Tosia H Zraikat

a Story of Dreams

 

Sketch of the dream behind my little tale.

Many years before there was television and before people lived in square houses, a young girl went into the desert with her friends, and after a long walk, they came to an oasis, a place where a natural spring bubbled up, and green plants could grow. There, they sat in the shade of trees and after eating their sandwiches and sweet purple grapes, they told each other about their dreams. The girl loved to talk about her dreams, and to hear about others’ dreams, because she believed that the dream world really existed, and that those things that they saw and did in dreams really did happen. Her friends laughed at her about this, calling her - sweetly and with little hugs - naive and childish, which did not bother her in the least. 

One friend, whose name was Alex, dreamed about a bed that he had slept in as a little child. He remembered that bed because it was made of silver, and very heavy. ‘In my dream,’ he said, the bed carried me far way over the sea, and became a boat, and took me to a land of many foxes. That is all I remember,’ Alex said. 

‘Oh, I love foxes!’ exclaimed the girl, and there was one in my dream as well. I was standing on a mountain looking over the valley with my baby brother, and I noticed a little fox in the grass, gazing at us. My brother ran towards it, that kind of waddling run that he used to have when he was smaller, and he disappeared into the grasses with the fox. I was very upset, but I knew the fox wouldn’t hurt him’. 

Well, said another friend, whose name was Jenna, I dreamed I was a crane, flying, and it was wonderful’. 

‘I don’t remember my dream,’ said the other friend sadly. 

So they sat, talking quietly among themselves. It was hot, so the girl lay in a little hollow in the sand, where it was shady. And after a while, she feel asleep. 

She awoke with a start, and saw her friends still talking. They had been dabbling their feet in the cool spring, and were standing beneath a tree in deep conversation. All of a sudden, the girl saw a great silver cot falling out of the sky and called out, 

‘Watch out! That’s your dream bed, Alex, about to fall on you!’

 Alex paid no attention, even when the bed just missed him and fell onto the girl. But she was ready, and held it off, though it really was heavy. 

Then the girl saw her baby brother falling from the sky, laughing as though he were on a playground ride, and he landed lightly on the grass. 

‘Oh hello dear brother,’ she said.  ‘So, you’ve had enough of foxes for now.’

 ‘Look’, she called to her friends. ‘My brother has returned from the fox!’ No one heard her. 

Then the girl saw a great white crane sailing across the sky, and it reminded her of her friend Jenna. 

‘Jenna!’ she called. ‘Come down and see us, crane!’

But the bird called back, ‘I am on my way to the sea where the whales are playing,’ and flew on. 

And then a small box fell down beside the girl, and on it was the name of her other friend, Tony. It was beautiful, but locked with a little key still in the lock. She knew at once what it was. 

‘Come over here. Oh come over here,’ the girl called to her friends, and this time, they heard her. 

‘What is that silver. . . . oh!’ exclaimed Alex. ‘My bed! The very one I dreamed of! How can that be?’ 

‘And there goes your crane, Jenna, on her way to watch the whales play,’ said the girl, pointing to the crane that was circling around them before flying out of sight. 

‘How did you know that I was flying to watch whales?’ asked Jenna in astonishment. ‘I didn’t tell you that part of mu dream!’

‘No, you didn’t. The crane did,’ said the girl with a big smile. 

‘And see, here is my baby brother, come back from the fox.’

 The girl’s friends looked totally perplexed, especially when they spied a little red fox disappearing into a burrow beside one of the trees. 

‘Here Tony,’ said the girl, handing the box to her friend. ‘I believe that is the dream you forgot last night.’

Tony stared at the box and the girl, not sure what to do. 

‘Before you go to sleep tonight,’ the girl continued, ‘why not open the box and dream that dream again?’

 Tony nodded dumbly. This was all too much. In fact, as the friends walked home, they could hardly talk from astonishment. The girl just smiled. She smiled because she knew that the world was full of surprises. There is so much that we don’t know about it. 

As she parted from her friends to go home, Alex said quietly, not quite believing what he was saying, ‘Maybe we live right beside the land of dreams, but just don’t see it.’ 

Jenna nodded. ‘Yes, maybe it is a real place after all.’

 Tony shook his head. ‘I just don’t believe it! Somehow, you’ve played a trick on us,’ he said to the girl, his eyes full of admiration because Tony did appreciate a good trick. 

‘No,’ said the girl. ‘No trick. You just have to believe,’ and with that, she went home smiling all the way. 

The Danger of Not Knowing Our Selves

 

 

Our world is in wild confusion, governed and dominated by ego-driven personalities who are blind, selfish, cruel, corrupt and oblivious to the feelings of others. The governed and dominated grow ever more angry, feel betrayed, disoriented, or despairing, fall into victim-thinking. And the darkest, ugliest, most feared or hated of our feelings and beliefs are projected onto others to such a degree that very few of us are aware of what really motivates or drives us. 

“Most people confuse 'self-knowledge' with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has any egoconsciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents.   (Carl G. Jung)

Even deeper than ego lie the vast regions of non-egoic (spiritual) nature that too few ever touch. This prevailing ignorance of our finer spiritual nature, and our consequent failure to strengthen and support it, keeps us hypnotized by ego and its delusion, and leaves us in the hands of ego-driven, self-serving, confused personalities, ours and others'.

This is the road to self-destruction and a darker future for humankind. 

Humanity as a whole must evolve. We must get down into our inner pollution and begin clear it away, refining our energies enough to move us forward.  Nature won't do it for us. God won't. They do support our sincere efforts but This is our task. We are responsible for our own evolution.

If we do not look honestly and courageously into ourselves, recognise our shadows and the negative qualities and dark desires that we project onto others, and begin clearing them away, we will continue on this self-destructive path that we are now following. The choice is ours, individually and collectively.

"The world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man ....The psyche is the great danger. "      (Carl Jung)

"If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”  (Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Texts)

 The evolution of humankind begins with the sincere search for Truth, and it begins in the individual, in the personal evolution of each one who looks deeper into themselves. When we do.....

"We gradually realize how much of the inner self we have covered up, pushed aside for what we considered the more important desires of the conscious self"  (Edgar Cayce in The Search for God). 

The search for the Divine, the Sacred in the world is the search to know ourselves, truly as we are, imperfect, full of dark secrets and unrecognised lights. It is the quest for the Pearl of Great Price.  It is a difficult quest. It can be painful and unpleasant and it is crucial. There is no greater challenge for each of us, and we must rise to it.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cc 2023 Tosca Zraikat

Accepting Eros

Some months ago, I posted this sketch on facebook with these words from Jung:

"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are" and "The most terrifying thing is to accept ourselves completely."

I was studying Jung at the time - again - and had thought I was about done with recognising certain troublesome aspects of my self-perception, especially in regard to truth and self-deception/illusion.

Going through my sketch books yesterday, however, I came to this, and realised that I am nowhere near 'done' with Self, nor will be until I have wrestled with Eros, Love - not what Marie Louise von Franz once described as "this Christian all-pardoning, sweetie-pie, strawberry-sauce love" but Love as Eros, the imperative, overpowering, aggressive force which Jung considered "might well be the first of cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself" ('Late thoughts' in Memories, Dreams and Reflections).

Those little figures and life forms in the drawing represent not Nature, as I had supposed, but teasing intimations of those fierce/tender, chthonic/divine forces of Eros that have been plaguing me. 

How it will play out, I cannot tell. Paul Selig's guides speak a river into which one must step in order to distinguish the small-self's love from True Love, which is divine.

"The moment you say, 'I am truly willing to know love,' what love is not will make itself known. And the pain of this, in many cases, is shattering to the structure of personality who only thought love could be a certain thing. .....True love means you are realizing the action of love that expresses through you and you are no longer deciding that it is you who is the lover. You have become both the recipient of divine love and the expression of it." (Paul Selig,'Opening to Love', youtube).

Shattering, indeed. But I am here, wading into the river because I want to be borne by Love.

And here begins the really hard work of letting go of preconceptions, illusions and sentimental wishful thinking about Eros, Love, something I will write about when I am ready.