Imagine that you were caught up in a plot of some kind, like the TV series “Lost”. You have no idea of how it started, nor your role in it, nor where it is headed. You can’t tell the goodies from the baddies.
You don’t know when you are doing something that is helpful or something that is dangerous but you have a strong feeling about it.
However some people do know. They may be on your side or they may not. They have agendas of their own. which they want you to be a part of. They appear and disappear regularly. They change costume. You don’t know who they are and they don’t speak your language anyway. They communicate with you in indirect ways – through apparent riddles or leaving signs such as pictures or symbols. Or by creating coincidences, mysterious illnesses or inexplicable accidents. When you experience these you have to figure out for yourself what they mean.
So you go looking for people who may know what is going on or at least are good at figuring things out. You try out some of the suggested interpretations and solutions. You go through many adventures, suffer victories and defeats, get it right, make mistakes, take wrong turnings etc. As you do so you find you are solving certain problems in your life. Every now and then a particular problem is solved without you having done anything specific about it. You find you have moved on from it.
Each one of these separate adventures is what a dream is like. It is usually a comment on what is going on in your life - telling it as it actually is (showing where we are being the coward or the bully etc) rather than how we would like to think it is. It also suggests how to change things, offering different ways of approaching problems, if you could read the clues properly. The clues are drawn from the eternal images found in the collective unconscious of every human. Sequences of dreams over many years are part of a bigger picture. Trying to piece the whole thing together is a lifetimes work, the work of the Hero.
So what is going on? The unknown persons are aspects of you that you neglected and lost contact with along the way. There are times for you to step aside and let them and their solutions manifest instead of the ones you consciously propose yourself. And there are times for you to take charge. Discrimination is needed to know when to take what attitude. The most important of these persons is the true Self or Soul. This can be seen as either something that is already whole and complete or something that is constructed with your conscious assistance, through many alchemical processes of trial and error. Eventually you learn to co-create with it – ie you jointly create something new together, in a manner that cannot be described and is ultimately almost totally mysterious.
PS This is why we are fascinated with stories of heroes, adventure, secret codes and hidden passages like the Lord of the Rings.
© Eilish Kelly July 2006
