The Double Refuge ☯️ Herr Jung
Into the Forest
The Mind’s Double Refuge - Hawthorne’s Warning
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The Mind’s Double Refuge
The way I see it, it’s not in the best interest of open agnostics or open theists to write down their dreams, to dwell on their meanings, to identify figures that recur in different forms, or to make coherent patterns as if their dreams had a script writer or director. By avoiding this Jungian method of dream analysis, double refugees can process more easily the figures, scenes, and issues that pop up, merge, and slide away. They pop up and slide away for a neurological reason. Their evanescence is their natural essence. Why try to fix them into figures and meanings when in fact we know so little about the depths of our minds?
We may of course want to explore specific moments in our dreams, yet we don’t need to get caught up in reworking these moments by digging into their meanings, by connecting them to other figures and scenes, and by making them into complex and interconnected scenarios. We don’t need to help a network of figures, narratives, and dramatic structures to become reinforced neurologically inside our brains. Instead, our understanding of dreams should change and evolve, just as the neurological structures inside our dreaming brains change and evolve. In the case of dreams that are disturbing or nightmarish, it may even be dangerous to double down on the negative aspects, focussing on them and giving them coherent interpretations.
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The very nature of dreaming can present serious difficulties, largely because we have almost no control over what dreams will come. It's for this reason that Hamlet likens the dreaming mind to the afterlife. In both cases, we have no clue what to expect.
… aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. (Hamlet 3.1)
But it doesn't follow that if you have bad dreams, the gates of hell are opening. To think that is to confuse neurology and theology.
Dreams can come from many places. We live in a world that's full of people like Donald Trump & Vladimir Putin, wars & global warming, mad consumerism & economic difficulties, as well as daily conflict with strangers, friends, and family. It's only natural that in reworking our cognition of this difficult world, our dreaming minds bring up images and elements we’d rather not face.
When there are people on the streets who stab people randomly, we try to put it out of our minds. But we can't put it out of our unconscious, dreaming minds. If these violent people crop up in our dreams, it can be disturbing, and we naturally want to change the tenor of our dreams. Yet digging too deeply and insistently into these negative dreaming visions brings negative images and elements more firmly to our waking mind. I have tried this Jungian method, and it only strengthened the negativity. The only relief I found was to think more positive thoughts, in a general way that didn't engage or fight the negative figures and scenarios of my dreams, but instead countered them with positive emotions and ideas.
The dreaming mind isn’t rational, and often our deepest fears present themselves to us in strange and distorted forms. Because this process is out of our control, the refuge of theology presents an avenue that may save us from this turmoil. We can appeal to whatever theological force of goodness, peace, & order we believe in or respect. Even if we don't believe in it 100%, we can still appeal to this force. It may be Jesus or Krishna, or a more abstract force like God or the Dao. Whatever it is, it can be appealed to, and we can replace the focus on negative figures and scenarios with a more positive spiritual focus. One doesn't need to imagine Shiva or Saint Michael fighting demons; one merely needs to imagine Shiva or Saint Michael. Or Saraswati or Jesus, or any image or force that works toward a peaceful resolution. I’d go so far as to say that we could even imagine Strider or Gandalf, two of my favourite fictional heroes. Established figures may have more clout, but everyone is different, and not everyone believes in belief. But everyone can believe in values and images of goodness and truth.
A dozen years ago I had some really scary dreams while travelling in Europe. In one a fish-head demon was stabbing someone at the other end of the street. When I woke up I focused on the image of a holy dove (or Holy Spirit) as well as the figure of Mary (I was in Ireland and Greece, and was influenced by the icons in churches and museums). Almost miraculously, this calmed my mind. The nasty dream bothered me less, and even though I don't know how the holy dove and Mary operate, thinking about them gave me peace of mind.
Because we don't operate on a spiritual level, we can't really say how spiritual forces operate. It’s for this reason that I think it's best not to try to take on the nasty personifications within you. Instead of reworking them in your mind, and giving them a more solid connection to your thoughts, why not appeal to a metaphysical or spiritual force instead? Such a force operates on their level, and takes you from the fear they evoke to a focus on peace, love, order, forgiveness, truth, understanding, etc.
Because dream images come and go, it may be helpful to urge our waking minds to focus on paradigms that unify our psyches and guide us toward happiness and a sense of liberation. These paradigms can come from psychology & sociology, science & religion, literature & art. They can come from our own ideas or from the ideas of others. Or from the fusion of all the above. We can analyze dark scenarios, either in the world or in our dreaming minds, yet we should keep in mind that there’s a clear difference between waking and dreaming scenarios: one has to be grappled with; the other doesn’t. One needs to be seen in every possible form, from the practical to the metaphoric; the other doesn’t. One needs continual observation and modification; the other doesn’t.
In the waking world, moving from one scenario to the next is an exercise in bridging, in examining of cause and effect, in order to find ways to smooth transitions and to create a more efficient flow of personal, cultural, and material traffic. In the dreaming world, as in the mythic realm, we don’t need to continually examine in this way. We don’t need to continually connect, or to dwell on, the root causes.
I have to say that I’ve almost triggered myself by using the term root causes, since this is the term that Putin uses to justify his war in Ukraine. But my Freudian slip may be apropos: just as Putin misjudges the root causes, so we too can easily misjudge what’s happening in our unconscious or dreaming mind. We can create scenarios featuring evil figures and intentions when no such figures or intentions exist. Just as the cells and neurons are readjusting themselves during sleep, without any malign intent, so the world readjusted itself after the fall of the Soviet Union. The “evil design of the West” may have an element of truth — for instance in Vietman and Iraq — yet NATO’s expansion was a natural movement of freed nations that wanted to join a structure that allowed them continued freedom. It wasn’t an evil conspiracy to tighten our grip on Russia’s throat.
The same applies to the brain and to dreaming: we don’t need to find all the root causes of cells and neurons firing this way and that. We certainly don’t need to create new neuron patterns that may work against the patterns we already have. And we most certainly don’t need to empower these new structures with the force of mythic figures and scenarios, such as Jung’s Shadow and Anima. If there’s a dark figure or scenario operating or “acting out” in our dreams, we are perhaps better advised to short-circuit its operation by appealing to a more powerful benign mystic force, such as Jesus, Krishna, Mary, Buddha, Allah, Guanyin, Shiva, Saraswati, etc. This may be far more effective than trying to defeat such a metaphysical figure on its own ground.
We aren't spiritual warriors by nature. Our waking minds are better adapted to the winding road and the battering wave than to the deep and hidden currents of dreams. In cases of spiritual danger — whether real or perceived, the open agnostic can’t say — why not appeal to mystic or religious forces that know those shifting fields and forces, those deep underwater currents?
Even Jung found terrifying nightmares within his nightmares – just look at his Red Book. How is the average Joe to navigate such powerful currents? Better to leave the navigation to Jesus, who walked on the Sea of Galilee, or to Shiva, who tempered the impact of the falling sky-torrent by directing it onto his hair, and by letting it flow peacefully from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal.
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Hawthorne’s Warning
Nathaniel Hawthorne provides us with a powerful example of why we should avoid magnifying negative images, personifications, and scenarios from our dreaming minds. In “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), Hawthorne’s protagonist — who may or may not be dreaming — enters the forest in order to make a temporary deal with the forces of darkness. Both his mental state (Is he waking or dreaming?) and his motives (Is he making a temporary bargain with the Devil?) are left ambiguous throughout the story. These ambiguities allow us to expand the implications of the story: a nocturnal journey into the forest can occur in a waking or dreaming state, and such a journey may have innumerable causes and contexts.
As Young Goodman Brown advances into the forest he chances upon several good people of the town. Yet these people are strangely transformed — as if in a dream — into figures that are sinister. Reaching a clearing deep in the forest, Young Goodman Brown finds a midnight bonfire presided over by the town preacher. He realizes that he and his wife are to be initiated into the community of the town’s evil.
After running from the forest and arriving home, Young Goodman Brown can’t tell if his experience was a dream or a reality. He then suspects his wife and all the townspeople of hiding evil in their hearts. He becomes alienated and miserable for the rest of his life.
Hawthorne’s point isn’t that everyone in New England Puritan towns is in fact evil. Rather, his point is that looking for evil in the forest and in other people leads to distortion, distrust, and despair. Hawthorne also suggests that if it was a dream, the dream is a distortion, a product of Brown’s fears and suspicions, not an accurate reflection of the world. Brown destroys his relation with his loving and beautiful wife — whose name is Faith! — and he destroys his own happiness, all because he can’t distinguish between the fearful scenarios of religion on one hand and the reality of the waking world on the other. Instead of choosing a religion of love and faith he chooses a religion of fear and distrust. The beauty of the forest succumbs to the dark stereotype of evil, instead of to nature’s wild beauty — a beauty that Hawthorne cherished as an American who wrote in the wake of English Romantics like Keats, Shelley, and Byron.
I see nightmares in much the same way as Hawthorne sees the disturbing visions of Young Goodman Brown. We can interpret our nightmares as indicators of deep dark truth, and we can create dark scenarios about the world and other people. Yet doing this is counter to empirical reality and also to our own interests. Just as we need to free ourselves from negative sense impressions, that is, from our past experiences (the focus of 🇲🇽 Señor Locke), so we need to break free of negative scenarios of the dreaming mind (the focus of ☯️ Herr Jung).
I suggest 1. that we avoid hanging onto the distorted, surreal and negative scenarios in our dreams, and 2. that we avoid linking these to negative mythic or religious figures and scenarios. It’s better to 1. use empirical doubt to separate our waking from our dreaming state, and 2. use open theism to see any possible metaphysical dimension in terms of positive figures or values, such as God, Love, Christ, Forgiveness, Krishna, Mary, Guanyin, Compassion, Buddha, Saraswati, Hope, Charity, and Faith.
The last item on this last — Faith — is the name of the wife in Hawthorne’s short story. This suggests that we can see Young Goodman Brown as having lost his religious faith and also as having lost faith in humanity, represented by the one person he chose to live his life with. This may seem like a small or obvious point, but to open agnostics and open theists this is a big point: faith doesn’t come in just one dimension or aspect; it may be faith in God, in humanity, or in a person; by extension it may also be faith in other versions of God, in other human ideals, and in other people.
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Next: ☯️ Animal Dreams