Accepting My Skills and Favors

Summary: Standing out in new choir; New hire at primate facility; Motherly to a chimp toddler; Ethical dilemma on caging animals leads to a recognizably self-generated scene of helping release a pregnant gorilla; Distinction made between dream content and sequence assembled by outside design and those imaginings of my creation; Acknowledging the degree of my skills and allowing for the gifts granted to me by my hard work; Gift from my distant sister and the guilt of receiving rewards being viewed as freebees or good luck by my struggling family.


Night of June 8/9th 2013

Wandering around town, asking for directions to the highschool. People are friendly. When in the school I again am lost, being new to this town. Looking for the choir room. As I'm walking down halls though I ask where is the highschool doors like in a hospital there are wards, I was looking for the highschool ward so I could get to class. People look at me curiously as I pass them struggling to keep clear perception of the maze of halls. Finally a blonde local my age, but heading to a different task tells me the highschool is down that hall and thru those doors. I thank her and make my way to the choir room.

I'm late. Walk in for a seat in the back, knowing my voice will carry and should be put at a distance to not drown out the others (I was usually seated in the back in choir; leading voices were put behind less confident voices so those up front could hear and take cues from those behind them). I knew the song they were rehearsing well, better than they did because my previous choir learned it a previous season. I was a transfer student here, and felt I was going to be transferred soon again. Why? Training elsewhere? Reasons my mentors had that I couldn't quite recall specifics of.

This choir was amateur, lacked enthusiasm and coherence, and dedication to improve either their individual voices and their sound as a group. Current song was in latin or french. I sang the solo aloud to myself. Peers around me, hearing my richness of sound [as egotistical as this sounds, know ego didn't exist in the dreamworld how we take it; my avatar was humble and not willing to blow her own horn, fine to stay in the background helping the choir as a member not to stand out as an individual; the ego is conveyed only in how the others responded and the overall setup, all of which is presumed to come directly from my mind as the host of the dream, but feels very different when in the dream. I always feel like a visitor in the setting, a person in an environment], they tried to get the teacher's attention to recommend I do the solo. I wasn't about to stand out by conscious effort, already standing out naturally with the difference between my skill of voice compared to the group. Rather I was organizing the sheet music in my folder.

My choir dreams keep trying to point out to me that I can have confidence in my abilities and perspectives. I doubt myself so easily when in the company of other minds dedicated to their field or craft, even if I might have something unique to contribute. This message likely surfaced because of last night's adventure at the Star Watch party, which I went to in order to see my famous star through better quality telescopes than mine [post upcoming]. Progressively I am emerging my research and exploration which consumes so much of my mental energy into my conversations, thereby legitimating my ideas to myself on a public stage.

Next sequence: I am a new hire at a chimp sanctuary assigned to a baby chimp. Evaluation process. I treat the chimp like my two year old child, communicating to it like a person who is learning the language (that is, involving them in the conversation, asking questions, regular tone, firmly conveying my disapproval for misbehaviors), but also with as much love and affection and praise and play as I would with my own son. The founder of the sanctuary, a thin woman in her 50s or 60s with long greying hair, dedicated to her research (like a Jane Goodall), was impressed with how easily I developed a relationship with the chimp. My role was to tend to it/babysit for a regular work period. She had an assistant who interrupted here and there to guide my interaction or comment. At the beginning she warned me to be careful because they are still unpredictable animals, to which I proved inapplicable to my personality as I picked up the chimp and proceeded to entertain and connect to it. It responded well to my fearless and free willingness to be a mother figure, something it wanted desperately, not to be treated like a caged animal (though this cage was two stories tall and could hold a van with walking room. The key ability displayed here is nurturance of a youth not even of my species because I do not discriminate; I can apply the same principles of my human relationships to other types. Very interesting. I suppose that is quite a skill.

Some oddities. When the chimp had to pee the founder, also with medical expertise, had to come in and brace open its legs with a speculum sort of device to open its pee hole and aim it into a bucket on the ground. They had me move out of the chimp's sight who now already considered me 'mother' and would likely not cooperate if I were in view because it would want me to hold it. (I say 'it' because I don't know its sex or gender, but was very fond of it.)

Scene changes in response to the growing ethical dilemma rising in my thoughts:  though the founder has great care for the monkeys, this containment is inhumane, they should not be caged and controlled out of caution for their unpredictable nature. Any being is dangerous in a cage, we should be putting forth the same kind of attention to developing relationships with them as individuals, just as we do other humans. In essence, out lack of trust shows, and her love for them is un. This is one striking example to other advanced beings of how selfish we are and how easily we diminish the right to freedom and choice of other beings, that we would deem prolonged captivity without need other than to be living education for paying public, no matter how well the treatment, acceptable.

As a curious person easily awed by an up close encounter with different beings, animal or alien, my heart cries for their sadness of being imprisoned. Just the idea that we might all be imprisoned by a system of control has me clawing at the invisible walls of my cage. There's got to be a better way besides zoo experience and picture books to encounter and learn about the beautiful creatures of our world. Like aliens, it has been random chance, but also initiated summoning by means of spiritually connecting that draws them to meet.

This moral debate led to generate a diverging scene from what may have been originally designed (because it had the feeling of literally being something I completely imagined, that may not have been part of the dream [though it was], felt like I woke up and indulged the tangent, but it was still a dream. A great discovery for me distinguishing what I create from what I am channeling from other sources). The design of my dreams is still a joint cooperation between my experiences and unconscious needs and feelings put into a context that can communicate to me difficult concepts for personal growth. But in the instance of this divergent scene, I am taking the conscious action to change things, so rather than feel a player making decisions within the bounds of a game, I chose the direction of the game. I can't stress how profound of a contrasting experience this was. Though I did not create the scenario in detail as follows, I put forth the will to change this situation and it was responded to with the next scene.

What resulted was the effort to help release a pregnant gorilla to give birth in the wild. We had to be careful. I explained firmly to the founder, who questioned our actions, that though she says she cares for these beings, her love was conditional and that it was unfair to keep them under her control at a facility. She finally decided to help us, for the gorilla's sake, because her condition was so delicate we had to load her onto the trailer properly or else the uterus could burst (not sure medically why this was nor if it even makes sense in reality).

Next scene: With my parents and sisters at their house (doesn't look like their house in physical world). I receive a card from my sister in England that is a serious of velcro flaps that add another line to the Christmas carol it is playing the music for. Supposed to be ironic, its not Christmas in the dream or in reality. My sisters are all getting ahead of how fast I can open the flaps. She ends the rhyme saying she's bought me a ticket to join her for a special viewing of the new "Star Trek" movie (I forgot that was out, didn't really care, sure enough though it's in theatres now). Enclosed is the ticket and some long black band that is supposed to enhance the viewing experience. I'm super excited, but my jumps of joy are sunk when I look on my family. I feel bad that this good luxury thing happened to me and my family struggles to eat. They look down, rooted in the hard reality of their circumstance, and decide they need to go food shopping. I don't know how to help or uplift them or enjoy the gift I've been given without guilt, which I can't exchange to then give them the money for instead because its only a receipt.

My little sister is going to stay behind at the house with me though to work on her game. She wants to figure out for the three of my sisters at home who play this game, how to unlock playmode with the villains (similar to Lego Batman), something I had figured out long ago and has been another point of feeling guilty that I am favored more than they, that only I get good luck. I explained to her in her ear what she was overlooking, that she can't unlock it until she finishes the good guy story level. They've been trying to jump ahead to the part they want to match with what I've done without doing the same amount of work. [Hmm, sounds about right.] She was much more receptive to that truth, and proceeded to try and finish the puzzles they had been avoiding.