I'm remembering my dreams again lately. It's been a long time since I've consistently been able to recall them - a few years at least. When I took a Jungian Theory course, I trained myself into remembering them daily - the very first moments of waking each morning were spent consciously re-narrating and recalling them to myself. That's the most important part, and all it takes is a bit of practice until one daily remembers the adventures they had that night. Unfortunately, it's a practice I let go of for a while (whether that was a conscious neglect or not is up for debate.)
Horses have been in most of them recently. Horses that rebel against my sincere and desperate want of their friendship, that seek my destruction, that lay waste to my relationships, bring guilt and shame with their presence. They kick at me, bite and threaten my life, break out of their stalls, destroy their paddocks, terrorize my family, tear their leads from my hands, run wild and out of my control.
Against natural fear for my life, I stood up to one the other night. A giant, a dappled, dark-grey wild monstrosity with black feather'd pasterns, hateful eyes, and blood of raging fire. I sought his companionship, believing him to be not so bad as he put on, but he always proved me wrong; I'd spent the entire week running from his violent kicks, his snorting and screaming, the way he'd throw every ounce of his unfathomable weight at me and threaten my throat with his granite hooves. But after night in and night out of running and hiding, I'd had enough, and there was nowhere to go; he'd angered my father, got me fired from my job, resurfaced past regrets and failures, depleted my bank account, refused all attempts at kindness, and chased me into a corner. So I did what any sensible human would do: I stood there and screamed at the top of my lungs for him to just kill me already.
But he didn't. He stilled. He silenced. The storm of dust around him started to settle. Heaving a deep breath, he walked to me and set his nose to my shoulder, letting the weight of his giant head down onto it. This war monger that tormented me for seven nights turned instantly into a lamb, and all I could do was release an admittedly half-disappointed sigh.
I remember learning in that course that the things that threaten our lives in our dreams, the things we want (or feel the need to) desperately to run from, whose threats seem to be inescapable guarantors of our ruin, or at least pain, are the things we need most to stop running from. Every time we stop running from them - a building collapsing on us, a beast on our heels, a serial killer chasing us - every time we let the bad thing simply happen, or make the conscious decision to let it happen, everything changes - and it never leads, despite all previous certainty, to one's destruction.
The real task, however, is figuring out what, in my waking life, this creature who features in all my dreams, has disguised himself as.
I've committed to spending the remainder of the year devoted to fairly Stoic practices. I've reverted my smart phone to a dumb one that does nothing more than text, call, show me a map, and allow me dictionary access; deactivated all social media accounts; cancelled the cable television service; asked my brother to turn off Netflix and Hulu sharing; set a $35/week grocery budget (complete with a list of unnecessary or indulgent foods to let go of, mainly sugars and animals); set limits on internet time; and a whole bunch of other small things that are all geared toward reestablishing appreciation, values, and getting rid of all the distracting rubbish that seems to have built up around me over the last two years.
Since I am no longer spending my days in a state either at the mercy of my own frantic emotions or utterly distracted by the mind-numbing baubles that contemporary society dangles here and there to keep us all obedient to its agenda, the inclination to do more reflecting, or at least narrating, in here, like an old friend, has found its way back to me.
