Dream 17 -
The slaughterhouse
This
was also a recurring dream, recurring three times as far as I can remember,
until I felt able to try and write it out. On previous occasions I had not the
courage to remember it at all,
The
scene of the dream and the action is now very familiar, but this time the
feeling content while intense was no longer simply fear, but many other
feelings, all very clear and distinct.
I
am in a set of caves or underground rooms with a labyrinth of passages. From
time to time groups of large cattle are let out of one of the rooms to be
transferred to another for further processing. It is a slaughterhouse, and the
cattle are moved from place to place as they are processed. For most of the time
the passages are empty, but one never knows when the cattle are going to charge
down them. The problem is how to escape to the open air without being injured by
the stampeding cattle. My wife, Joyce, is with me. There is no way of getting
her out. There is only the occasional man who works there. There is an air of
total impersonality. No one is in charge. It all happens. No one can interfere
and change it. But it has to be changed. At times an exceptionally big beast
charges right past me, but I am able to protect Joyce from it. I am only a
little apprehensive for myself, but I am desperately afraid for Joyce. At times
the beasts are part processed. They have been skinned, but are still alive and
blindly running. The cruelty and suffering is intolerable, and yet while I feel
for the animals and for the operators, I am fully aware that the operators do
not know the significance of what they are doing. It is what they have always
done. So it must be what they are supposed to do. No one is in overall charge to
tell them otherwise in any case.
This
dream would appear to be all about the Instinctive, Moving and Feeling aspects
of the lower mind. In particular it emphasises the early stages of the
transformation process when an attempt is made to see it all from another level,
from above, but because of lack of experience one feels lost and alone and with
no one in real charge. Perhaps this is the stage of "being in the
wilderness".
