Jabba the Priest

[Korpo]

I just dreamt this:

On a party of sorts I saw an old friend again I haven't seen in a decade, but of whom I thought a month ago. Ever since I've known him, from 5th grade of grammar school, he had his mind set on becoming a Catholic priest. He eventually did, as far as I could determine when looking him up he also has a teaching assistant position at university.

So, I turn around in this dream, to see him laying on the couch. He's always been very overweight, but now he looked like a caricature of himself, like Jabba the Hut from Star Wars. One weird thing was that his head was totally out of proportion, big! At first I found the sight so grotesque and bizarre that I was about to laught, but upon recognising the look on his face I didn't. He was obviously very distressed and in deep anguish. He seemed like he was on the verge of tears all the time.

When I asked him what happened, another school friend stepped out and explained it. These friends had been inseparable back then, and once upon a time this guy had been my best friend, too. He said "He broke on through to the supermind." The supermind is a term for, IIRC, Source consciousness. I remember the term from "Music and the Soul".

I came to the conclusion that my friend had had a destabilising Kundalini awakening. I said to him something like "Yes, you were always extremely devout." Somehow I also mixed in that he was also really obsessed with what he did. Maybe he had to be to become a priest when surrounded by peers who thought nothing of organised religion. Germans are usually not very religious. But he had known since childhood days that he would be a priest, and he had a hard time defending it sometimes.

So, I said "I know what you need." and ran to the book shelf and picked three books about Buddhism. Three big books, since I know he is also a strong reader. I remember "The Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha" being one of them. I gave them to him and said "Even a Catholic priest can do this. AFAIK Buddhism does neither acknowledge or deny the existence of God." (very skeptical or somewhat cynical "Yes, but do they believe in anything?" and for some reason I said "They believe in themselves, and that is what you need. It is healthy." That part of the dream ended then.

Now, it is not accurate to say that Buddhism is about "believing in oneself". Not really. But the feeling I had was that it would restabilise him by establishing a link to other parts of himself, maybe the body. I thought he needed grounding, and I expressed it as "believing in oneself" as if it were believing in one's own existence, validity as a being and soul, and therefore, "believing in oneself".

His gross appearance featured him having a head that was bizarrely oversized, and maybe I interpreted this straightforwardly as being ungrounded and totally overdeveloped in the higher chakras. He always was obsessively intellectual, also in the appearance of being intellectual, the image if you will, his favorite author was Thomas Mann (heavy, cerebral stuff) and he was so deeply into Bach's music, he became a formidable church organist. Bach's music is said to be strongly activating the intellect, but also has a strong aspect of spiritual awakening. At the same time he never seemed to be very happy with his outer appearance or other aspects of self more related to this world. In this dream this was developed to the extreme.

Oliver

[Korpo]

PS - the friend that stepped in must have been actually some kind of helper. He was very concise and to the point, unlike the friend impersonanted. In fact, the friend is a teacher of German literature - a real blab-mouth. But "friend" and "teacher" are good symbols for the entity - this guy simply knew what the problem was and told me in no unclear terms.

Oliver

[sono]

That's an amazing dream & ties in somehow with what Kurt Leland says in his dreaming tutorials, about friends & other figures in our dreams not being who they "are" but representing some other concept, doesn't it?

[Korpo]

Yes, indeed.

Of course I sampled the material, so I get experiences and messages that can be understood by the "vocabulary" I have now. A bit self-fulfilling prophecy in some regards, I guess.

Oliver

[Modest]

Well some christians and bhakti yogis believe in some god but not in themselves. They don't realy get the microcosm is a mirror of the macrocosm doctrine. A good advice. And zen buddhists do believe in themselves.