Life Phases of the Dreamer: Poe and Developmental Psychology

Edgar Allen Poe's Raven by Gustave Dore

"Is all that I see or seem/But a dream within a dream?" E.A. Poe

The practice of remembering dreams is one way to practice deep, inner self-awareness. The subtle energies of dream arise from the Source of Emotion. Both destructive and creative emotions are based on momentums of conscious action. Thought begets thought, and action begets action. As the Poe quote reads, so the psychological, subtle phases of our lives seem as dreams within a dreams.

Emotions are also based in psychological development through various phases of life. As a child, emotions are indistinguishable between self and other. The emotional vulnerability of a child rests in the experience of lacking discernment between “what is I” and “what is not I”. When a child experiences trauma, they are unable to separate the trauma in their environment from their own thoughts and feelings, which are not yet recognized as theirs. By adolescence, the human being is naturally predisposed to reflection on the content of one’s inner life, forming and recognizing their unique thoughts and emotions. This phase is often marked by the difficulties in attaining psychological independence from the collective emotions shared by family and community. If the person passes from this stage, they are able to maintain a strong sense of self, and so go out into the world, learning but not assimilating, acting but not capitulating. These three stages can be summarized as sight, thought and action.

At the fourth stage, there is a marked shift in consciousness. All the previous three stages become indelibly present in life, yet they all become partial to completion through a conscious manifestation of love. In the process of developing a love relationship, the emotions go through the three phases before they are actualized and fully recognized as the enduring experience of love. In the beginning, the emotional phase of the child returns, where individual emotions become indistinguishable within the love relationship. From that stage, thoughts are dominated by thoughts of love, and all action is cautioned by the fact that everywhere one walks now, they are not alone, but with their love.

As with the mystical hierarchy of seven energy centers in the body, known in such traditions as the Hindu Chakras or the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, these four phases represent the involuntary (feeling), creative (thought), power (action), and compassion (love). In the fifth stage, the love emotion resonates outward to engage a greater sense of love for a community, nation or people. In the sixth stage, the focus is clear, and the way aligns with a specific practice of devotion to service in light of the accumulated energetic septet of emotional phases of psychological development. In the final phase, sight, thought, action, love, community and devotion unites every phase of emotional development. The completion of self-awareness is actualized from the inmost depths to the outmost limits of human potential.

____________

She rushes ahead. Into a rigid cube of wooden frames and metal housing. Rusting chains fall over the marginal impasse of domestic space. The outdoor heavens collapse over the head of my lover. 

The Face in the Pool (frontispiece) by James Allen St. John 

Brilliant orange tigers growl and laugh with the insatiable greed of bestial hunger. She is engulfed under massive wingspan of the jungle predators. She submits to death, agog with passionate surrender.

Related post: Eye of The Other Tiger: Borges and the Dreamer Within

__________

Filmic mind, braving theatric kingdoms

            Weighed heavily by the German cross

Over western shores, blonde

            With sightless camaraderie

In the sociopathic gaze of mindless pain,

            Order & god for trade

                        At the bedside, nude

                                    Binging before a final restitution,

Breathing in dream-talk laughter nightly,

            Not for escape,

                        Only to tread the unfulfilled urge

                                    To let go of body into an act of base movement

excerpt from "think IN drink"

A Triunity of Conscious Remembrance: Writings on Noetic Symbolism

“We can dream about anything, no matter how preposterous, topsy-turvy or unnatural it may be.” Cicero

The three-tiered modes of consciousness, being unconscious, subconscious and conscious are reflected in the synchronous relationship between dream and memory. This is a daily experience from which we may understand the depths of mind on an elementary level. Fundamentally, it is a known fact that all people, and even many animals, are inevitably sent into the subtle realms of dream; it is part of our natural physiology. The three modes are as follows:

1)

Unremembered dreams are phenomena of the unconscious. The subtle emotions that the body and mind feel as a reaction to such dreams are only known by the most acutely aware. 

2)

Dreams that are had, and are known, where the dreamer on waking knows they were dreaming, however cannot remember any specific details apart from references to waking experience, are manifestations of the subconscious. At this point, waking and dreaming states of consciousness meld into a noetic dialogue, an inter-meeting, wherein the fluid exchange of reason and sense are exchanged with imagination and emotion. 

3)

Dreams that are remembered vividly, and dreamt lucidly, are part of the conscious realm. Most people are not fully conscious in their waking life, meaning they are not fully aware and actively engaged in their own lives, as in the source of their own lives, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. A conscious dream is more than a physiological memory of the natural, instinctual imagination, it is a gift from the transcendent inner world, a gate into our inmost being, where we contact that which seems at once incredibly strange and entirely familiar, our fully exposed, and whole selves. 

__________

The sting of marshland rushes bruise and cut the soles while tangling the toes in knots of wet, risen moisture. The earth perspires with enduring anxiety under these blank skies. Emitting the hot sweat of gaseous vents through the decaying roots and bacterial soil, I trudge. 

The Pontine Marshes at Sunset by August Kopisch

On the horizon, a large city is burnt to ash. They say it all begin with the conflagration of a movie theatre, and a plane crash that split the small city in two with massive fires extending outwards. Not a soul survived. The earth feels cleansed by the death of a throaty death rattle. The decay of human bodies seems to rise as from the strength of the grasses rooted in the damp, dank shifting ground. 

The Unknown by John Charles Dollman

Above our heads, a plane spews hot trails of ash. A man behind me loads a rocket and stings the plane through its side. I watch as the behemoth machine incinerates in mid-air, crumbling with a hauntingly delicate rush through the death-consuming land. I am surrounded by a feel of homicidal, at once in the horizon, while within the breast of the alive. The air is heavy with fate. 

__________

The rains bear down hard and long
On these deceased pangs, longing to embrace ghosts
Long shied-away, deep within memory’s misbegotten despair

...

The diminished poor bear arms while the rains fall

Calling them home no more to breath

In the air of pure and raw savagery

Beckoning our rice-fought union to work

In undivided shame across river’s breadth

That brings wealth and a name to the American prince

With breast inflamed

Prepared to reason with his shame

And engrave in the desert an unplanned way

Towards brotherhood

...

Freeing spontaneous whispers

To a last pleasurable remorse

Upraised and sacrificed

As great offering to the Klezmer bonfire

Whitewashing the New York tide with Greek verse,

In one soundless escapade towards relaxed state of being

...

Cyclically bridging the human body with the global fate

In one silent orbital wave that resounds instantly in every curve of lost strength

Between arms where the beat follows to our brethren and kin,

A growing and invisible host to our name, thinking up a sound

And so, calling forth the blessed invocation of being

excerpts from "The rains bear down"

Reflection on "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram"

"Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram" translated by Andrew X. Pham is necessary literature for every one who reads English. I read the first half of the book aloud to my wife, who was born in Saigon. After a series of waking with crying fits, she shied away from hearing the rest. Finally, I read the final half of the book to myself almost unceasingly.

The communicative brevity in Thuy's voice is indicative of her honesty, and her clear soul, of sonic vibrance in her words, imbued with such complicated emotion and sweeping literacy. With references to Soviet, French and Vietnamese literature, she affixes her personalized sentiment in historic immediacy as with the timeless genius of contemplative humanity. Her anger towards the imperialist aggressors, the Americans, is always buttressed by a stern will in defending the fight of her fellow brothers and sisters dying around her with the visceral intimacy that only a doctor would be able to elucidate with such clarity. You can almost feel her breath, and indeed, I was powerfully moved many times with a whole spectrum of emotions, as her intense character and youthful innocence enlightens even the bitterest soul with universal intention toward human grace.

Throughout the book, she calls on her dreams, both emergent in sleep and her daily life, and from those around her, pressing her on into the obscurity of the ruined jungles. Her dreams are shared dreams, and in that sense are a constant offering of refuge within, giving reason and stability to her tested mind, fulfilling her with inner community. As the book moves on through her astute witnessing, her dreams become increasingly present as she pours out her uninhibited thoughts with an awe-inspiring magic, reminiscent of the phenomenal dream world exhibited from her inmost reflections, as with the highest ideals of her united comrades.

I could praise this piece of literature on and on, by referring to its unprecedented impact on literacy in Vietnam, or the innumerable anecdotes which resonate with masterful purpose in the mind of the reader, as a daughter speaking to her parent with such loving presence, bridged only by the purity of the listening, however, I'll leave the rest to your own reading.

A family friend of mine is now making a feature documentary on the story behind the book called, "Finding Thuy" check it out, and remain aware of the dream legacy of undying peace from the Vietnamese heart of the world.

________

Off the plane, at the airport hotel in Vietnam, a troupe of American country musicians and a Malian music duet see the receptionist for their rooms. I sit on my luggage as my wife, in full regalia for a performance, shoots off through a glass doorway, unseen with the swift flap of her flowery dress.

After a bitter wait, she re-enters the lobby, sweaty as a marathon runner in mid-race. The performance is finished. My jaw drops as we board our flight, returning to Canada after the most instantaneous long-distance travel experience I have ever had.

And in our hometown, she lights a stage at a Chinese arts festival. Before her set, a glowing dance company exhibits the icy decadence of masterful classical costuming, their white-painted faces mirroring their paper fans. I eye the stage from afar, sitting with old friends. Then, she walks onstage, without her instrument. To the nervous curiosity of the organizers and select audience members, she begins to sing.

She is gorgeous, and stuns with an evocative elegance with the articulated genius of high emotion and well-trained harmonies. Her upper register fills the audience with recognition of the one mind, a fortuitous stretch into the harmony of collective being, as a sitting admiration of beauty.

Proud, I am ever separate, an eye afar, while with a heart imbued with hers between powerful lungs, emanating together, one voice of honest humanity. 

_______

Singing

"To hear singing in you dreams, betokens a cheerful spirit and happy companions. You are soon to have promising news from the absent." (iDream)

_______

yes, and woo over the sonorous
blush in the taste of her feminine blossoming
steaming with the cooled anger of Japan's cherry mind
in the sake spring of our zheng-doumbek interpretive madness
following the playful muses of a drunk and bold life,
granting wishes and boons to each other's heart homes
peaceful and sonorous
breast of ice silver purity.

- excerpt from "woo over the sonorous blush" 

To Read Is To Possess A Transference

"It is a regular observation that when you talk to an individual and this individual gives you insight into his inner preoccupations, interests, emotions, in other words, hands over his personal complexes, then you get slowly and really really into the situation of a sort of authority, you become a point of reference, you know you are in possession of all the important items in a person's development. Now you see, that creates an emotional relationship to the analyst, and that is what Freud calls the transference which is a central problem of analytic psychology. It is just so as if these people had handed out their whole existence and that can have very peculiar effects upon the individual; either they hate you for it or they love you for it, but you are not indifferent to them."

- Carl Jung, from "Matter of Heart" (Parts 4-5 on YouTube)  

________

A dream that will not drift from memory begins where I stand carefree in an old-fashioned English telephone booth on a paved street corner. There is a usual urban backdrop. The telephone booth curiously extends upwards as upon a ladder to unknown heights, yet I am unmotivated to climb it, especially as I am attacked on all sides! Furious, battered felines of all shapes and sizes, tattered and dusty, some with thick coats and others with scrawny short-haired bodies, skeletal and mangy fiercely claw at me. Their hissing and deviltry is a forewarning to my native sense, as I only barely escape their wrath, fighting them off after an intensely overwhelming standoff. 

________

Cat

“To dream of a cat denotes ill luck, if you do not succeed in killing it or driving it from your sight. If the cat attacks you, you will have enemies who will go to any extreme to blacken your reputation and to cause you loss of property. But if you succeed in banishing it, you will overcome great obstacles and rise in fortune and fame.

If you meet a thin, mean and dirty-looking cat, you will have bad news from the absent. Some friend lies at death’s door, but if you chase it out of sight, your friend will recover after a long and lingering sickness.” (iDream)

________

The willing sink in their seats.
Pure elements rain on the few.
They are felt, inspired.

The air is too hot.
It is dreamed with steam and smoke.
Waking is consumed with the taste of ash.

The Phoenix appears in ultimate silence.

Insects and weather play in hiding.
It is no theft, distraction, or hiding.
yet imbued with meaning.

Blink and you will see.

- excerpt from "An attempt at ethnographic science!" 

Dream Memory Sketches

Finale by Albin Egger-Lienz

These past few nights, coincidental with the emotional upswing of my transitioning back home, I dream vividly.

Remembered involuntarily, these sketches remain in mind with strong complexities, imprinted with such lucidity as to verify my waking experience of intense questioning.

1

Amid the desert, as drab and steaming with insidious fire as the genocidal, pioneer days of the Australian outback. There is a clamping furor in the air, a dream that dreams in images not only frozen in mind, but in heart, a climbing pull up the mountain of the soul in a delirium of ruthless passion. I wander haphazardly throughout an endless desert at high noon it seems, at high season, unprotected from the ferocious heat. The sun is a deathless predator. I hallucinate the presence of serpents into swords, and I am tunneled into an crime-ridden espionage heatwave in the middle of the Maghrebian deserts of Morocco. In the waving perception, a spackled host of armed thieves rush through my body in and out as if I was one with this burning, naked desert. A snake slithers and at once I am gashed, run through and impaled simultaneously at the sound of a hiss with thin swords resembling how I would imagine heroes of the Arabia to duel. A mental fog is lifted, and I am embedded in a cinematic Casablanca-effect, North African environment. I clamber with hopeless futility in sand-erected surroundings dense with trouble and quick death.

2

A bespectacled retired astronaut, mathematician at NASA and managerial sort of government space programs, clarifies into my vision, a full, bald head with rimless, perfectly circular lenses, covers one eye still with another ocular instrument held by his right hand. He tells me I am to travel to Olympus.

The next moment, I am shot at an immeasurable speed through the atmosphere and far into space through the solar system. I arrive at the destination without hesitation. Time is of no matter.

Arriving on Olympus, which seems to be a lunar satellite of some kind, I enter what appears to be my Grandmother's house in Upstate New York. This is troubling and fascinationg, as I look out of her windows and see the great void of space, smattered with stars over a horizon without an atmosphere.

3

I am walking my bike along a highway in my current city where I currently call home. There behind me, stepping on my shoes, is a homeless man bent on being an obnoxious follower. No matter how hard I try to get onto the bike and continue on my way, I am nearly trampled over by his mysterious presence.

At night, down a dark sidestreet, I suddenly lose my bike, find myself in a scuffle in some suburban bushes and begin to run. There is a great steed, mounted by a medieval knight following my with lance pressed into the windless eve in my direction. Running as fast as I can, I devise a plan while I turn a bend and end up in a backyard which resembles a fortified castle's outer court. Sophisticated narratives of children's stories and escape plots churn wildly inside my mind in the twilight hours of the morning. 

Intentions for this space (2)

I will relay the imagistic and emotional planes as they are present in my dreams along with any research into dream psychology or my daily interactions with art in my local environment as they collide and sometimes resonate with my own opinions about dreams and their inner nature.

As an artist/musician/writer full-time I can take time as I wish to become embedded in “flexing the subconscious” or practicing dream. Added to that fact, I live in Canada which gets DARK during winter, perfect time to start delving deep into dream. My bedroom has no windows.