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This essay and all site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 -2001
Some of us enjoy dreamless sleep, and some remember having dreams but don't pay attention to them. I'm one of those whose dreams are rich with what seems to be symbolic meaning. I sometimes have dreams that the memory of haunts me for years.
For example, I once dreamed that I was helping to evacuate a large building:the feeling of emergency was huge, but it wasn't a nightmare. In the dream, the last of the people seemed to be out, and I was now being urged to save myself, but I insisted on going back once more to be sure that the building was vacant. "Is everyone out of the basement?" I asked, and since no one was certain, I ran to explore.
Since this was a dream, I immediately found myself deep in a red-lit labyrinth, and I came to an area where there were warning signs posted all around: "Beware of the monster". There was a frightful sound in the air, like the growls of a huge beast. I pressed forward toward the deepest, most remote part of the cave, and came upon a heavy, barred door, with another warning sign upon it: "Do not open!" A voice behind me called, "Don't touch that!" as I reached for the door.
"Someone is in there!" I yelled, and opened the door.
"What are you thinking!?" my critic's voice screamed.
I swung the door wide and saw the monster: a beautiful lady was sitting quietly in her little prison, singing to herself. She was perfectly harmless. She seemed surprised to see me. I guess she wasn't expecting company.
The dream ended there, but in my imagination I take her hand and lead her to safety. That's the nice thing about imagination. When you are awake your reasoning mind can take over and figure out how to make things work out the way you think they should be.
I know of a fascinating new therapy for people who suffer from recurring nightmares: they are given toys to play with, and they are asked to assign roles to the toys, and to play out the dream so that it ends happily. For example, if a person had been repeatedly dreaming that they are being chased endlessly by a faceless creature, they take a toy to represent the monster they fear, and another to represent their own self, and the chase begins. Now they are asked to imagine that they turn to confront the monster, perhaps with the aid of a weapon or magic charm. The enemy is then defeated, or transformed into a friend or a cute puppy, and embraced.
The marvelous thing is that the subconscious buys it. Later, the people who have rewritten their dream scripts in this manner find the dream changes into the revised version, or simply stops, often replaced by dreams of victory and happiness.
This is the power we tap when we play out our scenes. We assign ourselves roles, and with the aid of our magic clothes and tools we confront the beast and claim its power for ourselves. Or, sometimes we release what was most beautiful that was hidden away deep inside.
Remember, the subconscious is the part of your mind that is always at work, even when you sleep, and it drives much that you create for yourself in your life. Be aware that it's possible that the people you have problems with might not be as you think they are, but might seem to be that way because your subconscious has assigned them a role to play. There is a fancy medical term for this tendancy, but it's simply human nature. People do it without being aware of it, because that's how the subconcious works. If you become conscious of it, you can control it, so the key to mastering subconcious forces is to shine a light of awareness upon them. That is called consciousness raising, and it works wonderfully well, as we have seen.
This is what happened with leatherfolk: we were assigned the role of monster by society, and only now are making it known that we refuse to play that role and be seen that way. We turned as one to confront the enemy, and when we asked why it was chasing us, it could offer no meaningful reply.
Those who oppose us don't like being the monster: in their own imaginations they are the good guys. Sometimes just making them look at themselves is enough to dissolve the evil power, but if that doesn't work, another method will. After all, we are all only human.
We are now re-imagining our collective dream, and this time, we all are heroes victorious.
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This essay and all site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 -2001