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| Paul Levy |
The psyche is multidimensional and non-local;
it is not limited by time or space. It can express itself via inner
thoughts, feelings, intuitions, body symptoms, and dreams, as well
as through seemingly external events, where an inner situation gets
mirrored through an outer event- what is called synchronicity. This
should come as no surprise if our waking life is indeed a dream, which
is what all the great enlightened teachers continually remind us.
As in a dream, there is a totally fluid boundary between the inner
and the outer. Our inner process gets projected out, externalized,
we might even say dreamed up into materialization, into and as the
seemingly outer dreamscape.
When we reach an edge in our process, and we are just about to
have a breakthrough, the psyche will oftentimes express itself in
a synchronistic phenomenon. This is a sign that we have touched
the archetypal dimension of our being, which transcends our personal
process. We are touching the deeper dreaming process, in which we
are merely playing a role in what Jung calls a "divine drama."
It is like we have fallen through the rabbit's hole, and find ourselves
in a parallel universe where everything becomes symbolic, as if
divinely choreographed.
These edge phenomena show the potential of the psyche to split-off
and disassociate. If we don't get distracted by these edge phenomena,
but stay with the deeper process that is trying to unfold, we can
have a genuine breakthrough. If our alchemical container is strong
enough to hold the pressure when these edge phenomena are reached,
we then become nuclear meta-physicists. We continually re-associate,
till we re-member, and re-assimilate all the long lost parts of
ourselves. This is true soul retrieval. To split is a postponement
and distraction, it is to miss the opportunity of full incarnation,
which is what life is all about.
A clear example of the psyche's mercurial ability to express itself
multi-dimensionally happened to me one day when I was working with
a client. It was the only time I ever saw this client. He came to
me with a completely split-off and disassociated part of himself
that he had never stepped into. (Synchronistically, I might add,
his name was Paul.) We spent over an hour talking about this split-off
part, and he was finally at the point where, for the first time
in his life, he felt safe enough to own and give voice to this part.
At the exact instant that he was about to do this, there was a loud
knocking on my door. Astonished, I open the door, only to find a
friend who just happened to be in the area and was stopping by.
He had never stopped by unannounced before or since. After asking
him to leave, I went back to my client, who continued to unfold
his process.
It was not an accident that my friend knocked on the door at exactly
the moment my client was going to step over a boundary. Seen as
a dream, we could interpret this dream symbol many ways. We could
say that a part of him was not fully willing to go over this edge
(which was probably true), so this energy dreamed itself up as a
potential distraction in the dreamfield (this was a manifestation
of the part of him that wanted to split-off). We can also postulate
that my friend knocking on the door symbolized a new part of the
client that wanted to come in. Like a dream, our waking life is
very multidimensional.
The point is that the psyche is continually expressing itself through
both inner and outer phenomena. The only question is do we have
eyes to see, which is what Christ means in the Gnostic Gospels,
when he says "the Kingdom is spread all over earth and people
just don't see it." Are we able to decode the clues in our
waking dream and read our life symbolically, which is to see it
as a dream? If all the great enlightened teachers of humanity are
correct when they say our life is nothing other than a dream, if
we start to view it as a dream, our life has no choice but to shape-shift
and manifest in a more dreamlike way. And if you tell me I am just
dreaming that this is so, I will heave a huge sigh of relief, as
you have finally understood.
Paul Levy is an artist whose medium is dreaming. A healer in
private practice, he is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence.
He is in the new book Saints and Madmen: Psychiatry Opens its
Doors to Religion. He can be reached at (503) 234-6480.
For more articles about dreaming, see www.communityconnexion.com/levy
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