In a dream, I am swimming across the Hudson River, beneath the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. As I swim along, I reach up and gather thousands of fishing lines, thin filaments that originate from the top of the bridge and hang down to the water. No one is now fishing from above, these are the remnants of past efforts.

When I gather, in one hand, enough entwined lines to form a thick rope, I use it to propel me forward. Then I let go of it and begin gathering new lines. I awaken before reaching the Kingston shore.

Crossing the river is a powerful archetypal symbol of significant Completion, be it with a stage of life, a relationship, a passionate obsession or a dominant attitude. To truly complete, we must be ready to let go of the solid ground we have habitually walked upon, as we venture forward into the unknown of murky waters, replete with powerful tides and undercurrents of emotional uncertainty, before arriving at a new solid ground of knowing. Such is the perennial opus of human life.

Incidentally, the currents of the Hudson River are so powerful that they have claimed the lives of many a seasoned and professional swimmer. I associate those potentially fatal undercurrents with the state of the  global energy of our time. We are dealing with volatile, unpredictable currents of energy that can exhaust one’s intent to stay afloat, or simply move forward.

The dream offers a technology to successfully traverse such chaotic times. The suggestion is to grasp and appreciatively weave together the thousands of attempts to spiritually advance. This processing and act of love can now provide the strength for a major advance.

One powerful association, for me personally, with fishing, is the act of remembering and interacting with dreams, messengers from the depths of the unconscious, or infinity, who nourish and share their pearls of wisdom, as they deliver needed guidance to the conscious mind.

As all who fish are well aware, patience and effort are required to successfully reel in the fish that is quite energetically capable of slipping back into the river. In practical terms, this means setting the intent to lucidly remember the dream and then record it immediately upon awakening, before the familiar thought of, “Oh, how could I forget this?” lulls us back into oblivion and lost dreams.

There is no actual waking-life fishing permitted on this bridge of my dream. The fishing lines presented are symbolic of countless attempts  to align the efforts of waking life with the spiritual guidance from the depths. These are the many cycles of groundhog days we have endured to inch our way beyond our default habitual patterns.

In Buddhist tradition, this completion is emergence from a path of Avidya, which means ignorance, unwisdom or delusion. By suspending judgment we can see Avidya as a necessary stage of learning, whose cycles accrue to a broader awakening to the true nature of reality. We see the deeper picture and no longer need the support of older scaffolds of attachment. We can let go with love and compassion. The many strands of this journey, when fully entwined and grasped, thrust us forward into new life.

Completion requires us to not turn back. To move forward may require some sacrifice, but energetically we have fully explored and exhausted our attachment to our prior way of being. To look back at this point is to lose our fluidity and turn to stone. We no longer need to go there; it is done.

The many fishing lines also represent the efforts of our ancestors, whose knowledge is there to be grasped and consciously integrated. This is a major feature in the technology of advance in the water. By grasping and intertwining so many threads the strength is gained to propel forward. There is also the suggestion to stay collectively united with resonant beings who strengthen our resolve.

Inwardly, our greatest resource lies in the Divine Intelligence accessed in our subconscious minds. The subconscious is the storehouse of all memory and experience, the many fish brought up from the sea of human history.

As I write this blog, my subconscious immediately responds to my conscious mind’s deliberations with associations to vaster knowledge, both personal and collective. This interactive relationship between conscious thought and subconscious associative memory, personal or collective, is a constant creative interaction within and between our minds and bodies.

My subconscious brings to the surface several memories of frightful encounters with the undercurrents of the mighty Hudson River. I’m reminded of the I Ching, hexagram #63, After Completion, depicting the river being successfully crossed. Psychological references to the island in the ocean as ego, in its relation to the greater collective unconscious of humankind, flood my mind.

Aside from the powerful ability of the subconscious mind to miraculously manifest desired change, is this automatic ability to constantly interact with the conscious mind by presenting a treasure trove of timeless knowledge, accrued through evolutionary history.

Of course, it remains for the conscious mind to weave or process these associations in such a way that they provide the solution to the dilemmas and questions we face.

We can quite directly ask the subconscious a question before sleep that will spin its strands of knowledge into the dream we are invited to participate in.

And finally, we can retrieve those dreams, as I have done here, and deepen our ability to successfully navigate our lives, and the troubled waters of our time.

Entwining,
Chuck