Dream Fragment: Reaching the Water

Dream Fragment: Reaching the Water

I’m driving down a city street with my brother C.C. sitting next to me. The whole length of the street passes before my eyes and I think how dull and boring the scenery is. “We’re going this way because it will get us to the water front,” I tell C.C.

“I’ve been in many cities in my life, but this is the most boring dullest route I’ve ever been on,” C.C. tells me.

The scene shifts and instead of driving, I’m standing on a crowded bus. We are traveling down the same wide city street. I know that we have to make a turn to the right, and then one to the left to get to the water front. I wonder if the bus will make these turns. The driver makes his way to the right hand lane and I realize that I am on the right bus.

As I wait for my stop a couple blocks away, I over hear two men who are saying something about how real I is not present in the vast majority of men. As they continue talking, I recognize that they are discussing ideas from one of Gurdjieff’s disciples. I think that it must be Orage, the guy who ran the Gurdjieff School in New York City.

“Excuse me. I couldn’t help over hearing your conversation. The ideas that you are a talking about… Aren’t they from the Gurdjieff School?” I ask.

“No, I don’t know any Gurdjieff School. The ideas we are kicking around are not that important.

“Are you kidding me? The concept of Real I is the most important thing that a man can think of…”

“Not at all. The company I work for is doing a lot of shipping now. That is what is important,” he tells me.

The bus pulls to a stop along the docks. As I get off I’m thinking that I’ve always wanted a job on a ship. I walk down the sidewalk with a young blonde headed girl at my side. “I’m so tired of accumulating more and more junk. My wife wants to get a microwave oven, now. We spend all our time and money on junk. The thing I really want to do is get a job on a ship,” I tell the girl. She smiles in agreement as we walk side by side toward the water.

The car and the bus represent those forces that carry me through life. The dreamer is traveling on the most dull and boring streets in the city of his unconscious. However, he overhears a conversation about Real I from the bus passengers. And, even though the men don’t know what they are talking about, they help him remember that he has always wanted to get a job on a ship. Shipping out represents leaving the shores of his old life and finding fun and adventure.

On his way to the waterfront, a young blonde haired girl walks beside the dreamer. She represents his anima, the feminine side of himself, the inner self. She agrees that he is spending too much time and money on accumulating useless junk. This suggests that his shipping out would be to go deeper into his inner self. He can find the adventure that he is looking for by going deeper into his unconscious.

I’m standing across the road from Tony’s old house on River Road, a house that we hung out at when we were teenagers. As I look down to the Delaware River, I see that Tony has landscaped the ground between here and the water. There are two levels. The level closest to the water is about ten feet lower than the level that I stand on. Both levels are about ten yards in length and covered with very green closely mowed grass.

I start toward the water and notice a small snake coiled around my right ankle. At first, I’m not too concerned thinking that it is just a garden snake. However, as I get closer to the water it begins to tighten its grip. It seems to grow bigger. As it wraps tighter and tighter it crawls up my leg. I become terrified wondering how I will get it off. I can feel it cutting off my circulation. I think that I should shake my leg to throw it off, but I am afraid that it might bite me.

The snake continues to grow bigger and bigger. I see that it is more than one snake now. In sheer panic I stomp my foot on the ground trying to shake it off as it squeezes even tighter.

Tony’s old house represents unconscious memories from my teenage years. His house was a place where we played poker and escaped from the restrictions of middle class morality. The water represents esoteric knowledge. I want to get closer to the water. I want to enjoy the oneness of the universal principals that the water represents. The snake stops my progress to the water.

The snake represents the knowledge of good and evil. It gives the forbidden fruit. It crawls legless along the ground, representing primitive instinct, the unconscious. The snake stops my progress toward higher consciousness. It reminds me that there are aspects of my past that I have not yet examined. I need to go deeper into my unconscious to uncover the dark side of myself before I can reach the water.

In both dream fragments I am trying to reach the water. In the first I have to travel through dull and boring aspects of myself in order to free myself from the desire to accumulate. The bus which represents public transportation or the establishment contains men who don’t know what they are talking about, but who can point the way if one reads between the lines. The dreamer can reach the waterfront if he works hard enough at over coming the dullness that he must wade through to get there.

In the second fragment, the water is in sight only a few yards away. The obstacles are not external but are internal forces that focus on the foot of the dreamer. The foot represents the external senses that one meets the world with. The dreamer must go more deeply into himself in order to change the way in which he senses the world.