Jungian Eye

I had an interesting dream a week ago in which I was in a 1950s style apartment with faded yellow cotton curtains (the kind your grandmother dutifully washed over decades to get that tactile softness). I appear to be going back to school for a degree but I'm not entirely sure which one. I notice that the campus is filled with women and this makes me wonder if I'm back on a women's campus somewhere. In the apartment, I notice my grandmother in a chair (I'm seeing her from behind) and I see that she's slumped over. I wonder...is she dead? alive? sleeping? dreaming? I'm uncertain as I approach her.

As I move towards her, I realize that I'm learning about something called the "Jungian Eye"--some omniscient presence--and I think to myself, "Hm. Someone could really re-read "The Great Gatsby" from a Jungian perspective."

The dream switches (more of the above theme) and when I finally wake up, I am compelled to search out this book from my youth.

***

I've kept a dream journal for about 10 years now and I'm always surprised and delighted when something new pops up. AND, I'm always *extremely* delighted when I experience a moment of synchronicity. In my reading of the "Descent" (see previous blog entry on this), I came across the following passage which made me pause:

"This cool, objective eye is one basis--perhaps the left brain aspect--of feminine evaluation. It does not get deceived by responsible performance or willed achievement, but finds the ineluctable facts in process, the panoply of emotional vectors that give each moment life, and that pass as others crowd into the present, leaving the individual at the mercy of time and processes over which one has little control, but in which one may find a grounding if one can reverence change itself and find one's own way to move with it. Such vision is transpersonal and a power that can protect--so Athena, gorgopis (bright-eyed) and owl-eyed, wore the Gorgon's eyes on her shield; so Inanna later embodied the "eyes of death" (Descent, p. 34.)

I find it all very interesting, especially since the dreams which have followed this one are all very relational and teaching oriented. And even more interesting that as I glance at the ring I bought myself in Greece last year (imprinted with Athena's owl), I see that one of the characters in "The Great Gatsby" is called "Owl-Eyes."

Okay, universe. I'll bite.