My Recurring Superman Dream

My Recurring Superman Nightmare

by Roger A. "Pete" Peterson

The secrets of the universe are hidden in the details of our experience. - Pete

I call this my Superman Nightmare because it was until I finally faced up to my fear.

I was about eleven years old when this nightmare began and it continued to occur, periodically, well into my forties. It was always the same. I'm Superman and darkness is falling. I can’t fly because there's a thick rope (2-3 inches in diameter) tied around my waist. It’s attached to something but at the moment, I don’t have time to investigate. The weight of the rope not only keeps me from flying, it slows me down as I run out of a park, across a city street, and climb up the side of a tall office building. Close behind me is a powerful Frankenstein monster, made up of body parts roughly cobbled together from many different people. The weight of the rope slows me down enough for the Frankenstein monster to catch up to me about a third of the way up the side of the building. When I turn and see the frightening menace reach up to grab my ankle, I panic and wake myself up to avoid suffering the consequences. This not only happens once, it happens again and again throughout the years, and the outcome is always the same; I wake up in mortal fear as the Frankenstein monster reaches up to grab my ankle.

Now in my mid-forties, the next time Frankenstein reaches up to grab my ankle, instead of reacting in fear, I get angry. Instead of waking myself up, I turn around and punch him until he falls off the building to the ground. Feeling new strength surge within me, I fly out from the building, rope and all. To my surprise, a large number of people have gathered, some stand on the edge of the park while others stand in the street below. Standing in a small circle formed by the crowd is a tall man wearing a stylish gray Fedora hat and dark gray business suit. He looks elegant with a black velvet cape wrapped around his shoulders, a flap of which is turned back to reveal bright red inside. He rests both hands on the handle of an ornate cane as he looks up at me with a wry smile. He is a priest! Uneasily, the crowd looks from the priest to me to see what will happen next.

The priest reminds me of the actor, Christopher Plummer. Still looking up at me and smiling, he reaches up and touches the brim of his hat with the first two fingers of his right hand, claps his heals together, turns and leaves. I get the feeling it is an admission of defeat or applause for eluding his trap? Looking down at him now, I realize he is responsible for giving "Frankenstein" the task of pursuing and capturing me. Why would he do that I wondered, unless it was to harness my energy and put it to work for others? And what about the people surrounding him, were they hoping to see me fall from the building in defeat or were they hoping to see me escape the clutches of those who would control me as a sign of hope for themselves? The expressions on their faces revealed little of what they were thinking.

As I slowly drift through the air above the crowd, my eyes follow the rope from my waist to the ground. It's attached to the earth. Slowly, it dawns on me that the rope represents my commitment to live an earthly life. What I make of it is up to me.

With so many questions remaining in my mind concerning this experience, on June 6, 1993, I asked my Inner Self, through Lefty, what it all meant. “Lefty” is my left hand using the right side of my brain. I write questions with my right hand and answer them with my left. It’s a form of automatic writing, which helps me get answers from outside the box of my usual thinking. In any event, here’s what my Inner Self said after I asked the question: “Inner Self, concerning my superman self with the rope tied around my waist – who or what is on the other end and why?” This is not a very good question but it did provide my Inner Self with the opportunity to give me the following answers. (When I use my left hand to get answers from my Inner Self through automatic writing, I use the name “Lefty” to identify the source of information because I think the name “Lefty” is cool.)

My dear son, (I don’t know why my Inner Self referred to me this way, unless in some psychological or spiritual way I am its offspring as well as the offspring of my biological parents.)

Your Super Man dream serves as a metaphor for your (ambivalent) feelings about life – its physical expression. Frankenstein symbolizes your perception of physical reality – a mish-mash of various and questionable source components (belief systems) forced together and trying to act as one. The result, of course, is a mostly angry, vengeful entity trying to find a victim, who, in this case, is you!

There are two "unseen" forces holding each end of the rope. One unseen force is the earth and your commitment to live an earthy life, and the other unseen force is you/me holding the rope* by having it tied around our waist and not realizing we can untie it. This seemingly hampered Super Man reflects your ambivalent feelings about your commitment to be in your current reality with its particular array of values, and the magnitude of the challenge you chose for yourself.

At the end of each Super Man/Frankenstein dream you would turn around, see the monster and awake from the dream in fear. This dream portrayed you as a Super Man with limits, but a superman, nonetheless. Repeated many times, it served to wake you up to your power. It also provided you the willingness to endure the more difficult learning times of your life. Now you know who I am, who you are, and what we are together. You also learned that Frankenstein isn’t such a bad character after all. He was simply a device to help you learn. By waking up to your inner resources you have become the Super Man you sensed you were all along.

A useful perspective to have of “Super” man or “Super” woman is one who is actualizing much of their potential – using inner as well as outer resources and abilities in determining the actualization of their reality or experience. In other words, when you use your intuitive abilities as well as your intellectual ones to perceive a larger reality, you enrich the quality of your life and empower yourself and others around you.

– Lefty

Lefty’s reference to “you/me holding the rope” confused me at first because my attention was always focused on the end of the rope farthest from me. In the final dream when I saw it was attached to the earth like an umbilical cord, I still didn’t think about the end of the rope tied around my waist and what it might mean. I simply overlooked it. It wasn’t until after I typed Lefty’s statement into the computer and was thinking about his use of “you/me holding the rope” while taking a shower that I realized how completely I had overlooked the fact that one end of the rope was tied to me. In effect, I was holding the rope by letting it remain tied around my waist! Why didn’t I just untie it and let it go? Was I given a hypnotic suggestion to not think about it, or did I simply overlook it? Did I know, intuitively, it was my connection to this recurring dream and, possibly, my earthly experience as well? If I had untied the rope would it have ended the dream as well as my life on earth?

I’ll never know because I didn’t untie the rope and the dream completed its mission. According to Lefty, the dream was meant to toughen me up so I could perform what I came here to do: share my Inner experiences with others to help expand our concept of who we are and what reality is so we can evolve at a time we need to.

This brings up the role of the players in this drama. If Lefty is correct and the purpose of the dream was to help me develop my character and strength in ways that would help me fulfill my purpose in life, does that suggest the other players in this recurring dream are friends or angels in disguise? They certainly demonstrated infinite patience and infinite love by reliving this drama over and over again with me until I learned my lesson. As each of us creates our own version of the universe in physical terms, is everyone else who participates in it with us a teacher or angel in disguise? If so, it gives new meaning and importance to the relationships between us.

Another important element of Lefty’s response is the way he refers to “you/me” as if we are both one and separate. The dream reflects this as well. In the dream it’s as if my Inner Self and I are both one and the same. However, when I “wake up,” we separate. I become the outer "me" (outer ego self) with my own individuality and experience, while my Inner Self continues on as my Inner Self with its own unique identity and experience. How amazing! We seem to be able to switch from our Inner and outer senses, our Inner and outer selves as easily as we breathe yet we take so little notice of these processes and abilities. Why? Do we see no value in doing so or does survival in waking reality blind us to the nature of our Inner Self ? This dream raises many important questions.

Finally, what do "Superman" and "Superwoman" of comic book, television, and movie fame represent? Compared to mere humans, they have superior strength of body and mind. In my dream, when I was both my Inner and Outer Self combined, I also had superior strength of body and mind. Is it possible that the comic book creation of Superman and Superwoman is a message to ourselves that if we discover and develop the connection between our Inner Selves and Outer Selves, we too will become Super Men and Super Women? I think so! What do you think?

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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