Good relationship with or marrying the man: shows the woman integrating her own ability to be independent and capable in outwardly active terms. This makes her more whole, balancing her ‘female’ qualities. It also shows the woman meeting her experience of her father in a healing way. This enables the woman to have a realistic relationship with an actual man. It also bnngs a sense of connectedness between her conscious self and what she senses as the ‘commercial’ world.
See also: father in this entry.
To be in conflict with the man, or unable to make real physical and pleasurable contact with him: suggests difficulty in meeting what may have been a painful or threatening experience of father. This can lead to lack of ability to make clear judgments, and lack of decisiveness in areas outside feeling values. She is prone to acceptance of collective or long held social norms without question; family or national attitudes not applicable to present situations; and reasoning’ which actually arises out of emotions connected to such family or social norms. Actual relations with men will be difficult, or entered into simply as a duty. Emotional or intimate merging with a man is threatening because it brings the woman close to the conflicts and pain connected with father. Sex may be possible but not a close feeling union.
See also: man.
Christ Although people generally think of Christ as a historical figure, in dreams Christ is not this at all. He is a powerful process in the human unconscious. In the west we give this process the name of Christ, but the process or archetype is universal and has various names in different cultures. Sometimes represented in dreams as a fish or a big man, in general the Christ is an expression of the dreamer’s own potential— what they can become in their life. But it also depicts what might be called a sense of the forces of symbiosis or cooperative activity operative in human life and the cosmos. There are at least four aspects to Chrisi as depicted in dreams.
The Sunday school or Church Christ: depicts social norms, the generally accepted morals and social rules. This Christ’ comes about because the Church tends to represent traditional values, and also the attempt to press people to live these values.
The dreamer may have a childlike relationship with this Christ or, if attempting to be self responsible, be in conflict with it. Some people find this Christ has a castrating role in their life, and flee in horror. In fact this aspect of social indoctrination may lead to such a burden of guilt and suppression that it can create psychic cripples. Trying to do all the right’ things may lead us to the point where ‘we can’t say no to a glass of water without a pang of guilt*. Two of the great forces which push at the human soul or psyche are social pressure, such as the moral norm, and biological pressures, such as the sex drive, individuals may fight a lifelong battle with one or the other of these.
The social cnminal typifies battle with the first; the ascetic, battle with the second.
The ideal Christ: the psychological process which causes us not to take responsibility for our own highest ideals; our own yearnings for the good, our own most powerful urges arising against what we see as evils in the world. This influences us to wait for a sign from Christ in our dream in order to gain authority, or to overcome the anxiety associated with the drive. We want God to say we should act in a cenain way because we are not willing to be self responsible. Example: I stood outside a castle. It was closed and guarded by soldiers in armour. Wondering how to get in I thought that if I dressed and acted as a soldier I would be allowed entrance. It worked and inside Christ met me and said he had important work for me to do’ (Sonia).
The closely guarded secret is Soma’s own impulse to do some son of socially creative work. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the impulse as her own; it is much easier if she can say ‘Christ told me to do this’. In this way she avoids direct encounter with opposition.
The unofficial Chnst. Example: A fierce battle was raging with bullets flying. I immediately fell down and played “dead”. It wasn’t that I was hurt in any way, but I didn’t want to be at any risk in the fight. As I lay there, I saw a tall well built man in soldier’s uniform walk to me. He gave no sign of any fear concerning the bullets, and quietly knelt beside me. I felt he was Christ, but was confused by him being a soldier. He placed a hand on my back and gradually worked his fingers under the shell of a large limpet type creature that I had never before known was parasitically attached to my back. I could feel him pull it away, but knew its tentacles still ran right into my chest. He then sat me up and told me how I could rid myself of the tentacles and so be healed’ (Peter Y).
Peter had a debilitating psychosomatic illness at the time of the dream, causing pain where the tentacles ran.
The shell is his defence against feeling his own hurts and inner conflicts.
The dream shows him contacting a strength which is not afraid of his internal battlefield of conflicts, and can show ways of healing real human problems.
The healing rests upon the dreamer’s conscious action, not Christ’s, suggesting the dreamer taking responsibility for his own situation. Peter realised he had been avoiding his own internal battlefield, but felt he had met a strength which would support his efforts to find healing. In fact he met his conflicts and grew beyond his ailments. Peter’s conflicts were between his love for his children and his sexuality. This Christ is our undammed life; the flood of loving sexuality; the strength to burst through social rules and regulations because love of life pushes us. It doesn’t give a hang about bullets, death, nght or wrong, because it has a sense of its own integral existence within life, and its own lightness and place in eternity.
The integral or cosmic Christ. Example: ‘I am a journalist reponing on the return of Christ. He is expected on a paddle steamer going upstream on a large river. I am very sceptical and watch disciples and followers gather on the rear deck.
The guru arrives, dressed in simple white robes. He has long, beautiful auburn hair and beard, and a gentle wise face. He begins to tap a simple rhythm on a tabla or Indian drum. It develops into complex intermingling of orchestral rhythms as everyone joins in. I now realise he is Christ, and feel overwhelmed with awe as I try to play my part in the music. I’m tapping with a pen and find myself fumbling.
A bottle or can opener comes to me from the direction of Christ. I try to beat a complementary rhythm, a small pan of a greater, universal music’ (Lester S).
Each of us has a sense of connectedness with the whole, with the cosmos. We may be little aware of this sense, our scepticism may deny it, as Lester’s was doing. But finding it can enrich the rest of our nature.
The sense bnngs with it a realisation of taking part in the unimaginably grand drama called life. It gives a feeling, no matter what the state of our body, crippled or healthy, that we have something that makes any faults in body or achievement insignificant. It doesn’t take all the difficulties out of life, but it is a good companion on the way. In dreams and religion Christ is also represented as the son of the Cosmos or God. This aspect of Christ is cosmic, from beyond the Earth. This is a process in the cosmos which the unconscious senses and presents under the image of Christ, or other figures in different religions.
It is possible that there is an innate process in human beings to do with love and symbiosis which humanity became aware of at a particular stage in the development of consciousness. This becoming aware was expressed in what we know as the histoncal Jesus.
The masculine aspect. Force – God [2]