Big Dreams Part IV: Alien Attack
“I remember some… horrible dream about… smothering.” — Thomas Kane, “Alien”
This next Big Dream was a game-changer for me both personally and professionally.
I am in an office in a “Century City” tower. Large chrome and glass windows are looking out into the blue sky, indicating that the office is high up in the building. I stand on a plush carpet in the common room. There are two smaller offices designed in chrome and glass, where my psychologist colleagues work. Evidently, I have worked here for a long time, since I feel comfortable and confident in this setting. Suddenly, I see an alien shrieking and scuttling around the carpeted floor (you know, the fetal-looking alien with deadly teeth that popped out of John Hurt’s chest in the movie of the same title). He scurries into one of the smaller offices, and blood splatters on the glass wall. Then he enters another office, and blood splatters. He is back in the common room; I grab him in a plastic bag and try to suffocate him. I then try to stomp on him with my shoes. I realize that he cannot be killed. I step back and wonder if perhaps this alien is so vicious because he is out of his home environment. Maybe we need to give him compassion. I step back and hold my hands up to beam compassion toward him. I sense others doing this alongside me. Then, John Lennon appears as a spirit on my left side and begins to sing “Imagine!”
The “Century City” towers indicate that this is another archetypal Tower dream, similar to the dream about the Empire State Building, taking place in a commercial district. When I see the alien that devours everything in its environment, I think about the voracious consumerism and unbridled capitalism in our culture: In our drive for the good life, for human achievement, success, technological and socio-political prowess, we go too far. This demonic energy is hungry for love, power, sex, and experience. It wants life, but in the process, it devours all that it desires. We don’t just fall in love with our material world, we want to possess it, and in doing so, we become addicted and hunger for more. We devour and destroy the world we love, consuming its resources and killing those who are more vulnerable in our drive for more.
This dream alien looks exactly like the one in the movie Alien. The movie has been described as a metaphor for death and rebirth. In the film, the alien creature incubates in the body, and then, with a splattering of blood, bursts out of the chest of a male character; a twist on men’s fear of the gruesome horrors of birth. That the alien mother keeps its victims alive in web-like cocoons also suggests primal fears of the devouring mother. The rise of a woman hero played by Sigourney Weaver is against the backdrop of these core patriarchal fears of the feminine.
The adult Alien creature is a brilliant design that is part machine, part insect. Horror movies are often metaphors for fear of the other (foreigners), and in films like Alien and The Terminator, fear of the machine that humans have created. The more that the human species excels in its creations of technology, like AI, the more we advance our destruction.
When one encounters a frightening and malevolent figure in dreams, it is important to remind oneself that there is always a daemon behind the demon. Nightmarish images reveal an essential life force that has been psychically disowned. In growing up, many people deny aspects of their instinctual being to assimilate into cultural conventions. These neglected aspects of the life force show up in dreams, often in terrifying form because we perceive them to be “alien,” ugly, or dangerous to our self-image. Yet, we need to acknowledge and integrate these energies to become more fully alive and whole.
I, like many girls, disowned my anger, potency, and innate “knowing” to fit in and be seen as “nice” and attractive. I suppressed my passion in exchange for perfectionism, appearing civilized, and non-threatening in a patriarchal culture. The result of disowning my life force has been disempowerment and hidden rage, which must be further repressed. It is a vicious cycle. Psychological suppression tends to result in depression, anxiety, and physical disease. Suppressing my authentic life force finally manifested as an autoimmune illness and physical depletion. This dream alien has pale skin and looks like a fetus or an intestine with teeth. There is something nascent and instinctual in my gut that is ravenous. It wants blood, or in other words, vitality.
When I embody the chrome and glass windows and office space from the dream’s setting, I feel the presence of the “seer” who is skillful at seeing through the pain (pane) and “reflecting” with clarity. My “dream self” knows that I am comfortable and adept in this role as a psychotherapist. However, the voracious dream alien kills my psychotherapy colleagues. While I love and respect psychotherapy in all its modalities, the dream reveals that I must have the audacity to kill off my traditional psychotherapy practice because it isn’t where the real juice lives in me. I woke from the dream with the insight: “If I don’t stop my psychotherapy practice, it will kill me”. This meant letting go of a thirty-five-year career and identity. This dream prompted me to close my practice and take a three-year hiatus, during which time I wrote the book, Tarotpy: It’s All in the Cards. Returning to do psycho-spiritual consultations and training in Tarotpy and Dreams has restored my passion, inspiration, and well-being.
On a collective level, I wonder if traditional psychotherapy is fully equipped to treat the epidemic of anxiety and depression in response to existential crises and the cultural disease that is consuming the American psyche and the planet. The radical Jungian psychologist, James Hillman, and LA Weekly columnist, Michael Ventura, wrote a book, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychology – And the World’s Getting Worse. (Harper One, 1993)
Dreams are like three-act plays. A situation is introduced in part one, the conflict grows into a crescendo in part two, and the final act of the dream offers the solution. In the third act, I realize that the alien cannot be killed and step back to beam compassion at the creature. Facing my “shadow” traits—such as lust, envy, ambition, and narcissism—with compassion is the only way I can transcend this split within me and have greater authenticity and energy.
In the dream, I am joined by others beaming compassion at the creature. Can we as individuals and as a society step back with compassion from who and what seems alien to our way of life? Look at the battle of polarities that is happening in the United States and the world—liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, the North against the South, white supremacists vs. people of color, male vs. female, Israel vs. Palestine. There is an unending cycle of violence, as one side tries to dominate or destroy the other. If what is alien cannot be killed, can we find the compassion to step back and redeem these threatening forces, within and outside of ourselves?
Then arises the spirit of John Lennon. He is a hugely public idol, which is certainly a tip-off that this is a collective dream. Lennon sings “Imagine”.
The “imaginal realm”—spirit—has wisdom beyond our limited and ego-centric consciousness. In the face of this destructive and all-consuming life force, the Tower archetype or collapse of the Empire as we know it, we need to go beyond our primal fear of death to birth something new.