Issue 48, August 2002
Men in Black
©Jane Teresa Anderson, August 2002
When I first met Michael he imagined I adopted a ritual sleeping position designed to induce and remember my dreams and that I would require silence in the morning while I ceremoniously scribed my dreams with an author's feathered quill into my leather-bound Dream Journal. Knowing the shape and scrawl of my handwriting the feather quill imagining was understandable. As for the rest, well - who am I to shatter illusions?
Oh, yes, that's my job, isn't it? Shattering illusions. The role of a dream analyst is to help a dreamer understand his illusions and beliefs about life and then help him to change those that are not working well for him. Or her. But in this case him. Michael.
Although Michael had witnessed some spectacular results of doing affirmations and visualisations based on dreams it was not until he started doing them himself that he really felt their power to release old ways of thinking and replace them with more constructive ones. Changes begin within days and the odd thing is that once the new thinking pattern is in place it can be really difficult to put your finger on what the old thinking pattern had been. The old thinking pattern, once so familiar, suddenly becomes totally alien. We have a new saying to describe this in our house, "The Men in Black have visited". Here's the story:
We went to see the movie "Men in Black 2". For those of you who haven't seen it, the story line can be dispensed in one sentence but many of the gags are funny and some of the best are based on metaphysical and philosophical themes. The Men in Black are agents whose mission is to protect Earth by communicating with aliens from other planets, killing them when they fail to reach peaceful co-existing solutions. Along the way people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time happen to see things that may threaten their mental stability, so their memories have to be erased. This is achieved with the Neuralizer. The Neuralizer is a little device that flashes a bright light into the eyes of he-who-has-seen-too-much and - hey - suddenly he remembers nothing. We, the audience, always know when the Neuralizer is about to be flashed because the Men in Black slip on their sunglasses to protect themselves. Simple really.
Okay. So, we'd seen the movie on the second day of a new affirmation Michael was using. That night, after a long dream, Michael got out of bed to go and get a drink of water. As he was walking down the hallway he was turning over the events of his dream. Suddenly he reached the part of his dream where the bright white light flashed and then - from that exact moment the memory of the whole dream vanished - before the light as well as after it. All he could recall was the bright white light. He stood in the kitchen sipping his water until it hit him. He'd been Neuralized! The Men in Black had visited!
No, this is no alien invasion story. Michael's dream had been a response to his affirmation. It was, quite literally, playing out the old thinking pattern and then erasing it, replacing it with the new (affirmed) one. His dreaming mind picked the perfect symbol to mark this change of brain wiring: the Neuralizer.
When you work with your dreams, or with dream-based affirmations and visualisations, you can expect to experience milestone dreams that indicate the release of the old thinking pattern. In one dream, several years ago, I saw a woman slowly unpicking a hem on a huge piece of fabric. Suddenly the thread unravelled at a phenomenal speed and the hem was undone. It was freed. The woman was freed from her work. The change I had been working on was in place the next day. My mind simply didn't go down the old, restrictive track any more. That way of thinking seemed alien. I was freed into a new way of thinking.
In another dream, in another year, I watched a huge ship about to be launched. Something was not quite right. I stood on the dock holding the end of a string that was attached through every room on the ship all the way through to what was known as the first room. Suddenly I knew what to do. I cut the string. Everyone on the ship panicked as the string unraveled like lightning all the way back to the first room and it was there - in that first room - that a pile of dust was identified. It had been overlooked. It had been the problem. It was cleaned up. The ship was ready to go and, do you know what? It was free to go because I was no longer holding onto the string. In this way my dream showed the release of an old string of thought (or belief system) that had been working against me.
Bless those Men and Women in Black - the secret agents of the night who work in our dreams to promote mental health and peaceful co-existence with otherwise 'alien' forces. Now, Michael, just look this way while I pop my sunglasses on please - thank you!
Jane Teresa Anderson
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