I hoped we might be finished with war. The power of our weapons, the prospect of indescribable destruction, and the catastrophic loss of life numb our sensibilities.

This cloud has hung over my head all my life. My grandparents suffered the cruel uncertainty of living daily, not knowing when a representative from the American Red Cross might drive up to their door with an announcement thousands of families received that a loved one was killed, captured, or "missing-inaction"—their location and condition unknown. 

In fact, my father served in the Pacific campaign under General MacArthur and returned home physically unharmed. My uncle, however, was not so lucky. He had been captured in the battle of the Bulge during the last days of the war in Germany. In fact, this major battle was the last major offensive on the Western Front during WWII. For weeks he was listed by the US Army and the Red Cross as "missing-in-action." The good news is that he survived to return home; the bad news, however, was the ongoing PTSD he suffered most of his life until he died in his 60's.

This tragedy, and many like it in families across the United States and other countries as well, scarred a generation. Sons and daughters had been drafted to serve in a war considered to be honorable, a war fought agains a tyrannical enemy, a war to save civilization. It was also thought by many to be a war to end wars. 

But it did not. Again, in my lifetime, I have experienced: the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the ethno-nationalist conflict in northern Ireland, the Iraq war, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the war between Hamas and Israel. And, in full disclosure, as many of you who know me are aware, in my lifetime I, too, have taken up arms and served as an artillery officer in Korea.

In the magisterial fiction of Herman Wouk's The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, he concludes the monumental task of describing the European and Pacific campaigns of WWII by saying this:

       These two novels tend to one conclusion: that war is an old habit of 
​       thought, an old frame of mind, an old political technique, that must
       now pass as human sacrifice and human slavery have passed. I have
       faith that the human spirit will prove equal to the heavy task of
       ending war. Against the pessimistic mood of our time, I think that
       the human spirit—for all its dark side I here portray—is in essence
       heroic.

Also, dear Wouk, with admiration and gratitude for your remarkable romance, war continues as does the pessimistic mood of our time. And yet, like you, I do agree that the human spirit is in essence heroic. However, I also add another dimension to this fictional dialogue you and I are having. This "dimension," if this is what we may call it, is the unconscious. In your novels, I do not recall you mentioning that word ever, nor did you tell what any of your characters dreamed. Yet, dreams are the most universal experience of each of us, as well as our dogs and cats. We all dream, and in our dreams we face the dangers with which our heroism is tested. This is the heroism of our total being: body, mind, thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

How ironical it is that many people say they do not dream, and in some cases refuse to face their dreams because the dreams scare them. Like all of us, they want to rest at night, to sleep undisturbed, to have a "peaceful" night. These night-time disturbances begin in childhood. We wake up, crying, running into our parents' bedroom, clutching our safe objects, dolls, teddy bears, blankets. My point is that at our youngest age, we run from our fears and rest under the protective shelter of whatever makes peace possible.

In some cases, the fears that disturb us are played out on the world's stage, as with Wouk's story of the European and Pacific wars. Sometimes our fears are rooted in the personal dynamics of families, couples, and children's playgrounds. Whatever the source or situations that prompt these fears, we must understand two things: First, it is a good thing that we are hard-wired so that we can experience fear because some encounters are wisely to be feared. The bullying person, the catastrophic illness, our accidents, the uncertainty of life's end, and so on. In these cases, fear helps us to respond and perhaps arise at some send of peace.

Then, there is the second case where fear is good. This is the deeper fear of our unconscious humanity. What I mean by this is our experience of the prevalence of uncertainty in the world. After all, each of us lives with a growing awareness that comes to each child eventually. "No, you are not the center of the universe. No, your mom and dad and friends will not always be here. No, in fact our solar system itself is not the center of the universe. No, you cannot be assured that all the individuals and circumstances you encounter will have your best interests at heart."

Given all of that, then how are we to live our lives with a sense of peace? How are we to hear the liturgies of Advent and Christmas in which the angels sing of peace on earth and goodwill to others? Actually this question occupies the center of most major religions. And the answer, simply put, is that we are to deepen our experience of life in a spiritual consciousness of peace.

This spiritual consciousness of peace arose within the New Testament account of Jesus and takes place in the ancient land of Palestine, consisting of three regions: Galilee in the north, Samaria in the middle, and Judea in the south. The political figures were the Roman emperor, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus; Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and sometimes referred to as King Herod or by the title of tetrarch ("ruler of a quarter") and called "that fox" by Jesus; Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judah where Jerusalem was located as well as where Jesus was arrested.

As for the social conditions in Palestine, the majority of people would be called a peasant class made up of tenant farmers and laborers as well as fishermen. Beneath them was another class carrying the name of "the poor." This class included the sick, crippled, mentally ill. Finally, there were the outcasts: sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors. The sinners were those who lived immoral lives, in some cases identifying with Gentile lifestyles, in other cases excommunicated and cast out of the synagogue. Among this group also were the non-religious travelers who passed through Galilee.

In other words, it is something of a motley crew in a remote part of the world where warring armies marched through, and political power was carried on the shoulders of these Galileans, Samaritans, and Judeans at the will of the Roman emperor with his subordinate governors such as Herod and Pontius Pilate. To those people, that place, and that historical moment came the bold chorus of voices declaring,
       PEACE ON EARTH
       AND GOODWILL TOWARD ALL
       (See the footnote for Luke 2:14, in THE NEW JERUSALEM BIBLE)

And there we have to leave it for this Advent and Christmas season. In our troubled time with the prospects of war bubbling throughout the world, where men, women, and children die brutally, where daily we turn away from the news too painful to bear—I leave you with the wish and prayer that you may know, express, and extend peace on earth and goodwill to all. 

     We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses, and it ain't names, and
     it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars ... everybody knows in their bones
     that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All
     the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years
     and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's
     something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

That's what the Stage Manager says in Our Town. However, the Stage Manager is not really a stage manager but rather the main character of Thorton Wilder's play, written and produced in 1938, and regarded now to be perhaps the greatest American play ever written.

I know the play, personally, as I was privileged to have played the role of Stage Manager. In full disclosure, I must tell you I was a sophomore in high school when I played this role of a lifetime. Many notables wise in years and experience far beyond my sophomoric musings have been cast as the Stage Manager, including Frank Sinatra, Henry Fonda, and Paul Newman. After the production opened the doors to include females, actresses such as Helen Hunt have added to the reflective, deep role of Stage Manager.

So what is the play, Our Town, about and why should it be of any significance for us, almost 100 years after it was published? Thornton chose as a setting a small fictional town, Grover's Corner, New Hampshire, sometime between 1901-1913. And the reason it might be of interest to us is because the play opens up life's profound themes not only of death and life itself but also of goodness and badness, hope and despair, the exciting urgings of youth and the deeper pathos of age, love and loss. We are privileged to see these emotions passing through the lives of individuals like you and me, awakening us once more to what has been and what might've been if only ... .

Consider the characters. There is, of course, the Stage Manager who observes the people of Grover's Corner as they pass across the stage, revealing the daily affairs of life in their small town where everybody knows everybody, where gossip reveals the good things and the bad. There are scenes in the play where the Stage Manager stops the action, reveals more about he characters and even asks the audience to describe what they are seeing. Of course, all the actions, the conversations, and the reflections on what is taking place—all of this leads us deeper into the hearts and minds not only of the people of Grover's Corner, but within us as well.

In other words, Grover's Corner exists not only in Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play but also in the archetypal depths of our existence. I mean by archetypal depths those universal experiences of thought, emotion, and action rooted in the very depths of our being. Across all boundaries of culture, race, religion, and gender, each us exists within the worlds of work, play, community, and spirituality of some kind. Think about the movies you have seen, art you have reflected on, music you have heard, people and places you have visited, moments when you felt suspended in awe. Without those moments, life would be banal, meaningless, maybe unendurable.

However, these archetypal moments in work, or play, social life or spirituality—each of these moments hold the potential for comedy or tragedy. The people in Our Town reveal our "ups and down," "ins and outs," "loves and losses." This was Thornton Wilder's genius bringing to life these dear heroic, sad and funny characters in which we see ourselves.

Consider the tragedy, for example, of Simon Stimson, the choir director and town drunk in Grover's Corner. Everyone knows Simon and gossips about him but does nothing to help the poor man. Maybe he is simply too repulsive. His attitude does not help matters when he says, 
     That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up 
     and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste
     time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one's 
     self-centered passion or another. 

Where would you locate Simon's tragedy in the four quadrants of work, play, community and spirituality? Was it his work? Was it an early traumatic experience in which someone hurt him deeply, so deeply he never recovered? Life eventually becomes too hard for him, only "ignorance and blindness," and he hangs himself in his attic.

Simon's life left him with a wound so different from the life of Emily Webb. Her father publishes Grover's Corner's Sentinel, appears to be well-informed, and supports Mrs. Webb as they make plans for Emily's wedding to George Gibbs, the high school star basketball player who gives up going to play for the local state agricultural college. He seems genuinely to love Emily and looks forward to their future life where they will rear their children in Grover's Corner. 

As the play progresses, we find that George and Emily do indeed marry but she dies young in childbirth. Then in one of the most moving scenes, Emily returns in her state as one of the dead who wishes to visit her old home. She chooses the non-material form of her 12th birthday and is surprised to observe both the familiarity of her old home but also at the same time to learn of all that has happened since she died. More moving and meaningful, however, is her awareness of how precious, fleeting, and important human existence is. Unlike Simon for whom life is a tragedy, Emily claims life as a transient treasure to be affirmed and lived fully. She says:
     Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen 
     years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. 
     His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible
     about it—don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. 
     Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. 
     I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't
     realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the
     hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye to clocks ticking....
     and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot
     baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for
     anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live
     it -- every, every minute?

I will pause here with Emily's question: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?"

Hope or despair, I asked in my previous writing. Which is it we feel most during this historical moment of uncertainty?

You know the threats very well:

• the climate changes that bring extreme weather systems of hurricanes, record-setting temperatures, flooding, as well as evolving weather patterns in local areas;
• the social medias' spread of misleading and sometimes dangerous misinformation;
• the betrayal by democratically elected officials who violate the trust placed in them for the work of our institutions;
• the destruction of natural habitats;
• the promise and threat of artificial intelligence, emerging as what might be the most significant cultural and technological development in our lifetime;
• and so much more, but let us not forget the failures of our old established churches to faithfully serve as stewards of our natural world, the poor, the disenfranchised, our children and young people, the elderly, and all who look for moral guidance.

Meanwhile, we are now experiencing phenomenal developments and advancements in medical care with explorations of the human brain and body never before possible. And while we are exploring with increasing detail the human body, another exciting exploration of almost unbelievable scope flashes across the pages of National Geographic, our TV screens, and other world-wide media sources. This is the exploration of space. With the landing of the James Webb telescope, we are now given images of the surfaces on Jupiter's moon Europa, the emergence of early galaxies, but, astonishingly, a look backwards over 13.5 billion years ago in time when our universe emerged out of the darkness that was before.

So there we have it. In this short list I presented, we see despair and hope. Or do we? Maybe we do not perceive them actually. How else can we understand the ongoing seemingly oblivious perception in recognizing the threat of danger at our doorsteps, or the promise of a golden future that AI and our technological advances could make possible? 

And so we come to the question of PERCEPTION. What do we perceive? How do we perceive? What blocks or distorts our perceptions? Is it not likely then, that we might look at the same object but perceive different things? What are the misperceptions in my life that are distorted because of the misinformation that falsely colors what I am perceiving?

In other words, our way of perceiving operates like this. I am given a view of the world that may be true to nature or not. Maybe I have misunderstood something. Maybe I have been misled or misinformed by a number of sources: people, media, TV studios, movies, papers, preachers, politicians, counselors, teachers, family members, and more. Perhaps I have never considered how to look for truth, how to investigate the nature of things, even the nature of NATURE. Perhaps I have become jaundiced by scams, or even by misfortunes that fell my way—sickness, accidents, death. So many factors influence what and how I perceive.

This is a theme explored by Wallace Stevens in his poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," written between 1915-1920, and published 1923, in his first book of poems, Harmonium. One of the more profound twentieth-century poets, Stevens noted the role of perception in the way we look at a work of art or an object in nature. He says as much in verse II of the poem:

            I was of three minds
            Like a tree
            In which there are three blackbirds.

Are there really three blackbirds? Probably not. He is looking at one tree and one blackbird, but he actually "sees" one blackbird and realizes he becomes aware of three different perceptions. How subtle and "tricky" are our perceptions. Later in verse XI, he describes the experience of possible misperception when he mistook a shadow for blackbirds.

Finally, in verse XIII of the poem, Stevens comes to rest within his perception.

            It was evening all afternoon.
            It was snowing
            And it was going to snow.
            The blackbird sat in the cedar limbs.

Now he perceives only one blackbird, and he is aware that his imagination symbolized by "evening in the afternoon" created or influenced his earlier perceptions of three blackbirds. Now, his "reason," represented by "snow," makes clear his perception. He is no longer projecting upon nature but rather is allowing himself to perceive what nature is presenting.

​And in this way we come back to our perception of this moment in which we are living. Is it a time of hope or despair? What are you perceiving?

"World" is a state of mind before it is a place. At any given moment you and I may think of our world as the United States, America, the hemisphere in which we are located, our solar system, or even the cosmos itself. For some of us, our political party, gender, race, religion, fraternity or sorority, region of the country, city, family name, university  we attended, workplace, or even athletic team becomes our world. We may identify as a Tiger, Bear, Ram, Eagle, Lion, etc., even adopting the colors, fight songs, and sites where games are played as our world. 

We all need a place to belong, something larger than ourselves. We cherish other people who understand us and share our values, familiar places, and experiences that offered meaning for an existence, validation fo our life, assurance that this life is worthwhile, perhaps even that there may be comfort and old friends in an eternal home beyond our earthly existence. This was the theme of many of our world's religions, a promise that seems to diminish the fear of death, but more profoundly to offer hope that our mysterious universe may reveal promise beyond the despair of our present time and place.

So where do we draw the boundary of our "world?" Where does our world begin and end, or perhaps even more accurately, where do our "worlds" begin and end as we live simultaneously in more than one world, more than one state of mind.

For the moment, then, I will define "world" as the state of mind that encompasses my many realities. Such are my memories and anticipations of friends, birthdays, anniversaries, jobs, travels, books, food, animals that both delight and also threaten me, pests that plague me (mosquitos!). Such are the "ups and downs" of my worlds. Some days I exhilarate in the joys of living, but on other days circumstances throw a dim light on my world 

In the 1985 move "Cocoon," a friendly group of retirees discovered a mysterious trace of an extraterrestrial place where the inhabitants lived with no worries of aging, sickness, and death. At the conclusion of the movie, they are given the option of boarding a spaceship that will take them there, or the option of remaining in their present home with the human suffering that comes with aging. 

Straining our capacity to imagine such a place and opportunity, I am reminded, however, of our ongoing fascination with UFOs or UAPs. At the center of this controversy is the search for hope "beyond the stars" where we may continue our existence but without the despair life on earth brings with its conditions of suffering.

THis is the nature of our life, said Siddartha Gautama, known as the Buddha. Living at the base of the Himalaya mountain range in what we now call Nepal, during the 6-5th centuries, Siddhartha forsook the life of privilege to which he had been born when he despaired over such suffering that privilege could not eliminate,  suffering that threatened the meaning of life. He became a wandering ascetic searching for hope for all human beings who faced the despair of childbirth, sickness, old age, decay, and death. Renouncing his princely life, he came to find peace of mind with his realization of the Four Noble Truths.

"Noble" does not refer to the truths themselves but rather to the state of mind of individuals who live by the Noble Truths which are as follows:

• dukkah.  Suffering. The reality of human existence must be faced in its true nature and must not be avoided or rationalized in any way. Human beings cannot avoid the pain, anxiety, and finality of aging, sickness, death, and the mental gymnastics that arise trying to avoid these unpleasantries.
• samudaya.  The Cause of Suffering. This is the craving, the attachment we make to the false hope of attempts to avoid the suffering.
• nirvana. There is a Cessation to Suffering. Here is the promise of hope over despair. Here is the promise of liberation, the fading of craving, the release from attachments, freedom from the obsessive desire for pleasure as a means of ending suffering.
• marga.  The Path to the Cessation of Suffering. What is this path? To the Buddha's credit, and for the benefit of all who yearn for hope over despair, Buddha laid out in very specific words the way of the path which he called astangika-marga, the Eightfold Path.

Before specifying the steps along the way of the Eightfold Path, it is helpful to place this way of living and realizing hope as a Middle Way. It is called that because the Eightfold Path weaves its way through the challenges of life without falling into the extremes of either asceticism or sensual indulgence. Granted, any one of us at any time may stretch the boundaries of the Eightfold Path. And, as is most likely, the extremes are not always crystal clear. For example, consider our use of time. How much vacation time is enough? Our time for balancing work, play, socializing, loving, caring, and being cared for cannot fit within the same prescription for everyone. The Buddha never specified the balance with which we approach our commitments. But, make no mistake, the Eightfold Path clearly outlines a path of moderation.

Here is the Eightfold Path:

1. right understanding.  This refers to an awareness of what the Four Noble Truths mean.
2. right intention.  The intent is to confirm one's resolve to follow the Path.
3. right speech.  Lying, divisiveness, and meaningless pandering are destructions and not right. 
4. right action.  Do no harm to any other living thing or the environment.
5. right vocation.  Do not accept work that endangers oneself or others.
6. right effort.  A lackadaisical attitude sabotages one's Path. The way of the wandering mind can distract one from focusing on the effort to continue the Path. 
7. right mindfulness.  Distractions, like weather systems, come and go. The aim is not to attach to a sensation, emotion, or thought but to let them pass through the mind.
8. right concentration.  Without intentionality, effort, and awareness, the mind wanders aimlessly making concentration impossible. Right concentration focuses on one-point, descending as the mind brings its energy to rest within a deep center of psychic balance.

To follow the Eightfold Path, says the Buddha, is to awaken and live in hope. Despair is not destroyed; it does not disappear. There will always be despair, but it need not possess us. This is the archetypal experience of individuation, our authentic "home" where hope dwells. The Buddha described a path towards this realization more than 2600 years ago. 

​There are other paths that lead to hope. But none of these paths deny the present reality of despair as we face the darkening skies of climate change and political extremism. As Carl Jung reminded us, only when we encounter and endure the threat of our despair, personal and collective, only then is there a genuine promise of hope. Toward that end, we will meet again next time. 

How do you and I understand this conflicted time in which we are living? The days stretch on and on, seemingly with no bridge in sight by which we may pass over our days of deep polarization, misinformation, and the failure of our democratic institutions to clarify the issues that polarize us. How are we to restore our conscious mind, personally, socially, and politically?

We, of course, are not the first society to struggle with threats to our personal and collective health, safety, and sanity. Over the course of human existence, consciousness has been achieved even in the darkest days, such as the terrors of World War II that ravaged all nations and witnessed the death of 70-85 million people, including 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust. 

How do we cope with such savage unconsciousness and evil? Asking that question, I went back in time, perhaps as many as 6,000 years ago, and consulted the I Ching which may be the world's oldest book. Drawing upon the ancient wisdom of the Chinese culture, the I Ching presents what we may refer to as the archetypal dynamics of change in individuals and societies. Consulting the I Ching is comparable to sitting before a centuries-old sage who unfurls the experiences of life from the vantage point of a deep wisdom. But instead of spoken words, the I Ching speaks in the recorded wisdom of hexagrams. When I posed the question of consciousness in turbulent times such as ours, the I Ching's response was "Inner Truth!" 

What is this "inner truth" that may yield insight as to what makes possible a conscious mind? The I Ching speaks symbolically: "It furthers one to cross the great waters," and the text offers an image of wind as it blows over the water and stirs the surface. Within this natural and mythic imagery comes an impression of the "invisible" making itself manifest, just as the unconscious becomes conscious when the waters of our unconsciousness are stirred by events acting within and/or upon us. 

For example, consider a passage of scripture in Luke 6:4 as it is recorded in Codex Bezae, one of the older manuscripts that contains Luke's gospel. In that reading, the story is told of Jesus observing a man working on the Sabbath, which would have been considered a sin. Jesus says to the man, "... if indeed thou knowest what thou dost, blessed art thou, but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the law."

In other words, how conscious is the man? Perhaps he was starving. This would reflect the consciousness of Jesus that appears in his statement elsewhere (Matthew 12:68; Mark 2:27-28) that the Sabbath is made for humanity and not humanity for the Sabbath. This principle appears in the writings where the disciples of Jesus are criticized for picking corn on the Sabbath, and Jesus defends them because they were hungry.

Consciousness may prevail when necessity confronts the law. If our child is deathly sick and we break the speed limit rushing to the hospital, we know we are breaking the law, but if we do not, the child may die before we get to the emergency room. 

Breaking the law in this case is a clear choice. Why? Because we value the child's life over the law. Yes, we have broken the law, but a higher consciousness impels us to do so. Our conscience has become conscious, and this is what I mean when I refer to "the conscious mind."

The definition of conscience is "an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting a a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior." (New Oxford American Dictionary)  And it should be no surprise that conscience and conscious derive from the same Latin roots (con-and scire-) that have to do with "becoming aware." To become conscious, then, is to listen to the inner voice of conscience.

But conscience is not only a private experience. It is also a collective, social, public experience. We affirm our social conscience each time we say our "Pledge of Allegiance." Consider the words of the Pledge:

       I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Sates of America, and to the
       republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with 
       liberty and justice for all.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a socialist minister, Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). Changed several times over the decades, the Pledge was amended last in 1954, when the words, "under God" were added—against the objections of Bellamy's daughter. 

Obviously, the Pledge is a dynamic evolving document, revised over the course of time, but reflecting the public conscience of our nation, just as it also reflects our consciousness. This is the point of my writing. The conscious mind arises from the very lofty ideals of humanity to pledge "liberty and justice for all," a commitment which, if realized, would bring healing to our conflicted time. However, our conscious mind is shaped also from the more foreboding impulses of our unconscious, forces that make our future uncertain. Will we realize the counsel of the I Ching: "It furthers one to cross the great waters."

When Carl Jung looked ahead to the promise and perils of our civilization in the closing pages of his autobiography, he said this:

          Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought
       about a demonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators
       and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has
       been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-
       intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But
       man's task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents 
       that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his
       unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his
       being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more conscious-
       ness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to 
       kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
​                                                            (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 326)
      

In my last blog, I presented a dream that concluded with the terrifying experience of a whirlwind that sucked the breath out of the dreamer. Dying, the dreamer thought, "This is God." However, even before this traumatic ending of the dream, there were other daunting images: darkness where there should have been light, light where there should have been darkness, a source of light where there should have been vacant space, and the bizarre performance-like movement of people underneath the light where there should have been no meaning or reason for such a performance. Lastly, there was the vulnerability of the dreamer sitting in a convertible as the whirlwind approached.

Now a word of caution. We must be careful not to dismiss this dreamscape with its unsettling images simply as a meaningless nightmare. Rather, we ask, why this dream at this time? Why these images? Why the trauma? What are we to understand about this supernatural trauma? 

In general, I think of trauma as the experience of unbearable pain. This "pain" may be acute (experience of a very stressful event), chronic (repetition of experiences of pain), and complex (the ongoing experience of the very stressful source). But in this case I have also used the term "supernatural" to describe the experience of the dreamer who is not likely to label experiences beyond his understanding as "supernatural."

That adjective, "supernatural," is described by the New Oxford American Dictionary as "a manifestation or event attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding of the laws of nature." However, the workings of nature have long led human explanations to seek explanations beyond rational understanding. In fact, one of the synonyms of "whirlwind" is "dust devil." How remarkable can that be? But also how understandable that if in the past a powerful and destructive force of wind destroyed homes, uprooted tress, threw heavy objects through the air as if they were match boxes—then we might say in colloquial language that "the devil did it," with no understanding of what this really means. However, there is in the language a residue of myth, superstition, folk tales, and religion in which nature and supernatural beings become entwined.

For example, in the Old Testament book of Job, Chapters 38-40, the terrifying whirlwind is described as God a "tempest" swoops down upon the home of the eldest son of Job where the other sons and daughters are visiting, and all of them are killed. Later, in this account, the voice of God speaks from "the heart of the tempest" and lectures Job about the Creator's ways of "conducing the business" of creating. Job cannot possibly understand but can acknowledge a force beyond his natural understanding.

Much more can be said about the Old Testament's book of Job, and for those who are interested I recommend Carol A. Newson's masterful commentary with reflections in Volume IV of The New Interpreter's Bible. However, this folk tale or didactic story as it often is described, is not the point of my writing here. I referred to it as one of the countless stories, commentaries, and folk tales that wrestle with the problem of suffering, the nature of justice, the mystery of how our world came into being, and the role of its creator.

In its own limited way, our dream under consideration leads us to look at how the dreamer understands the trauma of a destructive whirlwind bearing down upon him in the darkness of night. What are we to make of the dreamer's words, "This is God"? What kind of "God" is this? Is the dreamer's "God" a natural explanation for understanding the place of traumatic suffering? Or is the dreamer's "God" a supernatural force that acts upon the natural order of things with no discernible reason, sometimes bringing "blessings" and at other times bringing destruction and suffering?

However, the probing of all the images seems thus far to lead us back to where we started.  Like the dreamer, we remain in the dark. 

But before we turn our backs on this exercise in dream interpretation, there remains one symbol in the dream we have not explored. This is the total darkness in which the dreamer finds himself. The darkness is markedly pronounced. There are no lights in the building, no stars, no moonlight, not even the lights of his car. Except for the mysterious light descending from somewhere up above, silhouetting the movement of unidentifiable characters who appear to be miming a meaningless act, except for this light there is total darkness. 

What are we to make of such darkness? As I work with my dreams and those who bring their dreams for understanding, I have found over the decades of dream study that wherever darkness appears in such a pronounced way, there is something unconscious that needs to be brought to light.

A person may "know" much about many things and still not be a conscious person. As the Buddha taught, we may sleepwalk through life in the sense of not being conscious. To those of us who are sleepwalking, the Buddha says, "Wake up"!

In other words, bring to mind your consciousness, meaning-full perception and awareness. Such perception and awareness bring us face to face with our full potential to be ourselves, to do good but also to inflict harm upon ourselves and others. In the absence of such consciousness, we dwell in darkness.

We ask, then, what brings us to consciousness? How do we "wake up" psychologically? Unfortunately, our education today focuses largely on the transmission of information that we remember and regurgitate when called upon. And also there are times when our consciousness is so shielded with superstition, misinformation, convenience, or secondary gains of wealth, fame, power, etc., that we settle into the pseudo-comfort of unconsciousness. However, in our lives there are whirlwinds, accidents, sickness, or  dreams that wake us up to the darkness of our unconsciousness and awaken us to the consciousness of meaning by which we are fully alive.

The ancients do not fade easily over the horizon. I refer here to music, art, our inquiries into the intriguing mystery of nature, spell-binding stories that repeat themselves in native dress, the structures our ancestors built, the cities created by past civilizations, the routes we wander... and more.

This is because at the deepest level of our lives, each of us wants the same three things and has never changed: 1) to belong, 2) to have some influence over what we do or say, and 3) to love and be loved — in some fashion. These three things do not magically drop down our chimneys or appear on our doorsteps. Quite the opposite. Most often our yearnings to belong, to influence and be influenced, to love and be loved appear only after some effort, some courage, some trial and error. And once achieved, the cycle must be traced again and again as we spiral through the stages of life — its many stages if we are fortunate enough to avoid the more catastrophic calamities of traumas and accidents, illnesses, and pre-mature death.

How do we bear this? How do we "keep our chins up?" Well, of course, most often there are many joys along the circuitous spiral-way. We delight in our loves, our creations, our discoveries, our accomplishments, our friends, our growing consciousness of life's depth and wondrous meaning.

And if we tune in, really tune in, we become aware of the archetypal powers that convey a sense of wonder, beauty, courage, and purposiveness. Also, if we take time to pay attention, we become aware of "signals" that give us guidance in our needs to belong, to matter, and to love.

What "signals" am I referring to, you may ask, to which I respond — our dreams. Yes, I believe it to be true, having analyzed thousands of dreams in my fifty years of paying close attention to dreams of others, having recalled my personal dreams each night — I tell you with reliable confidence that our dreams come to us each night and offer signals about where we are off course, or conversely, where we are on course.

I have known those signals while observing my personal dreams, and I have witnessed  signals in the lives of others who seek to belong, to matter, to love and be loved. In their symbolic language, dreams tell stories of the good and the bad, the pretty and not-so-pretty, the places of safety and the nightmares of deep fear, the obvious and the not-so-obvious.

For example, consider the dream I am about to share with you. Watch closely the "signals," the images. This is the way we become aware of the archetypal powers that come in the service of our physical and mental health. We observe our changing identity as we pass through stages of life in which we lose old friends and hopefully acquire new ones, leave our old homes and find new ones, grow in self understanding including quirks of personality that make our worlds a kaleidoscope of changing patterns.

So these archetypal powers, like instincts of our animal friends, nudge us along the way, out of sight of our waking mind. But in the dramas our dreams present lie the clues to where we belong, how and why we matter, and the wonder of love. What a fascinating part of our life. 

It may well be that our parents and teachers did know to teach us this mostly unknown fact that dreams compensate our conscious life, that they endow our existence with the quality of experience which may be described as spiritual or sacred — or, in any case, worth remembering and paying attention to.

So it is with this dream I am about to share with you. The dreamer is in his mid-thirties, at the mid-point of a successful career, contentedly married with a child, but restless with the uncertainty of the world around him in which there is an ongoing threat of upheaval in his rapidly changing society which he expected to have been stabilized with educators, clergy, reputable and responsible politicians, and a government committed to the Jeffersonian ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

I describe his state of mind as "restless." He would say something is "wrong," but he found it difficult to verbalize what might be wrong, clinging to his expectations of what society would be like in a rational world. He wondered if he might be clinically depressed as he found himself with the feeling that something was wrong. Then he had the following dream.

                                               THE TORNADO

     I am sitting at night in my Volkswagen Beetle convertible. I look out my window
     to the left and see a building, a residence or office. But there are no lights on
     in the building which I thought was strange at this time of night. Suddenly a light
     appears from somewhere above. On the ground is something like a platform
     between me and the dark building. Two figures appear on the platform-like structure.
     The two people seem to be moving around. Is it a dance, a ritual, a movement
     without any suggestion of feeling or meaning? The puzzling movement seems
     regressive in some way. I feel contempt for the actors in this soulless drama of
     some sort. Then, I hear in the distance the sound of something like a rushing wind.
     It is a tornado approaching my car, and I have no time to escape.
     The tornado, a powerful whirlwind, hovers over me. I feel it sucking the air out
     of my lungs. I know I am going to die, and I know this is God.

What are we to make of this dream, the dreamer and his life situation, but also what it might mean for each of us today? The drama of the dream moves toward a frightening climax in which the dreamer believes he will die. What are we to make of the dark building with no lights, a mysterious light shining "from above," the ritualistic movement of the two figures, the whirlwind the dreamer refers to as a tornado, and the dreamer's conclusion that this is "God?"

These are archetypal images. They have teaching relevance, and they offer glimpses into our pursuit of the universal needs to belong, to matter, and to love and be loved. In what way do the dream's drama and striking images throw light on our three universal needs?

I will return to this question in my next blog.

The goal of human existence is transformation, and symbols guide the transformation. Consider the symbols as maps that guide our traveling through strange places we never have been before. Consider also the "names" we choose for our sports teams, represented by symbols that influence our character formation, our loyalties, our "fight" songs, and the massive reverence these images generate through the marketing world. It is the symbol that generates the energy that drives the markets, providing identity, income, and meaning spread around the world of our planet earth.

And nothing portrays our symbolic life more dramatically, more interestingly, or even more mysteriously than the stories our dreams narrate. What a treasure these stories our dreams tell, the characters—some familiar, others never encountered before—the scary ones, the comical ones, the brief ones, the "never-ending" ones, the references to our religious and political life, the re-appearance of loved ones long since departed, and the suggestion of a future never anticipated.

But, of course, like everything else you and I encounter in our multi-layered world, dreams mean different things to different people. This is as it should be. And that is why I have tried to be honest about my background and education, my experience as teacher, military officer in the US Army Field Artillery, my travels in the US, the Far East, and Europe, and my present work as a Pastoral Counselor and Jungian Analyst. 

So it is true that my life and experiences have served as a matrix from which my dreams arise. But it is also true that my life has arisen from my dream world, as I suggested in my last writing when I shared the evocative dream of an eagle that flew into my life with its puzzling message: "It's alright. I have come from the other side to tell you, it's alright," and then turning to fly back over the horizon from whence it had come. 

If it appears that the dream of the eagle and the message itself has an apocalyptic ring, I would agree. Apocalypticism arose in the Hellinistic period. One example is the book of Daniel in which symbolic visions portray the rising and ending of political worlds, imagery that appears later in the Christian book of Revelation that often is used today to project the sobering imagery of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with an anticipation of the end of history.

Such is the stuff of dreams and visions in which the world is thought to be governed by transcendent powers with whom humanity contends in the transformation of our personal, social, political, and religious destinies. Within the panorama of life and death, dreams flow through our minds each night. In doing so, they offer not a prophetic portrayal of what is to be, but rather the possible meaning of our individual and social life at a given time. These "meanings" are not realized until we ponder the images, the stories, the characters, and the environments described in the dreams. 

In just this way, I dreamed of a magnificent eagle that comes "from the other side," commands my attention, delivers a message, and then returns to the "other side." But, you may think, this makes no sense; the dream surely must have arisen from some incident in my life—something I ate, some event in my life, some scene I witnessed on TV or a movie, or something I read in a book.

But that was not the case. In my effort to locate the imagery of the dream in my waking life, I came away empty-handed. Only when I turned to consider seriously the imagery of the dream and its apocalyptic message did I uncover a meaning for myself.

The apocalyptic idea of the transcendent powers that govern our world made sense to me only from the perspective of Jungian depth psychology. And here, I discovered, was the key to understand not only my dream imagery but the unknown and unseen influences that have given shape to the stages of my life. This is important to note. Dreams come to us each night generally in the service of compensating our waking life by bringing us back to a "true north" location of our deep center. At no time is this as important and as difficult to understand as those times when a new direction is called for either because we have gotten off our path or because we have depleted the task of our present stage of life, and the time has come to move on. Our old "worlds" collapse or lose relevance; something new is called for—something we may not even understand, perhaps a path or situation or challenge we fear. After all, when you think about it, this most often is always the case. We do not know what we do not know, or as Carl Jung would put it, "the problem with the unconscious is it is unconscious."

Precisely. So how do we know when the time has come to say good-by to the old and take on the challenge of the unknown? In the old myth of the Knights of the Round Table, when they came to the challenge of a new task, the imagery was that of entering the "dark wood" with all its uncertainty. And each knight entered this dark wood at a different point. What guidance, then, you may ask can we look for?

And, of course, there are traditions. There are paths our family members have taken before us, there are educational and training programs that prepare us. But none of these offer specific directions as we approach the "dark wood" of a new world. After all, there never has been another "you," and like the knights of old, each of us has to enter at the point to which we have been guided or stumbled upon.

So say our dreams, in symbolic fashion. The anticipation of our transformation is encoded within the archetypal imagery of our basic humanity within which lies the age-old courage  to undertake the mission of becoming who we truly are.

Maybe then, I thought, maybe the message of the eagle makes sense. Maybe this is the central mission of our human existence and transformation, to become conscious. Hear the message again: "It's alright. I have come from the other side to tell you, it's alright." 

The goal of human existence is transformation The transformation occurs in all spheres of our life and may be sudden, or very gradual, seen or not seen, expected as with the stages of our life or surprising as with the breakthrough of a discovery. The transformation may follow the contours of rational thought or the dramatic stories of dreams.

For example, consider this dream and the experience of the dreamer:

                                               THE EAGLE
       I am sitting in a circle of 10-12 people, holding some papers in my lap,
       perhaps leading a discussion. We are in a contemporary cabin in the
       mountains, and the fall day is sunny and beautiful with a hint of change
       in the foliage. Slowly I become aware of a sound in the distance—some-
       thing approaching! It sounds like the whirling blades of a helicopter—no, 
       more like the loud flapping of wings! This seems impossible: the bird
       would have to be a very large one. Suddenly, a very large eagle appears
       outside our closed sliding glass door. The drapes are open, and we can
       clearly see the eagle whose wing tips tap on the glass as if it wants to
       get inside. Startled, we jump up from our seats and stare at the eagle, 
       afraid to move any closer. The eagle slowly backs away from the door
       and retreats about 100 feet from the cabin where it hovers 20 ft. or so
       above the ground. We slowly open the door, move outside and stand
       with our backs to the cabin. The eagle's head changes to that of a human.
       I hear a voice speak: "It's alright. I have come from the other side to tell 
       you it's alright. There is more." Then the head changes back to an eagle's
       head as it turns and flies away over the horizon to my left.

Where and when does this dream occur? Who is the dreamer? What is the pressing question on the dreamer's mind? What is the setting of the dream?

To begin, the season of the year must be fall as there is awareness of a change in the foliage of the mountains. Awareness of the world outside the cottage suggests it is daytime. A group of people has gathered for some unknown purpose, a study group, a business meeting, or an educational seminar. We know the state of the world generally: The Vietnam war is winding down, the Watergate crisis in government is being resolved with several high-level officials receiving jail sentences, and the social/political uneasiness in the country tilts toward peace.

Here, at this time of what seems like a transition, the dreamer bolts upright in bed, startled awake by the dream, feeling as if somehow he has been visited by a strange, mysterious guest he had not invited nor anticipated. 

In the dark of the night, he sits upright in bed, waking his wife, and tells her he just had the strangest dream. "A nightmare?," she asks. "No, not a nightmare," he says. "Then what," she wants to know, still in a groggy state. "I don't know," he slowly gets the words out of his mouth and continues, "but my life will never be the same." 

And it was not. Why? The disturbing dream could not be associated with the external events of the dreamer's world. Nor could he locate the dream in his personal life as a minister in a progressive Protestant church that had provided him a meaningful and fulfilling life in the pastoral duties of caring for people throughout the life and death events that make up the duties of all care-givers whose occupation is cura animarum, the ancient Church's care of souls.

Against the backdrop of the dreamer's personal life and pastoral responsibilities, the dreamer searched for some clue to understand the eagle's appearance and its mysterious message, "It's alright. I have come from the other side to tell you it's alright." The dreamer could think of no helpful clue. Except for one.

There, in the middle of the night, his heart still racing and his mind scrambling through the events of his life, he remembered a group he attended a few times. The group focused on the psychology of Carl Jung and recommended a resource for the study of symbols. The dreamer passed the night finally falling back to sleep but not before writing the dream with as much detail as he could remember and then searching through his journal for the name of the book on symbols. A Dictionary of Symbols by J.E. Cirlot, published by the Philosophical Library of New York. 

At the time of the dream, there was no internet service, nor did the library possess the book. Several days went by before Cirlot's book finally arrived, a relatively brief time that felt like an age for the dreamer who could not turn loose the eagle and its message. Then finally came the book and its reference to the symbolism of the eagle with these words: "A symbol of height, of the spirit as the sun, and of the spiritual principle in general. ... Similarly, in Christianity, the eagle plays the role of a messenger from heaven." 

There it was! In the dreamer's mind and throughout ecclesiastical history the eagle has appeared as a messenger. How could it be that a dream image, the eagle, appeared as it had appeared in the ancient history of the Church as well as in other legends, myths, and religions? He had never encountered an eagle in his waking life and knew of the eagle's symbolism only in a limited way, most generally as a symbol of freedom, strength, and courage, and most importantly as the national bird of the United States, spreading its wings on the Great Seal of our country since 1782, against the protest of Benjamin Franklin who lobbied for a turkey!

As for the eagle's symbolism in Christianity to which Cirlot refers, the dreamer knew of the eagle lecturn in churches on which the Bible rests, symbolizing the Word of God to be carried to the far reaches of the world. Also, the dreamer recalled occasional references in scripture to the eagle, such as Exodus 19:4 and Deuteronomy 32:11. In addition, the Gospel of John has historically been associated with the Eagle because its language connotes spiritual heights rather than biographical or historical details. 

However, in the dream, the eagle and its message do not conform to any specific religious or nationalistic imagery. Rather, the eagle alerts an indistinguishable group from an indefinite point over the horizon with a most specific message that is not located in scripture, history, mythology, legend, or the humanities. In the dream, the eagle's head changes to that of an unrecognized human, speaks plainly and simply, and returns over the horizon from which it came. 

What did this dreaming experience come to mean to the dreamer? How did it transform his life? What might this dream and other such dreams mean to us today? What role do they play in human consciousness and transformation? This will be the topic of my next writing. There is also another fundamental question: Is the dreamer sharing the truth of this dreaming experience? Can we trust him? To which I can only say, I do. I am the dreamer.