In two dreams last night I was playing chess with my dad. In waking life I don't play chess, but somebody I know plays chess. In the first dream, my dad made two moves in a row at one point, with the attitude that he deserved it. I quit playing as a consequence. Afterwards I thought something along the lines of "OK, this behavior shows he's really started tipping into senility now".
In the second dream, I had what I thought was a good late-middle-game position with a strong sequence of moves coming. While I left the room for a minute, my mom was moving the pieces around and showing the unavoidable sequence. But when I came back, it seemed she failed to put the pieces back exactly where they should be. So the advantage disappeared. Later in the game, I took a rook without giving it adequate thought first. I was distracted by still being angry about my mom, and also distracted because my dad had been moving the board around. This position led to a situation a few moves later where my dad thought he could get a rook back and another piece, which would lead to a win for him. It seemed to me that there might be a way for me to avoid the loss of the second piece, but I woke up.
In between these two dreams, I also had some impressions of my home town, and regretting that I had to move away, that there was never a path for me to make a living there.
In waking life, I don't have a very close relationship with my dad. If I believed that it was important to have more of a relationship, I could do that, but it isn't clear to me that this would be an improvement. He was a very bad parent in some ways, and has never seemed repentant. I understand that parenting is really difficult, and if he showed any sign of regret, apology, or accepting responsibility for the worst things, I think I wouldn't have trouble forgiving him. But it doesn't seem right to just give him a free pass if he's still not honest and doesn't really care.
He has a better relationship with my brother, whom he treated fairly well, and an even worse relationship with one of my sisters. My brother is happily taking care of both parents, far away from me, which seems to remove some of the obligation for me to do anything. But they'll die in the not too far away future, so if anything could be done better on my end, I'd better figure it out while I still have time.
In dreams, my parents are also somewhat metaphorically representative of providence or my 'higher self', so there are meanings there also.
It seems to me that many people assume that any 'higher spirit' must by definition be wise and benevolent, unless perhaps it is an 'evil spirit', which is assumed to be weaker and peripheral to the deeper, stronger, benevolent spirit. I guess that contemplating any other possibility is too scary. Or perhaps their view reflects the vanity of their personal gods, and their eagerness to suck up to them in hope of receiving favor. In any case, I think that some aspects of people's behavior makes the most sense if I assume that their 'higher selves' are less than entirely free from human shortcomings. I think that some of the 'natural evil' in the world exists because its unavoidable, but some of it is there because the Fates can be dicks, and the amazing intelligence and harmony of Providence also contains some real elements of stupidity and power struggle. Anyway, my perceptions in that regard are likely to affect my dreams about my "parents" also.
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