In My Living Room

DREAM that I was living with 3 other women, one of them was Vivi. We were sitting in the living room and I noticed that the red circular couch had been replaced with a normal rectangular one, but the metal pole that used to be in the centre of the circular one is still sticking up in between 2 of the cushions of the rectangular one. Apparently the old one was swapped and stolen, by soldiers who were billetted there. I felt indignant about this.

Later we went in to eat and there was an enormous banquet of food that nearly filled the room. There might have been an adjacent room as well. Lots of people were already lined up getting food. Dishes covered the entire table. I looked at one chicken dish closest to me and thought there must have been 20 chicken dishes of various kinds that people had brought. I was poking around in the chicken that looked as if it was made with a dark marinade like soysauce, unsure which cut of the meat I wanted.

At another point we were back in the living room, on another day I think, and the rectangular couch was gone, leaving just empty floor. I looked at the patio doors and figured they must have opened that in the night and moved it out that way. There were several other couches around the room, each one different. This is a very social room, I thought.

DREAMWORK:

4 women, the perfect feminine world and harmonious company, 4 being the number of the feminine. The thing that jumps out from this dream most readily is the theme of ‘socialness’, Vivi being the quintessential hostess and social butterfly, the living room, the many couches, the sharing of food and shelter and company.

Soldiers, are conformed representatives of masculine power, order, rule, and collective, a potential threat (as patriarchy) to the wellbeing of the feminine and therefore the whole. They have stolen the centrepiece of the feminine domain, the red circular couch that was the throne the 4 women can sit around and see in all directions. The pole in the centre was the stake of their territory, meant to be of significance and permanence. But the power-mongering patriarchal forces have abused the goodwill of the feminine who put them up (and put up with them), and replaced that symbol of feminine power with something ordinary. But the core of that power, the metal stake, could not be denied nor hidden, it stays.

All of this took place in the openness of society, and as women, we seem to accept the takeover as commonplace – totally socially acceptable, because that’s the way it’s always been. Masculine aggression, feminine passivity – it is a balance of a sort. But when does the table turn, as the yin rises and the yang ebbs, and natural rhythm and balance prevail? The feminine wisdom is also patient and enduring and timeless, though she knows her time is approaching, and the two arms of justice will move into equilibrium.

Within the feminine nature is also the energy of abundance and communal sharing, a time of gathering and celebration, of thanksgiving and social nurture. The feeling is expansive and exuberant, pleasure and sensuality are heightened, spirits and hearts are uplifted and we are all inexorably connected and bonded by flesh and blood. In sharing we leave behind our fear of hunger and deprivation, of carrying the responsibility of survival alone, the illusion of blackest isolation that threatens to swallow us whole.

This is, I suppose, is the darker undertone of the joyful event, that there is always a shadow side, something we are not yet ready to acknowledge. It is the high that breaks the monotony of the low, which precedes the celebratory high, and will return again on its heel. Life is a grind, and the harvest is always just a temporary reprieve, until we are able to take that expansiveness and gratitude into the ordinary everyday, and celebrate the small moments of life that surely do come along.

In the last part of the dream, even the ‘usurper’ is gone, the soldiers took back the replacement couch, but didn’t take any other in the room. The aggressive and invasive influences have gone, under the cover of night, for this is not the exercise of masculine power that rightly belongs in the light of day, the magnanimous, kind and just Father/King, but the unscrupulous, greedy thieves of the other extreme – masculine power out of control.

But we are consoled when we can see that the world of our societies is indeed a big enough place to hold even the likes of such destructiveness, that there are many more social groups that can be formed, from all walks of life, and dialogues and energy can be exchanged, alliances and mutuality tempered. This is the way human society can be restructured to wholeness. The way of Social Reform. And it starts inside of me, in the inner living room, inside of each of us.