Dreams!? Opportunity for Anger Management Practice

Hello Leo!

I'm not sure that I'll be much help, but I do love the topic of dream interpretation, so I thought I'd chime in.

The most interesting thing to me, with the information available, is that in both cases you were 'bothered' by the other persons behavior, and yet you only became a 'raving lunatic' in the dream where the offense was against someone else... And yes it had your brother but that was not the only variable was it?

However there are also symbolic interpretations of dreams. Fighting with a brother can mean you have unresolved feeling of anger/rage that you are hesitant to communicate... Perhaps your second dream lends to this as in order to avoid conflict you have to be 'untrue' (by telling lies) about yourself...

I find dreams fascinating and hope you find an answer which resonates with you!

SueNami wrote:Fighting with a brother can mean you have unresolved feeling of anger/rage that you are hesitant to communicate... Perhaps your second dream lends to this as in order to avoid conflict you have to be 'untrue' (by telling lies) about yourself...

This makes great sense.

SueNami wrote:Hello Leo!

I'm not sure that I'll be much help, but I do love the topic of dream interpretation, so I thought I'd chime in.

The most interesting thing to me, with the information available, is that in both cases you were 'bothered' by the other persons behavior, and yet you only became a 'raving lunatic' in the dream where the offense was against someone else... And yes it had your brother but that was not the only variable was it?

However there are also symbolic interpretations of dreams. Fighting with a brother can mean you have unresolved feeling of anger/rage that you are hesitant to communicate... Perhaps your second dream lends to this as in order to avoid conflict you have to be 'untrue' (by telling lies) about yourself...

I find dreams fascinating and hope you find an answer which resonates with you!

Dear SueNami,

(Great Name) Always good to hear from you. Well, I knew somebody must have been interested in dreams, so thank you for being the one.

You know, first, I should say that I don’t think much of traditional Dream Interpretation. Dream Interpretations tries to reduce dreams to discrete symbols that are supposed to spell out some message that are actually a bit separated from what happened in the dream itself. Now if I came home at the end of the day and told my wife about an incident that happened at work, and gave her all the details, and then she started telling me that such details meant this and other details meant that, well, I would think she was crazy and off track. Aren’t dreams the same thing. Something happened. It happened between two people. It happened because of a conflict. How is that any different from Real Life? But you reduce it to “fighting with a brother can mean I have unresolved issues of anger that I am hesitant to communicate. What!? My brother was complaining like sour grapes because an employee of the shop told him the ground rules and that he was crossing them. And I told him to Man Up and Shut Up. Now, how on earth do you fit some Cooky Cutter Interpretation into that?

In the next dream, where I had a difference of opinion with somebody, I was quick enough to tell him of my own opinion, but made it clear that I held him in high respect and appreciated his opinion also. And for this you say I am ‘telling lies”.

Really!?

Suenami…. I think you should throw away your little dream rule book and look at these things fresh with your own discerning mind. Systems of Thought will always let you down. Systems for what we Ought to think are for the lazy man or woman.

An Angel once told me “the Faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment. Forget your rules for Dream Interpretation and begin turning on your own Faculty of True Discernment.

If you are not offended with me, I can give you a few pointers….

what do wet dreams mean?

Cpt Yossarian wrote:what do wet dreams mean?

Well, Captain, Wet Dreams are a Pro and Con kind of thing. Pro-- You get sexual release in what seems like a real sexual encounter, but, Con -- you wake up immediately afterward… no more dream. Wet dreams come to a screeching halt. No chance to cuddle and make endearing small pillow talk like "boy, am I hungry... is that left over half a sandwich from last week still in the refrigerator"... no, you wake up alone and in need of a pajama change.

But, apparently, I am lucky. I got old. Now I don't have 'wet dreams'. I have romantic dreams. I wonder if it is the same for other Old Men, or whether I just got better at Dreaming. Anyway, the best 'romantic dream' I had lately ended with a #10 Top Notch Blond Girl interrupting a dance I was having with an '#8' Brunette, her friend who was standing in while the my primary girlfriend was busy somewhere, doing something... then… I didn't expect it... I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there was my Blond Blue Eyed Voluptuous #10 Girl Friend tapping me on the shoulder.... well, to fill you in on what happened before to make all of this more surprising, well, over dinner, in a real classy restaurant, we had had a bit of a confrontation over what she had found out about my past, and I had explained that I was a "different person now", but wasn't sure she 'bought" that.... I tried to ‘sell it’ by just looking like I couldn't even relate to enumerations of my past infractions, which I honestly couldn't (it seemed like she was describing another person)... so, at a sincere level I was telling her that she had nothing to worry about. Anyway, apparently, in the time it took her to go back and forth from the 'powder room' or wherever she went, she decided I was worthy enough to be trusted. So, she tapped my shoulder and cut in on the dance between myself and her best friend.

With the exchange of partners, well, Our eyes met and lit up like fireworks, and we assumed a dance embrace -- hands held and one hand behind the back -- and we twirled to the Music- heads thrown back by the force of centrifugal force, and laughter in our faces. We spun like a couple of dervishes in delight! It was a hundred times better than any Wet Dream. For one thing, I can talk about it in public.

But Wet Dreams… Sometimes they are morally low and disturbing. The Situations which play out in a Wet Dream can be, well, if it happened like that in Real Life, you could be arrested for Rape or Sexual Assault. A Gentleman just does not behave that way… Not Awake, and Not Asleep. Eyes Open or Eyes Shut, a gentleman is a gentleman is a gentleman. But, yes, of course there are situations where, if you are young enough, there can be romantic wet dreams that are full of reciprocated feelings and no grounds for moral recriminations. But, even then, you wake up.
Now, I am not a woman, and so I do not know, but, there was this Dream Expert, years ago – Patricia Garfield – and she was trying to popularize Lucid Dreaming among women, by advancing the assertion that she could control dreams in order to have repeated sex, and without waking up… just an all night orgy! Well, she was in the business of selling books, and so I never really believed her, but I never read anything to contradict her…. Maybe while other women found out that they could not ‘experimentally reproduce her results’, they were too embarrassed to admit that they tried….

Leo-

my apologies if my post offended or upset you.

When I said lies, I was simply referring to this part of your original post where you indicated you were fibbing:

Leo Volont wrote: I expressly made it a point to qualify myself , explaining that “I certainly don’t think I know everything (sometimes one has to fib a little bit…. I actually DO think I know everything), “and I may well be wrong (there I am fibbing again), “and probably am”, since he is in more of a position to be expert on such subjects than I (which was true enough, uncomfortably as it was for me and my presumed omniscience) .

I may have misunderstood your meaning?

I actually find symbolism to hold quite true for myself, however I have practiced and am quite good at dreaming in a literal state- meaning things are presented exactly as they are meant.

I think it's important to acknowledge that while the conscious mind rules our waking anger, it is our subconscious at work in our dreams.

I personally believe the dream state is an interaction between our conscious and subconscious minds, filtering out the days experiences, emotions, memories AND PERHAPS even preparing us for what we need tomorrow. The mind is a great predictive tool.

SueNami wrote:Leo-

my apologies if my post offended or upset you.

When I said lies, I was simply referring to this part of your original post where you indicated you were fibbing:

Leo Volont wrote: I expressly made it a point to qualify myself , explaining that “I certainly don’t think I know everything (sometimes one has to fib a little bit…. I actually DO think I know everything), “and I may well be wrong (there I am fibbing again), “and probably am”, since he is in more of a position to be expert on such subjects than I (which was true enough, uncomfortably as it was for me and my presumed omniscience) .

I may have misunderstood your meaning?

I actually find symbolism to hold quite true for myself, however I have practiced and am quite good at dreaming in a literal state- meaning things are presented exactly as they are meant.

I think it's important to acknowledge that while the conscious mind rules our waking anger, it is our subconscious at work in our dreams.

I personally believe the dream state is an interaction between our conscious and subconscious minds, filtering out the days experiences, emotions, memories AND PERHAPS even preparing us for what we need tomorrow. The mind is a great predictive tool.

Dear SueNami,

Oh! I am so glad you got back to me. With so many people, as soon as you open up a discussion, they take it as opposition and get their backs up and it turns into a quarrel, but it really doesn’t have to be like that.

So, First… I have a problem with what everyone calls the ‘Subconscious Mind’. ‘Sub’ implies ‘under’ and I just don’t see why we are calling it that. The Way I visualize it, is that the Mind is Thinking Everything All At Once, but we are Conscious of Only those Things that we are shining our Conscious Light upon, so to speak. It’s a matter of Attention. We are Thinking Everything All At Once, but we can only pay attention to one, or two, things at a time (left brain and right brain… yes, we can actually concentrate on two things at once, but in different ways).

Okay, but why do we have the Dreams that we have. WHAT designs the Dreams? Well, the “Subconscious”…. A funny word for it, isn’t it. Dreams seem like they are designed to give us insights, and to help us adapt to what is happening in our waking environment. It seems like an ‘Over’ function rather than an ‘Under’ function – a Higher Consciousness than a ‘subconscious’. Remember that the term ‘subconscious’ comes to us from the 18th and 19th Century Scientific Communities that were extremely Materialistic, and correlated any sense of High Spirituality with Religion which they rejected out of hand… a sort of Accepted Scientific Dogma that one had to simply accept, right at the door, or never be admitted into the Club.

So, I don’t think dreams are Personal and just have to do with the personal stock of information and experiences. I think dreams are sort of Collective. Dreams work with a broader pool of information than what we can actually prove to ‘know’ at the individual level. This accounts for instances of different people having similar dreams. People are Sharing One Dream Mind. We do not each have a separate Subconscious Mind. We All share a Single Higher Dream Mind. This explains why ALL Lucid Dreamers have the same kind of interrupting dream in which they ‘dream’ of waking up during a Lucid Dream, that throws them off of the notion that they are still ‘dreaming’, so that the Dream Mind can take over again and present the planned dreams as planned. Also, it explains Dream Types – everyone dreams of being caught out in public without any cloths, and Dreams of Disasters – Tornadoes in the Distance, or Atom Bombs blowing up – there are Dreams that Everyone Has…. So we can’t just say that Everyone has the Same Subconscious Mind…. That would be ridiculous. But we all have the same Higher Mind.

Now, about dreams… I did not make myself clear the other day. But I feel that dreams are not about ‘interpreting’. Dreams are about ‘how we respond to the choices presented’. Dream Events occurs. What do we do then. THAT is what dreams are about. Dreams are about Practicing Life. If THIS happens, what will we DO? That is what Dreams show us. And we get to decide whether or not we acted correctly.

But sometimes dreams just seem to give us literal messages… actual straight forward commands or pieces of enshrined advice. For instance, just today, a new young friend of mine spoke to me about 3 dreams he had had, all basically the Same Dream. The Dream started in utter Darkness, then he smelled a pleasant fragrance (!!! I can’t remember ever ‘smelling’ anything in a dream!) and then light was introduced by a Dream Character that began to manifest – my friend explained that it was an old girl acquaintance that he had known that he had had a ‘thing for’, but she sort of glowed with Blondness and Blue eyes, and the dream became bright and illuminated. The girl snuggled with him, and she said something endearing, and then a Low Voice… a Deep Narrative Voice (disembodied) spoke the words “Do Not Let Go!”.

The Dream happened three night in a row, with the only difference being that the girl’s voice became less audible while the Narrative Voice became more pronounced.

Well, on inquiry I found out that the girl was gone. She is not a fact in his life. So it is puzzling about what he is told to not let go.

Well, there IS one thing. He is getting ready to marry a girl from Russia that he had sort of sent for. Russian girls seem to be doing that. They make themselves available on line and wait for takers. It’s not much different from meeting available people in clubs and such, but it does seem a bit creepy. So maybe my friend was being warned not to give up on true romantic attachment… however that works. You know, the actual ‘chemistry’ that compatible people feel toward each other…. The kind of stuff that just can’t happen by email.

Anyway… well, I got way off topic…. But, since you are another ‘Dream Person’ I thought it just made sense to share and to see what you thought….

Leo Volont wrote: I have a problem with what everyone calls the ‘Subconscious Mind’. ‘Sub’ implies ‘under’ and I just don’t see why we are calling it that.

COMPLETELY AGREE> perhaps old habits die hard. I have a friend who constantly reminds me, it is the UNconscious.

Leo Volont wrote:So, I don’t think dreams are Personal and just have to do with the personal stock of information and experiences. I think dreams are sort of Collective. Dreams work with a broader pool of information than what we can actually prove to ‘know’ at the individual level. This accounts for instances of different people having similar dreams. People are Sharing One Dream Mind. We do not each have a separate Subconscious Mind.

I agree in part. I actually have my own personal philosophy, if you will. Our conscious mind is trapped in the limitations of the reality we perceive. Our UNconscious is limitless. Our unconscious is forever mingling with the rest of the universe. Perhaps mingling isn't the right word because it implies it is separate, which I do not believe. I believe our unconscious mind IS the collective of all experiences from all times and from all perspectives. Almost like an unseen collective memory bank for the entire universe...
That being said- I DO THINK THEY ARE PERSONAL. I believe they are HIGHLY personal. In fact, one of their primary functions may be to help us relate to our reality, which is an extremely individual thing.

Leo Volont wrote: Also, it explains Dream Types – everyone dreams of being caught out in public without any cloths, and Dreams of Disasters – Tornadoes in the Distance, or Atom Bombs blowing up – there are Dreams that Everyone Has…. So we can’t just say that Everyone has the Same Subconscious Mind…. That would be ridiculous. But we all have the same Higher Mind.

Not to nit pick, but I have never had those dreams. I had an ex who had dreams of planes falling from the sky all the time, but I've never had those types of dreams. I think everyone shares their UNconscious mind as described above, and I believe that it knows each of us individually to know what messages we will receive and 'get' and which ones we don't. And maybe we don't even need to 'get' it to the point where we can rationalize it, but being exposed to those emotions and experiences and images are enough for our conscious mind to be affected.

Even more interesting to me is why do some people not remember their dreams....????

Leo Volont wrote:Now, about dreams… I did not make myself clear the other day. But I feel that dreams are not about ‘interpreting’. Dreams are about ‘how we respond to the choices presented’. Dream Events occurs. What do we do then. THAT is what dreams are about. Dreams are about Practicing Life. If THIS happens, what will we DO? That is what Dreams show us. And we get to decide whether or not we acted correctly.

That's an interesting theory. I do not think this applies to myself per se. A response is not necessary in a dream to get our waking mind thinking about our options. And perhaps the emotional strength felt in dreams is really the motivating factor in real life, even if nothing in the dream was done. (I want THAT love, or I want THAT feeling of joy, or I hate feeling so out of control, etc)

Leo Volont wrote:So maybe my friend was being warned not to give up on true romantic attachment… however that works. You know, the actual ‘chemistry’ that compatible people feel toward each other…. The kind of stuff that just can’t happen by email.

maybe. The dream invoked that 'emotion' and said "don't let go". That manly narrator voice I've come to recognize as my UNconscious interestingly enough. Perhaps different for others, but seems to be common enough.

I will tell you a secret that I have found in my dreams... If I take the situation and summarize it as generally as humanly possible, it tends to have a profound meaning for me.

An example - I had a dream where I was walking through the woods, and it seemed to be devoid of life though the trees were perfect enough. no birds singing nothing. My ex (at that point I was still with him albeit close to leaving) was following me, every step I took. he was talking to me about something, I forget but his voice was clear in the dream and was really starting to irritate me. I was getting more impatient as I walked through the woods, as if I was looking for something, but I didn't even know what I was looking for. And suddenly just infront of me appeared a small group of people, no apparent relationship between them, but they were walking loosely and talking and laughing joyously and I was in awe of their happiness. I watched them and just infront of me a door seemed to open. Everything about it was invisible, no handle or knob, no actual door itself, but it's as if the air opened up for them to walk through. And they did. I quickly repositioned myself and I witnessed a world within the world. A seperate place right there in front of me where I knew it was not. And in the short time the door was open I took it all in. There were so many happy people. Living right there in the woods. there was a creek winding and bubbling and people were doing their daily chores and going about life, all of them with a smile on their face and laughter everywhere. The door shut and my heart nearly broke in two thinking that I missed the opportunity to go into that world. My ex apparantly didn't even see it, he was still going on about something behind me. I grasped in the air hoping to find the door, walked in circles looking and looking and nothing. And finally I stopped and refocused myself, knowing it was there and if it was there must be a way to get there. I turned around and noticed that my ex was quite a bit behind me, I could barely see him or hear him. And when I looked again for that secret world, I could now see it, plain as day. But I still couldn't get there. After strategically guessing where the door MUST be, my ex was once almost ontop of me. I turned around and I frustratedly and yet most decisively said to him "STOP!" He suddenly disappeared. Almost instantly the invisible door opened infront of me. I walked through it and as I did the sounds of the other happier world surrounded me, the creek, birds, children playing, people laughing and the feeling of joy and life that filled me was amazing.

Now, anyone could see that dream is about my desire to leave my then husband. ... but the truth that stirred my soul was much simpler and yet much deeper than that. And if I look at that dream and summarize it in a way that is VERY generic, I have my truth.

I was in a place I didn't like, it seemed void of life. Only when I stood up to my ex and decided I would have what I want, did the door to a happier joy filled life open.

The truth that struck me is I was waiting for a happier life to come and snatch me up and carry me away from him and that old life. But it doesn't work quite that way does it? You can't swim out of the river with the concrete boot still attached to your leg.... No the real meaning, the real difference that dream made for me was in the realization that the world I wanted was right there, but I would not reach it without first standing up to him.

NOW that may have been off topic, yet good to share! lol

SueNami wrote:
An example - I had a dream where I was walking through the woods

Wow! Wow!

Wait a second... I got to collect myself. Okay.... Wow!

What a neat dream.

Oh, yes, we think perfectly alike about dreams, but simply have different perspectives at the moment, but could talk them through soon enough. But, essentially, we are on the same page.

For instance, about my emphasis on seeing Dreams as an Offer of Alternatives, a Venue for Choices. Well, you seem to take for granted just how much activity you put into your quite special Dream... the Decisions you Made, the priorities you established... indeed the dream did come down finally to a pivotal Choice you made. Just talk to ordinary people about their dreams. it is like they are mostly just spectators. The dream happens to them. They see things and hear things. Most people do not become active and important players even in their own dreams! Yes, kind of crazy, huh!? But YOU do... and I do.

Just look at the dream that 'happened' to my friend. he was largely just a passive recipient of information. That is not bad, but look at how good it is to be actively working within the dream. your dream could have stopped if you had just dumbly accepted that the Magical Door Shut in Your Face, but, instead, you became for active and did, well, EVERYTHING to open that door back up. I don't know whether I would have thought to do what you did. It was brilliant. But it was all about Being Active, Making Decisions, and Doing Doing Doing. you weren't looking for Meaning and Interpretations, NO!, you were flipping over the Scenery looking for Answers, and getting Results.

Your Dream did not tell you what Decision to Make. In your dream you had ALREADY MADE YOUR DECSION. Didn't you? When you woke up that morning, your mind was already made up.... wasn't it?

Wow! What a great dream.

Someday, I will share with you some of mine... but, for now, I just have to soak in that Great Dream....

lol

Thanks for the dream compliment. My UNconscious will take the credit...

So one thing I'm going to throw out there is that me in that dream, my actions etc... that was very much my personality. Perhaps whether someone is active in their dream vs passive has more to do with personality? I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

Now I have had dreams where I was more of a recipient of information. But usually in those dreams I'm with a figure I esteem (I actually believe this figure to be my minds embodiment of my UNconscious) and receiving knowledge, wisdom or insight. Much as I would be less active and more attentive of a message a college professor was imparting....

I just do believe that our dreams are portrayed in a way that our personality gets the message out of it.

In that dream I was active, persistent, frustrated...lol...all me in everyday life... but the true message is that no matter how hard I tried or how hard I looked, that new life wouldnt come to me UNTIL AFTER i made a change with my husband. THAT was the true message. Whereas maybe some other person would get out of it that I must keep trying...

SueNami wrote:lol

Thanks for the dream compliment. My UNconscious will take the credit...

So one thing I'm going to throw out there is that me in that dream, my actions etc... that was very much my personality. Perhaps whether someone is active in their dream vs passive has more to do with personality? I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

Now I have had dreams where I was more of a recipient of information. But usually in those dreams I'm with a figure I esteem (I actually believe this figure to be my minds embodiment of my UNconscious) and receiving knowledge, wisdom or insight. Much as I would be less active and more attentive of a message a college professor was imparting....

I just do believe that our dreams are portrayed in a way that our personality gets the message out of it.

In that dream I was active, persistent, frustrated...lol...all me in everyday life... but the true message is that no matter how hard I tried or how hard I looked, that new life wouldnt come to me UNTIL AFTER i made a change with my husband. THAT was the true message. Whereas maybe some other person would get out of it that I must keep trying...

Dear SueNami,

Oh, while I think we understand each other perfectly, but are somewhat held back by the ordinary conventions of language and the restraints of a culture embedded in the starkest and bleakest materialism and with a scientific culture that wants to rule all but then is so unsure of itself or of anything much past the proofs of 2 and 2 equal 4. Indeed, because of the unwillingness of Science to admit to any kind of coherency or meaning in Dreams, because it does not lend itself to controlled and quantifiable scientific experiments, well, you still have Students of Psychological Science claiming that dreams are the product of ‘random’ firings of brain cells… assuming of course that your dream had been entirely random! So of course we have to speak to each other about advanced dreaming in a kind of a stilted stutter, given what we have to work with.

So, anyway, (compulsory lecture… or ‘sermon’ …having been delivered), well, NO! No Complements to YOUR Unconscious Mind. I really do think that there is a Collective Consciousness (Carl Jung called it something slightly different I believe). It is the same for Everybody. I think it was what lead the people of the Middle Ages to believe in the Influence of Angels, as from one person’s dream to the next person’s dreams, well, these Dream Influences retained a recognizable uniformity. While dream situations seemed unique, well, there seemed to be One Angelic Intent behind it all. Those Dream Characters of Stature and Authority, with the Deep Voices, or the Fingers that Pointed to One’s Destination, well, these were deemed to be Saints or Angels. Not the property of individual minds, but actual Spiritual Entities that could visit you one night, and myself the next.

Now, of course, there is the argument that Human Evolution basically equips us all with basically the Same Dream ‘Black Box’. So we are all Programmed in much the same way. That seems to be a very compelling argument; however, I KNOW that dreams are not just in the head… just in the mind. Back in College, what, 50 years ago! I had a dream. And so did a really nice girl I knew, Annie. I was a student and so of course when I wasn’t thirsty for beer, I was hungry for food, and so it was in the early hours of the morning that I had a dream that I was sneaking into the Cafeteria looking for any food that might have been left out on the Lines. I had come through the Back Door and so I came to Lines 5, 4 and was just leaving Line 3 when I met Annie, coming from the directions of the main entrance. She saw me empty handed and guessed what my mission had been, and so she said that there was no food on lines 1 or 2 either, and then we both commiserated with each other on how starving we were and that it would seem forever until breakfast. Well, just a dream, wasn’t it. I awoke, went to breakfast and then I was off to my first class, when coming down the hallway I saw Annie. We BOTH instantly had this look of Recognition, and said AT THE SAME TIME “I had a dream”, and then, thank God, we did not screw it up by giving each other time to speak…. As though we had been forewarned of the importance, we both spoke to each other at once; saying what we had to say, while listening to the other. We both simultaneously described the Same Dream… or well, the Same Dream Scene, but we were both in it at the same time. Overlapping Dreams. Dreams are Therefore, not necessarily personal. Indeed, it has taught me from that moment on to be a Gentleman in my dreams, because you can never be quite sure who the Characters are and who the Real People might be. (I think the Real People are more responsive. Dream Characters seem to come with written dialogue, with some capacity for improvisation, in order to cover certain anticipated choices you might make in responding, but not much, and sometimes Dream Characters will respond inappropriately or sort of ‘out of the blue’, but other Dream ‘People’ seem ‘alive and with it’. Oh, Dream Characters can’t fly or levitate, and they aren’t impressed by it, but Actual People in Dreams… well, they either fly and levitate themselves, or they find it remarkable.

So, anyway, my compliments are to you. Dreams don’t give one much time. You are given a minute or two to find a solution to the problem, or you have to wait for the Next Dream on the Subject. You were able to get there REALLY QUICK.

Oh, yes, Personality has a lot to do with it. Some people really are passive. It surprises them to hear that some people actually talk and do a lot of stuff in their dreams. For them, Dreams are almost about just being a Point of Perception which sees a Dream Happen in Front of Them, and this is where the Idea of Dream Interpretation came from… to satisfy people who see dreams only as Stories that happened before their eyes. They want to know what it meant. But for Personalities like our own, well, Dreams mean what we make them mean… an Interaction between the Higher Dream Mind and our own Questions and Responses expressed and made at the time.

Oh, what I found that was interesting was, well, I used to be something of a Dream Loner, but now, more and more, I find myself dreaming in Group Settings, and while it used to be that Things would happen to Me, well, now, in a Group Setting, things happen to an Entire Group. And, Guess What? Can you guess what my ‘Persona’ is? I’m what ‘gangs’ would call ‘the Mouth’… not the Leader… sometimes the Leaders are horribly inarticulate… a Leader’s Job is to maintain Group Cohesion. But whenever there was Trouble or Misunderstandings with Individuals or Other Groups, it would be Me who would step forward and do all of the Explaining. I Talked us all out of Jail! People had guns pointed at us, and I talked until the barrels dropped toward the ground. I amaze even myself! Oh, and sometimes it is so much fun! For instance, when the Guns were pointed at us, well, some of these Idiots in my group had decided to ‘trespass’ on what looked like a really neat truck out in the middle of nowhere (actually, in Africa), just at the moment when my habit of educated observation determined that the Truck was a Mobile Radio Station and probably operating the time, and I tried to call down my stupid friends, before we got ‘caught’, well, we got caught. Part of my Talking Down the Guns, was to really let my Friends HAVE IT – every insult in the book! What Idiots! You Stupid Jerks! Get Down Now before I shoot you! And they climbed down and I hussled them all way, while giving assurances that we had only just arrived and had not had the time to break or steal anything, using a Civilized and Reasonable Voice so that I would seem to be One of Them… a friend and not an enemy… I just amaze myself! Of course, the Group… they seem to take it for granted. That is what I am there for, and I better do it well!

But, yes, sometimes I still just have those weird dreams which one winds up thinking about. For instance, last night I became aware of this kind of Therapy – people would be somehow connected to a bed of water with a fertile bottom that could support sea grass and such, and their ‘impurities’ would be absorbed by the water, and not hurting it but actually providing some nutrients for the sea grasses or whatever. I mostly saw young people hooked up in this fashion, but there there was a Young Man, well, not as young as the others… maybe close to 30 but still with the lines of youth in his face. I somehow knew that he had been a mobster and criminal, but that his Girlfriend…. His Life Partner, had set him up for the Treatment. Well, suddenly the relatively small pool of water and sea grass turned into a fairly good Estate… like a coastal Mansion that cost about 16 Million American Dollars. “So Crime Does Pay” occurred to me briefly, but then I remembered the influence of the Girl Friend and that if the Young ‘Gangster’ truly was ‘purified’, then, well, why not? And it seemed like the Wealthy Estate was now doing the Job of the Water Tub and Sea Grasses – it was drawing out the Impurities that only nourished the grasses. Of course, it was all very morally puzzling… but I was keeping my mind open. And, of course, NOW that I am a Member of a Group, I am really not free to speak just my own mind. Observe and Discern. Observe and Discern. When the time comes to speak, I, and everyone else, will know about it.

Anyway… enough for this evening….

So good to chat. Please ask me anything, and I will try to answer… and likewise… I will try to think of something to ask you… Good night.