Fighting for the Queen's Jewels
(I have a dream to share)
A shout called me to the door. “Someone’s here to see you.”
I felt lazy, but swung my feet off the bed I’d been resting on and stretched. Gee, it was warm today. I felt comfortable and didn’t want to move, but walked to the door. Then I stopped, dead in my tracks, like they say. Here, indeed, someone was waiting for me, though a more curious person would be hard to imagine. He sat on what looked like an old Volkswagen bus with a camel seat fitted into the cutaway sky vent. He wore a ragged tunic and cloak, long hair and a strange smile. I turned on my heels and walked away at the absurdity of the sight, when I felt a chill and stopped as the man spoke in dry, wispy tones:
“I have been looking for you. Yes, you seem to be the one.”
With him was a handyman, small and childlike, who moved off to one side where I stood. I didn’t like the feel of this.
“Look, whoever you are,” I stammered, stalling for time, to think, “you’re mistaken. We’ve never met.” But the strange man jumped down, lithe for one of his apparent age and moved, I suspected, rather gracefully beneath a lot of tattered old robes. His confident approach unnerved me, and left me with little I could recall in the way of self defense at the moment, though I instinctively settled into a karate cat stance, ready for what might come.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he laughed. “On the contrary, I’ve come to see if you’re the one to inherit the privilege to defend”…and then he made reference to what I understood to be the Queen’s jewels.
“I don’t want the job,” I told him. But the small man bounded up to me and with a somersault meant to launch an attack at my chest. I sidestepped him and with an Aikido sweep finished for him an arc he launched aggressively towards me; my hands moving to guide his legs into a full circle. He fell lithely back into place.
“Well done,” the old one rasped in reference to my action. “When you have defended yourself thus ten thousand and one times from or for me, then I can retire, and you will take my place.”
[This dream I actually had years ago, but I include it here because it relates to my unconscious effort to recover the feminine strengths within, the Queen, psychological forces which can help me attain health, vitality, resilience and happiness, and her jewels, the intrinsic value or gifts I see in myself. An older, frighteningly odd component of (ageless) wisdom poses a puzzle: struggle for self-determination, or yield to self-defeat. Either way I have to fight within myself for (Jungian) individuation.]
A shout called me to the door. “Someone’s here to see you.”
I felt lazy, but swung my feet off the bed I’d been resting on and stretched. Gee, it was warm today. I felt comfortable and didn’t want to move, but walked to the door. Then I stopped, dead in my tracks, like they say. Here, indeed, someone was waiting for me, though a more curious person would be hard to imagine. He sat on what looked like an old Volkswagen bus with a camel seat fitted into the cutaway sky vent. He wore a ragged tunic and cloak, long hair and a strange smile. I turned on my heels and walked away at the absurdity of the sight, when I felt a chill and stopped as the man spoke in dry, wispy tones:
“I have been looking for you. Yes, you seem to be the one.”
With him was a handyman, small and childlike, who moved off to one side where I stood. I didn’t like the feel of this.
“Look, whoever you are,” I stammered, stalling for time, to think, “you’re mistaken. We’ve never met.” But the strange man jumped down, lithe for one of his apparent age and moved, I suspected, rather gracefully beneath a lot of tattered old robes. His confident approach unnerved me, and left me with little I could recall in the way of self defense at the moment, though I instinctively settled into a karate cat stance, ready for what might come.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he laughed. “On the contrary, I’ve come to see if you’re the one to inherit the privilege to defend”…and then he made reference to what I understood to be the Queen’s jewels.
“I don’t want the job,” I told him. But the small man bounded up to me and with a somersault meant to launch an attack at my chest. I sidestepped him and with an Aikido sweep finished for him an arc he launched aggressively towards me; my hands moving to guide his legs into a full circle. He fell lithely back into place.
“Well done,” the old one rasped in reference to my action. “When you have defended yourself thus ten thousand and one times from or for me, then I can retire, and you will take my place.”
[This dream I actually had years ago, but I include it here because it relates to my unconscious effort to recover the feminine strengths within, the Queen, psychological forces which can help me attain health, vitality, resilience and happiness, and her jewels, the intrinsic value or gifts I see in myself. An older, frighteningly odd component of (ageless) wisdom poses a puzzle: struggle for self-determination, or yield to self-defeat. Either way I have to fight within myself for (Jungian) individuation.]
70-79, MNew