Extraterrestrials Descend
12/31/82
Extraterrestrials are going to land at night in the country where I am living. We neglect to turn on a beacon light to guide them in and so they are delayed. When they arrive I am very excited. They look human, talk English, and are very normal and casual. I hope I’ll get to go on a space flight some day. I ask one of them what I will be doing in the future. He says I’ll take a trip out West with Mike McCauley in his airplane and do some cave exploring.
Associations
I was reading and writing about precognition (JB Priestly) yesterday and the day before. I associate extraterrestrials with meditation and caves with dream work.
Preference Predictions
Most Accepting Character: Extraterrestrials
Least Accepting Character: None
Most Preferred Character: Extraterrestrials
Most Rejected Character: None
Most Preferred Action: trip West
Most Rejected Action: delayed
Most Preferred Feeling: hope to go on space flight
Most Rejected Feeling: None
Sociomatrix Commentary
Dream Self: I am pleased that Extraterrestrials are coming to visit me. Theurgy! Very excited. Impressed. I have sought contact with them, but not diligently, only sporadically. The beacon is brilliant white light. It does its work while I sleep. I need to prepare for theophany if I truly desire it. I like how accepting and normal they are. I am glad I think to ask them about my future. I like caves. Mike is practical but pessimistic. I don’t see him as really caring about people. He’s more the smart businessman type than the helping professional. (It was at this point, while I was working on creating this Dream Sociomatrix, that I received a highly synchronous call from Bob MGarey that he was coming to visit! I had written to him some months previously (Spring 82) about doing dream work at the Clinic, perhaps moving to Phoenix. I had forgotten all about it. I had never gotten a response. My thought now, as I continue to fill out this Dream Sociomatrix, in light of the call I have just received, is that I will do dreamwork at the A.R.E. Clinic, moving out there this coming year. That would make me extremely happy. Look at the similarity of the names – McCauley and McGarey! The Extraterrestrials have indeed descended. They even said the dream was precognitive (indirectly). I had completely forgotten about my letter to Bob McGarey.
Extraterrestrials Joseph, you are erratic but dedicated. You will succeed. Contact with your spiritual roots is never far from you. You will work with dreams nationwide and help many people access wellsprings of direction and inspiration. You are more receptive to us at night. We do not come where we are not invited, and we do rely on direction from you: your goals and purposes. You will travel to Phoenix. That’s Bob McGarey. He’ll fly you out to do a seminar.
Beacon: I like the dreamer, even if he does turn me on late. I fulfill my purpose triumphantly with the arrival of the Extraterrestrials. It’s wonderful.
McCauley: As McGarey, I like Joseph a lot. I think he can fit into my work. I want to see. As McCauley, I don’t much care about anything except the excitement of flying and caving.
Airplane: His future is bright!
Caves: He’s great at exploring us already.
Dream Commentary
If you could change this dream in any way that you wanted, as long as it respected the rights of all fellow dream group members, how would you change it?
Extraterrestrials Review the dream before sleep but with the beacon on. Feel our love.
Dreamage
I am on the roof of my lake house turning on a brilliantly bright beacon that pierces the night sky, signaling the Extraterrestrials to land. I see their ship coming through the night sky. They land and come up to me. They are very compassionate and loving. I feel a healing energy that sets free my potential. They tell me to go cave exploring out West. I say I will – for them and for God. They ask me if I would like to take a ride with them. I am joyous and get on board. High above the Earth I pray, “Lord, merged with the Earth and all its beings, I praise Your holy name.” “Thank You for the gift of life; may I show my thanks in service.” The Extraterrestrials are very happy and repeat this phrase with me.
Waking Commentary
If you were this dreamer and were dealing with his waking issues – money, relationships, fears, career choices, physical health, spiritual development – would you do anything differently? If so, what?
Dream Self: Meditate; see the doctor. Go to Phoenix.
Actual Preferences:
Most Accepting Character: Beacon
Least Accepting Character: McCauley
Most Preferred Character: Caves
Most Rejected Character: None
Most Preferred Action: exploring
Most Rejected Action: delayed, forget to turn light on
Most Preferred Feeling: None
Most Rejected Feeling: excited
2 of 8: When I was making my predictions I had little insight or empathy with the perspectives of the members of this dream group.
Sociogram Commentary
Extremely synergistic except for forgetfulness and delay. That is enough to make it a thesis sociogram. Except for “future” and Mike McCauley, preferences are uniformly strong.
The acceptance axis indicates strong approval of my attitudes, feelings, and actions associated with this life issue. It is interesting that Dream Self is so closely identified with these powerful aspects of self. I think that this is a product of moving toward them – not of an expansion of waking awareness per se, because preference predictions are so low.
On the form axis, Caves, Extraterrestrials, and Beacon are highly preferred. I associate caves with dreamwork, Extraterrestrials with transpersonal dimensions, and beacon with centered clarity in meditation. That does not mean there is any correlation between my associations and these dream group members. On the contrary, they are much more than my paltry associations, and laying these aside and dwelling in their being will bring them to their ineffable life.
On the process axis the conflict is between hierophany and new beginnings, on the one hand, and postponement due to the sleep of forgetfulness/laziness. This is probably a good a summary of the cause of lost opportunities in my life as any I could ever conjure. The future is not important to this group, relatively speaking. They are interested in seizing the moment.
On the affect axis, excitement and hope for transcendence are strongly preferred. If there were negative emotions, they would be Dream Self’s, and they would be something like disappointment and perhaps guilt.
The key to spiritual insight is turning on the beacon. What an excellent metaphor for meditation! All is in place for growth.
Here are some reflections some thirty-five years later, in April, 2016.
I was invited out to Phoenix for a job interview at the A.R.E. Clinic, run by husband and wife M.D.’s, Bill and Gladys McGarey, who I had met when I was thirteen, on a trip to the Middle East that I took with the A.R.E. and my parents. That trip introduced me to meditation, dreamwork, holistic medicine, psychic channeling, and the entire world of New Age thought. The McGareys founded the American Holistic Medical Association. Their treatments at the clinic were based on the recommendations from the Edgar Cayce readings, which the A.R.E. was created to explore.
My time at the Clinic was spent as a social worker treating clients with anxiety, depression and family problems, who came to the Clinic seeking holistic solutions. I worked with principles from Transactional Analysis, Rational Emotive Therapy, Reality Therapy and also with their dreams. Because of my work with my own dreams using Dream Sociometry, since I developed the method in 1980, I had changed my understanding of dreamwork entirely. I now no longer offered interpretations, but instead interviewed several characters in them, like in the examples found here. It was at the A.R.E. Clinic that I first developed confidence that this approach could help others in addition to myself.
One client in particular came to mind. She had a severe case of agoraphobia. Her world had so closed in on her that she found it extremely difficult to leave her home. She was quite knowledgeable about different approaches to treating agoraphobia and in fact had created a newsletter for agoraphobics to put them in contact with one another and compare approaches to treatment. Over the course of about six months of occasional appointments and occasional dream interviews, she first started dreaming of being comfortable in public settings and then found her fear of leaving her home greatly diminished to the point that she could visit friends, go out shopping and go to sporting events with mass crowds.
Puzzling over how Dream Sociometry might have contributed to this drastic improvement, my theory was that fear collapses the self by making more of the world “not-self,” and menacing. Dream Sociometry reversed this process by expanding the experience of self by repeated identifications with a wide variety of figures that were perceived as “non-self.” When this occurred, those perspectives became to some degree integrated into a slowly expanding identity. I realized that while this process could bring people to a normal level of trust, equilibrium and confidence, that there was no reason why it could not help “normal” people to expand beyond identification with any permanent self at all, that is, into transpersonal stages of development.
