How One Dream Can Completely Change a Life
One line in a recent article by John Ege triggered a memory from a long time ago. (If you’re not familiar with him already, he is a prolific writer on Medium, especially interested in spirituality, the afterlife, personal transformation, and UFO disclosure!)
John is a therapist, and in that article he wrote: “BUT I DARE YOU to come into my office and not speak for a whole hour. No, seriously, don’t do that” (my italics). This reminded me of a story I heard a long time ago. Here’s a bit of background.
I was attending an adult education course on Jungian psychology. This followed an intense period of spiritual awakening which contained many Jungian elements: personal analysis, big dreams, ESP experiences, wild synchronicities, a profound encounter with the I Ching, also the realisation that my ego was not the only centre of consciousness within me, that there was a separate consciousness trying to help me during this process. All this seemed at the time to be an education in Jungian psychology, which is why I was attending the course.
I became quite friendly with the tutor, a Jungian analyst. She told me that she was going to be one of the tutors at a weekend course at Hawkwood College (which is a centre for courses on spirituality in England), so I went with my girlfriend (now my wife). During that weekend she told the following story.
She had a client, a young woman whom she described as a leftie social worker type, who took little care of her appearance and clothes — she frequently wore some sort of combat jacket. This woman came to her for therapy, I’m guessing on a weekly basis. However, she simply sat there in silence, not saying a word for six months. This was obviously frustrating for the analyst — why on earth could the woman not open up, given that she was coming for therapy? She stuck with it, however, and sat there patiently, waiting to see what might happen.
Finally, the woman arrived at a session and, breaking this silence, announced “I’ve had a dream”. The analyst was obviously excited by this development, but tried to contain her feeling, merely asking “would you like to tell me?”
The woman told the following dream: I am alone in a room. I suddenly notice that there is a mirror on one of the walls. I do nothing at first, but then go to stand in front of it. When I look at the mirror I see Marilyn Monroe looking back at me.
This had a profound effect upon the woman, who was being confronted by a repressed aspect of her nature which her conscious persona had been refusing to acknowledge. According to the analyst, for a few sessions after that they did nothing but talk about fashion (i.e there was no therapy talk), and then the woman left the therapy, presumably no longer feeling the need.
Perhaps John needs to develop a bit more patience! You never know how long the process of transformation is going to take.
Apart from some of my frequent followers, I’m also tagging in here some new followers, whom I don’t know how to contact as they haven’t written any stories yet.
