As many of my dreams do, this one opens at “Grandma’s House.” It’s not a random detail. There seems to be hardly anything about dreams that is random. I believe the representation of “Grandma’s House” in my dreams is that I find safety or refuge there. A lot of my youth was spent at Grandma’s House. It seemed that everything was as close to perfect as it could be when I was there. That isn’t to say that I was uncomfortable at my own house, but practically my whole family congregated at Grandma’s when I was young. You could say it was my personal “Garden of Eden” growing up. However, there is always something that is attempting to infiltrate paradise, just as there was in the story of Adam and Eve. Obviously, life here on Earth is far from paradise, so maybe it is more accurate to say, “there is always something attacking the frame of mind that is as close to any paradise we could possibly conceive.” Something like that. Because paradise quite obviously is not having a lot of money. It’s not beauty, either. People have nines and tens as spouses and hate their relationships or marriages. It also is not beauty in the context of scenery, although if you asked anybody to draw or paint their conceptualization of paradise, nobody would paint an image straight out of the projects. The thesis here being that “paradise” seems to be how we operate in the confines of our own heads, regardless of any external circumstance.
Anyway, the dream starts with me playing basketball at Grandma’s House. I play a lot of ball these days, which is a minor detail, but it goes to show just how nonrandom dreams are. At Grandma’s House, when you miss a shot, the possibility that the ball caroms off of the rim and bounces into the bushes is highly probable. That happened in this dream, and when I went to go retrieve the ball, I heard a loud hiss. Off the rip, I knew that it was a snake even though I had not seen it yet. It had to be a snake. I’ve always been deathly afraid of snakes. Eventually, I came to find out that it was not just a snake. It was a smaller crocodile as well. The snake made its appearance when the crocodile would open its mouth. So, the crocodile would open its mouth, and the snake would launch out of it as if it were trying to strike. The snake and the croc were a team of sorts, but when the croc opened its mouth, and the snake would strike, the snake would be set loose on its own. When this happened, there was obviously great concern, but the family that was at Grandma’s House in the dream were not in immediate danger. They were afraid because there was a deadly, poisonous snake and a crocodile loose in the area, but so long as they stayed inside, they were safe. The crocodile was not as dangerous as the snake. I had mentioned that it was a particularly small croc. The best way that I can describe this is that the croc would definitely fuck you up pretty good, but even if it bit you, it would only hurt like all hell. It wouldn’t kill you, whereas if I were to be bitten by the snake, it would be curtains for ole Josh. There is a two-headed dragon terrorizing my personal paradise. One head (the snake) is more dangerous than the other (the croc). Something has to be done about this.
Sadhguru (if you are unfamiliar, I implore you to look him up on YouTube) tells a story in his book “Karma,” in which his pet cobra escaped from its cage. The cobra was twelve feet long. It had escaped around 4:00, just as kids were getting out of school. Everybody in the town was terrified of the twelve-foot-long specimen. Upon returning to town, Sadhguru realized what had happened and knew that he could not go home. He simply rode his bicycle through the congregation, scooped up his cobra, and pedaled off. No problem. Well, something very similar to that happened in this dream. The snake was loose, slithering around Grandma’s House, and out of nowhere, Sadhguru appeared, scooped up the deadly snake, and sauntered off. Only the crocodile was left. He attributes his affinity for snakes and others’ aversion to them as respective “vasanas.” Vasanas are essentially ingrained behaviors or past impressions that influence them, even dating back lifetimes ago. In the context of this dream, I believe that Sadhguru represents a spiritual figure. A “higher power,” so to speak. I’m not saying Sadhguru is a “higher power.” As a matter of fact, I believe he would reject that notion. However, I am saying that a spiritual figure, higher power, or some type of relationship with the divine can remove even the utmost of fears, and I believe that has been the case in combating alcoholism. Alcoholism being the deadly snake. I don’t want to sit here and make grand proclamations that I am “cured,” but in the rooms, we talk about the “obsession being removed,” and I absolutely feel that is the case because of the implementation of spirituality. But, as mentioned, the second head of the dragon still has to be contended with. The crocodile was still running roughshod around Grandma’s.
Again, this particular crocodile could not kill me, but I can’t live life with a fucking crocodile running around. It can’t kill me, but I can’t really live with it around. The dream switched the scene back to the basketball court, and I remember Chris Paul was trying to inbound the ball but couldn’t because the croc was being a nuisance. I think what this represents is that my love of sports has been invaded by the crocodile – or gambling. They haven’t existed without each other for a long time. The way I bet on sports is not through a bookie. If that was the case, I feel that the crocodile in the dream would be a lot bigger and deadly. Fortunately, that isn’t the case. Eventually, the croc got inside the house. At this point, I stuck the dog living with me currently on the croc. When the dog finally got the upper hand on the croc, and it looked like the croc was going to die, the croc morphed into one of the dogs that live at Grandma’s House. A dog that I happen to really like. I had to pry the dog off of the other dog in order to save the other one’s life. End of dream.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the final scene of the dream is a disheartening depiction of sometimes having to kill something you love. The truth is that I love sports, but I love having action on it more. However, “having action” is having a crocodile threaten the mind frame necessary to achieve the conception of paradise. Jung is quoted as saying about dreams that they are “fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and runs into an impasse.” To be honest, I am not entirely sure what the hell that means, but I know that dreams are trying to tell us something. It is very clearly not us speaking to ourselves. After all, we are unconscious. Asleep. So, what is it exactly that is speaking to us through these unconscious dramas? Whatever it is, in the case of The Snake & the Croc, it is pretty obvious to me that I am being told that there is more work to be done. I wonder how my vasana is with crocodiles. Something tells me that I am not exactly Steve Irwin.
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