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Dream: Breaking the Parent Connection

The following dream occurred in 2000:

I am in a hospital with a woman I know well, (She was a psychology student that I had been in a long-term relationship with). There is an infant child in a bed with an oxygen tent around it. It is hooked up to a machine that I know is keeping it sick. We are sneaking around whispering, trying to avoid the parents who will be returning soon. I go up to the bed and I disconnect several hoses from a bloody plastic connector, which I place in the center of my palm and hold on to securely. The cute little child is released from the machine and slides out from under the plastic tent and further down the bed, giggling and beaming with happiness. I am surprised to see that the child had female genitalia. The woman and I sneak out of the hospital, but we are arguing. I see a suspicious looking dark-skinned man across the courtyard and I leave her and begin running down a dark street as fast as I can. I have never felt so powerful and free. The dream ends with an audible climax, like a bugle call to action, and myself suspended in mid-motion with credits rolling by like the top scores of an action-hero video game. Although the song did not play in the dream, I somehow know that the concluding theme song is Neil Young's Don't Let it Bring You Down.

Interpretation:

The hospital with the machine that is keeping the child sick seems possibly connected to the modern technological world and its general attitude in favor of serving and protecting the parents rather than truly caring for the emotional needs of the child. Note that the oxygen tent may indicate that the child simply can't breathe in the existing environment. The female genitalia seem to be pointing to the birth of the divine feminine within me. However, my arguing with the woman I know well may be indicating that I am still having problems in my relationship with my anima. The woman, the child, the shadow figure and myself add up to the number four, which according to Carl Jung is symbolic of wholeness. The most important meaning of the dream is that I had broken the connection of the parents and so freed the child within from the machine that was keeping it sick.

The theme song was:

Blind man running through the light of the night
He's got the answer in his hand.
Come on down to the river of sight.
And you can really understand.
Red lights flashing in the window in the rain.
And you can hear the sirens moan.
White cane lying in the gutter in the rain.
And your walking home alone.

Don't let it bring it down,
It's only castles burning.
Just find someone who's turning,
And you will come around.

— Neil Young: Don't Let it Bring You Down

The 'blind man running through the light of the night' suggests the dark night of the soul's journey to God described by St. John of the Cross. 'He's got the answer in his hand' signifies that indeed in my hand I held the answer, the broken connector to my parental abuse. 'Come on down to the river of sight, and you can really understand,' suggests that while my conscious self may still be blind, I can now come to the healing waters of the unconscious to receive my spiritual sight and hence 'really understand.'

'It's only castles burning' suggested to me both, the expression that "a man's home is his castle" and a Sufi proverb, "when God shows up, he burns down the house." The home or house in this case symbolically represents my past and present state of consciousness. So, God is only destroying that which I no longer need.