Dream Fragment: Pursuing the Spiritual

Dream Fragment: Pursuing the Spiritual

I’m in the middle of a large grass covered park. I sit down and look at the long yellow and green grass. There is a group of men and women sitting across the field from me. In their center is a tall handsome man. He motions with his arm for someone to join the group. My wife, Anne, arises from my left about fifty feet away and starts to walk over. Before she can get there, several men and women rush to take the empty spot. She sees me sitting to her right and starts toward me. My heart skips a beat for joy. She is wearing a bright smile on her face. I see the vibrant life in her body as she draws closer.

I am in some kind of wooden shed some fifty feet to the right of where I sat. On my hands and knees, I’m stuffing my pockets with coins that I’ve scrapped from the dirt floor. When my pockets are full, I look out of the gray four-paneled window in front of me. Anne is walking toward a group that I recognize as friends from the Trivia Coffee House. She is wearing a tight orange colored sweater. I think how sexy she looks and leave the shack to join her. Before I can reach the group, they have taken off. “They are going to see the parade and all the excitement on the streets of downtown Atlantic City,” a voice tells me. I run across the field and enter a paved area. There are large crowds of people in front of me. Anne has disappeared into the crowd. I rush to join the outer edge of the mob. A blue uniformed policeman blocks my way. “The streets are too crowded. We are not allowing anyone else to pass. Someone might get hurt down there,” he tells me, and pushes me back to where the sidewalk begins. “Wait here,” he tells me and the other stragglers who are around me.

“I have to find my wife. She is in that crush of people,” I tell the officer.

“Wait here until my wife comes. She’ll help you look for your wife. She’ll be wearing a yellow blouse,” he says and rushes away.

I wait for a minute or two, and decide that I can’t wait any longer. I start back up the street. A big husky guy, Leo, who I knew at the coffee house, joins me. I look into his unshaven face and see a smile of recognition. We greet each other and he falls into step beside me. “We have to catch up to the crowd. Anne is down there somewhere,” I tell him. I am amazed at the speed that I am walking at. I cover a quarter block with each step. Leo has to run to keep up with me.

We reach the outskirts of the downtown area. A parade of soldiers cuts off our path. As I watch the uniformed men marching up the street on our right hand side, a parade of marines is coming toward us from the left hand side. The marching men take up the entire street. I look at the front line of marines as it bears down on us. I focus on the eyes of a young marine in the front line. His cold gray eyes tell me that he wouldn’t mind marching right over me and digging his boots into my face. I grab Leo’s arm and rush to a doorway across the street. We dive into the doorway just in time to avoid being crushed under the marching troops.

Discovering that we are in a church doorway, we enter and sit in a back pew. A couple more stragglers enter and sit in our pew. One of them recognizes Leo, and they begin to talk. A column of marines marches into the church.

“It’s the marine honor guard. They are going to sing for us,” Leo’s friend tells us.

I get up from the pew and tell Leo that I have to find Anne. He tells me that he is going to stay and listen to the chorus. Back in the streets, I head up the block hoping to catch up to Anne and the Trivia crowd. They must be blocks and blocks ahead of me, I tell myself.

The street grows narrower as I quicken my pace. Out of nowhere, two mean looking black dudes fall into step on each side of me. The one on my left whispers in my ear, “You want to score some coke? I can get you a dime’s worth or a blow job,” he tells me. I tell the guy that I’m not interested as I wonder how I wandered into the poorer section of town.

“Man, we be doing you a favor. Dis is some bad, shit,” the guy to my right tells me.

“No, man I got to find my wife,” I tell him and try to break away. Just then a uniformed middle-aged woman comes around the corner.

“It’s the bureau agent,” the guy on my left whispers.

“Were those two boys trying to accost you?” she asks. I shake my head no and hurry straight ahead. I find myself walking down a narrow path with high walls on both sides. There is a crowd of people coming toward me. The sidewalk gets narrower and narrower. There is barbed wire atop the walls now. The wire becomes heavy and thick as it spills down the walls. I have to weave my way through. The wire tears my clothes and cuts my skin. There are people in front of me all tangled up in the wire. I climb over the wall and find a narrow dirt path. I make my way up the path clinging to the wall along side. “I had to fence off my path. People were stealing my irrigation water,” a voice tells me.

“I have to find Anne,” I answer and continue straight ahead.

It seems that the main focus of the dream is my effort to find Anne. She must represent the anima, the feminine aspect or more spiritual aspect of myself. Anne disappears into a crowd of friends that I knew from the days when I was co-owner of the Trivia Coffee House. These friends represent ‘I’s in myself who were into the beat literature of the early sixties. Though I believed that these beat friends were more spiritual oriented, really they were looking for adventure and excitement in the outer world. They were not as much into the inner spiritual world as I thought they were. Our friendship was a distraction.

It my efforts to reach the anima that Anne represents, I am distracted by a number of different obstacles. First, there is my attempt to gather up pockets full of coins. This must represent my interest in money that keeps me from going deeper into my inner self. Next there is the crowded street and the police officer that keeps me from entering it. Does he represent an ‘I’ in myself that would distract me from the pursuit of the spiritual because it might be dangerous?

Other distractions are the marching soldiers and marines. Do they represent the many ‘I’s in myself that feel the call to duty is more important than the need for spiritual knowledge?

The dream is telling me that I need to overcome any distraction that might happen in order to continue the pursuit of the spiritual aspect, the inner aspect of myself.