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| by Devan Duke |
A column dedicated to exploring the role of dreams, voices, and visions in the integral yoga.
by Douglas M.
I had a dream where I am laying in bed and
this being that looked like a Predator from the Predator movies was leaning
over me. He has big thick dreadlock
looking things coming from his head. On
one of them I can see the form of a small doll or figure molded into a
dreadlock towards the tip.
Then I woke up with the lower abdominal problems that I have so often in
the mornings. It’s a sort of mixture of
cramping and nausea but anxiety is there too and my heart is pounding
some. I’ve had this problem to some
extent for about as long as I can remember and I believe it’s largely a
response to emerging from sleep as well as the dehydration and hunger that go
along with that. I imagine many people
have this problem. In my case however,
it’s been exacerbated (sometimes severely) over the last couple of years
because of chronic and disabling pain in multiple parts of my body that I have
to deal with on a daily basis. This
brings feelings of anxiety and an understandable aversion to having to slog
through another day of it. I’ve gotten
better with time at getting out of this funk, but it always takes some time for
it to lift, and sometimes it can linger and color the entire day. In general too I’ve found that I almost
always wake up in this state if I had a hard time with depression and anxiety
the day before.
This creates a vicious cycle, and for most of the last two years I’ve
been eating this amplified anxiety for breakfast, but I’ve had more success in
dealing with it the last couple of months.
The majority of mornings the abdominal pain is mild and major anxiety
isn’t present, just a general anxiousness and inertia but there are still days
or spans of days where I have more problems.
I’ve mostly chalked this up to the ups and downs of anyone’s emotional
life, but the dream reminded me of something obvious which is the role that
hostile vital beings and forces are probably playing in all of this. In the Predator movies the Predators are
cruel and menacing creatures and dreadlocks suggest something (to me at least)
of the vital plane and things like voodoo magic. In addition, the doll-like figure in the
dreadlock was similar to a voodoo doll in that it was kind of vague and
featureless. All that along with the
fact that this being was leaning over me in bed before I woke up, and I was
immediately clobbered with acute form of this bad state leads me to believe a
hostile being did something to help bring it on.
It seemed to me the reason I had this dream was to make me aware of the
influence of this hostile being not only to know what was going on, but also so
I would ask for protection against it.
So I tried and am still trying an experiment. The following morning I got up around 5:30am
to use the bathroom. In general if I’m
going to have a real problem it doesn’t hit until after the sun comes up, so I
was feeling okay at this point. Before
going back to bed I stood in front of my altar for a moment and asked for
protection from this hostile being. Then
I went back to sleep and was able to get up a few hours later without any big
problems. The next morning I woke up
around the same time but didn’t have to urinate, so I sat up in bed a little
bit and looked at my altar again asking for protection. As with the previous morning, I woke up without
any serious problems. For four days in
total I was doing pretty well.1
I had to deal with pain of course but my spirits and energy were up and
I was productive. There was also more
conscious faith and trust in the Divine.
Then a couple of yucky feeling mornings came on the heels of dreams full
of vital activities such as going to parties and having sex, but they weren’t
too bad. Things were more or less like
that for a few more days, and then a bigger lapse came after I had this dream:
I am with Medhananda (a disciple of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother) and there is a snake there as well. Medhananda confidently grabs it by the back
of the head, handling it. It seems the
snake is trained and harmless. He allows
the snake to gnaw on this woman’s finger, but it doesn’t sink it’s fangs into
her. The snake also gnaws on my finger
but without sinking its fangs into me, and at this point (if I remember
correctly) Medhananda no longer has a hold on the snake. Then the snake lunges at my palm, and this time
the fangs go into me. At first I’m not
afraid because I believe the snake has had its venom glands removed, but once
the snake releases my hand I see a milky white substance coming out of the
puncture wounds. Medhananda grabs my
hand and starts sucking and then spits out a mouthful of venom.
Sri Aurobindo says in Letters on Yoga that “The serpent is a
symbol of force, very often a hostile or evil force of the vital plane”2 and
I believe that is the case here. Let me
describe what happened afterwards and I think you’ll agree this snake
represented an attack designed to bring anxiety and depression and perhaps as
well an attempt to make me physical ill.
I woke up feeling gross and lethargic
after this but what really started the downward spiral was when I checked my
email and saw my boss wanted to meet with me in half-an-hour. I rushed to get ready, which brought on a
very nervous and agitated state. Later
it occurred to me to ask Medhananda or whatever he represented to suck out the
venom, so to speak, as he had in my dream.
Things improved but the agitation stayed with me as background noise for
the rest of the day. The next morning I
was more or less okay, but during our staff meeting Nancy (the office manager)
was really coughing and hacking, and now I was feeling a cough trying to take
root in my chest. I was really afraid of
getting sick because I figured the deflation of vital energy that would cause
would really open the door to a nasty depression. That fear however, ironically but predictably
resulted in depression and anxiety getting the upper hand for the rest of the
day. The miracle though is that the chest
cold wasn’t able to get in all the way and I actually woke up feeling fine the
next morning. Maybe that was a result of
the helping force represented by Medhananda, but whatever the case, I was able
to bounce back and have been more or less okay emotionally since. Throughout all of this I have continued the
practice of asking for protection both before going to bed and when I wake up
in the early morning.
So what’s the lesson here? Well
for me it’s the fact that there really seems to be no magic bullet for problems
like this, and as long as I’m living with constant physical pain this amplified
depression and anxiety is probably going to be knocking at the door. It’s like walking a tightrope, and whatever
balance I find is hard to maintain indefinitely. Remembering to ask for protection is just
another tool to try and stay on top of this problem along with things like exercising,
drinking plenty of water, and trying to keep busy. I guess the goal one wants to achieve is
mastery, and I have to admit in clearer moments I can see the possibility of
not getting sucked into this depression or any of the other emotional and vital
reactions that come up in response to this pain, but at the same time the
process seems interminable, the resistance a bottomless pit, and any balance
one might achieve would seem to be easily toppled by a worsening of the
situation or some new affliction.
The truth is I have no definite answers.
I hope I do someday, but I don’t right now. For months now though, when I go to the gym,
I’ve been listening to Nolini Kanta Gupta reading the Words of Sri Aurobindo on
my iPod. I’ve noticed that as I listen
to them over and over again certain points keep popping out at me. To end this article I want to share one that
has been helpful for me and I hope helpful for the reader as well.
The persistence of your own will to conquer
with the Mother’s force supporting it will come to the end of the resistance.4
Notes
1. There is one thing I want to bring up related
to this. After the Predator dream, as I
lay in bed feeling lousy, I was able to put two and two together and my initial
response was a feeling of hatred towards this hostile being. My mind reminded me though that it’s just
acting according to its nature and there’s really no sense in hating it. That enabled me to drop the hatred. Later on I was exercising and thinking about
the dream some more and I recalled the lines from Savitri where the demons weep with joy at the prospect of their
defeat 3 and I thought about how it’s just a suffering creature like
me. I thought this was worth mentioning
because I think its possible that bit of compassion might have helped to
further weaken its hold over me.
2. Letters on Yoga by Sri Aurobindo pg 975
3. And as
he sang the demons wept with joy
Foreseeing the end of their long dreadful
task
And the defeat for which they hoped in vain,
And glad release from their self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom they came.
Savitri
by Sri Aurobindo pg 417
4. Letters on Yoga by Sri Aurobindo pg 1436
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