Читать книгу The Ivory Gate of Dreams - Amanda Kelly - Страница 3

Introduction

“The dream is the soul´s very own sphere of action.”

(The author, 2009)

“In a beautiful sea with strong movement of waves a whale moved in his courses, up and down. At the beach a woman was lying down and did her gymnastics. The dawn was breaking. A big, white tiger appeared. The tiger flaunted along the beach. The woman lifted one leg in the air. The tiger snapped at her foot. The woman remained calm despite of the pain. The tiger passed by and disappeared. I was standing in front of a big window on a brick-work wall of a great house at the street in front of the beach. I was watching all of that astounded and scared at the same time.”

If you ask yourself, how one can interpret this dream, you are quite right here. This beautiful, but also frightening dream one can naturally only explain, if you know the background story of the person, who had the dream. It dealt with a woman who has spent her holidays at the sea with a beach. She lived in a hotel on the mainland. Her room had a balcony (window at the house). She did not dare to travel over to the island, where her friend lived, because there had been so many misunderstandings (strong movement of waves) lately between both of them. By chance she met a very friendly man, a little younger than her, who was good-looking and likewise proud (the tiger). He fell in love with the woman. Indeed the woman was able to develop erotic feelings (bite of the tiger) towards another man after a long time of solitude. However, she was not sure whether the feeling was strong enough to finally forget about her friend (the whale fish), who she still loved very much (the deep sea). After several weeks back home she realised that the affair with the young man had been only a fire in the straw. The feelings towards her friend on the island behind the sea still were too strong (the whale in the sea appeared to the woman very beautiful and powerful in the dream). Then the woman kept quiet in not phoning the young man any more (remained calm after the bite). This is why the young man gave up on her and disappeared from her life (the tiger had vanished). However, the woman did feel pity (the pain), because it had not functioned.

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What does it mean, an ivory gate? If we imagine ivory, this precious material, which is used for piano keys and carved work and obtained by elephant tusk, everybody knows how beautiful and durable it is. A gate, a threshold, a passage between two areas made of this raw material therefore can only mean that this doorway is of a very high quality. It seems to be rather noble and shining, but it is also strong and impermeable. Just like as if this gate was leading to a Grand Kingdom. Naturally, it can be opened or stay closed, if necessary.

Let us keep up with the imagination of a kingdom in order to understand that there are not only watchers at the gate but also rings of security do exist behind and in front of the walls. Such a picturesque fantasy may be a little help to comprehend the explanations of Sigmund Freud M. D. (1856 - 1939) concerning the different levels of consciousness: the sub-consciousness, the doorway to the pre-consciousness with its watcher, the consciousness. It is not possible to understand dreams without the precise knowledge in which way the sub-consciousness has an effect on the consciousness and vice versa. It again fits in the imagination of a Kingdom: the King has a strong effect on his people, but sometimes also the people has on the King.

Where do dreams come from, where is the dream production area? When you fall asleep, you take with the sleep all the things that happened during daytime. Then a fertile exchange between consciousness and sub-consciousness can take place, because the ego is now unable of control any longer. Actually nobody can deny that sleeping represents a certain kind of unconsciousness which one cannot steer by the free will. Sleep happens to us. The sub-consciousness, like in the story of the Kingdom with its ruler, gives us order to do so. You can still rebel for a while, just like the opressed people can disobey in any way with the command of the King, by drinking a cup of coffee or something like that. However, at a certain point of time sleep conquers every one of us. As if the King has sent out his troops in order to take us by force to rest.

Thoughts about what happened during daytime are now unhindered to communicate with the sub-consciousness. A virtuous exchange takes place. As if there was a market place of life, studies will be carried out now, comparisons drawn, advertisement hung up. Declarations are spoken out, a vital discussion about advantages and disadvantages takes place. To whom is all this of any service? To us, to our ego. We are everything this is all about. You must not forget that the sub-consciousness only wishes the best for you and knows what you can bear and how many revelations it can send you over, so that you care of them when you are awake.

If you do not remember nice dreams, because you never paid attention to them and therefore forget them at once, the sub-consciousness is going to create more strange scenes to let you remember the dream. Many dream sequences only rise up, because the sub-consciousness knows exactly what really upsets you. It wants you to lead your focus on a certain matter which is of paramount importance for your development. The cavalry of the King would not let it happen, too that the royal carriage, which should represent the way of life, will be tripping over a stone, racing into a broken tree on the way, crawling into a death bringing ambush or steering straight into deep morass. The residential dream-power wants you to gain further development. It will never stop trying to present you an old trauma, until you react. It wants to show which way is the right one for you and which is totally offbeat. With the help of the dream-power, you can recognize the real faces in your personal environment and learn to analyse your own feelings within the relationships.

In which way do daily experiences have an influence on the dream-power? The things you are going through while you are awake, will be compared with the material stored in the sub-consciousness. If there are discrepancies or similarities between the situation of today and experiences of the past time, the sub-consciousness reacts upon. It seems to be logical. The sub-consciousness likes to be well informed at all times about the changes in your environment in order to prepare you - and this way the ego - for the upcoming circumstances. A striking example: If, all of a sudden a war breaks out, it needs to prepare you for the danger you are in, and that you are likely not to receive everything you are used to get. Actually it is quite clear why this happens. If not, one may otherwise been driven to despair by the new situation. One would probably not be equipped well enough to search for solutions or to simply refuge. Caused by an impressing experience in the presence, the sub-consciousness starts researching firstly, whether you have already experienced something similar and what you have done about it in former times. This way you can draw on your wealth of experience and act more quickly. If the situation is completely new to you, a nightmare may call for you. Most people remember a nightmare remarkably well. You are going to talk about the dream with a friend. The friend may have already experienced something like that and offers a good advice. In this case, the dream-power has fulfilled its task: you care of what is on the schedule.

If the sub-consciousness gets hold of an experience you have already gone through in former times to resemble the new experience, the dream shows up with scenes of the past time. You sit and wonder why you suddenly dream of your childhood. During daytime, you might not have recognized in the whole that something has a strong relation to the past. An example: someone is ready to fall in love. Then a dream rises up in which “a family member appears along with this person.” Therefore one remembers a sister or a brother, the father or the mother and starts pondering about them mentally. The dream wants to point out directly that there is a community between the object of desire and an experience of the dreamer´s past time.

What is the meaning of the above-mentioned doorway, or as Sigmund Freud has called it, the watcher, in connection with the dream interpretation? We have learnt that the sub-consciousness transfers important information to the consciousness in the shape of a dream. A story expresses itself through pictures, like in a movie, and passes over to the consciousness. However, there is a kind of censorship on the way to it. This censorship works for us and holds back scenes of the dream that would be too cruel for us to bear; if it is the case that we have not yet achieved the appropriate growth to deal with it. For example: A man had been beaten by his parents as a child and now, as an adult he watches a scene like that in a supermarket or somewhere else. At night the dream-power tells him a story about his own childhood, about how he felt when this happened to him. If this man never dealt with the problem of having been beaten as a child, the dream might arise in the shape of a nightmare, which the watcher holds back at the passage between sub-consciousness and consciousness, because it is not yet time for the man to work out the trauma. The dreamer has successfully inhibited the cruelties all over the years and does not want to be reminded of it now, just like in the past. Probably his parents never told him they are sorry about what they have done to him.

In the following the different types of dream will be explained. It is possible that several different types of dream appear during one night.