What is a dream?
A meaningless fantasy of the absent mind?
Is it the moments in which everything about life seems to be in blissful harmony?
When the struggles of everyday life don’t seem to exist?
What happens when that dream turns out to suddenly be nothing more than a lie, an illusory
reality?
What happens when our life is suddenly turned upside down into chaos, when we’re too dazed
too even realize we’re nearing rock bottom, or when it’s been too lifeless to have meant
much at all, when a meteor comes crashing down into our reality, into the lighthouse
that stands at the center of our unconscious, which we had trusted to light us a path into
the unknown.
And what happens when we’re the ones who are directly responsible for this collapse?
Carrying a burden of guilt, ever present to remind us of our deeds.
Perhaps a lick of paint will wash it away, covering the stains of who we truly are, maybe
that way we get to move on?
He’s back, a miracle, but something’s off, he’s changed and he’s dying because
of me.
It’s my fault, I must face whatever he has faced before me...
But where and how do we start?
Is it a religious event?
An extraterrestrial event?
A higher dimension?
Something so large in scale and alien in appearance has to be something external, outside of us.
And yet at the same time, it feels strangely familiar, like something profoundly internal
hidden behind an ever-growing veil of illusion.
Staying on its edge and observing it from a distance might feel safe, but the only real
solution is to be found when we muster the courage to venture inside, and so we shall…
“In the unconscious, one is unfortunately in the same situation as in a moonlit landscape.
All the contents are blurred and merge into one another, and one never knows exactly what
or where anything is, or where one thing begins and ends.”
This world within the dome is the strangest, most confusing place one could visit.
Time, space and matter merge seamlessly as if in a dream.
The order and structure of the outside world don’t exist here.
To say one might get lost in this place would be an understatement…
And yet this is the place we collectively find ourselves.
The geomorphologist beyond mourning, the physicist without purpose, the addict, the terminally
ill, the cheater…
All in a state of inner confusion, risking their lives to find answers to problems only
those that are going through deep inner instability would find themselves caught up in...
But if the king of this world is chaos than beauty is not the only thing one is bound
to find.
Lurking just below the surface are those primal creatures that will test our instinctual abilities
when we least expect it...
“The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates
that an instinct has been split off from our consciousness and ought to be (or is trying
to be) readmitted and integrated into life.
The more dangerous the behavior of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the
primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is its integration
into his life if some irreparable evil is to be forestalled.”
Facing the dragon head on is to merge with the primal instincts that can guide us deeper
into this new world.
Failing to do so can make us stray from the light and become blinded in the darkness,
unconscious and therefore vulnerable to the dangers that can emerge into our lives at
any moment…
We’ve faced demons, and they’ve taken their toll, but frightening and menacing as
they may be, we continue our path and we will trust our instincts to overcome whatever else
rears its head.
We’ve come upon an abandoned military base, a safe haven for those that came before, a
memory card is found, a second revelation reveals itself…
The monsters we believed to be exclusively external in nature, dwell abundantly within
our own bodies, within our souls.
A realization emerges: Am I the real danger?
Am I the thing bend on self-destruction?
Accepting it would be to admit to one’s own shortcomings which we so often try to
hide behind a masked personality.
Denying it would be to disown its existence within oneself completely…
“When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often
ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other
people – such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies,
schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice - in short, all the little sins about which
he might previously have told himself: “That doesn’t matter; nobody will notice it, and
in any case, other people do it too.”
For the denier, the only way out is to project once own monsters onto the people around her…
How could I ever be a monster?
Maybe you or you, but not me!
For it is I who knows the way and who will save the world from damnation!
This unconscious failure to come to terms with one’s reality then becomes nothing
more than another ultimate dead end.
It is only those that have made peace with the fact that spending time in this world
is slowly changing who we are and how we perceive ourselves.
It’s this growing realization that the tumor of the shimmer isn’t necessarily caused
by something outside of ourselves, but perhaps an echo from our own inner world.
And so, the only way to save the world, would be to save oneself.
But why would one bother to go through such lengths to salvage something that wasn’t
even perceived to contain much value to begin with.
Life does what it wants, why bother struggling against its will?
Only those who truly desire to return will have the power to reemerge.
And so, one by one, the companions perish, dissolve and disappear, until she is the only
one left, alone with herself and her thoughts.
Why did they have to succumb to the darkness and why am I still here?
Were they really: Anya, Sheppard, Josie, Ventress, or were they just characters of a dream?
Fragmented parts of an unconscious personality seeking to be integrated unto the body?
Like the ever-continuing cycle of death and rebirth, the sign of the Ouroboros “The
dramatic symbol of the snake eating its own tail for the integration and assimilation
of the opposite, of the shadow.”
The only way to truly find out what all of this means is to make one final push towards
the center, towards the lighthouse..
In this final leg of the journey, we are already well broken down, but as we enter into the
lighthouse we slowly begin to realize that the toughest challenge is still in front of
us.
Hidden In the darkness deep beneath the shining light of the tower a mandala shaped orb appears.
Magnificent in its wholeness but equally frightening in appearance, it shows us a mirror out of
which a figure emerges…
In shock, we stumble and we run.
Or perhaps we don’t run at all but loose ourselves in complete confusion?
I can try to fight it, but it mirrors my every move.
So perhaps I should desire it, for self-destruction is ultimately all that’s certain.
But both these options will end me permanently.
What is this creature that acts as if my shadow?
Suddenly a face begins to take form, a sudden realization dawns on us…
If you are me, if you are more me than I am, then I am a lie and I can exist no longer…
We finally become fully aware that this world is not at all alien in nature, but a part
of our own self that was hidden away in our unconscious, desperately trying to be acknowledged.
The only way forward then is to look oneself directly in the eye and accepting this shadow
as it is.
Only then can final illuminating integration be achieved.
“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by
it…
…Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins
the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain”.
He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self
and thereby has gained himself.”
We now know better who we truly are and have thereby dissolved our pathologies.
The return to order is therefore shown as a reconciliation of two previously estranged
souls.
Both fought and died in one way or another, and both have reemerged as someone else, one
a mere shadow of his former self, the other more intact, strangers but strangers more
attuned to each other than before, embracing one another as the first step to start anew.