I initially demurred, and found myself near the back of the pack rushing the fences. I couldn’t help but thinking “you are joking, right?” (as a side note, I normally know when I am in a dream, and have a fair amount of control–I choose where to go, and what to do, and can usually levitate, use psychokinesis, and sometimes even walk through walls–but have learned it seems to be best if I just watch things go and try and learn whatever lesson it is trying to teach me.)
But they weren’t. In this “game” people on both sides were killed. I participated on “my side”, those charging the defenses, but decided after a time to “recycle” the game, and it started again. I was supposed to lead the charge for my detachment, while banging a cowbell. I lost my gun, so I again demurred, but then decided I was being a coward, and jumped to the front, and directly confronted the “enemy” commander, who threw down a knife, initiating conflict again.
We fought for a while, and my side lost. I retreated, and had to rerun my retreat–I have a rewind button in my dreams, sometimes–a couple times, but I got away.
Several thoughts occurred on waking. One, that this reminds me a lot of the frequent internecine warfare between the Romans. In one battle in modern Hungary, some 56,000 legionaries died on the same day. You would have identically clad and armored and trained men who spoke the same language–albeit sometimes as a second or third language–killing one another in support of their man’s side in a dynastic dispute.
It is natural to run and hide from conflict. It was only training, and particularly tying a conditioned response to the word “coward”, which allowed such senseless slaughters, among men who should have been brothers. For their part, the “barbarians” also prized courage, and they had often the added motivation of fighting for their lands, although of course the frequent cause of conflict is that they, too, had stolen other peoples stuff and raped and enslaved them, and the Romans were just protecting a part of their Empire.
And I thought of the religious conflicts between the Homoousians and the Arians, the vapidity of the difference between their creeds, and the knives that were stabbed in the necks and hearts and livers of at least thousands of men, woman, and likely even children over this ridiculously, obscenely small difference. It would be no different than separating out a Boy Scout pack and waging war over the exact way to tie a particular knot, or the exact requirements to be an Eagle Scout. Surely it is a bad joke. But it happened.
Then of course in terms of deep psychodynamics I am realizing that both the actively conscious part of me, and my defended side are on the same side. There is no need to push it, contend with it, or do anything but welcome it. It FEELS like a problem, because it has caused me a lot of grief and pain. But on the other side, no it hasn’t: it has done its best, in its childlike but very watchful way, to protect me from existential assaults. It is to be befriended.
In some important respects, it is likely best never to be overly angry with ourselves, even when we “screw up” badly. That screw up happened because we never learned to relax and to interact with the world in an orderly way. You can suppress screw ups through discipline, but that way you never learn what they had to teach you. You kill off an important part of yourself.
Most of us fail to learn all the lessons we could have learned. We all fail. It is inevitable, and even if it isn’t, it should be treated that way. Because if you insist on learning ALL the lessons you can, you will learn less than if you took a patient, welcoming, kind approach, and let those timid sensations and feelings gradually crawl and flitter out into the light. When things organically expand, it has NOTHING to do with will, except in its absence.