Dear Leo,

I’m tempted to reply that you should’ve listened to your guru! But then I won’t say it because you probably don’t consider your long post as a creation of your intellect!

Honestly speaking, and with all do respect, I tend not to give too much credential to someone who insist to be perceived as a speaker of truth, who cares to “prove” that he or she has been given a gift by this God or that Goddess in a dream. From my experience, those who really have a gift or are wiser in some ways don’t try to defend or prove themselves the way you did. They don't try to validate their credibility by explaining that in previous dream experiences involving Gods, they received gifts or missions or whatever...

Concerning your reply, you said that :

“(…) we have you advocating Uncertainty and an eternal diffidence as your ideals and highest held values.”

Did you come up with this generalization using your so-called faculty of “True Discernment”? The least you could do is to explain what led you to this conclusion. And it’s the same “problem” throughout your email. To be honest, I have trouble following what you are saying about me because it’s very disconnected with the words I actually used. It would have helped me to understand if you’d had cut and pasted my statements and commented underneath. This way, I would have known where you drew your conclusions from. I don’t even know what the heck I said that could be related to “materialistic virtues”.

Let’s continue , Leo said :

“Of course you can't believe that I can simply discern a Truth that has you all confused. It is a bit like Plato's allegory of the Cave, and you insist that if shadow are all that you can see, then shadows must be all that there is.“

You are right about that one, I don’t believe you discerned a Truth (which of course does not mean that you haven’t). Might I add that we could use the allegory of the cave to illustrate your own behavior as well.? )

Leo also said:

”I have noticed in the past that the people who tend to elaborate on my dream interpretations generally do that -- they elaborate -- they add a level of complexity that is not justifiable by the context of the Dream. “

I actually didn’t elaborate on your dream interpretation, I just criticized it as being too simplistic. I didn’t “add” a level of complexity, I just pointed out that the dream WAS in actuality more complex and elaborated than what O-nieronaut open-mindedly shared with us. I mean, one cannot deny that the short description he provided us was only the surface of it. If you are a lucid dreamer yourself, you are aware that we cannot describe the fullness of one’s experience in only 10 lines. There is a lot that ACTUALLY happens in the dream, even if we don’t recall everything. (And it’s not because we forget something about the dream that it suddenly doesn’t matter in the dream interpretation.)

This is why I was saying that the “sample” was too small to dare claiming to make a serious and definitive interpretation about it. Just the fact that O-nieronaut pointed out later that his cat had kitten and that he felt guilty about giving them away refers to the complexity I’m talking about. This event is potentially linked with his dream.

Interpreting a dream independently of someone’s personal history is from my humble point of view a very limited way of interpreting dreams. I’m thereby not advocating uncertainty in the sense that we can never know the truth, I’m more suggesting that we should learn to deal with uncertainty when it arises. That if for some reasons, lack of information or if we don’t know or don’t have enough info to make a decision, it’s better to deal with that fact. Like Sartre said (and I’m not an Existentialist in case you would “accuse” me of being one  ), “Very few people can deal with the fact that they do not know”. And I find that it’s true. As soon as we don’t make sense of what happens to us, we usually grab the first interpretation that comes in our mind to get the feeling that we understand what is happening to us. But what we sometimes fail to see is that in that very interpretation of reality lies a set of beliefs that can limit ourselves. So maybe it would be wise to be careful of what we choose to believe in.

Leo said:

“Besides, you come out from your vacation and wonder at the fame of this Leo Character and at your first reading see nothing to justify it. But maybe you need to evaluate the anecdotal evidence. Why is it that this Leo has something of some minor reputation in dream interpretation? Think about it. Might it be that people see his interpretations as ringing true in their heart of hearts. “

I’m sorry Leo, I don’t give credit to someone just because other people give him credits. I know that’s what you’d like and the fact that you even mention it to support your credibility doesn’t help your cause either. It’s like a guru saying : “Listen, don’t you see all these guys following me? It must mean that I’m right, right?” Well, actually, no! ; And especially not when someone who uses this as an argument to validate his credibility.

Btw, I’m not extending my judgment to people who like Leo’s interpretations and I’m not saying that he is “wrong”. I just wanted to bring some nuances that I thought were important. It seemed too “black or white” to me, leaving aside a whole array of different potential greys…

Leo said :

“But, yes, I know, the Materialist in you revolts at such easy surrender to what must seem to you only so much superstitious manipulation”

Here’s the “materialist” thing coming up again… If anyone knows why Leo sees me as a materialist, please feel free to share your wisdom with me, as I don’t make the connection with what I previously wrote. In anyways, I don’t consider what you said as superstitious manipulation. It was, as I said earlier, just a simplistic interpretation that I wanted to point out.

And Leo finally ended up with a charming:

“If you had your way, everyone would be as confused and confusing as yourself”

Did I sound like I was confused? Or did my words confused you? Hehe, in any ways, you are right that I’m often confused. The more I invite critical thinking and self-awareness in my life, the more I discover that I actually know very little, that I held many beliefs just out of insecurity. And that does bring confusion. So yes, it also happens sometimes that my words confuse people, because they sometimes get to see things in a different way, a way that also makes sense but yet, they have trouble integrating it. It just doesn’t seem to fit with their belief system and they are right, it challenges their belief system. So what is the reaction when our belief system is challenged? We usually flush it out ASAP to recover a sense of equilibrium, unless we can deal with the uncertainty and confusion, to eventually come out with a more flexible and complex view of the world....


Apologies

I apologize for everyone for such a long message. I also apologize for being so clumsy at expressing my ideas in a non-threatening peaceful way. It’s obvious that I will fail in having a constructive and positive impact on Leo because I was way too “aggressive” in the way I expressed myself. So I think I kinda wrote this big msg for nothing… … Anyway, my point was NOT to attack his credibility because I don’t even know the guy, I didn’t even read any other post that he wrote, which can be good in a way because I didn’t have any previous preconceptions of him. This being said, if anyone has any feedback, personal or in group, please feel free to share with me.
John