Have you noticed that laughter and humor seem to be a vanishing commodity? Individual ethnic and cultural idiosyncrasies that once served as a source of gentle ribbing or a ‘roasting’ of an individual, and formerly received by one with an attitude of good humor, now you can bet someone will be offended, and the initiator of that humor will be condemned and chastised as a racist and a hater! Isn’t this so?
Even late-night and other comedians have become fearful of what they say, lest forbid, someone may be offended. Unless, of course, a conservative, or, our former President, Donald J. Trump is the subject or target of the joke, then it’s open season.
I’m betting you that liberals are much more lacking in laughter than conservatives! I’ll run some names by you; Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Reverend Wright, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, and Adam Schiff, to name a few. Have you ever seen any of these people engaged in genuine heartfelt laughter? I can’t say I have. More often, I see liberals scowling and posturing with expressions of anger and hatred on their faces—with an underlayment of negativity effecting their entire countenance.
Have we as a nation of people lost the ability to poke some simple fun at ourselves? Have we become a nation of fearful, timid, overly sensitive, overly offendable people ready to lash out at the least provocation, even if the intent was for humor? Can anyone see how far we as a nation of people have drifted? The simple fact of the absence of laughter should serve as the canary in the coal mine. Have we as a nation of people become far removed from laughter, and by association, the emotion of Love (Unconditional Love) from where laughter originates? Yes, that’s what I said, laughter originates from the emotion of Love! But all too often—many are instead immersed in negativity—cut off from laughter and the emotion of Love!
As stated, laughter is constellated within and from the emotion of Love. Typically, in an atmosphere of laughter is found the presence of joyousness, pleasure of experience, elevation of experience, and camaraderie. Remember how in “Reader’s Digest”, there’s a section entitled, “Laughter—Life’s Best Medicine”? Surely, laughter serves a very important purpose in the life of everyone. In any gathering of loved ones of family, friends, associates, and colleagues, a unifying element is what? — laughter! A spiritual mentor of mine once said to me, “Laughter is one of the highest forms of Spirituality.”
This brings us to this point in our discussion. This magnificent human structure, the individual, is a complicated self-healing, self-sustaining creature. Self-healing and maintaining a measure of balance within the individual can happen on different levels; to include the physical, the emotional and psychological, and the spiritual.
A great deal of this self-maintenance may occur in sleep. Did you ever stop to think that the average amount of time a person spends in sleep is around seven hours? That’s one-third of your entire lifetime! One may think, that’s a lot of time for one to spend on sleep—what a waste of time—I could be doing something more productive!
On second look, one must acknowledge that without sleep—how could we renew ourselves after a long day’s expenditure of energy via the physical body, brain activity, and emotional engagements? It’s with sleep that we can bring ourselves back into balance, harmony, and rejuvenation by the renewal and healing that can only come about with ample sleep.
There is another facet of sleep in which we achieve renewal that some of us may not have thought of. The late Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung devoted his life to the study of the human psyche, and he gave particular attention to the study of human dream activity. He concluded that through dreams during our sleep we achieve psychic and spiritual renewal. He categorized two major types of dreams: “big dreams”, and “little dreams”.
It is the “big dream” that one should give full attention to. It is unmistakable when one awakens after a big dream. The big dream has a well-defined beginning and end, it tells a story or narrative, and upon awakening, one generally has a strong emotional feeling of the dream that may persist through the day, even for weeks, and be remembered for a lifetime.
In American Indian culture, the tribal medicine man welcomed the big dream as it signified a gift of grace from the Great Spirit and great heed should be paid to it as it portended something special to the individual or tribe.
A second major conclusion Jung arrived at in explaining dreams is that dreams serve the individual in a “compensatory” fashion. What did he mean by this? If an individual is out of balance in their psyche, attitude, behavior, or even biologically out of balance—their dream activity will present the very opposite point of view, attitude, behavior, or biological standpoint—all with the intent to create a balance by pitting their conscious reality against their unconscious self-hood as found in the dream.
Here are just a few examples of a compensatory dream: if one has been deprived of food for many days, he may dream of sitting at a dinner table with a bountiful meal which will be thoroughly enjoyed; another, if one is much too introverted in their waking behavior, one may dream of being the out-going extrovert; and, if one acquires a full bladder during sleep, one may dream of going to the toilet to relieve himself. No kidding!
In these examples just given, one can see that the aim of the dream content was to achieve an overall balance and equilibrium by presenting a view contrary to the conscious reality.
Just as in the same way the human body at a physical and biological level strives for equilibrium when a virus or germ invades it—the body instinctively at an unconscious level engages its defenses to combat it and achieve healing and balance. So too, it is within our instinctive striving to achieve psychic or psychological balance through dream activity.
I well remember a compensatory dream of mine from several years ago that I’d be happy to share with you. Admittedly, that period of my life was filled with a tremendous amount of activity, pressures, deadlines to meet, and all-in-all, intensely stress producing. Laughter and humor were a scarcity… nowhere to be found at that period of time in my life experience.
Then, once near dawn, after a night’s sleep, I had this dream; and this dream was composed only of dialog—nothing visual, no narrative with a well-defined storyline—just dialog as if someone were relating a sentence to me. The following was the declarative dialog statement: “There are two kinds of stupidity in the world—average and better than average.” I literally jumped out of bed engaged in belly laughter. My intense laughing woke me up!
Now, you may ask, “So what’s so funny?” The answer was obvious to me. In a manner, it was the absolute absurdity and illogic of the statement. Think about it—imagine, you the reader must fulfill a mandate and make a major decision in your life between one of two choices. You must choose between the following: either you choose ‘average’ stupidity, or, ‘better than average’ stupidity? If you choose ‘average stupidity’, does that mean you are more stupid or less stupid than choosing ‘better than average stupidity’? Is there an advantage of one above the other?
Absurd, isn’t it? But then—the objective of my unconscious mind was to get me to laugh! That’s the point! Remember, the unconscious mind is a well-spring of creativity which operates far outside the range of our conscious processes with one of its main functions to provide balance and healing in our life experience.
So, here’s what you do, dear reader of this blog. The next time you’re in the company of a liberal, you say this, “Hey liberal! If you had to make a choice between having ‘average stupidity’ or ‘better than average stupidity’, which would you prefer? And you must be very careful how you structure your question, or you will offend and anger them from the get-go. If the liberal finds humor and laughter in this, there’s hope for them. If the liberal is offended and reacts with anger or even hatred… the best you can do is turn and walk away as quickly as possible.
JDM
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