The Invisible Man
(First Dream)
“I was in some sort of shopping mall near an escalator. In the mall there
were a lot of people looking for me. All of them had weapons and had a
very ominous presence. I was hiding and they couldn’t see me. Then I had
this feeling that I could be invisible, that is, I could just walk right by
them and they would not be able to see me. So I did, and they didn’t see
me.”
(Second Dream)
“I was in a prison camp and people were about to torture me. I decided
that I could just walk out and I did. No one did anything; they couldn’t
touch me.”

One of the wonderful things about dreams is that you often find yourself doing things that, in waking life, you are completely unable to do. For instance, you can walk through walls or fly or jump really far. The purpose of these dreams is to show you, through the appropriate metaphor, spiritual abilities that exist inside of yourself. When you learn the
inner meaning and can release the energy from inside of yourself, you will be able to function in your life with a lot more competence. It isn’t that after this dream I would be able to be invisible, but there is something about the energy that enables me to be more competent and guarded, as if I were invisible.

The end of both of these dreams is invisibility. That is, I am capable of walking away from the danger in both circumstances. Being invisible means to go “inside” yourself, into the invisible realm. In the dreams, the problems occur in the beginning. The end is positive, but the beginning is negative. This means that I already am capable of accessing my true self in the invisible realm, which is positive. In the beginning, my fears create a situation that does not allow the invisibility to flourish in real life. Invisibility works in my dream life, not in my waking life, because my fears are too intense to let it happen. In dream-work, the goal always is to make everything positive, to systematically work through the dreams so that each negative aspect is transformed into a contrasting, positive activity. When you do the transformation work, you end up with positive upon positive, thereby increasing your competency. When I work through the fears presented in the dream, it will not only allow the invisibility to fully function, it will also release the energy that has been repressing my fears. When I work through this, it is like a double bonus. It actually shows the double value of invisibility, both in positive
situations and in negative ones.

These dreams present two of my fears that are closely related: the fear of being shot down and the fear of being tortured. I always find it easier to work on an issue that I can take responsibility for, so I try not to blame others for my fears, even when I have been in situations where people have behaved badly. As long as I characterize them as the culprits and myself as the victim, I am less capable and have little control over the situation. When I am both the culprit and the victim of my own inadequate inner workings and negative patterns, I know that I can do something about them. However, making such an assertion and actually doing something about it are two different things. Something is so universal, so easy, so temporarily satisfying about blaming others. People rarely escape its
seductive attraction. When I do my own personal work, I usually start out being furious toward someone else. I blame them and pin lots of guilt on them. Then I slowly and laboriously work through the problem until I find that, whatever I have accused the other person of doing to me, I already am doing to myself. It is a major blow to the ego when you come to the realization that you are the guilty party and you are doing it to yourself.
It also is a huge blessing, because the fears can be transformed into positive opposites, resulting in new abilities and new patterns of positive energy. The energies released from the negative aspects of the dreams are actually a blessing; they make the therapeutic work much easier.

Usually when you have fear, you are facing a situation that already has played itself out in your life, often repeatedly. This is a little different from anxiety, which is an emotion that makes an illusion out of a future negative possibility. Anxiety is related to an illusion, whereas fear is usually based on experience, sometimes the experiences of parents who pass the fear down through their negative responses to things. Even cultures pass down fears based upon negative sentiments about past events. In the two dreams presented here, the origin of the fears doesn’t really matter. I have shot myself down and tortured myself repeatedly.

Consequently, studying my dreams may reveal some new understanding, but it
will always have the same result, the blocking of a fully functional ability to act with invisibility. When I stop putting myself down and stop torturing myself, then invisibility will be more accessible. This is the goal of the dream.

Unlike waking life, in the dream life the end of things comes at the beginning, because the spiritual world wants you to know your purpose, your goal, your objective, before you begin acting. The purpose of the dream is to get me to stop putting myself down and to stop torturing myself, so that invisibility can work. In order to stop doing the negative things, I need to do their positive opposites, which then will allow the really ositive energy to flow.

When I meditate about these dreams, the intrigue first wraps itself up in the ability to be invisible. However, as my understanding increases, the real jewels are in the positive opposites of the negative emotional states. I know that I have the ability to be invisible even without understanding what it is. It is something that I already am competent in intuitively, but I am not yet adept at just letting it flow and work as it wants to. This is because I am forever putting myself down and torturing myself. Overcoming these dreadful patterns is the work. Putting yourself down and then torturing yourself to make sure that you stay down is universal; it exists in every culture. It is hard to imagine that we could ever have peace in the world unless we change these characteristics of humanity.

People have patterns of behavior based upon the false belief that criticizing others and pointing out their faults will improve them. All around the world, people believe it, even though study after study verifies that the opposite is true. Many people believe that when you point out to omeone what they are doing wrong, they know where to improve. However, the research indicates that when you criticize people and are negative
toward them, they feel less motivated, tend to quit more easily, and have poorer relationships.

If I would do the opposite of putting myself down and torturing myself through criticism, blaming and guilt-mongering, I could be more motivated, stay with things longer, and have fantastic relationships. What are the opposites? The opposite of putting oneself down is lifting oneself up by acknowledging the positives and adhering to positive patterns rather than the negative ones. The opposite of torture is extreme gentleness, a quality that I have not practiced very well. Some people regard gentleness as a weakness. Gentleness allows weakness, but it isn’t a weakness in itself. When you make room for weakness, it means that it is permissible to have flaws and faults. If gentleness is such a positive force, why do cultures shy away from its power? We do not stay in the state of gentleness as a world culture, because, when we are faced with a fault or weakness, we experience discomfort. Instead of embracing the discomfort and learning from it, we
run from it and then criticize and blame others. Gentleness allows us to embrace our imperfections, and then it helps us to transform them by making lots of room for them. When we lift ourselves up by finding the positives, and when we also have lots of room for imperfection, without having to be mean and nasty or turn away from it, then personal
transformation is not only possible, it is an easy and smooth process.

Imagine that you planned an event in which everything went well except for a few things. If you use these two strategies, not only are you likely to repeat success, but you also are likely to achieve a new level the next time you attempt it. In the evaluation process, you can spend the majority of the time reminding yourself of all of things that went well. When you do this, it fixes success in your memory; this makes it more automatic and
habitual. This way, you can take the thing that is the biggest weakness and use it to develop new qualities within yourself. If you focus on the weakness, instead of the success, or if you focus too much energy on the weakness and not enough on the success, then you will be practicing the weakness. You will be diminishing or forgetting your success, which could esult in your quitting the projects, becoming less motivated, and losing important relationships.

All new abilities first start in the world of ideas, the world of non-material reality, like the dream world, and then later they appear in action in the real world. A new building or piece of art doesn’t create another new building. A new piece of art or new building emanates from new ideas, and new ideas are produced by their creators going into the realm of the invisible to do their creation. This is where you can find wonderful new ideas and energies. The best way to do it is by creating an extremely positive atmosphere and being really gentle with your weaknesses; you can work on them with the care and tenderness of a good nurse or a good doctor, whose presence allows healing to take place. When a baby is born into this world, mothers are instinctively gentle with their babies and almost always positive. They recognize the weaknesses of their children and give them
lots of room and encouragement. This is how babies develop. However, somewhere in the process of development, of maturation, the whole world forgets how the baby developed. Imperfection is no longer given lots of space and embraced. Instead of being gentle and encouraging, we become harsh, and judgmental, and critical. Our fears take over and squeeze out the positive. We forget how easy success and transformation can be; we
dwell on the negative things, and then quit things easily and have poor relationships. New ideas and new abilities come from this invisible realm, which is facilitated by remembering the positive and being gentle with our weaknesses as we work to transform them.

Meditation Questions

1. What is the worst thing people say about me? What is the positive opposite?

2. What else do people say about me that is critical? What are the positive opposites?

3. What other things do I criticize about myself? What are the positive opposites?

4. Write a paragraph about how your life would change if you lived out the opposites.