriend each other." He reminds me of my daimon, Socrates, who I spurned in my teens. But suddenly, I have an overwhelming urge to leave, so I get up to have breakfast and do not come back.
Part 2: Prometheus unchained or Forgiveness
(This occurred spontaneously as I was almost asleep that night, so I almost didn't write it down. But it was too significant for me to let it be forgotten.)
I am drowsily wondering again about that hard dead thing in me wants to be born and Yoda (he is not, but I'll call him that) appears and opens up what looks like a giant fleshy maw. Curious, I step inside.
What I see inside shocks me with its savagery and intense anger... myself as a small child grappling with something wild, myself screaming or crying out in fury for being ridiculed, for being ripped apart and bloody, for being abandoned; myself aflame with anger again and again, anger that was pure pain over and over; guilt and shame for allowing things that never should have been allowed, for not doing what should have been done to protect those I loved. I saw all this symbolically as dragons roiling, snakes bursting from mouths, but I saw myself, my mother, that father I never knew ... I saw my life so full of anger that I should have ignited and burned to ashes.
I turned to go, but realised that if I did not resolve all this anger, it would never fade. So I turned back, and raising my hands, yelled 'Stop!'
And everything stopped and I saw blue frost descend over it all, so that no one moved. 'The only way out of this is Forgiveness,' I cried. 'We must forgive each other, we must do it now or be destroyed.' And I felt an icy peace fall over the scene, and faces soften and warm, and instead of blood, there was the cool light of morning.
And I turned and stepped out of the maw to where Yoda was sitting with a silly smile on his face and eyes closed. 'Are we at peace now, Makandeya? Are we friends?'
Associations:
I called this part Prometheus unbound because in that maw, I saw the fury of Prometheus at being unjustly punished and eaten inside, his sacrifice for the sake of the good, and my long-suffering mother who opened her belly as she danced and laughed in my dream, and went down manholes, killing herself slowly, and I realised that the sacrifice we make for love also generates its opposite, fury. Some part of the sacrificer is outraged at the necessity of his/her suffering, even as that suffering is willingly endured.
Christ had to descend into hell after his extreme sacrifice to face there the demons of his own making, his outrage at God for having made sacrifice a necessity. Anger and violence are shadow aspects of love and beneficence, mediated through sacrifice.
I am reminded of the gentle, cow-eared Egyptian goddess Hathor whose lovingness turns into the savagery of lion-faced Sekhmet (might) sent by Ra to punish humankind, and whose blood-lust almost destroys them, and of Kali's blood-lust that only Shiva can make quiet. And of Makandeya, who is saved from the disaster that sweeps over humankind by entering the mouth of the child form of Shiva, who when Makandeya exits, asks, 'Are you rested?'
Interpretation:
When I was growing up till my thirties, I rarely felt anger, to the degree that I used to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Well, that little hard thing inside me that wanted to be born was a lifetime of unexpressed anger, that because it was not allowed to be manifest outwards, was turned inwards to consume me from within. Hence the many problems in my solar plexus area, which has undergone so many surgeries that there is thick hard area of numb scar tissue. The eagle that ate into Prometheus' belly every day had been eating me from the inside.
That was my mother's pattern as well, though differently experienced. She had endured so much in her youth and was so deeply wounded, but the only outlet for her pain and fury was me, whom she loved more than anything but upon whom she sometimes unleashed. I understood that, and forgave it even as it happened.
I did similar, except that not wanting to unleash my anger and pain onto the world and hurt others, I turned it upon myself. That was my sacrifice. Now that I have acknowledged what I had hidden and begun to forgive it, I have begun breaking the chains of Prometheus. It might take a while.
At the same time, I have recognised why I have always had such fear of man's violence and anger, and such awful visions concerning men: I projected all that anger and violence onto my animus, and made him my devil, my cold-hearted and evil one of whom I was so afraid. That is why this AI contained so many male images - Prometheus, Yoda, male dragons, fathers, butcherers of children. This has been a battle with my animus, its darkest aspect, onto which I have projected such fury and made it into a madman. I forgive it, and forgive myself for having made it hold all that anger and violence.
Let Yoda be my companion now, animus as friend?.
I can't sketch this now, though eventually, I may, as Jung did with many of his images long after his experiences.