vision about nightmares: we haunt ourselves

because we are blind when we are alive means that we have to die. 
we have to do this each and every moment when we want to live in presence. 

from a certain age onwards, different for each one of us, we feel the approach of 
and an end to life in our diminishing energy and changing physical structure. 
it can cloud our perspective of life and death, and it can make it either easier
or more difficult to let us walk in presence and to let go into the moment.

It is mostly about this: to let go.

ghosts and haunted places, it is said they form when somebody dies who has not finished 
with his life, who is still attached to  place, a person, an unfinished business,
a strong emotion or else. 

and i think nightmares are generated in us like this. we haunt ourselves.

i conclude for now, and my opinion may change in a few minutes, that therapeutic 
approaches with techniques of learning to give less importance to nightmares, 
fear and anxiety are not always well suited and can muddle up a clear path, 
in fact lead into later spiritual disaster.

i guess that in fact these dreams and fears are there for a reason, 
and we should honour their presence because we must honour ourselves, 
and we must  find out where they stem from, find what we are sticking to, 
where we started punishing ourselves to suffer a fate such as Prometheus. 

we must find out WHAT we must let go. 
it is not the nightmares, 
it must be another thing, a loss, 
a way of thinking about ourselves  of having no worth, of viewing us in a prison 
somewhere, of having been hurt or of hurting ourselves continuously 
or of having done so and of not getting over and out of it. 

we must forgive and we must forgive ourselves and we must let go. 
not everything, just this sore place hidden inside even from our own eyes, the place
where we cannot bear to see ourselves, 
which glues us to ghouls and ghosts who may appear as very real persons in our dreams:

but they are not. they are emissions of our own unconscious struggle to escape suffering, 
taking us deeper and depper into it at the same time.
This is the story about Ariadne's thread too...

there is no general solution, only a personal one. 
to meet oneself and to embrace oneself with all 
the weakness, stupidity, ugliness, badness, past and decay, 
with all the warmth and love and kindness and wisdom we are: now.
then let go...and live.

this is why another one cannot really help. he or she can draw attention
to other sides of life, but he or she, the other one,  though they can embrace 
you with more ease than you can yourself,
they cannot solve a shit.

Psychoanalysis with its quite reduced view of humans, 
an anatomy of  functions and emotions, a history of deprivation and estrangement,
is not a path of or for the soul but one of vivisection. this is still my firm opinion. 
even this may change but rather not.

In another view and perspective, bad dreams at night can be bearers of light, 
they show us our dark roots in the light of fear and pain, and they lead us to find 
what we should not carry onwards as a burden or a guilt.

what i don't know is if this preliminary vision can help anybody at all.
but i will meditate more on it, and i hope it can, some time to come.

in the meantime i dare to enter here one of my own dreams, it happened  about
14 years ago, and i could see what it meant for me:

nightmare and second face: dream

I woke in a sweat this night, trembling and crying with fear and horror.

I had walked into a huge cave, a sightseeing group just returned to the entrance, 
disappeared behind.

I felt hesitatingly something which made me wait and tarry. 

Whilst the last visitors stepped into daylight

behind , somebody jumped me, a boy, maybe twelve years old, dark, slender, 

clung to me like a monkey.

a faint reminiscence of a sexual pose drew my attention for a moment, 

and I thought, what does this poor boy want, and then the boy fingered around my clothes,

tried to take my purse, and I wanted to push him off, managed only part of it with an effort,

the boy stuck to me like glue, like a woman, one of these who would 

put one leg around your hip, standing, spreading her crotch wide open, 

to show you to the others, this one is mine, my cock, this is where i piss, 

yes, in this way the boy had enveloped and fixated me with all his limbs, 

then from one moment to the other he began to strangle my throat,

without a transition, no warning.

Out of the very darkness, out of nothing, two other ones materialized,

one an obese small boy between ten and twelve years old,

a face maybe a little coarse but nearly good-natured. 

The other one a boy or a being, a demon, rather around fourteen,

café au lait spots in his face under short frizzy hair, and this one watched me, 

stared into me and through and through, explored my deepest hidden inside. 

he was pure malicious spawn, 

this boy's eyes burned out of a blurred sick face, and now, this moment,  

I knew that these three beings didn't just want to rob but to kill and torture me.

In despair I cast off the slender dark one, hit him with my fist, made him lie at first 

unconscious and then listless throughout on the ground.

And the spotted one looked at me, and I knew that unimaginable bad 

would happen to me if I stayed quiet and evasive, 

I knew there was no room for negotiation.  In my dilemma I saw

a picket, took it from the circle of an old fireplace. 

Deep inside i felt that the ceremony had started in which I would have to sell my soul.

The spotted one sent the plump and quiet boy, not even using one word, and 

this one came with a knife now, and I beat him with the picket and beat him,

and the boy never put away the knife, and I beat him and beat him more, 

the beats on the boy's head turned  into sound reverberating in the cave, into rhythm, 

the rhythm of my very own heart.

and the spotted one looked at me and through me as through old glass, 

and this one new that he only had to wait. 

The beating got weaker, I tired out, my arms pained, I didn't want to kill him, 

the plump one began to turn blue skinned, couldn't breathe, 

large bruises showed on his breast, lumps on his head, and I knew what I had done 

to the boy, the bones I had broken, and I felt sick and sicker , 

why did this boy not fall down, 

why did I have to kill a child. 

and the spotted one looked at me and knew that he had won,

this way or another one.

Shortly before life left the boy and he finally fell, I woke up..