Thought for the Day
Wednesday, May 7, 2025

The dream that is the impetus for “thought for the day,” referred to the present world situation as a conflagration. The intensity of the word in the dream was striking and I must not ignore it. The word comes from the Latin word conflagratio. The con here is meant to intensify the word flagratio which means “to burn,” “to blaze,” “to glow.” So, the word itself carries the feeling of intensity that I felt in the dream. My sense is that intensity not only describes the degree of the inferno we are facing, but argues I believe for the urgency of attention this requires.

Of course, what we are seeing is literal conflagrations at work in climate change, but it may be imagined that the degree of denial that is being exhibited may itself be a form of destructive fire. When so much of reality and truth is subject to denial, then everything becomes fuel for the fires. Everything losses stability. All values become subject to the flames.

One thing that seems to escape the ravages of the fires is dreams. Dreams seem to have a kind of “immunity” from being destroyed. Part of this may be the simple fact that so little attention is ever given to dreams in the halls of power or anywhere else for that matter. So, what do dreams have to say about the conflagration? Some dreams seem to be so personal in nature that they are likely to be about one’s conscious and unconscious relation to what is happing in the world. But other dreams have little to do with the personal. These dreams come from a dream source I call “the other.” These dreams in particular have to do with the future and they have little to do with one’s conscious or unconscious intentions. It is these dreams that we learn what the creative other is proposing in relation to the conflagration. These dreams are a source for what cannot be derived either from history or from conscious and rational states. These dreams will convey not ready mades that we understand and can explain, but highly original forms that we may not understand at all.

What I am seeing in my own dreams and those of others, is the advent of something “new” and “unique.” These dreams will strike the dreamer as “odd” and “strange.” For example, I recently had a dream that featured only a word. It was not a voice dream, nor was there any image. I simply felt the “presence” of this word and it was striking. I could not deny the importance of this and it was most certainly way beyond anything personal. The word was olmelleon. This word will not be found in any dictionary or in any language. It carries the sense of “new” an “unique” I mentioned earlier. It stumps AI. However, AI adds an interesting observation: “words without literal meaning that come in dreams can be very important, if for no other reason than the mystery they embody.” The word carries a sense of mystery for sure and one are “stumped” trying to “figure it out.” The deep sense of the meaning of mystery is “seeing with the eyes closed.” So that is how this word must be approached.

Next Wednesday, I’ll describe my work in seeing olmelleon with my eyes closed and what this has to do with the conflagration sweeping the world.

Russ