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#12 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 11th June

#12 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 11th June

Participants: 41
9 dreams
42 associations

Themes:

  • The World – skin colour, hierarchy, Covid-19 and Healthcare
  • Choking and panic. Silence is too awful.  The rush of dreams and associations stops the thinking, zipped up, so the associations become reactive and unprocessed.
  • Challenging authority of the Hosts, started late, ended early! Linked possibly to DA, MS and RK being GR consultants.
  • Race is forbidden in the matrix; it is shut down by white people
  • Sexuality and desire locked out from the matrix too – the matrix acts out exclusion.
  • When one is offended, it is unleashed onto the other; Being unplugged, unconnected, unsafe
  • What’s the panic about? Anger and violence – Martin Luther King had a dream and it did not work out for him. The relationship of violence to dreaming, makes for panic.
  • SDM like navigating new territory like rage and numbness. ‘Mining the Unconscious’
  • Anxiety about ‘plug-in’ being the sole source – we need to plug in to All Lives Matter.
  • #BlackLivesMatter – all lives matter – my people are called Red and we lost that issue a long time ago. I feel the presence of my great grandmother.  Now my people are stuck on reservations, with alcohol, drugs and government cheques and they are not part of any change.
  • The counter-transference is linked to the fear of not being human; no space to let anything in – sex and race disturbs the matrix.

Dream: I’m doing up a cardigan with a zipper.  As I’m pulling up the zipper (not sure if I am wearing it or someone else), one side seems much longer than the other.  As I near the top, it doesn’t match or fit.  Is it all going to work out?  At the top, a sensation of choking. 

Dream:  I’m visiting husband’s relatives – many houses on a mountain cliff, at different levels.  A waterfall.  With husband’s dad (he looks different but I know its him) and a couple of others.  He’s here to meet his brother.  Waiting.  The house is painted green inside.  It’s raining – I realise I need to wash my hair (it’s oiled) and run around opening doors, looking for the bathroom.    Opens a door, a small boy sitting.  There is a tap – he pours water and I wash my hair.  My hair is falling out as I’m washing – I’m panicking.  Hair in my hand.  Now I have very short hair.  If I do go bald, how will I look?  Steps out.  Family has left. Another says, take me down the mountain and drop me. 

Association: to the mountain and hair falling/cutting – taking an oath, becoming a monk.  A leap of faith.

Dream: There’s a storefront with several tables with people at them.  A white woman, with grey hair is doing enneagrams – dreamer wants her enneagram too but the woman is now not available.
Now in an industrial kitchen – pizzas.  I notice crumbs in a line in the centre of the counter.  What if the Health Dept comes?  Winslow, her son??, works here and she asks him what he’s doing.  The microwave begins smoking.  Pulling it away from the wall, then someone else unplugs it.

Association: Strange things happening, overwhelming – the amount of dreams are overwhelming.

Association:  to the cardigan – covering oneself up, being protected.  But being choked, can’t speak or breathe.

Association: Cardigan – the possibility of talking.  There are only seconds of silence in this SDM – the 2nd dream not heard at all.  [note: someone entered, left their mike on and began talking to someone outside the matrix]

Association:  Mountain, father, son, brother.  Living in an Ashram, not able to go out.  Did go out with a friend for a pizza – massive furor in the Ashram.  It caused havoc in the Ashram as people searched for us – What were we up to? How a normal act could cause so much chaos.

Association:  Not in control, loss, imbalance, overwhelming sadness.

Association:  To the first dream – film, The Misfits.

Association:  To the first dream – told to ‘zip it’.  Being told, in organisations, to be careful about what you say about Covid-19.

Association:  to the mountain – leap of faith – film, Midsummer.  A shocking scene where the elders of the community are giving a farewell – they jump of a mountain voluntarily and end of life is celebrated by the whole community. 

Association:  Movies from different eras – 1960s Westerns with soundtracks – cowboys. 

Association:  Visit to Monument Valley in the US – the grand scale of the stones, a sacred experience.  It’s like people from another world created this structure millions of years ago.

Another association to Zipping – keeping the mouth zipped – struggles with what sex means in time of lockdown.  Keeping it zipped up. 

Dream: I’m pulling up outside my home, on water, a marsh.  Far off as I approach, I can see a man and his expression – frozen.  He’s a black man in a field of willows next to the house.  I am excited to be walking into the house.  Seeing the man, I become afraid – run into the house.  Silence helped make sense of the dream.

Association:  Unplugging the microwave – fire, it’s not safe, what’s going on?  What we can unplug or not? 

Dream: I’m at an event – I’m allocated a breakout room in the basement and am upset there’s no window, no view.  The floor of the room is littered with bits of paper which turn out to be destroyed maps of the area we are in.  I go next door into a washing machine – not allowed out, with others in the machine, until all the colour is drained away.  It’s a Hotpoint. 

Association:  Microwave, broken world around.  Exit.  Basement.  Later associates the basement with the safest place. 

Association:  zipping, maps, place – boundary and authority – a place of safety

Association: torn maps – not the territory. Plato’s cave where people are held captive and can only sense a reality through shadow play.

Association: to the basement: film, Parasite

Association:  pulled to the basement – both dark/scary and things we want to keep, mementos for the family. How can they be together? things in the basement are a place of storage of precious things.

Association:  Enneagram and cave – a 10-day immersion.  Sacred practice in caves.  What is hidden, revealed, so much is hidden.

Dream:    Old rundown hut in North Ontario, I have been before – go downstairs into a trench or dug out like in World War 1.  There’s a woman dressed from 1910s and I don’t recognise or want to speak to her.  She says, This too shall pass.

Lake Huron, Ontario – lovely sandy beach, I’m walking along and get lost, land up in an amusement park – lost amongst the rides and people. I felt very ungrounded.

Association:  to Ontario – reads a poem, ends with ‘helpless’

Association:  to the basement – base line – music’s baseline, always there.

Association:  to the micro wave – a small wave of hello.  Sitting with the fear and through it to find something beautiful.

Association:  basement, line, diamond – Australian mining company got approval to destroy 80 aboriginal caves – sadness.  Continuing to destroy.  Inner need to plug in.  Difficulty in doing this whilst travelling.

Dream:  Yellow powder being put in eyes.  It is dried milk – an animal feed substitute.  Fed to the eyes into the ‘wrong orifice’ then more aggressive feeding.

Association: People, Places and people relates to history – the current investigation of history in the US, how to get colour out? Hotpoint.  before coming out.  #BlackLivesMatter – all lives matter?

Mining – Homegoing Yanofsky miners.  The original miners were freed black slaves – prisoners working in mines in order to become free.

Association:  Eyes – hidden, not seeing the whole picture, searching for connection but disconnected.  Light at the end of the tunnel – may be the truth

Dream: I am with sisters at home (it’s an industrial building, but home).  Woman with long wavy hair, becomes a statue, covered in black. She’s zipped up.  Becomes silent.  We move and she moves – we realise she’s an evil spirit and want to get her out. We push her to the door to get holy water.  A struggle – to protect sisterhood.

Association:  Fighting Covid-19, can’t see or feel, can’t push it out of door, no help.

Dream:  I was the evil woman, at home.  Hire black man to clean the house.  Realise he’s angry at me – he’s been working had for 4 hours and I’ve not given him food or drink.  I can’t find anything to give him.  I want to go shopping but the telephone rings, then someone’s at the door.  Wake up feeling bad for not offering.

Association:  welling up – black man in field and evil spirit.  Mine prison – the nature of whiteness, what do white people need to do to get out of the depths underground, in order to be free, perhaps.

Association:  UK advertisement – Scottish Widows – young woman in black cape/hood, she is always young (the advertisement is 30 years old) wanders aimlessly – reassuring as it’s an insurance company who will look after her.

Association: good sisters, bad women – Sleeping Beauty and 3 fairies who were blue, pink and green, bestow good wishes on the baby.  The bad witch crashes the party and threatens the princess.

Association:  the solution is to invite the bad witches to the party.  Plugging in, fitting in, the misfits – but we have ambivalence about connectedness.

Feeling:  Struggling to engage as if exploring caves mining or interrupting.  Not much space in this SDM – is it me?  Not plugging in.  Or is it ‘them’?

Association:  Sex and desire are mentioned and then ‘evil’ women start to surface.  Mining is a big issue in his country, polarizing – it could take them out of recession, despite the risk of infection in the mines.

Association:  rush of material (associations) – thinking has been locked out.  Panic – about not filling every single space.

Pause

Association:  Wanderlust – a virtual retreat. There’s a man who always pays attention to what local people wear in order to fit in.  He has a revelation later – not trying to fit in but afraid to stand out.

Association:  before Covid-19 travelling a lot and an airport game, looking at people to guess where they come from.

Association:   Fitting in/out.  Yin / Yang symbol – interdependent / interconnected.

Association: Irritation and impatience with silence – valuable but so much thinking about discrimination and not enough action.

Association: Stop the thinking and stopping the feeling too.

Association:  Ying / Yang – not comfortable with this, only 2 sides, black/white – represents the opposite of matrix, system.  No choice

Association:  Rage/anger in this session – correlating to other experiences this week – white people telling him what he should be doing.  When he raises historical aspects, they say let go of past, forgive.  He’s supposed to shut up.  The words for Yesterday and Tomorrow are the same in his language – cyclical

Association: Will my association be within rules of matrix?  Fascinated with image of Hotpoint.  Wish for colour to be a non-issue and wash away the divides.  Wish to disown, not to be burdened by history.

Association: Clothing losing colours – reminds of bleach – whitening.

Blog compiled by David Armstrong, Mannie Sher and Rachel Kelly.

Image: Responsibility by Juliet Scott, 2019

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