Dreams, as Freud theorizes, are actually forms of wish fulfillment, secret conflicts and desires that are unmet in real life which manifest in the form of the dream. Thus those dreams which are most memorable may actually be a literal or symbolic representation of what we really want in life. In my case, there was one dream which I remembered vividly which, after the dream analysis session, led me to understand myself better. It was a dream about an encounter with the girl who for the longest time now had captured my heart but was a far-fetched reality from coming true. She was, she is, as beautiful as the sunrise and as resplendent as the dawn. But she was, she is, out of my league, and thus only came to me through my dreams. I was with her, holding her hand, looking in her eyes and knowing all of a sudden, that her soul touched mine through those glistening golden brown eyes. Her eyes penetrated all that I am, all my defenses, and at that moment I knew not what I could do but only that I was helplessly in love as I stared back at those radiant sunrise eyes. That was the detail which was most vivid in memory, her golden brown eyes. It was the one word which I could not take away with regards to the dream. I realized it was symbolic in the sense that it is through someone’s eyes that you could see a person’s soul, the innermost value or the core of a person, and in her eyes I saw iridescence, a resplendence which reached out to my own heart and reminded me of what it meant to be home, to find solace through someone’s grace. In that sense I realized that what was important to me as a person was to be able to find comfort in someone’s arms, to find that person who would accept me for who I am and for all that stand for. I wanted a sense of belonging, home, and warmth through someone who would see my worth as a person and someone whom I could transcend time with. This is a good example of what is termed as the latent or figurative content of a dream while the eyes were the manifest content or the literal/physical object, the actual dream itself. As a pondered about it, this was a realization which was very true in terms of what I really wanted in life, and the following activity on hypnosis proved this realization to be even more authentic.
The hypnosis activity began with a form of exercise on relaxation. I guess it was meant to eliminate all conscious anxieties (consciousness here being a person perception of the immediate environment as well as thoughts and ideas currently being entertained). In a world or in a state wherein so many stresses and requirements in life are always circulating one’s psychological activity, there is a need to quiet down and sort of suppress these thoughts in order to achieve clarity of mind, to get in touch with one’s unconscious. From waking consciousness, I would call the experience an excursion into an altered state of being wherein there is a shift in the pattern of mental activity. From the usual thoughts of school, work, and other everyday mundane endeavors, there is a movement towards a relaxed introspection of the mind. We were asked to find a place from our childhood, symbolic perhaps of milieu which was special to us by virtue of being a comfort zone for us. Afterwards, a friend would come to us and share with us some words of wisdom. These friends (which we could say represents our unconscious) symbolized our innermost innate selves free from social conformity and everyday pressures. It was, therefore, an attempt at communicating with our covert desires and emotions. As Ernest Hilgard would put it, the process of hypnosis is tantamount to a hidden observer wherein dissociation is present between the unconscious and the conscious. This meant that every day through the course of our routinely lives, the unconscious is constantly observing and adapting to the activities of our conscious reality. During the session, the task required us to recall those hidden observations made by our unconscious and trying to commune with it. From another angle the social cognitive theory sheds some light on hypnosis in the sense you are tasked to play the role is necessitated of you during hypnosis and therefore you are able to see aspects of your personality which you would normally with your regular disposition. In activity, I played the roles of an “introspector” of the unconscious and thus I was able to see some of the thoughts of my unconscious. As for me, my “friend’s” main message to me was that of hope and firmness of spirit. Perhaps the most important thing she said to me was that I was worth it and that to not stop believing in a brighter future in my life. Upon mulling over this message I realized that indeed that was what I needed to hear. I was and am in a stage in my life wherein I feel directionless, unaccepted, and inferior, like in a state of limbo because a lot of aspects in my life are not going the way I planned. Back in high school, you could say I was at my peak in terms of being all I could be. I became a student leader, musician, honor student, athlete and perhaps most of all, a romantic. There was someone who I cared about so deeply that I could not stop caring for her during the point when she stopped liking me in the same way. After that experience everything just fell apart for me. Aside from the pain of unrequited love, I started losing a lot of other aspects of my life such as athletics due to priorities and time constraints. I was and to a certain extent, still in an unstable state. I lost passion in my life and everything just became so mechanical. Right now, the search for myself, my direction, my passion is still underway. My unconscious told me what I needed to hear, that I was I had still had the capacity to be great despite my losses and failures, that I should have faith in the God’s plan for me. I should stop taking to heart all my mistakes and inadequacies and rather should believe that the
Dreams reflect our core as a person, and reality reflects our shell. Though our shells are there as protection from influence of the outside world, we should not let our armor grow to thick so as to obscure or conceal who we really are at the core. The real Kevin, the Kevin who was a great achiever and romantic back in high school is still in me and not gone. I just needed to find him again.
by
darkespeon (student)
