Eggs to Ashes by Mario Lorenzo

Author:Mario Lorenzo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mario Lorenzo

chapter four

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How to Massage a Dream

Another useful tool that I have discovered in my quest for a better understanding of myself and my life is dream analysis.

A dream not understood

is like a letter not opened.

—The Talmud

I am at a Jungle Endurance Training Center in the middle of the desert, with my Jeep buried in the sand. I am free to leave at any time but I have important lessons to learn. Contrary to all appearances, I am not stuck.

That’s the dream I had after I applied for a prison chaplain’s job. It was a job that I actually did not want to undertake.

As a child and as a teenager, I did not take dreams seriously. Thanks to Carl Jung, the pioneer of analytical psychology, I have since embraced dreams as powerful messengers, and not scrambled, nonsensical images from our psyche. According to Jung, “The symbol in a dream has more the value of a parable; it does not conceal, it teaches.”

When faced with pivotal choices, dreams have always shown me the way. While discussing my Jungle Endurance Training dream with a friend, he revealed that Jungle Environment was another term for prison. That piece of information was key to unlocking the dream’s meaning for me. I accepted the prison chaplain job knowing that the job is valuable and not wasting my time or resources. I realized that I was not trapped, but could leave at any time.

I invite you to bring a dream to mind and hold it in your consciousness as you read on. You don’t need to do anything with it right now. Just let it hang out. Know that playing in the field of your dreams yields rich rewards. Dreams have the potential to teach, affirm, direct and enlighten. They are especially potent because they are created from our own unique vocabulary of images. Sometimes dreams are the only way vital, beneficial information penetrates us.

“Again and again I find that my own inner counselor; my secret dreaming self, is not only wise and helpful but usually amusing as well,” says Sheldon Kopp, author of The Hanged Man. Beginning to trust your dreams and your interpretation of them is a process. I’ve repeatedly experienced that my fork-in-the-road dreams are here to alert me. They show me what I will encounter in the future and how I’ll need to deal with it.

After 18 months as a chaplain at the state prison, I applied for a federal prison job located in northern Phoenix, Arizona. The group that interviewed me said they wanted to hire me. Once again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the job, even with a raise in salary.

My uncertainty inspired my Eagle Arrow Dream:

I am at a mountain cabin. Behind it is a lean-to, normally used for storing wood for the fireplace. When I dig into the wood pile, though, I pull out a burlap sack filled with gold coins. Imprinted on each gold coin is an eagle with its talons wrapped around a bundle of arrows.

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