TIME, LOVE and the DREAM Of FAMILY

[An allegory]

Throughout much of our lives, it is as though we live in a timeless place – in some wondrous way we walk through the days of our lives as though – really – we were in a streaming dream. Sometimes we awake from the life-dream with a shock – say when looking into a mirror: where is the forever-young person that we feel ourselves to be? Who is that stranger with the age-lines and sadder yet wiser eyes, that peers back at us? It is in such moments that we may even catch a glimpse of the two intertwined fundamental realities: that of the self – timeless in essence, in co-existence with the flux of time-movement.

Again, under some lucky star, one may be startled out of one’s normal, internal timeless dream-space when meeting another, as when a man meets the woman, when they gaze at each other, when their glances lock. Then time palpably moves, kicks in. Then it is as though time celebrates the making of itself through its creatures, reasserting its own creativity so as to again appreciate the reality of its myriad points of origin. When a man and woman find each other that first time, each previsions a future life with the other – within their exchanged gaze, the couple’s mind (now one) reaches forward to a future state: the nascent conjoint-mind dreams its future space-time – its new life – into manifestation. A portion of the conjoint dream may be the tangible expression of love – the manifestation of a link in the chain of embodiment – the generational continuum. Life’s own dream embedded within its creatures – the passing on of the ancestral gift of life. And should the couple honour life’s dream, what was two becomes one through the confluence of their lives together – a new life is created which embodies their former physical and spiritual states, their dreams and energies. In the fullness of time, the couple’s total dream may become manifest: flows of energy and support passing back and forth between them; relative success according to the standards of their environment; and maybe even a family dependent upon them – a family comprising creatures issuing from, and nurtured by, the natural energies of their conjoint aspirations.

Thinking that they are already living in awareness, the couple may never think to check to see if their issue – their dream children – are real in their own right, or only phantoms of their desire and dreaming. That their children be real in the sense of having their own self-awareness, and the evolving courage to define themselves as worthy creations of their lineage – that is to say possessing a sense of their own creative uniqueness in living up to the traditions of their human heritage. Contrary to the family dream-script, and all-too-frequently, the couple’s children may abdicate their roles in their parents’ family. May turn out to be disloyal, secretive and treacherous concerning family interests, dishonest in dealings, and of a shaming and persecutory nature. May not uphold even perfunctory standards of respect and honour towards the parents, and even withhold from their parents not only their own personal presence, but withhold also the presence of their own issue – the grandchildren. And not just for a season, but for many, many years.

The parents may blame themselves and each other for having created vehicles but having neglected to infuse spirit into their progeny, and it may take some extended time for the parents to awaken from their mutual dream of family (turned nightmare) and see what their creations are intentionally doing to wound them. The parents may have even been overcome with shame at times – shame at the lack of spirit and integrity felt firsthand through being so persecuted by their children, and profound shame for having imposed such deformed creatures upon society.

Yet even in the midst of the parents’ distressing family nightmare there may be elements of lucidity present – a part of the couple’s awareness not caught up in the dream may realize that whatever their creations do – or don’t do – is on their own personal account, and not of the parents’ ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’. And so the bereft parents counsel and comfort each other in their joint tragedy, and with time’s help come to understand that their loss was not because of any deficiency in the potency of their own dream powers, but because humans sometimes are compelled to assume destructive means in pursuing their own personal ends. In some cases the created ones do not grow out of the natural parasitical (dependency) stages of infant-child – wherein they had to ‘suck’ needed physical resources from their parental hosts.

In many family dreams the children’s earlier normal parasitical impulses are transmuted into desirable forms of adult-embodied self-reliance and spirited forthrightness. As a caterpillar transforms into butterfly, such children self-create into vehicles worthy of continuing the noble human dream. Not always right, but always prepared to fight – and to be seen fighting – for what they believe right. Sensing the need for action, as opposed to the cowardice of vacillation.

However, in all too many unfortunate families the children’s natural early physical parasitic stages may not be outgrown – the children only morph into spiritual parasitic leaches. Having deficiently evolved spirits of their own, these progeny impoverish and drain their parents’ faith and spirits through intentional, progressive destruction of the parental dream – the dream of family which had given rise to – and sustained – the children’s own earlier existence. And the destruction may not stop at just the ‘family dream’ component, but the couple’s main conjoint dream – their conjoint life-sustaining love for each other – may become a mortal casualty of the meanness of the aberrant children.

The symptoms of dysfunctional parasitical morphing?? The physically adult progeny fail to observe such cultural imperatives as honouring and respecting their parents, of sharing a little of their time, lives and families with their parents. With the arrogance of the ignorant, these progeny decline access to the body-and-soul preservative knowledge that had been transmitted to their parents from the ancestors, nor the knowledge that the parents had picked up through their own experiences. But why?? Why such lack of foresight and vigilance concerning life’s vicissitudes?? In the shallowness of their thinking, do the progeny see ill will against their parents as a way to ‘push them off the sandbar’? Or is it to gain control over – and punish – the parents?? Yet – punish the parents for – what(?) – surely not the parents’ gift to their children of unsolicited existence. Life must indeed be hard for creatures that hate their creators! Ponder on the irony that howsoever children relate to their parents reveals how they themselves appreciate, value and function in their own lives. Gratitude for essential life is self-evident in any sentient creature, as is its opposite. And who can be surprised that such children’s own physical and social worlds in time come to reflect their lack of initiative, creative dream and vision at the primal level? Is it any wonder that the physical states of such creatures become prematurely afflicted, their essential relationships become corrosive for lack of spirited principle, and that their work becomes arid, purposeless and meaningless??

The grieving parents, through long years of deprivation, gradually awaken, perhaps having been directed to the writings of R.D. Laing, of Harry Stack Sullivan, of Virginia Satir, or George Santayana. Santayana, Spanish/American professor of naturalistic philosophy at Harvard and Oxford for decades, observed about families:

“Parental functions in nature are limited to nursing the extremely young. This phase of the instinct, being the most primitive and fundamental, is most to be relied upon even in man. Especially in the mother, care for the children's physical well-being is unfailing to the end. She understands the vegetative soul, and the first lispings of sense and sentiment in the child have an absorbing interest for her. In that region her skill and delights are miracles of nature; but her insight and keenness gradually fade as the children grow older. Rare is there any genuine community in life and feeling between parents and their adult children. Often the parents' influence comes to be felt as a dead constraint, the more cruel that it cannot be thrown off without unkindness; and what makes the parents' claim at once unjust and pathetic is that it is founded on passionate love for a remembered being, the child once wholly theirs, that no longer exists in the man.”

And concerning personal development, Santayana had this to say:

“The full-grown human soul should respect all traditions and understand all passions; at the same time it should possess and embody a particular culture, without any unmanly relaxation or mystical neutrality. Justice is one thing, indecision is another, and weak. If you allow all men to live according to their genuine natures, you must assert your own genuine nature and live up to it.”

And thus with the aid of time the couple painfully sense that their family dream is no longer viable solely through the power of their own projection. They see that it is futile to blame themselves for the actions of others, and worse than futile to try to compensate or over-ride their children’s self-willed dysfunctional evolution. And the parents come to realize the impossibility of conceiving some magical way in which they can ever help their estranged children “feel good about themselves” through contriving an ‘easy’ re-linkage with their parental source. Even the finite limits of the much-touted “forgiveness” are seen, in a situation where the recipient cannot forgive himself, and is ‘supported’ by others in the same fix.

Realizing these truths, the parents may see through – and relinquish – the traps of their earlier illusory dream of family. And if still healthy they will re-channel their energies toward dealing with less intractable, more productive aspects of their environment. As they did at the beginning of their conjoint path, the individuals again measure each other – looking deeply into each other’s eyes, into each other’s hearts – and time once again moves creatively with them.

With humble patience - yet with intense passion – the two rejoice in again dreaming together as one.

Posted June 17, 2004

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