64 attendees including hosts, facilitators.
9 dreams
64 associations

What a matrix!

It’s been 8 months since the last matrix in June last year – it feels like a continuation of the first one.  This is the first matrix session of this series – acknowledged at the end – Spring and the anniversary of what was happening last spring.  Perhaps we, as societies, have been and still are suffering from PTSD – what impact might that be having?

Themes:

Creative boundaries vs the middle – where are the boundaries?  Since the first series, the virtual world has changed these for ever.

The first 3 dreams profoundly resonated throughout the SDM: The number 3:

• The arc of a life: Birth; marriage (joining); death
• 3 is associated with life/to live in China
• the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost – there was a focus on family pairs particularly the mother – as Mother Earth – and son.  What happened to the girl?

Association 8: I used to have a recurring dream of being lost and carried out to sea. As a child, I used to swim on the sea and be scared of it. The contrast of the beauty of the sea and it suddenly turning and being dangerous – associate this with ‘family.’

Work hardly mentioned – ‘a new business model’ gained no traction in the matrix but a lot about Relatives – family – pairs: Mother/Son; Father/Daughter.  Families will be transformed after pandemic – remain together or split up.

Paradox between incubating and statues – states of being and legacy.  Dione Hills, a staff at the Tavistock Institute, dying – she wouldn’t want a statue (so prevalent in the West) but for more reflection and action around climate change.  Snow White – waiting in her glass coffin to be reanimated – the West twiddling its thumbs whilst coastlines around the world (and people in the matrix) are being flooded.  Climate change altering our world forever possibly cataclysmically, unless we do something.  Wanting the pain and horror to go away.  The incubator as a symbol of collective anxiety – we can’t carry on waiting but it is frightening to think of what might come.

Association 39: The world is incubating. A terrible thing or a new life? The new police bill in the UK. Thinking about fascism. Are we going a deathly way or is this an opportunity for re-birth? Membrane – can’t really see. There might be dark, there might be light, there might be both.

Water – absolutely necessary for life; the birth canal as transitional space – the smell of the baby – how will we be rebirthed?  How deep will the transformation be?  How will we get out of the pandemic?

Much more religious imagery than usual in SDMs eg Jesus’ first miracle: turning wine into water. The Sea of Galilee with its highest water level for 40 years.  Another association to Soave wine – being saved and finding a break-through – are we hoping for a miracle.

Association 37: Jesus and the transformation. The sea of galilee – highest and richest that it’s been in the last 40 years. Springtime.

Association 38: Water and flooding. A client who dreamed about a flooding in the house of her sister. This morning I saw a simulation of how the whole of the state of Florida would be flooded if all of the glaciers would melt. Higher sea level. We will all be stranded.

The inherent danger of having freedoms curtailed ‘to contain the virus’ and the danger of institutions – the second dream about passports and associations to Fascism and being forced to complete the census; being in a Science experiment; and the murder of a woman by a policeman in the UK recently.  Passports for vaccinated people – is the vaccination programme going to be successful – will only work if a certain percentage of all peoples around the world are vaccinated – we rely on each other.

Association 45: The matrix is a social registry of birth, death and marriage.

Association 49: My heartbeat increased at the mention of registration – fear of institution. Death, marriage and birth – so human, so soft and affectionate but somehow, I feel danger at the mention of office.

Illusion – the illusion of beauty with the horrors just under the surface.  The illusion that life was better ‘before’, a lack of contact with reality.  Contagion has always been a part of history.  The full gamut of joy and horror throughout history.

There were many associations to the wine fridge in a later dream – refrigeration as morgue.

Dream 7: I was working in a restaurant, one that I did work in 25 years ago in West London. I was starting the shift in the bar/terrace – not what I wanted. A regular was sat at a table with a glass of wine – sauvignon blanc. She was celebrating giving birth and held out the baby for me to see. Her friend, the manager, came out to meet her and ordered a glass of the same. I went to put it in the till, but I could only find an old one. There were no numbers anywhere. I went to the bar and found the white wine fridge. Opened it and the light inside was off so I couldn’t see. Turned on my mobile and shone a light inside but couldn’t see the sauvignon blanc. Touched the other bottles and they weren’t cold. The fridge was half-empty so I assumed it was a change over. I was getting a bit anxious. I went out to see if I could find any more and if I should not charge them because of who they were. I woke up.

Smell – missing the physical presence of each other, smell is the most fundamental of our senses.  Klein likened smell to the mother.

Association 28: You can’t smell a dream – what do we miss?

Association 30: A lot of people infected with covid lose smell and tase.

Association 31: We miss smell over Zoom.

Signs of Hope – even the talk about immigrants dying in boats in the Mediterranean / the dead boy on the Turkish beach – the possibility of transforming and a tension between this and the anxiety of waiting – whether good or bad, something emerging.  Trying hard to hold idea of transformation, pushing through – and a profound ambivalence around transformation.

Dream 1: In Rome – go to the beach with wife. Take a small boat in the sea – very happy, lots of sun nice air, smell of the sea. Suddenly hear a voice crying ‘mama.’ I look around and I see a boat that is going down in the water and I realise that in the boat is the mother of the boy. The boy continues to cry until the voice disappears. There is no more mother and child in the water.

Association 20: Passports and the first dream. The immigrants. Can’t get the image of the dead boy on the beach in Turkey out of my mind.

Association 22: Those who have drowned trying to get into the country. Who don’t have passports.

Transformation

• The ambivalence of transformation. Be it promising, joyous or towards something more restrictive, damaging.
• Dismissing what already exists, what is already here. Focus on births and longing for something new.
• The incubator, be it the matrix, or Zoom or this year. Keeping us in suspension to emerge at some point in the same world? Incubators which could offer warmth and transformation versus statues that remain frozen.

Dream 3: I was going to the wedding feast of the daughter of a relative. The wedding feast was in the country on a hilly slope. There was an enormous, long table stretching down the slope on which were piled beautiful cut glasses with champagne, bowls with punch and fruit. There were a few extremely beautiful people in wonderful dresses. The daughter was in a 19^th century wedding dress. I walked down the table towards the bottom to a little grove. I was very struck by the beauty. I was so pleased I was there. I looked up and saw the daughter and she looked so beautiful. And then suddenly I was with the daughter’s parents, and we were coming to the wedding feast for a second time. As I walked down the table again, somehow it wasn’t the same. Glasses had been used and left there. People were in garments that had been beautiful but didn’t seem to be anymore. I was disappointed I couldn’t show the parents how beautiful it had been. There was to be a theatrical performance on top of the field, which the father was keen to watch. He said “this is where X landed to perform Shakespeare.”

Association 10: The quality of transformation. Babette’s Feast – how food can transform a whole community.

Association 11: The story of the Life of Pi. By the end of the story, you wonder if the tiger had been a family member.

Association 12: 1) Despair with what we are living with today. We can’t do anything about the people that are dying at the moment. 2) Transformation – in transformation, one has to let go of things to go into the next phase. Certain things have to die to go into the new one.

Blog compiled by Rachel Kelly, Debra Noumair, Gabriela Barrial and Lucy Walker.

Image: Feline Authority, with black corvid bird, a Social Dreaming illustration by Juliet Scott 2020 (detail)