To sleep: perchance to dream...

Ay, there's the rub.

We studied Carl Jung last night in my Theories and Method's seminar. Interesting stuff really...the archetypes, collective unconscious and the idea that we create the Deity archetype and religion as a way to keep us from actually having religious experiences... Anyway.

Maybe it was Jung, maybe it was that yummy brown sugar cinnamon tortilla thing I made right before bed, but I had crazy dreams last night.

The craziest of them all was the one that I had to wake myself up from, because I didn't feel like dying in my dream.

I dreamed I had traveled to L.A. to try and get back together with my ex who lives out there. I spent the first half of the dream flirting with him and things seemed to be going along well, until his female roommates got home. (Ryan you're going to love this) Turns out he was in a relationship with his three female roommates, and they hated me. I started screaming and crying as the girls knocked me around and threw my stuff out of the apartment. I yelled to Ryan that I was leaving L.A. on the next flight out and never coming back, but he calmly reminded me we had tickets to a dinner theater, and I should stick around.

At the theater I started getting that creepy "you shouldn't be here" intuition feeling. And sure enough, not 5 minutes into the meal...here come the mutants. Everyone panics and starts running for the doors (which of course are locked) as these crazy lizard things start slaughtering people left and right. I was running along the balcony of the theater, avoiding the mutants when I noticed there were people with video cameras.

As it turns out, they were filming a horror movie but it was real life horror, and people were really dying. I thought to myself "I've got to get out of here, this is just not right!" as the back of the theater burst into flames. Out of the flames flew this skeleton creature with a pumpkin on his head, on fire himself and laughing maniacally.

That's when I realized- "I'm dreaming, and there is no way in hell I'm letting Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas be the reason I die."
----

Ugh. A night full of dreams always leaves me more exhausted than when I laid down.
Maybe I'll interpret this later...

Can you blame the sky for having clouds?

(If you don’t feel like reading there’s a cute hamster picture at the end of this entry ;-) )

A paper I wrote for my Religious Perspectives on War and Peace class yesterday morning (7 pages in 2 hours...I still rock!) got me thinking about the nature of my personality versus the person I desire to be.

My paper dealt with "conflict transformation", specifically what various religious groups are doing to aid in the process. My research gave me a plethora of examples, and I am still in awe of those individuals who bravely put their own lives on the line to help resolve and transform conflict in violent, tense situations.

Allow me to let you in on the train of thought which led from the Catholic Relief Services to my personal discomfort with how snarky I can be when it comes to ex-boyfriends-

I wonder what causes conflict, what is at the root of hatred? In my small group in class we swerved pretty far off topic and found ourselves discussing Mel Gibson's hate speech during his DUI arrest. It was unimaginable to us how an individual could hate another person so much simply because of their race or religion or what have you.

A quote I used in my paper from Douglas Johnston makes me wonder…

“Reconciliation born of spiritual conviction can play a critical role by inspiring conflicting parties to move beyond the normal human reaction of responding in kind, of returning violence for violence”

Is this really the “normal human reaction”? Is this what we’re programmed to do? Is my default setting hatred and a thirst for retribution?

Sometimes I think that might be true. I’m horrible when it comes to ex-boyfriends…don’t think that I don’t have multiple scripts in my mind of mean snarky things I’d love to say to them, especially if their wives/fiancées/girlfriends were around. The hurt I felt has congealed into repulsion and general spitefulness.

So I’m working through it; I’m working through the hurt to transform my own conflicts into positive energy. I want so badly to live the Eightfold Path, to truly love my neighbor as myself…but why should that be a such a struggle for me unless I’m inherently broken?

So what is it?

Can you blame the sky for having clouds?
(Inherent goodness with a few bad days)

Or

Can you blame a fire for burning?
(Inherent brokenness explains everything)

I'd love to hear what you think...

Here’s the afore-promised hamster picture! Aww…