Patient: I recently saw Inside Job, a documentary about the economic meltdown that almost caused the collapse of the country as well as a worldwide one. I have heard many of the names of the people who were interviewed. Now faces were attached to the names. All were stolid, "dead." I will explain this as we go on.

I wanted to kill them all. I wanted them to be charged and found guilty and deprived of everything for what they consciously did. I wanted them paraded in the streets before the people whom they impoverished.

The film showed a congressional hearing where one congressman asked a person, "How could you do this? Have you no feelings? You emailed your colleagues that you sold absolutely worthless instruments." Of course, there was no answer. Being dead, they could not answer. Being without feelings, the question would seem strange to the person sitting opposite the Congressional Committee.

How my dreams reflect this, or if they do, I do not know.

Dream 1

I see a beautiful sixteen-year-old African girl in a green dress. The dress is very full and it is very heavy at the bottom. So heavy she cannot move. She has to crawl around on the floor.

The patient rolls around in a chair to show me the clumsiness of movement.

Dream 2

And then my husband David and I are walking in the desert trying to get to the airport to catch a flight. It seems that we’ll never make it in time since we’re on foot. A man on a camel stops to talk. We tell him our plight. He says, "I live one half hour away. Come, I have a car. I will take you."

Maybe he is you, Dr. Bail, having white hair, yet he doesn't look like you.

Dream 3

I am at my parents’ house. They are talking to my brother, who has recently seen a doctor about his emotional problems. They want to know what the doctor's diagnosis of him was. Did he say he was bipolar? My brother says the diagnosis does not matter. I walk past them in the hallway going to the bathroom. For some reason I am in my dad's bathroom and the color scheme of the tiles are pink and white. The tiles are made of pink soap. My mother's bathroom has a color scheme of blue and white. Since she’s associated with the color blue and my dad with pink, I assume this means that she wears the pants in the family. Growing up, my brother’s chores were more masculine (mowing the lawn, taking out the trash), while mine were more feminine (dusting, folding laundry). I leave the bathroom, and pass my parents, who are still interrogating my brother about his diagnosis. He insists that no matter what the doctor’s diagnosis is, it doesn’t matter. As I walk by, I say out loud that my brother is right.

Dr. B: I agree with you and your brother. A diagnosis is mostly a matter for the insurance companies. The whole structure of medicine rests on the diagnosis given to the patient. I am not saying it is unimportant but I think what you mean, and you can correct me, is really whether or not the doctor knows how to get into the substance of a diagnosis and work through the problems with a patient, meaning the origin of the illness and the elaboration of that illness.

The patient nodded. This patient is the young woman who is discussed in my essay "The Cat's Meow." She went on to describe the duties she and her brother had growing up, which were, as she mentioned before, assigned according to gender.

Dr. B: What about the man on the camel?

Patient: I thought it was you but now as I think about it, it was really M.D. We had been at his house last week. His house is immense, in the heart of town. It has some 15 bathrooms. It was just enormous.

Dr. B: He is obviously wealthy. In the dream where were you going?

Patient: I didn't know but he was offering a shortcut. We were just walking the walk in the desert. I guess I am reluctant to ask him to our tiny place. I don't want to have to feel like he pities us or looks down on us for living in an apartment.

Dr. B: And what about the African girl?

Patient: I was attracted to her. I did kiss her.

Dr. B: Why?

Patient: I don't know.

Dr. B: Let me say what I think about the man. My thought was on hearing the dream that this man was on his high horse looking down on you.

Patient: We wanted to take a shortcut. I guess there are no shortcuts in this work.

Dr. B: If there were, I would be the first one to offer them to you. Now coming to the girl, I think she represents the verdant earth which you and everyone sees as damaged and burdened to the point of inability to clearly step forward and she represents you as well. You are down to yourself and your emotional damage. (As I say this, the patient begins to cry silently.) But there is a difference. Your mother did not damage you intentionally. These men, all of them, consciously intended to harm the larger community of Americans and the world. They knew what they were doing. They planned it.

COMMENTARY

Inside Job is, as it states, a concise, compelling account of the financial meltdown in America and elsewhere. It is well known by now that lack of regulations, ballooned and worthless assets, gambling, and no accountability were the main factors in that meltdown.

I was struck by the similarity to the mother’s imprint—a process that differs in one respect: it is unconscious. However, there is no accountability to the mother for the segueing of the infant’s future life just as there is no accountability for the segueing of her own life. I put this forward not as an opportunity to point fingers but as a fact to be considered in its consequences.

The men who engineered the meltdown are all highly educated and took advantage of the stringently rewritten laws put in place after the Great Depression of FDR’s time. The fact that these prohibitions were quietly undone indicates a premeditation to loot the country and the world.

The important factor for these people would then be no accountability, and this too was established.

In the private domain of the family, the mother is usually idealized. Although people talk about bad mothers and bad fathers, this is not the general view of the public. Idealization is a state of mind that rests upon denial. These “money” people are exceedingly knowledgeable about money and its uses, especially how to manipulate it, which is seen in what are called derivatives, which are a chimera.

Now with success in sight, with all restrictions lifted, with no accountability, no downside for any of these individuals, there readily comes into being a state of omnipotence. Anything they do is possible and wonderful. Omnipotence, too, is based on a great denial of reality, as is idealization.

As one looks at the self-satisfied, well-fed faces in the film, one detects no sign of guilt or remorse, except the one man, Mishkin, who betrays anxiety in answering the questions asked.

It can be said this class of individuals is much like the mother, holding the power of the purse and deciding what to do, a decision that might ruin millions of people. If those decisions do harm millions, they claim no responsibility. Instead they chortle their glee in duping the public. No guilt here either, no shame, no depression.

I would surmise in this context these individuals experience their imprint in a terrible way and had to split off that part of the personality that contained the pain. These individuals must have viewed the mother as a cruel being and a cold being who could offer them such pain. They would identify with her. In real life these individuals, now “money” people, would visit that pain on the population with little concern for the consequences.

Mothers’ imprints often leave their children crippled and unable to pursue the tasks of life such as living with one another, relationships between man and woman, between man and man or woman and woman. A few mothers do, however, sense they may have had something to do with a child that cannot step up to the job of living his/her life.

Watching these faces and hearing these voices, I was reminded of the Nazi trials in Nuremberg—same faces, same lack of guilt on them. Everything was denied. With those people, millions were physically killed or destroyed. With the “money” people millions are also destroyed, not physically but monetarily and emotionally, which eventually destroys in the form of physical and mental illness. With the Nazis (Communists, Fascists), the West had to get involved else the entire world could well have been brutalized and enslaved. With the “money” people, powerful political forces protect them and work toward once again letting them run free to do as they will, risk free.

I would add that though it seems these people are not feeling any pain, the damage to their psyches is considerable. Patients who function by omnipotence and denial suffer psychically and there is deterioration of mental functioning. There is a mental law, whether we see it or not, just as there are the physical laws of the universe. We do not have to witness those physical laws to know that they are in operation; likewise with the mental sphere.

It should be noted that we have just witnessed an enormous blow to the mass psyche similar to that which mankind sustained when realizing the barbaric methods of the Nazis. What the “money” people have done and are now permitted to do once again strikes a blow at that already macerated mass psyche. The mass psyche turns to this very class of people and asks that it again lead them. It does this because it is a very regressive entity like an infant who only knows one source of safety—the mother that feeds it. The damage to the infant’s mind is incalculable, for it has to split its mind and deny that the original blow also comes from the very same mother.

It is with a split mind that everyone grows up to adulthood and his or her destiny, to live out whatever further instructions the mother has unconsciously put in that mind. Note that not every child is similarly instructed. Each child has a different meaning to the mother’s unconscious and conscious mind, often without awareness on her part.

So it is with any private individual living in the state of omnipotence, therefore in denial, feeling there is no consequence to whatever he/she does. They have no access to feelings, which are absolutely necessary for us to venture forward on any project in life.

We and the world have just experienced a disaster. The mass consciousness is dazed and inert, and there will certainly be another disaster. It is already in the making, aided by a political structure that functions the same way. By this I mean the men and women who make up the American government.

There is no foundation under us yet we believe, especially in our work, that we have a grounding. It is part of the fabric of society that we have a grounding. It is an illusion.

In the end it is the lack of feeling and the lack of accountability that lets a Nazi or Communist or “money” person come into existence and permits any atrocity by man to man to occur.

It is ironic that the patient dreamed of the "mud man" arising from an ancient sarcophagus, meaning it had to do with feelings long buried in her psyche (see earlier essay, “The Cat’s Meow”). She is a young woman and her features are not frozen as I assume were those of the people she was talking about in the documentary, Inside Job. Those people are deadened and far removed from their feelings. One can also be removed from one's feelings, but this removal is accompanied by the abuse of alcohol, drugs, and other addictions.

Since those dreams, the patient has come a long way toward being in touch with her true feelings and the pain associated with that knowledge and that intimacy. The pain is so hard to take, almost all patients wish to take a shortcut; many do, only to find inevitably there are no shortcuts. (I have discussed this problem at length in my essay, "The Long Hello.")

We have come from the “emerald isle” of Shakespeare's England now transposed to the world which lies, according to the dream, with shorn rainforests, slagged and sheared mountains, streams and rivers poisoned with chemicals, the atmosphere clogged with toxic gases, the shorelines brackish with all manner of dead sea life—all of which might take one thousand years to flourish again. I empathized with the patient.

And what if the millions of people in America were to know what the patient knows? Would we be ready to move? And the people in Europe and Asia—would mankind be ready to move? And in what direction? I would hope to a higher plane.

*************************************************************

In the interim, since I began this essay, there has been a senseless shooting, a congresswoman severely wounded, the extent of recovery is still in question. A number of others were killed, including a nine-year-old child, and still others wounded. The nation paused for a moment. All political actors used the internet to further their political end. Mr. Obama made a stirring speech. I am again struck by how (consciously or unconsciously) he stretches his neck in a manner reminiscent of President Franklin Roosevelt and it seems to me he is like a boy imitating his father.

Soon this event will sink into the underworld as have others like the British Petroleum oil spill where a number of men were killed, the ocean and shoreline decimated. All have gone away. The companies responsible are not being held accountable any more than the people portrayed in the documentary Inside Job are being held accountable. Mr. Obama may be a great speaker, but despite his being a lawyer he brings no justice to the American people. They know it in their bones where it is hidden like so many other unpleasant realities.

The people of this country are numb. Their minds are paralyzed with fear. There is the feeling that suffering and misery are the staff of life and that life must be a tragedy. This is utterly false. As in all times there are men willing to make use of that paradigm and who will see to it that it "remains the truth." That paradigm is an illusion that has been going on a very long time so that it appears to be the truth.

When patients (like the patient above) come to see me and work with me, they too have that illusion—"no exit." However, with their dreams interpreted they get to see another reality and after a time are stunned to see how much in the dark, a never-ending dark, they were living, or what passes for living.

As I have shown above, what can be life changing with the individual can also be so for millions of people on earth. They need only to look in another direction and see another paradigm, which will open up a new vision of how life can really be.

************************************************

The patient below is the old man from my essay "Venice Beach." This patient came in approximately the same day as the patient described above. I thought these two people formed a remarkable duet and each contributed to one half of the title of this essay. We have read the BAD NEWS. Now for the GOOD NEWS.

Patient: Dr. Bail, I had several dreams. This first one is already interpreted. Is that possible? The others are exciting and a little scary.

Dr. B: Why not? If you have worked something through, the manifest content can also be the hidden content.

Patient: This is the dream.

Dream 1

There was a concerted effort to get some new ideas out about God and since God was love, let it be understood there is no Satan. God does not fight, just loves. Satan and all the comments about God are man's idea to rationalize their bad behavior and let some fantastic entity shoulder the blame. Time to put it away and take responsibility.

Patient: That was my dream…I don't know what I could say in association with the dream. It says it all. I know this is not original with me. For example, in colonial times, when the Constitution was written, some of those men were agnostic or atheists. Some voiced the idea that the world would be better off without any religious institutions. I know the argument that religious institutions saved civilizations, preserved texts, and created a sense of order and fear to control the population. Let me tell you another dream.

Dream 2

I was in Australia. There was a huge creature that was going to have a baby. Maybe it was a gigantic bear or maybe it was a huge elephant. There were doctors waiting for the birth to help. Time passed. One doctor said, "Let’s take the creature to the mountain until it happens. It will be more natural."

Patient: Australia now to me means floods, terrible ones, and they remind me of floods in Southern Brazil and that reminds me of the East Coast, which is losing ground to the ocean. It means disasters. And talking of disasters there is Mt. Etna, which has acted up again. What a sight. What power.

Dr. B: What about these ancient animals?

Patient: The scientists have estimated there were such creatures on earth a long time ago. I doubt that doctors or anyone would be there to help with birthing. Doesn't it happen naturally for animals? It is strange, my thinking of destruction at the same time as birth. The end and the beginning. The end for the world is coming. Isn't that what the Mayan prophecy says, 2012?

Dr. B: What prophecy?

Patient: You know, the Mayan prophecy. I thought everyone knew about the Mayan prophecy that the world would end in 2012. That is as far as they predicted.

Dr. B: Why would you be dreaming about these things? Besides the floods in Australia and Brazil, what else has been going on?

Patient: Nothing much on the outside. I do a lot of meditating. I haven't become Edgar Cayce yet. I am sure you know he would fall into a trance on his couch and see marvelous things, whatever would be going on in the universe. People thought he was a crazy so we never used him to our best advantage. Just like Nostradamus, only he had bad luck. Too bad for us. We could use a little accurate prophecy now. All I see is everything going downhill. You don't have to go into a trance for that.

I am talking a lot today. There is a lot for me to tell you. Let me tell you another dream.

Dream 3

The hero went in his old car. His girlfriend followed in hers. They were chased by some bad men but they lost them. He wanted to buy land to build a hospital. He saw a parcel of land that would be suitable, a place where a road could be built so people could come to the hospital. A woman owned this land. He bought it from her. The hero could see an elegant and handsome man thereabout, very graceful like a ballet dancer, and very rich. They bought the land.

At this point I don't see the hospital built but the dream segues to the following...

We worked for the king. We had everything we needed. I see a naked woman holding onto her vagina run across the room to get to the hospital. She is very pregnant. It is as if she did not want the baby to come right then under unprepared conditions.

Dr. B: Let's stop here for a moment. What do you make of what you have said so far?

Patient: I think this is all a metaphor, isn't it? I see a link to doctors and animals waiting for birth. I see this middle-aged woman and handsome rich man. I would have to guess I am in some Shangri-La, that this is the great mother and the rich man is the great father. Only in Shangri-La would we want for nothing, living in the house of the king, in the house of the Lord. That's biblical, isn't it? Does that mean I am ready to go?

Dr. B: I don't think so. I see you looking healthy. You take care of yourself. I agree it is rather a reply to your despair about conditions on earth.

Patient: We are then in a bathroom...

Dr. B: Wait. There is something. As you described the woman, it is clear there is a timing process going on. The right time must occur for the new birth, the birth of the new world. Talk about metaphor. There is an anxiousness in human consciousness and, for all I know, in the universal consciousness. The message is—not yet, not the right time, almost here, almost.

Patient: I think you put your finger on it. It is a process. So let me finish the dream because I think it says something along the lines of what you just said.

Dream 4

We are in the bathroom. I am with a friend. It has flooded. Two expensive Persian rugs have gotten wet. We pick them up and put them on the side of the bathtub. I feel surprisingly that they are not soaked. They are on the way to getting dry. There is water on the floor. We are busy mopping it up.

Dr. B: The bathroom is a place where people eliminate. It is also, in terms of the water, a place of healing. You are saying we will get rid of the emotional turmoil, too much water, and wait for the time when the rugs will be dry. The rugs are symbolical of a true foundation, so that we are in this chaotic universe currently watching the chaos and the imminent birth, healing and cleansing at the same time. It becomes a tandem reality. So it is in the universe, and the hospital would represent where the healing will take place.

Patient: The last dream I had was this.

Dream 5

The building was an elaborate sandcastle, a traditional one. Then it was torn down. This was a ritual. The man there is dressed in a blue pinstripe suit. He goes to town. I watched this a very long time. It was an old custom.

The patient continues...

Patient: When I thought about this dream in conjunction with all the other dreams, I wondered about this ritual. The ritual has to do with something being done over and over in the same way. Now if I think symbolically, as the dreams seem to say I should, I would think that the sandcastles being built and torn down are representing authority, where the king lives and all of the subjects within and without. You will have to help me here, Dr. Bail. Could this be a representation of the world? If we take all the governments of the world, they would represent the castle and the people in the countries would represent all the people living in the castle and outside its walls. What do you think?

Dr. B: I think it is an interesting theory that you are proposing. It takes a great imagination to boil the world down to this. But then I know you have that kind of imagination and I do not take the other dreams you have told me lightly.

Patient: I want to mention one more thing. I thought this took place in Spain and I have been to Spain once or twice. I liked it but I don't know that it has any specific meaning to me. Let me tell you a very strange thought I had about Spain. I hope you don't laugh at me.

Dr. B: What was the thought?

Patient: I thought of watching a bullfight. In reality I have never seen a bullfight though I have watched movies about them.

Dr. B: So what was the strange thought?

Patient: I thought that the bull really stands for God and in this ritual—there you are—bullfighting has been a ritual in Spain. I understand they banned it recently. In line with what we are talking about, I think killing the bull is a denial of the reality. Killing the bull is a way of affirming our power over another tremendous power—the bull. The truth would be that if the bull really represents God, who is more powerful than God? And the idea of killing the bull is a piece of high arrogance and omnipotence, to use your term.

Dr. B: I hear what you say and I am not laughing. You may be right. You know the earth is a sandcastle that is built and rebuilt. It is an elaborate ritual of Source to build, tear down and rebuild. You see it is in your dream time so that what has been known—the sandcastle—for an eon is being broken down and prepared for a new design of life. If we follow your thinking, that is how I would think about it. I would essentially agree with what you say.

COMMENTARY

It would seem foolish to stand behind this statement. Yet scientists have verified great shifts in the environment of the earth necessitating great shifts of the population. I would say, considering the above, that the calamities experienced in the recent past, like the tsunami, like Hurricane Katrina, like the volcano erupting in Iceland and grounding all European air traffic, the earthquake in China, the floods in Australia and Brazil, all these may be considered previews of what is to come.

Perhaps in the Mayan prophecy the world ends in 2012 because something new is coming into the earth's realm, something that has never been seen by human beings in these thousands of years. After all, Divine Mind cannot be fathomed, except after the fact, and slowly at that.

In reading this essay before it went on the website, some people have said the second part was dense. That meant there were not enough links from the dreams to the interpretation. I did not think so but I paid attention to these comments.

I understand that someone coming upon my work and reading this or any other essay might find it dense, even far-fetched. It is important to remember this session is presented as one among hundreds, and that if one were to read this person's progress, which spans years, one would come to see a pattern of development. One session is a glimpse into a life at a particular instant, a combination of his internal world and the external world as he experiences both. The dream is a reflection of these two worlds. The unconscious has the ability to roam anywhere in the universal, the world itself, into any space or any mind. It may then come back with a picture and a happening that completely baffles. When that happens, it tells the analyst that the link between the conscious and the unconscious are so far apart that an intelligible interpretation cannot be made at that time. One has to wait.

However, this is not exactly the case with this patient. He has an extraordinary interest in the world about him, in the politics of this country especially. He is pained by the increasing poverty seeping through the population. He reads of the scams perpetrated upon the people - allowed by the government. The scams practiced in the military until now have been unchecked. He is pained by this information. I do not wish to go into all the convictions he has. They can be perceived by reading the various essays about him.

When he dreams of a process of birth, which is metaphorically one of renewal, I can only think that he is tapping into something big (the big animal) happening and something new happening. When he dreams the naked woman is holding back this birth by holding her vagina, it is apparent to me this renewal is to come however desperate the need for it now exists.

I understand there will be a summit in Davos, Switzerland about the economic state of the world. The delegates coming will be in a somber mood. The discrepancy between the rich and the dispossessed is gaining. These men are oblivious to the danger of such a condition existing or increasing. There have been spontaneous uprisings. The world today is well connected. Where and when there is no future - no relief - the philosophy of the times will then be "I have nothing to lose". That will sway the masses. This country more than any other is choc-a-block full of firearms. People will use them. A risky game is being played. Those in charge may overplay their hand in their exuberant arrogance, which pays no attention to reality.

I would not be surprised if someone in the early 1700's may have dreamed of something new coming into existence, never seen anywhere in the known world - a new form of government, the birth of democracy. It was a flawed delivery at best because humans are impaired from before birth. Consequently every enterprise man undertakes will eventually betray that flaw. Corruption is the inevitable consequence. This condition ultimately sinks all of man's creations.

Patient: Dr. Bail, are you, too, political?

Dr. B: No, I did not think so. Let me explain. If the dreams and the associations have significance for you, I take that into account and show it. I want to show all that I can when there is a mental state that is true of you or any patient and, at the same time, is true of the world at large. I attempt to clarify it with the best knowledge I have, like its origin. If that is applicable to the mass unconscious, I try to point that out. I want to show how our unconscious mental states reveal the devastation visited upon us by the imprint and furthered by the internal saboteur. I can say infants divide along two lines; some with their trauma identify with the mother who is the giver of all things, of life itself. In the mass unconscious authority is registered as the mother. When there is trouble in the land, the mass unconscious tends to vote safety. The infantile self feels preserving one's life in safety is first and foremost. An infant however has no judgment of reality so in the adult state a choice made according to infantile misperception can be dangerous.

I point to Mr. Obama who won so handily in 2008 for the promises he made. The record shows that he has given everything away to the monied class. His words are smooth, his delivery is compelling, at times even thrilling. The people cannot live on words. Actions say he is not in the people's corner. The Republicans calling him Socialist are playing a game. Everyone in Washington knows that. He has given everything away to Wall Street, to the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the health industry and the credit card industry.

He has the perfect disguise. However, his unconscious makes it impossible for him to deliver on his promises to the middle class and to the poor. He has surrounded himself with rich, powerful money men. These are his “mother”. Independents, Democrats and Liberals will continue to be disappointed but he can do no other than what he does. Republicans have nothing to fear. He is “their man”.

Therefore, it is clear that the mass unconscious chose Mr. Obama to be president for it unconsciously knew him to be the essential reflection of their deepest anxieties and fears and – though well dressed and well spoken – is nevertheless, like they are, a frightened infant. As I have indicated above the real power is the various interest groups. The most compelling example of this is a newsreel of Ronald Reagan making a speech presumably to the press when Mr. Donald Regan, at his right side, says to him, “Hurry up.” Donald Regan was Secretary of the Treasury and a former Wall Street man and, of course, a multi-millionaire. Who says that is not talking to a president but to an actor? This scene is clear in the Michael Moore movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story”.

When did the American people lose its White House and its Democracy?

This is much like the infant who gives everything away to the mother. In the fantasy it will save his/her life. Later this infant becoming an adult will placate everyone and go through life in expectant dread.

The well being of everyone in America must be a concern for anyone in America and, of course, it stretches out to the people of the world.

NOTE:

A recent article in the New York Times has the headline “Climate Change Contributed to the Fall of Rome”. This is verified by scientists looking at tree rings of that time. The rings are pale indicating very cold weather. Historians also report the political times were contentious, much like our current times.

January 2011