dreams:   our most personal letter from and to ourselves

        By the close of 1982 i felt as if i had "bottomed out" trying to discover a way to make money that somehow was true to my own dearest self and life and did not violate my integrity. i understood all-to-clearly the potential for construction shortening one's life and had had my fill of pounding nails with Steve. Even though the piano technician's path was not physically lethal, i felt i wood be "selling myself down the river" with the sense that tuning and rebuilding wood not nourish me in the longer haul as i knew whatever i did to bring home the bacon had to.
        During 1982 i had met a piano technician in San Francisco named Richard Moody and worked for him learning how to rebuild a number of player pianos. Like Bruce, i had always enjoyed understanding the mechanics of the way things worked. Working with Richard, i became very intrigued with the mechanism of the "air system" that worked the miniature bellows for each of the 88 keys. He also owned an Atari and i had my first exposure to PacMan and Missile Command. That was the first and last time i've ever found computer games engaging but during that period, i was very caught up in endless hours of ever higher scores and warhead detonation.
        But by the end of December i felt i was slowly heading for the junk pile and was more inclined to be open to possibilities i hadn't previously considered. i had been keeping a dream journal since February and was impressed that the more i wrote them down, the more i remembered when i'd wake up. i had read Jung's posthumous autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections when i was twenty and had been exceedingly taken with his own propensity for "self-honesty" -- for being able to see himself free from the self-deception so prevalent in our society. i'd also read the beginning of Man and His Symbols.
        From both these books i became quite curious about dreams and their significance. i believe Jung at some point wrote that a dream is the most personal letter we'll ever receive from our self to our self. On January 16, 1983 i had a dream that was integral to my own continued growth and development which i include here in full:

going to a place that's 4 or 5 stories where things fade and become other things good & bad and being there with Carol, Ok and Steve H. Up on the 4th floor Carol is telling me about these little creatures called Tazzios that know our names and all about us, and can tell us all sorts of things as well as make all sorts of things seem to happen. I'm with her & Steve & one of these Tazzios and she says go on and take it up to the 5th floor room and ask it anything, you'll see what I mean. So I do, and it does know so much that I can't understand how it can. It also makes me think I'm in a Maharajah's tent (mine?) with an infinitude of blankets/rugs at one point that are in a pile on the side of the room. Then somehow, it seems that I am down on the 2nd floor but that the place has slightly altered. There's some kind of changing of people that's taking place where I go outside and around the building and then am supposed to come back in, but, I think, I stay out too long (we're going around & around the building) and when I finally get back in I am correct in my fear that I now do not have my previous identity (was I some sort of detective?) and am numberless. Because I do not have a # (or name) I don't know where I'm supposed to go and after a short time get pursued by some "regulator". I go back to the 5th floor to try to find a Tazzio to get me back to where Carol & Ok & Steve are. En route I can reach Ok audioly and ask him for help in finding the Tazzio or getting back & he says "Just become expansive" and I'll find the Tazzio and it'll help me alright. I'm somewhat afraid of the inexplainableness of the Tazzios.

        Throughout my life, Carol has been a fundamental source of love, inspiration, and sense of inner well-being. Of all the people i've ever known, it is from Carol i know the strongest experience of unconditional love. With her eldest and youngest sons present, a quorum of my real-life "adopted fam'blee" is present and participating in this situation. At the time, the dream's theme was fundamentally perceived to focus on the process of transformation. The ineffable and utterly mysterious wisdom of dreams is in full evidence in that it is Carol who introduces me to the Tazzio. i had read some about the "senex", the inner wise old man. i felt the Tazzio was a symbol of this age-old unforgotten wisdom we each contain and carry within, even though we become cut off from it by the conditioning we are subjected to growing up in a culture that has lost its own sense of place in and belonging to uni verse.
        The experience alone with the Tazzio amplifies my appreciation of its apprehension of reality. The perception that I can't understand how it can know what it knows emphasizes the importance of irrational events and awareness of things beyond and outside the rational experience and understanding of consciousness. The Maharajah's tent seems to impart the understanding that i possess great wealth of a foreign-to-my-western-sense nature. Blankets enfold us while asleep with a cocoon-like sense of security and warmth, and rugs adorn the floor which i interpreted as symbolizing the essential nature of having a solid foundation underfoot. In an inner context, the message was seen to be that i possess a stable and rich basis within my self -- for one such as i who is so inclined to doubt myself and my own abilities, this was a communique of critical import.
        Then i find myself "outside" the domain of the Tazzio where people are changing and i sense being outside too long. Once again inside, i find myself directionless and pursued by an agent or representative of conformity. i attempt to ascend to a higher level of awareness to regain my connection with the centering influence of my adopted fam'blee via the Tazzio's ability to go beyond the rational and in transit i am able to perceive Ok's recommendation to Just become expansive. Those three words became a veritable guiding light for me from that point forward.