In my dream I see Luke Skywalker. He has resigned his post as the galaxy president to go off on an important mission for the safety of the new Republic. The working title for the new movie is "An Ancient Evil". Well, the ancient evil, in my dream, is a black cube about the size of a basketball. It has awoken and is radiating evil. Luke knows through the Force that he must act quickly and get to this object before it can summon a Sith or some unwitting person to come under it's evil influence.
The cube is on a planet at the farthest most remote point of the galaxy. The cube is billions of years old. It's exact age cannot be determined. It may have existed when the universe came into creation. It is the essence of evil. It is the most ancient of everything that is evil. It is like the serpent of Bible in the garden of Eden and it is like the black obelisk in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this secondary role, like the obelisk in Kubrick's movie, it is also an agent of chaos, evolution and dramatic change. It cannot be destroyed. It can only be hidden or entombed which puts it to sleep. You can throw it into the heart of a star and it will not melt or burn. It is indestructible. Every few million years it awakens from it's slumber and causes wars, and mass extinctions, and galactic transformation.
Luke drops everything to race to the remote planet to get this thing before it releases havoc on the galaxy. It will take every ounce of his Jedi training not to come under it's influence. Given the sheer power of the object it may be a suicide mission.
Luke, unbelievably, makes it ahead of all other interested parties to the planet where the cube lies. The cube is located at the end of an immense underwater volcanic tube. It was once encased in lava rock and has now become partially exposed and thus has awakened. In my dream I see Luke swimming down this tunnel toward the object. The object pulses with a red glow. It is now alive and conscious again for the first time in a millennia. And in true cliff hanger fashion this is at the point at which I wake up from the dream. Why do my dreams do this so many times?
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars did a lengthy interview for the Biography of Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. In the interview Lucas states, "it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology ...so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books....It was eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs."
Joseph Campbell coined the phrase "the hero's journey" to describe his concept of the monomyth. Our dream is a snippet snatched from a larger story. Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory argues that there is a basic pattern to most narratives from around the world that transcend time and cultures. Campbell summarises the concept with this statement:
" A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
In our dream the hero, Luke Skywalker, is seen doing the first two stages of Campbell's 17 stage theory of monomyth-- The first stage is 1. An Uncomfortable Home: Luke is in an environment that he is not completely comfortable with and he knows something is wrong and he is restless. Luke has been a politician for sometime and the duties often grate against his own internal desires and values. It drains him energetically and he feels the need to escape. Second stage is 2. The Separation: The Call to Adventure. Luke has a vision of the black cube coming to life and what the consequences of it's awaken power will have if it falls into the wrong hands. It suddenly becomes clear to him that he must do something, and that something must done, and thus his adventure begins with his conscious choice to give up his duties and answer The Call.
We do not get to see the third stage which is The Refusal of The Call. I seemed to have fast forward beyond through many of the intermediate stages. I could see all of Luke's friends trying to talk him into staying and trying to convince him to send others in his place. They want him to stay for their own selfish reasons or desires. There are many more steps to the narrative that we do not get to see due to the nature of the dream's abrupt ending, but we can well flesh out the rest of the story, following Campbell's monomyth model. We can assume that Luke has many trials to endure just to get to the object in just the same manner as many other heroes in myth and legend.
It will be interesting to eventually see if the new movie follows any of the elements of my dream. The black cube is an object of mysterious supernatural power. Who or what fashioned it? An ancient civilization or perhaps God, or the Force itself? Some theorists equate God and the Force to be one in the same thing.
How does this dream relate to my own conscious life? Well, like Luke, I am in a job and place that I am not completely comfortable with. I will soon need to make choices about where I will live and work in the next couple of months. I am trying to get my sweetheart here to marry her and begin our life together. Many people around me want me to bend to their own selfish desires and have no concern about my personal welfare, but are chiefly concerned, about my usefulness to them. I can relate to Luke on so many levels. I am energetically drained just like him. I secretly yearn for a supernatural adventure to shake up my mundane existence. I have been wanting to get in touch with the power of nature. I want to feel the grass beneath with my toes and experience the wonderful sight of the milky way on a clear warm summer night. It has been a long winter for my soul.
This dream is an exercise in the possibilities. My unconscious self desires my conscious self to consider what my life could be and is using our imagination to move in this direction. The Universe is prompting me to change. The unconscious is planting seeds. We will see if I can live up to it's hopes and desires for us.
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