July 18, 2006

Dream Journal: The Giant Eye

I’m sitting in a long line of people on the steps of a city plaza, waiting Godot-like for some kind of vehicle of transport to take me to a place of fulfillment, a heavenly kind of place. Everyone is silent so I decide to sing: “Sugar Magnolia,” a sweet old love song by the Grateful Dead, a song of admiration for a woman. A young man sitting near me, listening, turns out also to be a Dead freak and he joins in, singing tentative harmony. But it seems he has a deformed eye: his left eye is normal, but the right eye is so large that it takes up most of that side of his face. It’s disgusting, and he tries, not very successfully, to hide it by turning away, but I overcome my shock and revulsion and we enjoy singing.

This seems to me to be a dream about my Jungian shadow. The harmony singer is the side of me I’m ashamed of and wish to hide, who’s deformed by egotism (enlarged eye/I). My chance for happiness comes from accepting my shadow as my backup singer, and filling the present moment with loving creativity and companionship as we wait for whatever comes.

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