Do you Believe in the Unconscious?

               Do you believe in the unconscious?  Do you dream?  Do you believe in things bigger than yourself?  I do.  I’ve seen evidence of this too many times.  I am repeatedly awed by the power of my unconscious.  Therefore, I am writing the next few posts about my unconscious and the lessons it has provided me.  

     I came across something that I found incredible, several months after my mother was killed.  I was doing my best to withstand the hurt. The grief was intolerable. I didn’t have the resources to get therapy, so I did therapy on myself.  Some of it was just allowing myself to feel the pain and cry.  There was also deeper work.  I had to work through issues of anger, guilt, blame and revenge.  Some of it made no sense, but the feelings were there just the same.  Who could I blame for losing my mother?  

     One at a time, I would face the cast of characters.   Obviously I was angry at the person who killed her.  But I was never 100% sure who that was.  I was angry at the police for being useless.  What about my father?  If he had been there, she wouldn’t be dead.  I was angry at him for having his heart attacks, dying and leaving us.  Then there was God.  What kind of a God would have let this happen?  God certainly dropped the ball.  There was the anger at my mother.  She got herself killed.  She left me.  Finally, I had to face myself.  She wanted me to move home. She had asked me to move home, only a month before she was killed.   If I had been there, could I have saved her?  Would I have ended up dead too?  

     I needed questions answered. I knew just enough therapy to be dangerous.  I used my skills to help me mourn.  Sometimes I would talk to this cast of characters in the empty chair, ala Fritz Perls.  I would pretend that my mother was in the chair and I would confront her.  I asked her why she died and left me.  Then I would switch seats and talk for her.  “I didn’t want to leave you.  I didn’t choose to die.  I love you and I wanted to be with you.”  Then after a while I had my father join us.  I would confront him on his smoking and the end result, his heart attacks.  I used this dialogue technique to help me work through my issues.  I had few  people to talk to.  So I wrote in a journal.  I had started the journal the year before when I was an intern.  Then it was a learning exercise.  After my mom’s death it became a lifeline.  I could talk to it, and express any issue.  I came to cherish journaling. 

     Several months after my mom died, something made me turn to read the entrees in the journal from before her death.  At first it seemed the calm before the storm.  Then I found a dream I had recorded, the night before she died.  The dream was like a slap in the face when I read it.  

     In the dream, I was driving the car.  My mother was in the passenger seat and my father (who was deceased) was sitting in the backseat.  As we drove along, my mother told me to pull over.  I stopped next to a dirt road, leading up into a woods.  My mother got out and started walking up the path by herself.  I protested.  My father stopped me and told me to proceed.  He told me that she had to take this walk by herself.  We had to go on without her.  We left my mother there and drove on.  That was the end of my dream.  

     Some people would say this was a coincidence.  I don’t believe in coincidence.  This was a premonition that I did not recognize.  It was a warning of what was to come.  I can remember the fear I had for my mother during the dream.  Here was my father telling me to accept it.  This dream helped me accept losing her.  Mysteries like this make me believe that the universe functions on many, many levels.  Sometimes, just sometimes, the universe will bend enough to let you know that the world is bigger than our own single existence.  Because of the power of what was going to happen, my unconscious tuned into a future event.  I can’t begin to explain it.  But I certainly recognize it for what it was.