The Dreamers' Dive

[Balder]

In a back corner of O'Kenny's Pub is a long, old table, well-carved, etched with initials, curious carvings, and countless quadrant diagrams.  In the dim light of an old gas lamp, folks have been gathering here for years to share stories from the subtle realm: dreams, visions, imaginal flights.  Pull up a chair.

[Davidu]

Perhaps that fierce, unruly, 'head' lion was a symbol of my ego-self, that later changed to become an aging, worldly Greg Allman, with a lion's mane of golden hair.  He realized the importance of presence, my fountainhead from the ground, the essence.  So the 'Greg', (ego) set desire for it in order to expand.  And the Greg/ego is impatient, because he feels he's aging and running out of time. 

This is common pattern for spiritual searchers, and I suppose 'all-man'.  We experience something and the ego-self grabs at it, but can only grasp its memory.  The memory of the experience is to be pursued as a desire, or avoided as a fear.  This new and deeper awareness of the emptiness, essence or wellspring to direct awareness has definitely taken hold within me.  I can't unlearn this either.  I can hide, I can run, but I can't undo being aware.  

Davidu said:

I dreamt I was in a pride of lions and I was the biggest, fiercest lion with the loudest growl.  I growled at the others to keep order.  I was the head lion.

Then I changed to become the creation of all music. I was a fountainhead of music bubbling up from deep in the ground, and I also had a childlike presence.  Greg Allman came to my wellspring with his long blond hair and he said. "I need to learn your song, kid.  I don't have time, I need to learn your song now."  That was the end of the dream

[Davidu]

My interpretation of that dream fro a dozen or so years ago:

The dream was really about spiritual development and realizing potential.  The bear represented my presence and mankind represented my ego, my world of thought.  And so the ego was appreciating presence, not afraid of it but loving it.

The whole dream was a symbolic response to a line in yesterday's email to you about the ego checking with presence before formulating thought.  This dream represents this 'self' acclimating to a new understanding resulting directly from recently experiencing the emptiness in it's current depth.  As Ken Wilber describes, "So evolution goes past what went before, and because it includes and embraces what went before there is an inherent directionality, a drive towards increasing depth, increasing value, increasing consciousness." 

This reorganization of the self and its thought processes is currently going on inside me and I seem to be moving from an object based awareness to a more subjective awareness that has its basis in this emptiness.

Davidu said:

I dreamed I was a  big, reddish-brown grizzly bear.  I moved through the landscape, my world, content doing bear things.  I remember going from woods to fields and clearings.  Then I became mankind looking at the bear and collectively appreciating it.  We led it to a place in the woods to a small clearing in front of a large sign which was a thank-you card.  Mankind knew the bear didn't know what it meant, but loved and appreciated the bear for just being itself and doing its natural thing.  Mankind felt tremendous warmth for the fact that the bear was true to itself and its nature.