There are many different ways to understand dreams. My method is a mixture of traditional and contemporary methods, and intuition. More than anything I keep in mind that a dream is a communication: it has something to say. Here's an example.

The dream narrative: I am flying in a 747. I am sitting at the front in the nose-cone of the plane with my girlfriend. I think we are going on holiday. I have met the pilot who is a tall genetically-perfect, confident pilot. The aeroplane lurches to the right and dips low - I don't feel right about this. Through the window at the front of the plane I can see that we are skimming buildings and trees. I am hoping we will make the runway, but we plough through earth, stones and steel girders. Although we are flying into the ground the plane holds its shape, but eventually comes to a stop. I push my girlfriend forwards out of the wreckage and shove her up on to a stone flagged road. I leave her there in the sunshine and tell her to wait while I get the others out. I can see a wall all broken down that the aeroplane has gone through. The wings have broken off along with the undercarriage, though the fuselage is still intact. I see what looks like a seaside train taking the passengers away and I realize we are on our own and that no one will necessarily believe that we were on the plane. I return to the plane to fetch my mobile, so I can phone my mother.

The dream interpretation: The central motif of this dream is the impossibility of the aeroplane's fuselage surviving the crash. Flying itself denotes a mental or intellectual - or even spiritual - activity that provides a clue to the content of the dream. The vehicle in a dream usually stands for the ego self. The ego is the identity or separate self we identify with throughout life - our self - and in this dream the ego symbol is the biggest, possibly most successful airliner of our time. So, either the dreamer is self-aggrandizing himself or he has a magnificent life purpose.

He is in the front of the plane with his girlfriend who is (as he confided to me himself) merged or confused with his anima. The anima for a man is a guide, often a challenging one, to inner wholeness. Rather like Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy. The dreamer is with her but he mainly saves her, which is curious in itself. What guidance does his anima give to him? Well, he travels at the front, as he said, "in the nose-cone of the plane", and he noticed that he is going somewhere (on holiday), whereas usually in dreams he observes he is "coming back". So the anima is involving him in the new pursuit of going towards something.

It is well-known that we should drive our own vehicle in our dreams. This denotes that we are in charge of own lives. Here though a genetically-perfect individual, not the dreamer, is the driver or pilot. In other words his unrealistic aspirations for perfection are driving him on in his mental or spiritual pursuit aim (the plane flying) of achieving his goal (on holiday?).

While the body of the plane - the fuselage - is intact, it is back to the "wreckage" of the plane he goes to be reunited with the great modern day symbol of the umbilical cord - the mobile phone. In the body of the aeroplane he will find the umbilicus which connects and unites him again with his mother (the mother ship, the Boeing 747, was also known as "the Queen of the Skies").

Since the umbilical motif ends the dream we can safely assume that the message of the dream lies solidly here: Review and explore your early life, your relationship with your mother (in this case the emotional abandonment, personal rejection and betrayal) that has created emotional-behavioral patterns that have perpetuated your suffering throughout your adult life.

Does leaving the plane unscathed ("without feeling stress or fear" - the dreamer's words) symbolize escape from the ego, as the dreamer suggested? No, return to your early life and the insights you will find there. Partly this is before the ego was formed of course. But the unscathed escape from the plane crash actually stands for something much deeper. This dreamer has not engaged with life fully. If he died today, he would regret that he hadn't really lived (he acknowledged this when it was put to him). The fuselage that holds its shape and remains unaffected is the childhood ego-shaping that has ensured his survival. It stands for the maxim: Nothing will get to me, nothing will hurt me... ever again.

From the fuselage he must rescue his girlfriend - can he love her? want to be with her? save her from his lack of feeling and emotional commitment? The other people are parts of him, aspects of his life. As he is going to rescue them (from his disengagement from life) he sees them going where he was headed before the crash - on holiday (on the seaside train). The passengers, the other aspects of him are incidental and remote. But never as remote as in their exit from the dream. His experience of enjoyment of life is as remote, far-fetched and out of reach. They disappear from the dream leaving him (and presumably his anima-girlfriend) alone with the uncertainty that his tenure on the truth may even be doubted (they may think we were not even on the flight). To fly is to live, but we must be present and involved and engaged: we must be here!

This dreamer does not, nor can he ever under the present circumstances - though he would probably refute it - enjoy himself. Because even when he is he is not engaged, he is always looking over his shoulder for the perfect woman, the perfect holiday enjoyment, the ideal moment. The tall, genetically-perfect and confident pilot is his mother's perfect lover who stands for the dreamer's ineffectiveness, inferiority and inability to satisfy her - emotionally and by association sexually (the dreamer has confirmed the fantasies he has about sex with his mother).

One last thing - he pushes and shoves the girl forward. But it is she sitting passively alongside who accompanies him always at the front of the plane on the journey within (in a sense the dream itself). This journey - the inner journey - is a descent; a descent into the deep unconscious to hidden selves, to repressed inner emotions and conflicts where his soul vies for place with his heart, where his mother competes with his innocence. But if these fights or conflicts are allowed to live on he can never be the winner. It is in the resolution of the conflict gleaned from deep insights which await him in the inner word that his freedom may be attained. And not only his freedom but his wholeness too.

Are freedom and wholeness the meaning of the holiday motif? His uncertainty is evident at the outset of the dream; like a child or someone who is not informed he only thinks" he may be going on holiday". Is "holiday" the enjoyment and engagement with life that he craves? Or is holiday an unknown spiritual trajectory? Well, it's both: Holy-day and Wholly-Day, the religio-spiritual occasion as well as the celebration of his desire to be wholly himself. But the wings of the aeroplane (the spiritual traveler) have broken off. For now he has missed the train. And here is food for thought; for the train is unable to deviate from the tracks that are set out for it, whereas wings offer the freedom of the air. So, for now his journey to freedom is held back, his wings broken, but the restricted access the train gives is also denied him. He must wait with his anima and realize that he is already wholly himself.

Self-dream analysis may be effective, but it is unlikely that the deeper messages of the dream world will be forthcoming unless you work with an experienced and preferably gifted dream practitioner, e.g. a therapist, counselor or other inner guide. Such a person should be able to help you to monitor your dreams effectively and fruitfully and enter into an ongoing relationship with the unconscious that can be an unexpected treasure of wisdom in your life.

BLOG entry #120

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Interpreting the Dream in Psychotherapy: The Boeing 747 Dream’ was first published in 2011.

Harry Redmond was a special effects artist in Hollywood when cut and paste was not a metaphor for a keyboard click. He was famous for his work on the film King Kong. 1930s audiences were thrilled and moved to the edge of their seats by the effects of stop-motion photography and live action projected on to the cinema screen, as Harry and his team convinced them that a 25 foot-tall gorilla could climb the Empire State Building -- the world's tallest building -- single-handed while holding a wailing actress in the other hand.

A little lower down the totem pole Harry, who died recently aged 101, created the famous transition scene in the film The Woman in the Window. A film noir and famously perhaps the film that originated the genre, The Woman in the Window is a Faustian drama of an aging man's obsession with a femme fatal who effectively materializes out of a picture and seemingly lures the protagonist into the deepest debasement of human tendencies -- murder, crime, deception, treachery and animal passion.

Hollywood at this time was infatuated with psychoanalysis and flaunted psychological conditions like paranoia and repression with risqué abandon, fixating audiences who alternated contempt and fascination towards its own transferred desires. An audience could live out its deepest-held unconscious obsessions via identification with actors and celebrities who acted as scapegoats -- as they arguably still do -- for their shameful sins.

The prescribed ending was the suicide of the hero (or anti-hero depending on how we feel about our shadow side), but to avoid offending sexual mores, the church and the Hays Code, it was commuted to a classic dream ending. Edward G. Robinson falls asleep and wakes up in his club, only to discover that it was all a dream.

The transition scene that depicts the transformation between dreaming and waking life demanded that Harry and his team shift the background scenery of a New York apartment and exchange it for a gentleman's club. They did it in real time and the finished scene in the film has no cuts, splices or doctoring of any kind: everything changed and yet nothing changed.

In the personal exploration process known as psychotherapy something similar takes place. It is so similar that Harry Redmond's profession evoked it for me with lucidity.

The first "special effect" in life is early conditioning. From it we are condemned to wander in a wilderness of limitation and contraction. Everything is more or less as we expect it to be. The addendum to this is that we are unaware of it: it is as if the experience of real life were rubbed away by the hypnotic trance of conditioned thought and behavior.

Anaesthetized to life, we tend to act as if we are numb to experience, to others, to intimacy and touch, to beauty and aesthetics. We may only respond to the blow of a gigantic stick, which is a metaphorical way of saying that when occasionally life throws a shock at us in the form of a bereavement, a serious accident, an illness, bankruptcy, a romantic obsession or any other intimation of mortality, we tend to awaken, albeit momentarily or for a limited time, and smell the fresh air of real life and enter authentic existence.

The corollary of these shocks (which some think may be the outward manifestation of unconscious forms and fears, or dreaded events) is inflated scenarios. Common examples are the recovery of our childhood selves to our true home well away from the planet earth (see the film E.T. or the more recent movie, Paul), the solicitor's letter from our deceased long-lost uncle in the Congo who has left us a colossal monetary fortune or bequeathed us an aristocratic title (see any number of old or new fairy tales and their re-telling by Hollywood, including the classic Alfred Hitchcock's movie Rich and Strange, or the modern novel Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare) or the most common mainstay of all, falling in love with the man or woman of our dreams and living together happily ever after (see any story in living history).

King Kong is just such an inflated scenario or allegory. Compressing it or expanding it -- depending on your point of view -- into the inner realms, we see a man's (or woman's) animal, instinctive nature captured by the base motivations of greed and profit. But the animalistic, physical, sexual male deeply desires a tactile mate, which in the inner world stands for our irresistible attraction towards wholeness, which is achieved through our soul journey guided by the anima (or in the case of women the animus) or "other half". Fay Wray's character in the film symbolizes this and then endures a reversal of soul guidance when Kong struggles to protect her.

This is not a good state of affairs. The wise soul should guide the compulsive instinctual nature, not the other way round. Fear and desire must be tempered with a higher wisdom within the human psyche, or it will be consumed and overwhelmed by its baser nature. The only hope for a human being is to realize his or her true nature by opening to wholeness. King Kong is a pointed lesson in how not to do it. Kong is over-sized; instinct dominates, nature is exaggerated, the ego-self is inflated.

Self-inflation, like self-aggrandizement, is a mental object: it comes out of our imagination. Similarly Kong comes out of Skull Island (a mind sufficient unto itself - an island), where he lives amongst a plethora of over-sized prehistoric animals: plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, styracosauruses, triceratops and the inevitable dinosaurs, all living together in a brutal world of primitive battles for survival.

The animals are over-sized because they represent the repressed emotions and brutal competition of thought and idea in the human mind. While the world of food, hunting and primordial survival has been rendered irrelevant in the post-industrial, postmodern Information Age, it survives intact in our restless dream world, in violence, rape and brutality on the movie screen and, most of all, in the personal and collective unconscious.

Fay Wray plays Ann Darrow, a disillusioned vaudeville actress turned aspiring movie star. Ann comes from the entertainment world and reflects its impending shift from stage to screen, or symbolically from outer to inner worlds, as Kong's soul guide. Her name means "God has favored me". But Kong's story is not a Dantian journey through heaven and hell, more a journey through two hells that never gets out of the second one.

Rampaging monster or tragic antihero? Our ambivalence about Kong climaxes when he climbs the Empire State Building, which represents man's highest achievement (at the time of course; only recently completed the Empire State Building remained the world's highest building until 1972 when the ill-fated World Trade Center's North Tower was completed). Will animal instincts, animal passions and raw emotion destroy the superior, sophisticated man of intellect and morals or does it have to be not suppressed but resuscitated, incorporated and integrated into the healthy psyche, so that it doesn't turn against him. Biplanes, which like Kong would become obsolete within a few years, attack him at the uppermost reaches of the body of man. For the Empire State Building, drawn, engineered and constructed from the creative thought and imagination of a man (William F Lamb) represents the higher reaches of man's ambition: the top the head. Man is destroyed by reason and intellect when thought dominates feeling, emotion and instinct. The primitive battle for survival is no less brutal in a man's internal mental life than it is was in the primeval jungle.

This is spectacular stuff and it catches the collective imagination. The giant King Kong is also a perennial entertainment monster, with countless TV, movie films and spin-offs, novels, comic books, animation series, electronic games, theme park rides, DVDs, laser discs, official website and merchandising panoply.

In contrast, the transition scene at the climax of The Woman in the Window is understated, drama-free, yet the meticulous attention to detail and technical expertise that must have gone into it is a match for the spectacular pyrotechnics of King Kong.

The second "special effect" in life is the transformation of a human being. After a long period of application to integrity, honesty and cultivating transparency a person seeking truth may, through awareness and non-clinging arrive at that point of freedom when they experience a rebirth. The precursor for this is the death of the conditioned self, the hypnotized, apparent being, the one invested in self-aggrandizement, self-inflation, and fear and desire.

Dramatic, spectacular, ecstatic and despondent as the journey is, on arrival the transition and the transformation are comparably mundane and profoundly natural: a homecoming, a return to sincerity and spontaneity, somehow where you have always been. It really is as if Harry Redmond and his team shifted the stage, the theatre and the background and we have returned home at last.

In the movie Edward G Robinson's character lurched from one realization to another, puzzling over his reorientation. His relief escalates into innocent joy as he realizes that all he dreamt is not really true. Everything has changed and in a Scrooge-like way you know that he will appreciate the ordinariness of his life since, apparently taken away, it is now miraculously restored.

The transition scene and subsequent events recall the poet Rilke's words: "Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart." And this is the point: it was and has been all scenery and when it falls apart you realize what is true. The world lacks scenery and is devoid of backdrop, as well as assurance and certainty. When the scenery shifts and falls apart all that remains is dangerous uncertainty. Sureness is a chimera as we wander in life's adventure to awakening, afraid of death and desiring what we do not have.

But when we have stopped doing all that we are doing to prevent reality, the truth from setting in, from informing us in everything we do; when we start to see what the heart sees, as opposed to what the eye sees, we prepare the way for wisdom to arise and present itself to us. This is the ageless paradigm. The muddy puddle clears from being left alone, undisturbed, and in the same way our inner restlessness, when it finally ceases from our disinclination to fuel it, allows the reflection of truth to become central and stable; it enables and empowers us to finally see. And when we do, we may recall the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

What is unconscious or invisible to the eye is the fact that most of us are spending all of our time holding up the structure of the ego, without realizing that the heart can see exactly what is happening.

In yet another accomplished piece of special effects work Harry Redmond has shown us this. The Marx Brothers' film, A Night in Casablanca begins with Harpo leaning against a wall. An officious policeman, making his rounds, takes offence at his casual stance and asks, "What do you think you're doing, holding up the building?" Harpo nods vigorously and contentedly and then, as the policeman pulls him away, the entire building collapses.

BLOG entry #119

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Psycho-Spiritual Transformation: King Kong and the Ageless Paradigm’ was first published in 2011.

Spirituality and transcendence are always compromised by description and definition. Words, at best, will lead only to a pale imitation of what they attempt to describe. The stronger the experience, the less the individual personality is present. Ultimately it may be that more is conveyed in silence when the world becomes alive and the veils that usually separate people from us are peeled back.

Spiritual teaching should always be received with caution and ambivalence by teachers and students alike. When we attempt to convey spiritual truth we are tending towards transcendent meaning. Transcendence, by definition, is above or beyond the separative, cognitive world of words and concepts. Mental cognition imposes structure and form which clarify most areas of knowledge. But spirituality and transcendence are always compromised by description and definition. 

Analogies may be found in true art and nature. We might try to convey the ecstatic qualities of great music or a panoramic vista. But words, at best, will lead only to a pale imitation of what they attempt to describe. As Krishnamurti pointed out: "The description is never the described."

You have to experience and be affected by art or nature to truly commune with them. You may have to lose yourself and become transported by them by responding with abandon and surrender, which resembles the effects of transcendence on the soul and spirit.

It is a fact that the stronger the experience, the less the individual personality is present. The more real the transcendent, imminent noumenon, the less real we are ourselves. This is true of art and nature, as well as of spirituality and transcendence.

Therefore all teaching about the spiritual realms is symbolic, analogous or metaphorical. We cannot say what it is when we are speaking of the otherworldly, of a stratum of ‘experience’ beyond fear and desire; we can only say what it is like. The means we use are only useful insofar as they point beyond themselves to something entirely and completely ‘other’.

Spiritual teachings fall into one of the following categories:

• Quasi-spiritual teachings
• Spiritual methods
• Partial, but nonetheless earthbound, ‘spiritual’ truths
• Fake teachings
• True spiritual teaching

The first, quasi-spiritual teachings, are usually descriptions of exalted human experience in which all our senses are heightened so that experience is vivid, rare and acute. These unusual conditions lead the teacher or the student to the conclusion that their experience is spiritual, when in fact it is merely a fully human experience. As we engage physically, emotionally, mentally and energetically with developed inner powers we can easily mistake the fully human for the spiritual.

The second, spiritual methods, are the means to the truth, rather than the truth itself. This may appear obvious, but the fervor with which students become attached to method is like worshipping the road and forgetting the destination.

The third - partial, but nonetheless earthbound, ‘spiritual’ truths - arises out of the fallacy of mistaking a stop along the way for the destination itself. While there is nothing at all wrong with enjoying the journey, or seeking refuge for renewal and refreshment, we should never think we have arrived before we get to our destination.

The fourth, fake teachings, are, at worst, the power play and manipulations of people who try to exert outward power over gullible students or followers and, at best, an expression of self-delusion. Before beginning to teach, we should be clear that our inner knowing and the impersonal truth have aligned seamlessly inside us.

The last, true spiritual teaching, is of course what it’s all about: conveying the deep truths of the human condition to draw the inner and outer worlds together and fulfill a human lifetime. Here the question of telling people what to do or imparting a structured form of teaching must be carefully considered by teachers, and no less carefully received by students alike.

Often spiritual teaching is non-directive, which can be frustrating for the student who is looking for answers. I remember during satsang with a Zen roshi asking what the point of life really was, because I couldn’t see the point in anything. He answered, "I know what the point is for me. You must find out what the point is for you." And that was that!

Then there is the story Robert Johnson tells about his first meeting with C G Jung. Jung sits him down and, having never even met Johnson, tells him exactly what he should do with the entire rest of his life based on a single dream interpretation. This would sound patently like amazing arrogance if it hadn’t all turned out to be exactly what Johnson did and through doing so he found his life fulfilled.

Ultimately it may be that more is conveyed in silence than in verbal teaching. When we remain quiet and allow the subtle energies to move us, over time a great intimacy arises and a profound receptivity. Our sensitivity to life increases and we experience more fully and more authentically than ever before. The world becomes alive and the veils that usually separate people from us are peeled back.

Ramana Maharshi is the preeminent example of this. He taught through silence. He asked, "Which is the better, to preach loudly without effect or to sit silently sending out inner force?" And his answer was that the true spiritual teacher is "the bestower of silence who reveals the light of Self-knowledge… Silent initiation changes the hearts of all."

BLOG entry #118

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘The Expression of Spiritual Truth: Words or Silence’ was first published in 2011.

Meditation shows you yourself and all your inner and outer restlessness. The simple practice of sitting quietly within oneself is surprisingly difficult. Physical discomfort arises, mental distraction too, and emotional turbulence sometimes overwhelms us.

Perhaps the biggest difficulties are found among the small, insidious phenomena -- irritability, planning, not being able to resist making a phone-call or writing down a reminder to do something. If -- and it may be a big if -- we can surmount all these obstacles then the rewards are great; a tranquil sense of inner abiding, or being in oneself, a serenity which no amount of pretence can get close to and an experience of inner peace of rectitude and honoring life, movements of grace and wisdom that surfaces in you like reflections of the sky in a still lake. Finally meditation shows you yourself, so what are you waiting for?

It is a flawless guide to your ego's attempts to fail you in becoming your true self, learning to live from the stillness of compassion, centering, learning and practicing inner guidance and cultivating inner peace. Only through thorough in-turning do we learn who we really are, beneath the level of facade and disguise we have presented to the world for so long. This experience is a great home-coming and a simple gift of authenticity. When we arrive the heart opens in an unmistakable way and we become capable of compassion, quietly caring, profoundly kind. The heart becomes our new and constant, genuine center and a reservoir and source of inner peace and guidance.

Meditation is the dependable link to your source and self-abiding truth; it is the essential spiritual practice for all serious aspirants on the spiritual path, because it urges you towards awakening to transcendence, and ultimately to the divine. What other way, other than sitting quietly, can direct us to ourselves? It is openly available at any time. When we practice just sitting, quietly allowing thoughts, feelings and all kinds of experiences to go by, we become identified with our awareness which in turn lodges us firmly in truth. It is the central practice in spirituality because it is the closest we can get in holistic form to the experience of complete emptiness and profound fullness, both at the same time.

This presence, residing in the opposites short-circuits the rational mind and expands into areas of truth, the unknown and the truly spiritual. For there are no truly spiritual experiences, and no rationally or intellectually expressed truths. We can only point at the moon, only speak in image and metaphor, simile and symbol to express the timeless truths of the perennial philosophy; that which has always been, always is and always will be.

BLOG entry #117

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Meditation Show You YourSelf’ was first published in 2011.

The concept of happiness seems to predominate in spiritual literature today. Happiness arouses strong feelings. Some of us are reactionary towards it, while others spurn it. Some people's aspirations are higher—they delight in the struggle, welcome the suffering and savour the ordeal that may lead to the goal of spiritual enlightenment. Others are simply pleasure-seekers, hedonists merely masquerading as spiritual seekers.

Others of us are perplexed. Aiming for happiness is simply not a realistic goal in spiritual practice. When we embark on the journey of the soul, or the way back to ourselves, we are treading a path that is characterized by self-sacrifice, loss and renunciation.

Renunciation doesn't mean sack-cloth and ashes, or a loin-cloth and a begging bowl; it means non-attachment to those relationships, accolades, belongings, roles, events, circumstances, emotions, feelings and prejudices that we identify ourselves with. Only when we have shed our attachments can we become, as the Zen people say, “worthy of wearing the patchwork robe”; in other words, of living in the world.

Living in the world is a great blessing and we needn't think too quickly that we are already doing it. Born into a world of ignorance and blessing we may only begin to seek when we have become disillusioned enough with the outer world, when we have become so deeply disappointed by the world of appearances that we are compelled to turn in and look deeply into the inner realms of the soul and the spirit. Seeking is the prerequisite for truly living in the world; before that we are hardly here, barely present!

To truly live in the world we must be profoundly present and to be present we need to surrender to our true self. No thing, no appearance, no relationship, outer wealth, personal accomplishment or characteristic can possibly compare with our natural and innate treasure, the jewel of the heart, our most precious possession—our inner self. The capacity for spiritual awakening, liberation and transcendence and living the divine life is the fulfilment and the actualizing of the blessing which is given to each of us: to live in the world…truly, happily.

Happiness isn't what we think it is. We cannot hold on to the egocentric existence of self-contraction and the regeneration of misery through resentment and be really happy—only relatively happy. Spiritual happiness is not affected by changing circumstances because it reflects our eternal nature, the divine. It will not be sought; it cannot be attained; it is not the purpose of spiritual practice or discipline—it is simply the natural expression of the illuminated state.

True happiness is a consequence of the profoundly natural life, the awakened and liberated existence of the human being who has given up everything, the renunciate, the one who lives in freedom, through longing only for the divine.

BLOG entry #116

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Spirituality and True Happiness’ was first published in 2011.