Tag: sri aurobindo

So You Wanna Get a Hold of Human Evil? – Synchronicities With The Wasp

On By Douglas M.In SynchronicityLeave a comment
Wasp colors by quinet, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License   by  quinet 

Recently I wrote a post on how my dreams used the symbol of the wasp to draw attention to my anger.   Interestingly, the day after posting that article, the wasp entered my life again, but not in a dream. Rather, these were synchronic encounters in waking life that happened in conjunction with strong movements of anger that day.   Events in the waking world can also be our teacher just like a dream can and this example really illustrates that point. Let me tell you what happened.

The daily operations of the chamber of commerce where I work are mainly handled by my co-worker Rhonda and I, and this necessarily involves a lot of collaboration and hashing things out. In general, Rhonda and I get along very well, and I find her very easy to work with overall.   Sometimes though, as in any close relationship, vital reactions come up in both of us that aren’t voiced or shown on the surface. Most of the time I can just drop these reactions, but at other times they’re played out inside in thoughts and emotions that either run their course until they die out or I successfully reject them.

On this particular day Rhonda wanted me to add our business expo to a dropdown list on the chamber’s website. I didn’t say no; I just responded that normally we only have the really big events on there. Then, rather uncharacteristically, she said in a rather snippy way, “It’s becoming a big event and it needs to be up there!” Well my vital didn’t like basically being given an order, and a smoldering resentment opened up like a black hole inside me.  I was able to detach from it, but it got in a bit, so it didn’t subside immediately. My vital wanted to lash back and thoughts on how to do so were coming up. I just tried to ignore them while at the same time acknowledging to myself that she was right.   We are trying to grow that event so it made sense to add it to the drop down list.

Shortly after this I had to leave the office to go and tidy up our mobile welcome center, which had been out of commission for a while. As soon as I got there I encountered a wasp flying around the door of the trailer. I remembered how the anger had risen earlier, but I was more concerned with avoiding getting stung. I got out the can of wasp spray we keep inside, but it flew off and didn’t return. When I got back to the office I noticed a little of the anger reaction still lingered from earlier, but it wasn’t really a problem.

I would, however, encounter a wasp again later that evening when I was taking our dog Rosie for a walk. During the walk, I saw a plastic grocery bag lying on a neighbor’s lawn, so I picked it up. As I was examining the bag, I suddenly spotted a wasp clinging to it and quickly dropped the bag and crushed the wasp under my shoe. Encountering the wasp again like that struck me as quite synchronic. I wondered how it might apply to my situation at that moment, and I thought about how I often get annoyed and impatient with the way Rosie takes her takes her good sweet time sniffing and investigating things instead of taking going to the bathroom like I want her too. So I tried to be conscious of that and resist that impulse to get irritated with her.

Then when I got home, I noticed some outside lights we have set up on an outdoor timer were switched on almost two hours early.1  I know there’s a button on the timer you can hit to turn it off or on manually and override the programming, and I figured that somehow the timer had been manually switched on. So I hit the button to switch it off, but when I did so the screen flickered erratically back and forth for a second or two between On and Off before it finally turned off.   That didn’t seem right to me and made me wonder if something was wrong with the timer.

I went out back to our lanai as my mom and dad were coming up from sitting on the dock. I mentioned what had happened and told mom I thought the timer might be faulty. Without warning my dad exploded into a short rant about how stupid the timers were, and how nobody sees the lights, etc. He was obviously testy so I tread carefully around him until he’d seemed to settle down later.   I figured the second synchronic encounter with the wasp had been foreshadowing dad’s outburst, and I think it was indeed doing so, but there was one more thing that was going to push my button before the night was over.

Later that evening mom asked me to vacuum and wash her car the next day before she left in the afternoon. Dad almost always handles washing our cars, but for some reason she really wanted it done the next day. Like Rhonda earlier, she was basically giving me an order and also did it in a snippy way. That got my goat, but I still tried to tell her in a nice way that was fine, but I’d just like to use the pressure washer and would need dad’s help to start it. Then she made a comment that all I’d need is a bucket and soap and that ticked me off even more. I have lower back problems, and anyone who does knows how difficult that can make just about anything. The kind of bending over I’d need to do to wash the car with a bucket and soap wouldn’t be easy for me, and she knows that.   The thing is though, in general I just stoically endure the back pain and don’t complain about it. Because of that, sometimes mom forgets my limitations and has even said that she sometimes forgets because I don’t complain.   My mind understands that, but my vital was not happy with her for forgetting.

I went in my room for a few minutes and thought things over. Then I went back out to the kitchen, and though the anger was still kicking around underneath, I was able to calmly explain again that I’d be happy to wash the car, but I wasn’t going to do it without the pressure washer and needed dad’s help to start it.2 Then I explained to her how it’s not easy for me to do it with just a bucket of water and soap, because in order to keep from bending over I have to constantly keep going down on my knees (I’m not flexible enough to squat) and getting back up again. I explained to her I could do it with just the bucket and soap but I’d need a cushion or something to put under my knees. At that point she just said forget it, but I reiterated that I could do it with the pressure washer if not the next day then definitely on Friday. I never did end up washing the car either the next day or Friday, since dad thought it was a waste of time with all the rain in the forecast. I did however vacuum the car the next day.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, this example is interesting because it shows how symbols can meet us through synchronicity in the waking world as well as in dreams. Going farther we can see that these kinds of synchronicities give a glimpse into the intricate interconnectedness and interpenetration of all things. They help us see that there’s a hidden meaning and intelligence in the cosmos, one that informs and presides over its unfolding behind the mask of apparent unconsciousness in the universe’s outward appearance.

Another thing worth drawing attention to is the way that, in the evening, the anger first manifested in my dad and then later in me. This shows how things like anger are a vibration that’s ‘in the air’, and can invade more than one person or even be passed from person to person. That may have happened also with Rhonda and I earlier, but it’s less obvious.

In closing, I’ll say that I believe these little synchronic glimpses are just the tip of a massive iceberg of interconnectedness that we can only truly appreciate from a higher or cosmic state of consciousness. It’s too stupendous to fit in the littleness of the ego. What would such a consciousness be like? I don’t know, but this passage from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri casts some light on that, and seems like an appropriate way to end this post:

Interpreting the universe by soul signs
He read from within the text of the without:
The riddle grew plain and lost its catch obscure.
A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
And Fate revealed a chain of seeing Will;
A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.3

Notes and References

  1. Interestingly this was one of the two timers that were mentioned in my previous post on the wasp.
  2. My back also prevents me from pulling the starter cord, so I need my dad to start the pressure washer for me.
  3. Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo Volume 34 Savitri, pg 76

 

Mad as a Hornet! – The Wasp in Dreams

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment
Angry Wasp by L@uReNCiO, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License   by  L@uReNCiO 

Like a lot of people I can be irritable, and while I have a tighter grip on it in public, it comes out at people close to me like my mother.   Even there though I have a pretty good level of control most of the time, but I find I have spans of days or weeks sometimes where I’m more agitated, and the irritation is more difficult to restrain. I had been going through a period like that recently, and the movement was shown in my dreams using the symbol of the wasp.  This makes perfect sense as there are few things as hostile as a wasp, and we’ve all heard the phrase “mad as a hornet.” Here are the two dreams I’ve had during this recent upsurge of irritation which feature the wasp and took place within a week of each other.

Monday Sept 7, 2015

In this dream I’m in Briarcliff Circle in front of Todd Brim’s house. There’s a house being constructed across the street, and at the top of it there’s a huge wasp’s nest with big six inch wasps crawling around on it. I’m talking to RJ Snyder, and he says he’s going to pay $5000 to have it removed. And I say, “Why don’t you just call pest control and have them do it for free?” The street the house is on goes up a hill and RJ and I walk up to the top. I tell him I’ve seen other strange things in this neighborhood, and he tells me that Dhina is running around with my voice recorder and he finds that unnerving.

Sunday Sept 13, 2015

 I’m in the garage and someone there wants me to video him with the GoPro camera. I really can’t though because the piece of plastic that frames the lens is out of place. I look under the workbench and see a wasp’s nest. I go into the house to get away from the danger and then out to the pool. As I’m walking around the pool I encounter a mirror and can see my face in it. I can see it’s really sunburned from the bottom of my eyelids on down, red as a lobster. There are a few small patches of unburnt skin though.

Like many older people my mother struggles with technology, and this is the main thing that pushes my irritation button as far as she goes. This annoyed part of me feels these things really aren’t that hard and she ought to be able to figure them out, or at least be able to remember how to do something after I’ve shown it to her a couple of times, etc. etc. Over the recent Labor Day weekend her questions and requests were coming up more than usual, and as the irritation got worse it started to come up when she would ask me about virtually anything and not just tech questions. It was just like the way some kids or teenagers will get riled when you ask them to do something, acting like you’re really imposing on them. Dhina, who is mentioned in the dream, is an Indian boy I know and is a perfect example of this kind of indignant teenager. The fact that he has my voice recorder I believe represents my speech, since my irritation manifests both as a vibe of annoyance and also comes out of my mouth. So the dream is showing me I’m acting like Dhina. The part about calling pest control I think has to do with calling on the divine for help with the irritation and not just my own resources, which the dream portrays as spending $5000. The house is something under construction in me, though I’m not sure what. That I make it up to the top of the hill is good as it shows an overcoming of the irritation on that day at least.

Though I fought back well on Labor Day, the problem continued during the week and through the next weekend. The morning after the second dream I once again gathered up my will to try and cast off the irritation’s grip on me. We had recently gotten an Amazon Firestick for our TV, and I had agreed to show mom how to use it, so I knew a test was coming in advance.   I think the dream foreshadows this with the filming with the GoPro, but in the way dreams most often do it, which is analogously and not exactly.

Perhaps though it’s more accurate to say that an event in the inner world (shown or translated by the dream) gives rise to an event in the outer world, and the relationship between those two events is analogous and not exact. Regardless I think we can see the connection here. That I flee the wasp’s nest is a good sign and reflects my effort to get away from the irritation.   I’m not sure what going from the garage to the pool might signify though the garage seems to represent dreams according to the experience of my collaborator Donny and it makes sense to me. I think the sunburn is again showing the problem with the irritation manifesting as speech since it’s mainly on the lower part of my face. And we all know how a person’s face will turn red when they’re really angry. The location of the sunburn also shows that while the irritation had gotten into the speech and action center of the mind (the throat chakra), it hadn’t reached the seat of the intellect and higher reason (the third eye chakra).

While it doesn’t feature the wasp there is one more dream I had in between the other two that also drew my attention to my irritation and merits being shared:

Thursday Sept 10, 2015

I’m sitting on the front porch with Dad and this girl I’ve known for about a year. She’s blond, has a lot of tattoos and is dressed in a crop top and a short skirt. She has a punk look to her. I have a computer and am looking at her Facebook page. Her cover photo is showing her left forearm (I’m pretty sure it was the left) and it has the words “black mamba” tattooed on it. I’m telling her how it doesn’t feel like a year has passed since we’ve met, that it only feels like a couple of months.

The day before this dream I had set up some outdoor timers on the front porch for some decorative lights we have outside.   Then on the day following the dream my dad went out and added a needed extension cord but thought he’d messed up the settings on one of the timers in the process. Mom told me this and muttering something indignant I went out to the porch to see what was wrong. As I was examining the timer (which turned out to be fine) the fact that I was on the porch made me remember my dream and I saw how the irritation strikes like a snake. A snake in my dreams represents some kind of hostile force or lower vital movement, and I think that’s pretty universal, though I believe a snake can represent a positive energy or movement in some cases too. My vital itself is represented in the dream by the girl, and that too seems to be fairly universal symbolism though a woman figure could certainly represent many other things.   For example if you dream about a woman you know it might represent some hallmark characteristic of hers that you’re currently exhibiting. My dad in this dream is this kind of character and represents my irritation since like many men he’s irritable with his spouse.

So what’s the lesson here? I guess for me it’s that things like irritation are hard to get rid of, and uprisings like this are part of the process until the defect is fully integrated or simply disappears by the process of spiritual transformation. There’s a fine line though between recognizing that and giving a vital movement permission to continue. The fact that my dreams stepped in like this tells me it’s no small matter and I have to continue to be vigilant in rejecting it. I do want to be rid of it though (as well as a great many other things) and that’s an important step.

It also never hurts to look at things through the eyes of understanding as Donny reminded me when I related the dreams and the irritation to him.   He reminded me to look at my mom with the eyes of the soul, see her as innocent, like a child. The fact is it’s just hard for her to figure technology out.   And when you also consider the fact that she and my dad let me live with them for free and feed me to boot, a little patience and understanding while serving as house tech support isn’t much to ask.

Notes and References

  1. The reader will probably notice I don’t mention anything about the character of RJ or the significance of Todd Brim’s house while discussing the dream.  Both RJ and Todd Brim are what you’d call “a ladies man.”   The day following the dream I had an uprising of sexual desire, and the dream seems to have woven the two vital movements, the anger and the sex desire, together into one dream. Maybe that speaks to some connection between anger and sexual desire?