Dream Programming

[Colly]

Magicbird, I just thought I'd throw this in. Hope it helps you. It certainly helped me unravel some of my dreams. I posted this on a previous thread so Walt if you're reading this you might get deja vu.

John Kehoe talks about dream interpretation in his book: 'Mind Power in the 21st Century'. He writes:
"Dreams are always about you and your circumstances - where you are stuck, what you're avoiding, what you're missing, what you're ignoring, where you need to go. Ninety-five percent of the time all the characters, creatures, monsters and strangers in your dreams represent aspects of yourself. When you are interpreting a dream assume that all the people in the dream are you (except when you recognise the characters - children, spouse, parents, co-workers and so forth - and even then they are sometimes you)"

This was a real eye-opener for me, and helped me through a difficult period recently.

The rest of his book his great too. I recommend it.

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Hi, Bruce. Your allergies kicking in at your aunt's house sure sounds like they were from repressing emotions
going back to your boyhood and your parents' fighting while you lived there. Watching your dad smash the
vacuum cleaner must have really given you some trauma.

As you know from Herbie's and my book, I had similar trauma from my folks' quarreling, mostly over lack of money.
I had to put myself in their shoes and figure they had lots of reasons for Dad's back aches and Mom's migraines.
Then I was able to forgive them.

 

[BruceMC]

Oh, yeah, Walt, my late father's childish tantrums and violent alcohol-driven behavior patterns must have put me under continuous psychological pressure during my formative years. No wonder I developed allergies, asthma and later, after my parents' deaths, TMS. You can defer and defer, but then whatever you've successfully repressed finally comes out of the closet. I think the underlying message was "Be perfect or I'll kill you and your mother too!" I can remember that the implicit message he was projecting was that if you two (me and my mother) didn't live up to his demands for absolute perfect behavior ( under his control of course) he'd kill us both and then commit suicide himself. Nasty threat to live under year after year as a kid. Funny, though, how many families there are like that that are governed by a reign of immature, self-destructive behavior based on low self-esteem passed on from generation to generation. The old-style macho man father figure wasn't exactly mature. Amazing how many women back then put up with that kind of stuff simply because they wanted to hold the family together at any psychological price. Speaking in larger psycho-historical terms, you can certainly see how the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression led to the apocalyptic violence of WWII. The "Greatest Generation" certainly wasn't exactly a happy one.

 

[Magicbird]

Magicbird, it's always powerful to hear someone say I have changed their life. It never gets old, it's very humbling, and I never feel worthy enough to do those kinds of things. But it feels good to hear it.

To answer your question, I wrote my healing story out in great detail to show people not only how I healed, but all the mistakes I made along the way. I was desperately feeling my way around in the dark for a life-raft. Sometimes I laugh when people tell me I was courageous in healing. To me, it was more like being thrown into the deep water and flailing my arms and legs just to stay alive, and to keep my head above water. I learned many things on the way, most of which came through mistakes. The one thing I did do that was courageous was to try.

I had my ex wife hit me to try to distract me from the searing waves and agonizing spasms of the sitting pain. I don't know if it worked or not, but I think it may have taken the edge off some. We were going through a divorce so I think she was having way too much fun with it. I said in the book, that she didn't have to have that cigarette afterward, as a joke. She never smoked.

She didn't beat my leg until I cried, I just began to break down after so many waves of pain. The leg beating was ancillary to any tears. I don't think I even felt her punches through the cutting back pain. I do think I was onto the idea of the symptom imperative 8 years before I heard of it.

I hope that answers your question?

SO

 

[Magicbird]

Thank you so much, Steve, for answering my email personally.

 

[Magicbird]

COLLY, THANKS for sending me John Keho's quote. I'll see if that helps me make sense about my dreams. The pink rat I was walking on a pink halter through the Indian village might have had to do with the fact that I foster dogs as a volunteer for our local animal shelter so halters and leashes have been part of my life this last year. But I can't make sense out of the teepees or my long black Indian braids. And the 'cardboard-like' cutout of the Indian mother in my tee pee--my mother was warm and loving, she was anything but cold and stiff. My mother has, best as I can remember, always been true to character (warm and loving) in all my other dreams.

....which raises a question in my mind--I'll need to think about this more, but:

TO EVERYONE: Never mind the bizarre things that people do in dreams, like walk pink rats or fly in the sky--but it seems to me that loved ones and friends STAY TRUE TO CHARACTER in one's dreams. Has that been your experience too? My best friend might be playing her piano on my roof in my dream, but I can trust that she won't throw the piano keys at me. Same with my mother--my mother never once said anything in a dream that was not true to her loving character when she was alive.

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Hi, Bruce. I sure would say that visiting your aunt's house brought back traumatic memories that your subconscious gave you allergies and colds. It sure works in mysterious ways.

It's wonderful that you learned about TMS when you did. I too wish I had learned about it years earlier. We had to wait for Dr. Sarno and the internet.

Your father must have had a bad case of TMS.