34 people presents (3 host/ facilitators + 31 participants)
11 Dreams and 36 associations were presented

Some themes:

• A longing for touch (but it is not allowed) (: inappropriate touching, colleagues in hotel room, sensational affair, an old friend visits in a dream,  during SDM wanting to show sympathy for loss of other participants but thinking that it is not allowed; what are the rules and do we need to obey or change them?)
• Sexualization of death and deadening of sexuality (a man touching a woman’s breast on a gurney; a woman with bad-smelling breath; A wish to smash and be smashed – Car smashing; Two colleagues in bed ‘but not really touching’).
• Smugglings (green) coffins (“coughing”) into the matrix; Facing death in real life – anticipated end/death of the matrix … (: infiltration of coffins into society, mentioning of (grieving) people who died recently, many references to separations – heads from bodies, mothers from babies  denial of death, saying goodbye prematurely, pushing up daisies)
• Ending of the Matrix whilst COVID’s still alive (: green coughing, airbags not working, people dying from Covid, protesting death, how to compost the body so it goes back to nature, no people but pictures/plants in the cathedral/concert hall, the SDM as medicine)
• Neglecting ‘bad’ mothers who abandon or lose their babies. (Complaints against ‘Mother earth’ who exposed us to the Covid 19 as well as the Mother-Matrix = the medicine which is now ending and leaves us alone with virus.
• Separating heads from bodies (A split between thinking and experiencing (?); a split between the change of associations and the chain of dreams(?)
• Life after death (Heads in boxes without bodies; Bodies which turn into compost)

—

D1: in a large house where a conference about to happen outside, bags are everywhere.  I realise I only have 15 minutes to shower and get ready. I can’t find my trunk and clothes. I open the trunk, but someone has put my things in a haphazard manner – I look for earrings made from shells. I am hurrying – someone tells me I don’t need to shower – but I feel I have to. I can’t go unclean.

D2: Staff member of a leadership programme. During a break I met with 2 female colleagues. We have to meet in the car park as there are no rooms free.  We found a trolly or gurney. Two of us sat on it to have our conversation. We lay down on the gurney and held each other.  I noticed I was fondling her breasts.  I said to myself I should not do that I felt guilty and stopped. She transformed into a priestess figure and lost her hair – she said she had lost her passion for the work and wanted to move in a different direction.

D3: Two work colleagues in a hotel room. They were together but I was also in the room. People were coming and going of the room. I have an image of them laying side by side but there being no intimacy or touching.  Then the next day, seeing on the front page of the newspaper about this sensational affair between two people.  I was left feeling confused by this front page. It felt unjust and damaging for the people involved but I couldn’t say anything.

A1: When they lay down on the gurney – I felt a rush of profoundly sad emotion – around loss – this carried over into the last dream.

D3: I have a baby but no time for it so another woman Is caring for it. We are walking in the street on a hill – then the pram runs down the hill – I am shocked, and I chase but can’t catch it. It crashes and the baby falls on the blanket of a woman. The woman takes it and comforts it. I am very sad that I cannot take the baby as it would not recognise me as its mother as I have neglected it.

A2: memory of being at the beach where there was a woman with a pram taking a picture of the sunset. The pram ran down the path, but she did not notice – I caught the pram – she was very grateful – she was capture by the sunset.

A3: a memory of a very skinny woman under the influence of drugs and alcohol. She was making her young child carry her heavy bags and she was shouting at him and I didn’t know how to intervene.  Horrible.

A4: the dream had a component of shame and revulsion

D4: I was sitting at a long table with my husband on one side and the other man on the other – as we were talking both recoiled due to my bad breath

A5: The first dream made me feel and think about how unprepared we are or I am that there is no time left – and there is such big task ahead of us.

A6: Struck by the image of the gurney and the man and woman on the gurney and the shame of touching a woman. The symbol of an ending of some sort of connection.

D5: I am in a car at high speed. I lost control of the car and crashed, dand I felt the crash very vividly:   when I was back in my seat I wondered why the airbags didn’t work. Maybe the crash was not enough. I got into another car and deliberately crash but the airbags didn’t go on again – I felt very frustrated.

A7: About the first dream:  the conviction of the member of attending the opening plenary had to be done only when clean. An atmosphere of sanitisation. The subsequent dreams are full of perversity/ danger/ inappropriate touching/ babies neglected.  Where is kindness and love in this system – what have we done with it?

D6: I’m working with a spy organisation – our mission is to infiltrate coffins into society without people noticing – the captain of the team wants it to go unnoticed but it seems hard as the coffins are beautiful and green.

A8: “Coffin” could be to “coughing” of green slime or something

A9: The last dream was so creative and made me laugh. And the other dreams: the dreaming matrix is an intervention on the GR world.

A10: Green coffins: death is also about life, but it is very hard to get that conversation going. My dreams at the moment are shades, are fleeting, associated with grief – I can’t grasp them – they come and go – the green coffin is very striking.

A11: I know that I am dreaming a lot more than I recall. I think I am having multiple dreams per night but can’t remember them

D7: In a static caravan park, walking through each caravan. Maybe I was surveying them. Lots of squalor and drug use – it was very disturbing.  The last caravan I came to I had an interaction with a recovered drug addict which was very hopeful – but it felt that I had to walk through a lot of distress and chaos before encountering hope

A12: Green coffin – a feeling of something that happened to me. My mother passed away 2 days ago – I am in mourning.  I could choose to miss the matrix and excuse myself but I thought no I have been at 13 or 14 session so I cannot not go. But it is inevitable that it will come up – someone mentioned a coffin – I couldn’t escape the association – it is too obvious. Maybe we are seeing the matrix is doing good for us – like a medicine rather than as system. I was hoping that no one would mention something so close to that.

A13: Also, death and loss. Just yesterday I lost a colleague who died. She was for Ireland – I think of the green pastures. Last week I saw her in a hospice, and she asked: “did I do enough”? its really stuck with me – the neglected baby – am I doing enough?

A14: yesterday was my dad’s second death anniversary and a famous actor in India committed suicide. My father also had depression when he died, I am filled with a sense of helplessness and anxiety about where do people go to grieve.

A15: last time I singed up to the Thursday matrix my father had died two days before.  I couldn’t attend – but there is something hopeful about the dreams about getting into the coffins – wouldn’t’ it be great if someone could interact with my dad.

A16:  Until these recent dreams and association I have been feeling this unbelievable grief and pain – and finding it increasingly hard to be here and it feels like I was feeling the grief of what has been shared prior to it being shared.  Before this the green coffins I had thought about them being surreptitiously being brought in, getting in the way of more openness abut feelings – now the associations have changed and those feeling more appropriate.

A17: I am with you (last associator) – people who were speaking about actual losses of recent days – this is important to make sense why we are here – why I am here/ why I think we are here.

D8: I was in a cave – a cliff, a stream, there were people with boxes like hat boxes, they put one to one side – there was the head of an old man – protesting about being side-lined. In the second box was the head of a young girl. In both case the bodies were dead, but the head were alive.  I was saying that they are dead and should be left to die but there was no agreement about should we kill them or let them die. It was decided to throw them over the cliff.

A17: the last dream makes me think of the intellect cut of from feelings

A18: Heads over the cliff, leaving the traces of something wrong, it made me think of 20 years ago when the war ended. It was very common for disappearances and hiding bodies and removing traces and then the truth came discovering murders. This is work that is still ongoing.

A19: Murder: there is a whole controversy right now about the death of the actor.  He was systematically alienated and there is a question about whether it was it suicide or was it systemic murder due to apathy and not adhering to norms.

A20: We must lose ourselves to find ourselves.

A21: There is a sense that somehow, we want to touch and feel but we are divorced from our bodies.

A22:  last dream and comments make me think of transhumanism. To upload our brains into a cloud. I am not sure if I am more afraid of dying or not being able to die because I am uploaded.

A23: Aware of the denial of death. The box with heads. The inability to engage with what is going to happen with all of us.

A24: My dad died some weeks ago from Covid and I haven’t been able to come to the matrix because it felt too raw.

D9: In the dream my father appeared. we were having a family celebration but I was in my dressing gown and not ready at all.  I needed to bring a pen into the room, and I could see my guest all dressed up while I was dishevelled.  I found my dad in another room crouched down talking to the youngest grandchildren of his girlfriend and he was saying: ‘its ok – death is part of life – I’m ok’.

A25: Loss and sadness and grief makes me think about OPUS event about psychodynamic impact of Covid on BAME people. Lots of talk of trying to fix racism but at the end sadness came into the picture at the very very end.

A26: About dying. Maybe one month ago I read in the paper in US they are experimenting how to compost the body so it can go back to nature and continue to live.

A27: link to an guardian article abut a concert that will take place in Italy where the audience will be filled with plants and the musicals will play this concert to hundreds of plants.

A28: The concert with plants without people:  last Sunday in Lima cathedral there was a mass for people who died from Covid 19 and instead of people attending he put photos of 4 or 5000 photos in the seats – it was huge news about it. It was like an art installation and then  someone noticed that one of the photos was of a porn star and it was a mistake – it was a funny mistake – he is still alive – he was there present among all the people who died. What is besides the losses and deaths?  This discussion felt like a big stone falling in the matrix and crushed desire that appeared in the first dreams.

A29:  I am thinking of a forest I know which I visited which is very old and almost untouched and very green. All the fallen trees are covered in green moss. In trying to move among them a log would just crumble under the moss. I am thinking really about the matrix as it coming to an end next week. Are we concerned about what happens to our memories? How we keep our memories alive or do they die? How we are already anticipating the end of the matrix?

A30: Compost: what endures? There is an English euphemism for death: “pushing up daisies”.

A31: Concert for the plants and green made me remember I work with tribal people in a state in India and there is a particular forest where the roots of trees are trained to meet across the river – it is called the living roots bridge. It is stronger enough for some vehicles to go over it and relates to the matrix and how it continues.

D10: Within a dream it felt like it was a recurring dream – there was a house I was doing a renovation or do something new with it. I was making drawings of the façade. Every time I drew it it looked like a cartoon like the 7 dwarfs or something or really tradition. Not what I was trying to do.  My son and daughter were there, and I felt they were going to get it right. I didn’t see them drawing but it kept recurring I was still trying to draw and failing but they were standing right next to me.

[Long silence]

A32: this period of quiet felt like kindness and care in the matrix

D11: 2 weeks ago, I had a dream.  I met a dear old friend who I real life I will probably not meet again. In the dream we were shaking hand and very excited to see each other.  We have to divide as we had no issue for us to meet  for farewell he just wiped some dust from my shoulder – it was  kind gesture  – and then I saw dust on his shoulder and I wiped it away – when I woke I was so glad he had visited me in my dream.

A33: The last dream. Curiosity about the friend. I had a sense of him being a live but also why you won’t see him again?  My own curiosity about when I will be able to see people again and connect. I felt a lot of sadness through this crisis I have been thinking about my grief. When will I see people again and what will that look and feel like?

A34: who have I already said goodbye to prematurely and why have I?

A35: A recurring thought:  life and death, fear and intimacy, the divide. I ask myself are you really living and are you really embracing death. is there a way of really being on this earth or is it an affair?

A36: I was having a very different feeling of: until we acknowledge and engage with death are we living?

End of the Matrix

Blog compiled by Matt Gieve, Yossi Triest and Martijn van der Spek

Image: Responsibility by Juliet Scott, 2019