The Jaded Eye

Last night before sleep I asked my dreams to help me with rebuilding my confidence, my willingness and readiness to go out and be in the world...

DREAM that I had a pinhole in my right eye, with tiny serrated edges like a star, so some kind of fluid could get in... another image was of 4 contact lenses in a holding container... ‘my guy’ was with me...

Then I was lying in bed looking up at a window high up on the wall, and I could see an SUV drive up the ramp on the side of the house next door. A shaven black guy was driving it. He parked the car and looked at me. I tried to wave to him but I could barely lift my arm (left). I wondered how the floor could support the weight of a car.

Then I was inside a dimly lit apartment of a young, slender Chinese guy who was a teacher to a handful of small boys. They were running around in the apartment. My sister was with me. There was a toy sheep or some kind of small pet on a side table or counter, and I gave it some kibbles I found. The guy came over and pushed against the left side of my hip so I’m held tight between him and the counter, but only one side of our bodies are touching. He did this somewhat covertly but I knew he wanted to be intimate...

DREAMWORK:

First part, I need to allow the emotional content of what I see sink in, with all of its potential to radiate in unknown directions and force, ups and downs, it is all still following a cosmic order and pattern. I don’t need to fear it going out of control or overwhelming me. (Interestingly I just watched the Japanese movie “Warm Water Under the Red Bridge” last night.) Now that I can let the waters of my emotions out, I must be able to first take it in, with the inner discerning eye, without losing the child-like way of seeing wonderment and awe, instead of seeing with the outer eye and immediately judging, censoring, and often not even noticing the baby in the bath water.

The Jaded Eye (exhaustus oculus?): a modern malaise.

Interesting that ‘exhausted’ means spent, drained. My eye which is drained of emotion – namely compassion; the dispassionate eye that sees the world of humanity, with dry distain. It is merely my ego’s attempt in distancing itself from lower human nature, thumbing its nose to say, “I’m not violent or destructive or ignorant. See? I’m better than the rest of my kind.” Of course, behind that posturing is my great fear of pain, the pain in confronting that violent, destructive and undifferentiated darkness in myself.

To allow the great tears and grief of humanity to flow into me, to receive it through a new (reversed) way of seeing, with an emotional clarity that can penetrate and most of all, connect all of this movement and transcendant numinosity to my head, mind, intellect. Finally.

The 4 contact lenses soaking in solution... my eyes, each with inner and outer vision, all 4 needing corrective measures (lenses), cleansing, and freshening, for a spell, so that I can see the world in a new way, as if through new eyes. I make the intention now to close and rest my mind’s eyes for the next while, and allow this transformation to happen.

Lying on my bed inside a dark bedroom lit only with daylight that came throught the high window... I think I was a child in that part of the dream, about 8. The window – still about seeing – but a higher seeing, aspiring in a way, at someone else’s self (house), and how he (the masculine of that self) had built a ramp (a path) with a space (a resting place, a home) to keep his drive integrated into the self. I wanted badly to connect to him, but my own resistance – the sluggishness in my arm – prevented me from succeeding.

In the mix is also my fear that the world is a dangerous place, that even the ground under our feet, or under our car, may not support us. This is a phobia of mine, hidden in the Shadow of my Animus (the clean cut black guy), and where power and drive will come out of for me. Come to think of it, my sense of safety and protection from external harm has mostly come from my mother, the powerful feminine, not from my father, whose influence was comparatively absent in my childhood. Balancing this will lead to the gold that will be the source of my strength and all that I feel lacking in dealing with the outside world. What I need to heal this, now that attention has been brought to it, is care, nurture, growth and eventually maturity (I lost that drive and confidence in myself when I was about 8, after the shock of realizing I’m not always going to be #1). Part of that healing, I think, is coming from the next part of the dream...

Back in the darker recesses of my unconscious, the young masculine in me is being guided and fathered by my ancestral spirit, though its appearance and influence is not overly masculine, but innate and no less enticing. He projected a humble, meek, and endearing persona (the little toy sheep), winsome and disarming to the feminine heart, which cannot help but want to feed and nurture it. Perhaps emboldened by this, he made it plain his desire for closeness, for union – be attached at the hip – and playfully but with enough force, to tell me that I am wanted, I am captive, and there is no escape from this ultimate Oneness within myself.

My Shadow Sister, though, was there, hovering around the periphery as she often does in my dreams, and I could sense the faint odour of her disapproval. She does not approve of this ‘relationship’ because I/we will have to give up a piece of our ego in exchange, the piece that my ego identifies as my individuality, my independence from the tyranny of patriarchal rule, which is sometimes difficult to separate from the masculine overall when there’s a power struggle going on. My ego is reluctant to give up the struggle that separates (is individuation necessarily a separation?) for the sake of reconciling the split between the feminine and masculine.

At this point I must admit that my own prejudice against all things masculine comes from my (mis)perception that ‘all men are harmful’, particularly reinforced by my Western upbringing. Eastern and Oriental men somehow much less representative of that to me. They are less reeking of testosterone and the implicit aggressiveness and destructiveness, although through the eyes of my superiority complex and immaturity I saw that as a weakness.

What is true virility? Perhaps I need more understanding of this.