Last night I dreamt of a new playground being built that was subterranean labyrinth below and built playground above. And there were places where both met. A metaphor for the intuitive meeting and exchanging with the rational conscious mind. The lower level was done as a series of cave-like play spaces open to the air in places and covered in others. On the covered areas were conventional looking play spaces with swings and slides. The Cave circuit was for imaginative exploration that lead upward into action-oriented play.
Now the analysis. The underground areas represented to me the intuitive, imaginative and creative parts of myself (ourselves). All play there did not need built playground equipment for creation, exploration flourishing of imagination or fun. Open and enclosed meant to me that this particular playground was designed so that the light of awareness could find its way into Intuition, normally considered an "underground", or sub-conscious space. But is it really? Is it not that way simply because we have not been taught awareness of it or how to value its gifts? Part of the fun and magic of this playground was in the exploration and discovery in those labyrinthine spaces, a journey that could be undertaken alone or with others.
The upper play areas represented to me the tools we have been given through consciously learned processes. This is the playground in our conscious minds. It is populated by that which is dreamed up by the mind. Some of the structures in it are conventional, developed already by our understanding of the world and our experience in it. More often than not, this information is given to us by others as fixed and static limits--"Here's how it is, this is how the world works."
In this dream, the playground equipment was fixed, but not static. These too were being redesigned. I don't know what they were supposed to become. My sense of them was that they were to become more fluid somehow, moveable or redesign-able by the kids who played with them. Perhaps it was a way of being able to vision the equipment as though on a Star Trek holodeck--they would become whatever the group needed for the play they wished to engage in.
That this play ground had to be reconstructed seemed to be telling me something about my own playground, opened up to shine a light into my sub-conscious intuitive self, making me more consciously aware of its knowledge and wisdom. In this new configuration, that knowledge and wisdom can work in a more integrated way with with my conscious mind for a more fullfilling "play" experience, one that involves my whole being instead of segmented, edited parts.
I have been thinking about how we educate our children, and how this integration is knocked out of us early on in our lives. We have to rethink this situation for ourselves individually and then for the collective whole. For wouldn't we ALL like a fulfilling play experience?
Our systems of education are designed to bore kids to death, stifle creativity and create good soldiers, serfs and yes-people. No surprise, the model currently in use was developed by Napoleon, I believe, but its origins go back much further than that. The sub-conscious intuitive working harmoniously with the conscious rational has the potential to open up whole new vistas of human experience, something creative people know already.
Our kids deserve better than the world currently has on offer. In fact, so do we. If the universe is flush with infinite possibility, why then have we chosen a nightmare of duality, distruction, disconnection, separation, judgement, power struggle and fear? Why haven't we chosen one of integration, creativity, peace, acceptance, sharing and trust?
Okay, Monty, Let's Make A Deal. I choose Door Number 2.
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