Dining with the Trickster

 

What seemed, at first, to be a silly inconsequential dream…

…turned out to contain an archetype found throughout world folklore and myth.

In the dream…

I’m at a group banquet, situated on a long table, in the side yard of a home.

We first tried eating gooey, cheesy food—such as slices of pizza.

Finally, after going through various alternatives, we ate some cold cuts.  This food was better for us.

I have a stack of open-face bologna sandwiches on the table.

A woman takes most of these sandwiches.  She doesn’t realize they’re mine.  Nonetheless, I’m irritated.

I sneak over and grab most of the sandwiches back, while she’s not looking.

I would hardly have given this dream a thought…

…if I hadn’t been bothered by my petty thoughts and actions.

Was I being so small in my waking life?

Well, yeah—in many areas.  But I’m already aware of how petty I can be.  Why would I need a dream to tell me what I already know?

Maybe the dream actually relates to food.  Is the dream instructing me to eat cold cuts?

I don’t think so.  Gooey cheese may not be the best choice, but neither is a diet based on cold cuts.

But that’s not the real problem in this dream… 

There’s a theft, but that’s not the problem either.  After all, it was done in innocence—the woman didn’t realize she was stealing.

For that matter, at that point, I’d already had several sandwiches.  I probably didn’t need any more.  But I wanted to grab a few extra—”get while the gettin’s good”, as the song says.

So maybe that’s a problem, but the more important problem is my reaction.  Again, I have to consider my pettiness in the dream—my sneakiness.

I could’ve just confronted the woman and resolved the situation that way.  Truth is, I took some satisfaction in swiping those sandwiches back.

Rather mischievous of me.  Maybe even a little cowardly.  By stealing the sandwiches, I didn’t have to deal with the woman directly. 

She took from me, but in innocence.  I took from her, but deliberately.  Though I’m taking what’s mine, I’m the real thief!

In my waking life, I believe in playing by the book—even if it costs me.  However, this dream tells me that I sometimes enjoy being sly.  But worse than that: I may commit the petty act of taking revenge through trickery.

However, I don’t see my behavior in the dream as immoral—I see it as amoral.  Like the mischievousness of  Trickster—the character found in so many of the world’s myths and legends. 

Trickster is amoral.  He enjoys playing tricks, but his actions aren’t really malicious.  He does as he does because that’s just what he does.

However, in the course of his trickery, the tricky trickster often ends up tricking himself.

Well, I have fooled myself many a time!

The dream ends after I’ve stolen the sandwiches back, but if the scenario had continued, my actions could have easily blown up in my face.

I still can’t relate this dream to a particular situation in my waking life…

…nonetheless, it’s given me some insight in my character, into my ways of working in this world.  I’m not so strait-laced as I may imagine!  Nor so brave!

Now I know to watch this shadow aspect before it gets me into Trickster trouble…

…and to find better uses for it.  After all, the Trickster is also a creative force.

© 2012, Michael R. Patton
sky rope poetry

 

Can’t See the Message for the Socks

 

Even when I have a clear memory of a dream…

…I’m probably not going to be clear about everything in it.

But I’ve found that I need not remember every detail in order to get the message.

In a recent dream…

I’ve just woken up.  It’s early in the morning, just before dawn.

I start rushing about—there’s much to be done.  I’m thinking I should’ve risen sooner.

I start to put on some red sneakers.  My socks are wadded up inside the shoes.

I’m in such a hurry that I decide to forget about the socks for now.  I’ll slip into the shoes and put the socks on later.

Though I thought this dream might have an important message for me…

…I got hung up on the color of the socks.

I had a clear image of the wadded-up socks inside the shoes.  But for some reason, I couldn’t recall their color.

Were they white?  Were they gray?  Were they some other hue?

Fortunately, I soon saw how I was distracting myself.

I’m not saying details aren’t important, but there’s so much else happening here…

The dream tells me that I’ve begun something new.  In the dream, I’ve just moved into that house, into that city.  It’s a new day in a new place.

Though I’ve gotten a early start, I’m criticizing myself for not rising sooner.  Again, I’m not giving myself a fair break in a dream scenario (as also happens in waking life).

True, I do need to get a move on.  But maybe I shouldn’t be rushing about—I could actually cause problems for myself.

Perhaps that’s the reason the color of the socks didn’t register with me—I was in such a hurry.

Again, the dream mirrors a waking life condition—I can miss things when I try to go too fast.

Furthermore, I do have time to put on the socks.  I mean, how long does it take?  If I wait, I’ll just have to take my shoes off later and drag the socks out of my pocket—if I don’t lose them in my blind rush.

Though I can’t recall the color of the socks, I still see those red shoes.  So that’s the detail to consider.  In any case, the most important thing in the dream is what I’m thinking and doing.

© 2012, Michael R. Patton
searching for the new mythology

 

A Tough Act to Swallow

 

My dreams have shown me some ugly business.

Since I consider anything in a dream—any person, any emotion, any situation, any thing—to be a part of myself…

…dream messages can be a hard pill to swallow.

On the other hand, sometimes when I see something beautiful, something wonderful…

…it can also be hard to accept.

In a recent dream…

…I’m on a pleasant trip, moving above a blue marsh plain as if I’m flying.

I’ve chosen some music for this trip: a collaboration involving John Coltrane and The Beatles.

True, I’m listening to the music, not creating it; nonetheless, it‘s in my dream…

…and if I’m going to accept the worst about myself—if I’m going to accept that those terrorists, wounded women, rats, and malfunctioning cars are all a part of me…

…then I must also accept that this collaboration—between a seminal jazz saxophonist and the seminal rock band—represents something within me…

…no matter how difficult that may be to believe.

So then, what does this collaboration represent?

I’m not exactly sure.  But interpretation can come later.  Right now, the morning after this dream, I’m just going to enjoy the feeling.

© 2012, Michael R. Patton
sky rope poetry

 

Looking Back on the Present

 

In this time of looking back…

…of trying to assess the past year…

…I’m considering why 2011 wasn’t much of a “big dream year” for me.

Yes, I remembered dreams.  Yes, I wrote those dreams down.  I also went into a few of them and unveiled to myself some obvious secrets about myself—so obvious, that I’d missed them.

Nevertheless, this activity was not at the same intense level as in the last decade, especially the time between 2003-2009.

But that’s okay.  I don’t see what I doing now as “avoidance”.  I see it as healthy—as an attempt to create more balance in my life…

One can do good work in a cave, but there comes a time to step back out into the light of day.

In her book Dancing in the Flames, therapist Marion Woodman tells of people going through periods of deep inner examination, and then turning their attention back out, focusing again on the demands of the world outside the cave.

However, I didn’t fully emerge from the cave in 2011…

In the process of moving my blog from MSN Spaces to WordPress, I reconsidered many old dreams—which really weren’t so old.  Problems shown to me in 2003 were often still with me in 2011…

At least now, because of the dreams—and my work done on them—I’m more aware of those problems.

So, I’m not discouraged.  Besides, I’ve learned from my dreams that some struggles will be lifetime projects.

But these old dreams became current in another way as well: as I reconsidered them, I gained new insight.  Sometimes this new insight seemed so obvious!  Yet I’d missed it the first time ’round.

I’d planned to transfer the old material directly to the new site.  Instead, I ended up rewriting each and every entry.  As far as I was concerned, I had no other choice now.

But it was well worth the effort.  I needed to make the knowledge gained from these dreams more a part of me—more a part of my conscious thought.  I also needed a “summing up”—a summing up of a period of intense inner work.

So in one way, 2011 wasn’t an active year for me in terms of dreams…but in another way, it was extremely active.

© 2011, Michael R. Patton
sky rope poetry

 

Buggy

 

I’m still bugged, according to this dream:

I’m sitting outdoors, talking with an old man who’s a pest exterminator.  He holds up a can of bug spray.

The can is old—it’s grimy around the top.

The old man says the can’s nearly empty.  He pushes the nozzle, but only a weak spray comes out.

Yes, there’s a problem in this dream.  But because the dream lacked a certain drama, I wasn’t too bothered by the situation…

…until I realized how it connected to two earlier dreams.

A few weeks earlier, I dreamt of lying under a big fir tree at night.  Though I felt secure, I was unable to sleep because I worried there might be bugs on the ground.

Then, in a dream that came soon afterwards, I’m struck by an irate driver in a Volkswagen bug.

The pun is obvious.  There are many things that “bug” me in this life.  Things that keep me from sleeping in peace.  They run down me, even when I try my best to avoid them.

True, I have a pest exterminator to help me deal with these irritants…

…but apparently, he’s out of bug spray.

But maybe I shouldn’t be using such poison.  In my waking life, I try to avoid using pesticides.

However, the old man of this dream seems wise.  The spray will kill bugs, not me.

Nonetheless, he would seem to be engaged in a losing battle.  Doesn’t this world have an infinite supply of bugs?  Why fight?

Because I want to sleep in peace at night, that’s why.

Bugs are small problems, but they’re problems.  The dream is telling me that I didn’t heed the earlier messages.  I’m on empty.  What has served me in the past won’t serve me in the future.

Maybe I need to try something new—perhaps something more effective.

But what?  Often dreams only show the problem.  It’s up to my conscious mind to find the solution.

Since that dream, I haven’t had any more buggy scenes, so maybe I’ve heeded its message.

However, I know “bugs” can appear in different forms.  I’ve certainly been bugged in many other dream scenarios.

But the bug-spray dream wasn’t about eliminating bugs.  It was about controlling them.

It’s a lifetime project, an never-ending battle.  Such dreams are weapons in the fight.

© 2011, Michael R. Patton
searching for the new mythology