DREAM INTERPRETATION

In the end, life is but a dream,

a daily recurring dream mistaken 

for a transformative vision we can make lucid.

Instead, the unavoidable folly of our living actions

imprints in how we interpret that dream,

in how we warp its field of vision,

in how we freely associated it away in shadowy illusions.

Into divine dreamtime we assert what we deem essential,

no matter how ephemeral, no matter how discordant.

We cast ourselves upon roiling tides of emotion

with drives and schemes that crash us on the rocks,

all the while clinging tight 

to the complex phantoms we are led to value.

We play out our projections symbolically

in who we try to be and what we choose to believe.

All of it we foolishly identify with as real.

In the end, we must let it all go, all of it.

It flows from us without analysis,

it fades to nothing in our fatuous fog taken for fate.

And then, after the end,

perhaps our inscrutable living dream merges beyond

only to awaken upon the start of another dream,

this time a dream without a dreamer but a dream nonetheless,

a dream that is dreamt when the only thing that remains of us

is the shining void of our active imagination – 

surrendered, thereby exalted.

 

THE FIRST MIRACLE IS WITHIN YOU

There once was a rich but thirsty man. 

He was rich in the precious and the sublime 

but none of that mattered if he couldn’t quench his thirst. 

He searched in vain high and low for the finest Pinot Meunier, 

the rarest Pinot Noir, and the most coveted Grand Cru Chardonnay. 

He thought he had found a 1907 Heidseick, but no. 

He dreamed of a Pernod Ricard Perrier Jouet 

or a Bollinger Blanc Rose Gold Methuselah, 

but dreams would not satisfy his thirst. 

He plumbed the deep sea for a Juglar Cuvee 

or a Veuve Clicquot but his nets came up empty. 

At the end of the day, exhausted and parched, 

he struggled to find the strength 

to accept a dented cup from a passerby. 

Knowing nothing but thirst by then, 

he simply gulped and gave thanks. 

The water in the cup had no vintage 

and yet it held the ultimate distinction – 

it quenched his thirst. 

Sighing in relief, he realized 

the sublime riches of precious necessity.

The water was still water

but the miracle had happened.

 

Mass Psychogenic Illness - DHS Warning 

Wikileaks has made a storehouse of information available. One document is a July 5th, 2006 HITRAC Private Sector Note from the Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center warning about the possibility of "Mass Psychogenic Illness" events. They define these events as follows:

"Mass Psychogenic Illness

(U) A phenomenon in which social trauma or anxiety combines with a suspicious event to produce psychosomatic symptoms, such as nausea, difficulty breathing, and paralysis. If many individuals come to believe that the psychosomatic outbreak is connected to the cause of the trauma or anxiety, these symptoms can spread rapidly throughout a population."

The DHS warning goes on to say:

"The observed symptoms of many mass psychogenic illness events are similar to several non-specific symptoms of possible chemical and biological weapons—including chemical agents, inhalational anthrax, and avian influenza. 

⎯ (U//FOUO) Recent cases of mass psychogenic illness display a transferal of the symptoms onto contemporary anxieties."

The warning document gives three example events:

1995 release of Sarin in the Tokyo subway / 12 died but over 5000 people claimed exposure, flooding over 260 medical facilities, although the actual release was confined to a small area

2003 in California when a man entered a bank, sprayed an unknown aerosol into the air, then left / bank employees and customers soon became ill but no chemical or biological agents were ever found

2005 illness in children in the Shelkov region of Chechnya but medical officials determined it was a case of psychosomatic contagion—mass psychogenic illness—brought on by anxiety over Russian military activities in the area. 

The DHS should now update their warning by adding Covid-19 to their list of example events.

See document at:  file.wikileaks.org/file/dhs-mass-psychogenic-illness-2006.pdf

 

The Undiscovered Self

“The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes. But if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost its meaning – which, after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living – then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has becomes its proselyte. The man who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has no resource with which to combat the evidence of his senses and his reason. But that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. Conversely, those personages who strut about on the world stage and whose voices are heard far and wide seem, to the uncritical public, to be borne along on some mass movement or on the tide of public opinion and for this reason are either applauded or execrated. Since mass suggestion plays the predominant role here, it remains a moot point whether their message is their own, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion.

Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, i.e., is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society, namely, the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy.”

                       - Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self 1957