In dreams, savagery and the macabre are perhaps more easily digested because of the soothing reassurance that when one wakes, it all ends in relief. Just a dream, it’s all just a dream.

There is great comfort in believing that the source of all the distasteful, disturbing imagery with its multiplicity of meanings can easily be blamed on a B grade movie, negative media, a corrupt elite ruling the world, dark entities, or overindulgence of that grain. You know, the one with a glutenuously bad reputation.

“Not me, not I, it’s just some twisted lullaby.”

Yes, blame digests beautifully.

Like our morning smoothie with all its superhero hype masking its massive carbon footprint and potentially negative effect on the local community that it comes from due to a growing global demand. It appears that what matters most is how we behave in our decorative, wakeful state. The irony of course is that we are mostly functioning half asleep.

What a palaver.

We have woven an eternal struggle in our human condition with this tension between external conformity and internal revolt. But, there is nothing quite like our subconscious to remind us of how perverse we are. A slab of encouragement for us to pause with radical responsibility before popping the pill of projection and blame.

This journey that we find ourselves on is not all rainbows and unicorns but something to be observed as a continuous process of transformation. Transformation needs fire at times, and we don’t have to be afraid of the heat that is generated by the shadow side of our personality.

We are invited to look at it.

So here I am laying my subconscious bare with a rather dark dream this wonderful week.

The dream…

“Everything we need to know is written in Nature my child” she says contemplating the sunset while sipping a cocktail to drown the remnants of a day spent prostrating herself before the demands of commerce. The sky an almost sulphurous colour to match the stench of a rotten day.

“really mama?” he replies at her feet while weaving his toy car between her weary, pantyhosed legs.

“Yes boy, really”

“so what’s Nature writing when a big ‘ol tornado comes and wipes out the town and makes cows fly around like paper jet planes through the sky?”

“Well….” she ponders briefly.

“.. or when the ground cracks open and gobbles cities whole with people and buildings and babies and all?

… or mama how about when we go down to the frozen lake and we hear that creepy sound? Pa says it’s cause the ice is starting to thin, then you can hear all them dead people that are sealed under the ice just howling to come out.. or how about when it’s hailing like bullets and it hurts to.. “

“Oh for crying out loud Jimmy! What in hell’s name is wrong with you?! Look at the bees, the butterflies, the bloody trees for Christ’s sake!”

“sorry mama..”

“It’s OK Jimmy, it’s not your fault.”

She always knew that he would be one of those kids who fall out of a tree and never quite reach the ground. He came into this world blue, gasping for air and the wrong way around.

“Go get mama some more ice for my drink. I’m exhausted. My wretched job will be the death of me.”

“ok mama”

He hurries back from the kitchen with podgy, peanut butter-covered fingers clutching a glass tumbler filled with ice cubes.

“mama, when Nana’s Betsy ate all her puppies…”

“Jimmy! ENOUGH!!”

” I was just wondering… sorry mama… “

“Sigh…. There was probably something wrong with them Jimmy. Betsy knew what she had to do. It’s part of Nature’s plan.”

“mama?”

“What..”

“Thanks for not eating me.”

And for a brief moment, as he raised his eyes tenderly to meet hers, she wishes that she had.

I wake quite disturbed by this little dream, the mind seeks the sources of the disturbing imagery and the hidden foundation of the story outside of myself, but it does not arrive.

I teeter on the verge of descent into a chasm of defense for I deem the dream to be such a gross and inaccurate simulacrum of my world.

But is it really?

I am called to pause. To be aware, to be fully present, and to be patient with the things I do not like.

Without denying, censoring or proliferating about my mental behaviour, I get up and leave the room leaving my confusion to creep out quietly behind me but with a tiny step closer to freeing the heart from delusion.