Unsub
Saturday, December 18, 2021
6 a.m. I got up no fewer than four times to record fragments of dreams that in some way seem to form one dream. Can you help me with this, or do we have other fish to fry?
Other than the word “unsub” which remains mysterious to you, you see clearly enough what the message is, don’t you?
Well –
[paraphrasing entries made during the night]
- 1 a.m. Someone was searching for something. “Unsub” was used and I knew what it meant in context, but not when I came to record it.
- 1:35. I am uneasy because I promised to do something and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. I noted that the first dream had the same element.
- 3:25. “They” were keeping us all apart, working separately on whatever the problem was. The staff were breaking down. We somehow overheard what the difficulty was, and persuaded them to let us work together rather than in isolation.
- 4:30. Success, quickly. Then I forgot the dream, thinking about Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society” – “O Captain,, my captain.”
- 5:50. And finally, a dream, perhaps in more than one segment, about me, my friends, competition (not necessarily among ourselves), my carelessness, and many other aspects of social interaction, I see now.
Yes, I suppose I see one thread of it, well enough (except for that word “unsub” that I clung to, to write down, though losing the rest of the dream in consequence, and therefore losing the significance of the word.
Okay, we’ll teach you a trick, here. Concentrate on the word that you know was significant, free-associate on it, making occasional notes if appropriate, and see if you cannot thereby link your conscious present-moment self with that dream element by associating your present-moment self with the self of the moment that experienced the dream.
Huh! Interesting idea. Okay, I’ll try it, don’t go away. Although, thinking about it, I don’t see why you can’t be that link, existing outside of present-moment-time constraints.
Well, try it, anyway.
It sounds like computer code. Gosub, in BASIC, for instance. Like spy jargon in memos, or military acronyms. Radio jargon for hams or CBers. I’m getting a combination of Gosub and a negation of it: Unsub, not Gosub. I suppose, stay where you are, don’t go off and execute a subroutine and return. But that’s stretching it.
“Stretching it” is exactly the nature of the exercise. It is designed to help you evade the limits of logic and language (and every manifestation of sequential thinking) and instead function via images, gestalts, non-logical connections, or (more carefully said), emotionally connected. More like dream-state functioning, you see, only you piggy-backing to leave a record.
So, don’t judge the product, just continue until hopefully something goes “click!”
Yes.
Well, Unsub. Sub-lieutenant. (Where did that come from? Is there such a thing?) Accept no substitutes. A submarine of the United Nations. This could get silly.
Remember that the actual connection did not make sense to conscious processing, hence disappeared.
Okay. “Unsub” in the context of somebody searching for something, and my worrying I won’t be able to do something I’d promised to do. The original (no substitute.) But I had gotten that as a thought a moment ago.
Sometimes repetition means you’re getting warm.
Hadn’t thought of that.
When you run dry, add another element even if it wasn’t strictly connected. Robin Williams, for instance: You began thinking of him and that scene from the movie not during your dream but in writing it down. Why? It came to you; you didn’t fetch it.
True. Well, that scene involved the boys’ tribute to him as he was leaving. Their grief, their appreciation, their love really, and his acknowledgement, warm, grateful, proud. All of it in defiance of the institutions and the rules.
It had a valedictory feel, did it not?
It did. And in my dream it was tacked onto success through a group effort.
That segment, that originally looked to you like a happy ending to the four dreams, then followed by one dream more (in several acts).
Yes, a dream of trivial contentions and schemings (there was something political in one of them) and the complications of dealing with others.
So, what do you need, a road map and an Indian guide?
Maybe not. Still don’t know what the point or context of “Unsub” was, though.
Would you rather have that, or the overall message of the dream?
Both, actually.
In any case, you have a method of approach for the future.
So we do. Thanks. There was something else, but it fled. I guess I’ll transcribe and send this. I wasn’t sure I would, but I decided to go with your advice to proceed openly and censor later if need be, and it does help. But we have a few minutes. Anything you’d like to add?
Remember that dreams don’t usually mean one thing. They may be looked at as Jung looked at them, as compensations for your conscious attitude. That is, you are thinking too highly of yourself in some context; a dream says, not so much. Or you are thinking too little of yourself in some context. A dream says, you underrate yourself in this regard. This isn’t everything a dream does, and it is not what it does every time, but still it is something to consider. “How is this dream mirroring some aspect of me that I am not sufficiently aware of?” That is always a good question to ask, and sometimes it will shed surprising light on an otherwise puzzling or obscure situation.
So this leaves only one question: Why “Unsub”?
Yes, very funny. When you find out, let us know.
That’s what Bob Monroe used to say when asked an unanswerable question: “Go find out, and come back and tell me, and we’ll both know.”
That’s how it works. Things don’t come front and center arbitrarily. There is always a reason, obvious or not. Pursuing your own puzzles is always going to be more productive than trying to attack someone else’s, and at the same time, you are likely to get more out of it than anyone else could, because it emerges from your far-flung context: everything you are, everything you have thought, felt, read, heard, imagined; everything and everybody you connect to in various ways 3D and non-3D. How could anybody’s unique combination of elements be duplicated? We keep telling you, you are each unique and hence irreplaceable. You are not identical cogs in a machine, no matter how it seems.