XIV. Dreaming

XIV. Dreaming

This long weekend in my  Bear Creek cabin with Tina was one non-stop primal scene.  It seemed like she just couldn't stop crying, and for the first time I began to appreciate the severity  of her desperate mental condition.  She showed me things about herself that weekend that had never remotely come across on the phone, and had only vaguely been hinted at in her letters.  On the phone, she had sometimes wept a little, but  she had mostly been calm and rational; calm and caustic, rather, because she let no opportunity pass to blame me for everything, and only retreated from this position when I called her on it, which was difficult to do because she couldn't stand to be criticized at all.  When she climbed into that rental car,  to drive the four hours back to the airport, I wondered if I was ever going to see her again.  

The next six weeks were spent in intensive self examination, and massive letter-writing.  It was during that weekend that she told me for the first time how she had been repressing her feelings of anger and resentment over my abusive behavior and the constant noise of music lessons in the house; and it was during these six weeks that I reviewed my behavior of the past several years, and began to see it the way other people must have seen it.  I heard myself raising my voice over nothing, I felt myself freaking out on the freeway, I saw myself with a bag over my head, and I couldn't believe it.  Not only could I not believe that I had done all those things, but I couldn't believe that I had  not only thought it was OK, but that it was an important part of my personality that I couldn't give up or modify.  Looking back on these unpleasant memories, I allowed myself to view those behaviors as I had the censorship issues with Rudolf, and let them go, let them slide off, let them float away.  I know it is easy to say, sitting here calmly in front of my computer, far away from the heat of battle, but I am very confident, sitting here,  that the days of out of control emotional behavior are over, Dracula is dead and will never rise again.  

I don't mean to indicate we have a Hollywood ending here, because I feel the same anxious responses to over stimulation I always did; but the difference is that I have installed in myself a system of warning responses, and I am practicing implementing them, such that the instant before I indulge in a spontaneous fit of some kind, the warning light switches on, and, by act of will, I control it.  The difference is not that I had no will power before and now I do, it is that before I was never willing to exercise it and now I am.  I cannot emphasize enough how intimately connected to my essential self I felt these antic behaviors were, and how difficult it was to give them up.  However, like masks at a carnival, I have thrown them all aside, because I have learned in Alaska that my essential self is far beyond the power of these false personae to dictate action.

[ I need to interject an aside about false personae.  I always get a kick out of people telling me what a powerful personality I have, because, for most of my life, it hasn't seemed to me that I have had a personality all.  I never thought I had much of one all through grade school and high-school, and when I went to college and met Reilly, Westcutt, and McHone,  I just sort of ripped off little bits of their personalities  and slapped together a composite creation just like my music. I should have known it wasn't myself; I did know, in a way--every time I made a little idiomatic reference to one of those three, a little spark lit up in my mind, and I knew.  I knew and I didn't care;  I just took these little fragments, made them my own, and settled for that--that was who I was. 

I suppose it's not much different for everybody-- everybody learns who they are from the people around them--except that I chose the most flamboyant, theatrical, and, in many cases anti-socially obnoxious aspects of these, my heroes', personalities to imitate, and consequently put together a pretty bizarre, composite; I thought the composite was pretty cool-looking, and, indeed, it would have been if life were theater.  Failing that it was a pretty fucked up mess.

 And still I clung to it.  And still,  even though I knew the derivation of every subtle nuance of my jig saw self, I sincerely thought it was I, and fiercely defended every contorted excrescence, like Beethoven defending his 32nd notes.]   

There is a lot of talk in spiritualist circles about such things as "higher mind " and "higher self "; these are the kind of terms that turn people against new-age concepts.  I use the terms here, not only because they are available, but because I have direct experience of them, experience, and fact, inspired by the terms.  Let me explain:

Many years ago now I was reading Edgar Cayce, and encountered the term "Higher Self" possibly for the first time.  In the text there was an exercise briefly described for getting in touch with your higher self.  I went to sleep that night having made no conscious decision to attempt the exercise; nevertheless I had a dream, or vision I don't know which:   

I was in my old high school, the far right side, traveling down a long corridor, a wide passage associated with the dining hall-- only it wasn't really my high-school, and I wasn't really in the passage; I was outside looking up at the red-brick walls of my school but seeing a kind of square, mobile-home like, tunnel-like structure, which I was first inside and then outside of.   

I was suddenly clinging to a pile of gray rocks--large, rounded, comic-book colored gray rocks--which led up to the far left entrance of my high-school near the office.  The picture reminds me of a sheer rock face I climbed in the Sierras, a long time ago, when youthful enthusiasm took my life in its hands and nearly dashed me to bits  by way of a hundred-foot fall.  I do not fear death now on these friendly gray rocks--I am happy, it is fun, the rocks are easy to climb, and climb them I do, straight up to the brilliantly lit crest, and the cement step in front of the side door.

 There is a sunlit vestibule between the outer and inner doors of the school (an image of this place is the first memory I have of the school, this is what I saw the day I came with my father to register for classes).  As I enter, the first thing I see is the hardwood floor, the smooth, bright, light brown boards pieced and varnished together in a comfortable glow, the best modern way; I see them just the way I saw them when I came there 35 years ago.  

Suddenly, there is a bright young man sitting on a cushion, a large rug, really, and he is smiling beatifically at me.  I have the impression of the Cheshire cat smoking a hookah on a floating carpet in Alice-in-Wonderland, but I do not see the young man smoking, only smiling.  I see the young man looks just like me when I was in high school, he looks just like a picture of me I have that was taken at my father's wedding. I am sitting across from my first girlfriend, pointing a finger at someone outside the frame of the picture; I am young, I am animated, I am brilliant, and as I remember I am also drunk. I have a sharp chin, and pale skin, and the pale skin emphasizes the glow of my inner brilliance. 

"I am you," he says. "I am your higher self." The  smile is dazzling. 

There was more to the dream, but I can't remember it.  My impression is that he was giving me some specific advice about something that was going on in my life, but that he was, moreover, inviting me to visit him again whenever I needed to. Thus, in ensuing years, whenever I needed to, I had an inner image  I could conjure.  It was like having a patron saint, only, presumably, the saint was  myself.  

I tell this story to establish a context for other experiences I had of my higher self at about this time. It will be noticed that my early visual impression of a higher self consists of a young man, possibly on drugs, definitely comfortable in a material   incarnation. The impression I got of my higher self as I advanced spiritually became much more abstract, much more like a cloud like white light.  During the periods of greatest emotional stress, I would invoke my higher self in meditation and ask for insight.  It was during these meditations that I became dramatically aware of the extent to which the false personality of my Dracula self had intruded upon my reality, and impinged upon my happiness. 

 The following are excerpts from letters  which deal with the higher self:

 January 14th: 

I think my higher self is appearing in more and more of my dreams and visions, but it might be some incipient alternate personality waiting to replace the me that nobody, especially you, likes.  This pain of rejection you are putting me through (I know you think I'm making this all about me, and I think you're making this all about you) is either forcing my higher self to emerge as an active force in my flawed, damaged life, or I am starting to actually lose my grip on reality.  

I'm really amazed that I need you so much.  "You don't know what you've got till it's gone. " I am also amazed at how little you need me.  

Three nights ago I had this dream: I'm watching TV in the motel room, and suddenly I look at the walls and realize I'm not in a room at all but outside.  So I go get my key and start looking for my room, and I can't read the number on this flyleaf of a hardcover book, like on your first book, only it's yellowish, and plastic.  I wander into other people's rooms looking for mine, and ask people if they can read the number.  Then I see this cop, and I ask him for help. He says, "Sure," but instead of helping me find my room, he leans back on this sofa-bed and reaches out his hand to this girl he is obviously in love with, and makes out with her right in front of me.  The cop is in blue and reminds me of the picture of me sitting with my first girlfriend at my father's wedding.  

I identified the image of the cop as how I appeared to myself as my higher self, many years ago. Who is the girl? Is it you?

 January 8th 

Remember I told you that I could take a month for two without you, but after that I start to crack up? Well, I'm starting to crack up.  I start to get disoriented, and spacey, and kind of pathetic.  It's funny though, I still am feeling the benefits of Alaska, and there is something strong in me asserting itself even though I'm missing you so much.  There is a kind of joy in my solitude that is felt through the solitude like lights glimmering through a veil.  It's like that feeling of exultation I began to feel when I realized I would never be a success and I suddenly could handle it.  I almost wrote, "I suddenly didn't care." That would have been a lie--I think I will always care that my work has not been recognized, but something about that makes it more preciously mine.  I will always regret that the light shining through me will never shine on very many others, but there's still something about my private joy that is satisfying.  Alaska intensifies this feeling. . .  Anyway, outward tokens of success or loyalty aside, this inner glow in the face of despair and loneliness is a comfort, and when I make time to dwell on it, it compensates for a lot.  But the pain of missing you still washes over me in waves, and I can almost feel you under me, feel my mouth on your neck, trace the sweep of your back with my hands, and taste your lips.  My fingers are tangled in your hair, my legs are entwined with your legs.  God, how could I have ever imagined living without you?         

 January 12th 

I cannot live without you--without you I know I will just dry up and blow away; it is not that I haven't developed a heightened sense of my spiritual identity, it is that without you this world holds no charm for me.  I know who I AM, but my worldly existence has no meaning without you--my art and my teaching, which benefit humanity, are merely a cross I bear, in order to delight in your company after the day's work is done.  The work itself is no longer a pathway to an undiscovered self--it is a stream of snap-shots taken from a various-enough number of new angles to be diverting, but it is not revelatory enough to justify the lonely nights.

 January 10th 

I have only two good feelings about myself these days: 

     1.) losing myself in the music still elevates me above my petty self- reflections, and 

     2.) retreating into this inner self, I've been becoming coming more and more conscious of since coming to Alaska.  I hope I'm not going crazy, because to discover this inner self to be false, like all my other self- images, would be a major downer.  

I had an insight about this last night.  If the purpose of life is to enjoy the physical dimension, then these trips inside to visit the self that does not laugh, does not weep, does not suffer, is the central stability which allows pleasant descents into flesh-mode.   

I had a dream about staying overnight in a huge mansion. I had to go to the bathroom, and there were these unexpected people in these huge expensive Roman bathrooms. Then I was standing in a pool that threatened to split up sewage, but instead covered my feet in clear water.  There were two Eiffel-tower-like sculptures I had to turn the lights out of, then a small wagon-shaped house, about the size of a microwave I had to turn the lights out of--then in came the water.  

Pools represent birth, and the towers obviously represent phalluses; the microwave, a female body (?).  So I know there is something being born in me, but I clearly fear it--everything points to you leaving me, even though I can't believe it, I miss you so much my body will have faith that you'll come to me again.

 January 17th 

As you read in my last letter, Alaska is working on my internal reality in a big way, and I think I might actually be generating some self-love.  My arrogance has always been a poor excuse for self-love, and self-respect  (of which I have an abundance) is also useless, since that part of myself which I respect is all outer manifestation.  Getting connected to the inner self from whom the manifestations spring is something I never thought necessary--I felt I was merely a channel, and couldn't really claim ownership of my work, of my playing, even my teaching.  I've always thought of myself as a talent in search of an identity, except that I did not believe there to be an identity to find.  Alaska has subtlely planted the idea in me that I might actually BE SOMEBODY and if so, I can DESERVE LOVE, and therefore perform the actions which promote loving reciprocation. 

 January 20th

I have been through purgative fires up here, and have made contact with a part of myself that has power to control and change.  So many details of my of unconscious mechanisms have leapt into conscious relief, while I have lain awake in the electric Alaskan night.  I'm pretty much done being angry with God.  I'm realizing, now that the journey is almost over, that God has guided every step of the way; that it was all for a reason, and the reason was good.  I'm kind of pissed about how things have turned out for you, but I have an irrational faith that the last chapter can be the best. 

I had a realization about predestination while reading Screwtape: how can we have free will if everything in time is already planned out? It is because the Spirit exists and chooses "outside time", and it is the Spirit that possesses free will, not our petty paltry minds.  That is why I am so sure I can change--because it is my Spirit I have become conscious of.

There was an uninterrupted flow of of these letters all through the  rest of February and March. I did a lot of re-reading of authors like C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Joseph Campbell, and talked about them with Tina; meanwhile she was reading a library of self-help books with titles like, "Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: a step-by-step guide to help you decide whether to stay in or get out of your relationship", "The Emotionally Abusive Relationship", "The Verbally Abusive Relationship: how to recognize it and how to respond", and "Taming Bipolar Illness".  At the same time, she was seeing a therapist who said, point blank, things like, "I see little hope for your relationship,"  and, "I don't see how anyone who really loved you could speak to you like that."  She was advising Tina to get an apartment by herself in Anchorage and dump Dan Tucker and me both, get out on her own, find herself;  she also suggested that Tina finish her book and publish it as a form of revenge on me!   This dimwitted  asshole came to these monumentally stupid global conclusions on the basis of the distorted reports that Tina gave her, in her hysteria, and one pissed off e-mail I sent back in December.  With the opposition lined up against me like this, it's a miracle we ever saw each other again.