Samurai Counseling 4
Are you interested in Fractal Psychology? Fractal Psychology (founded in Japan by Mau Isshiki) can easily analyze the cause of problem. You can learn how it is possible and how it is effective to solve problems reading entertaining scenario! Let's enjoy!
[Case No. 1 Repay for the Past 4] (Back to the first page) (Back to the last page)
Madam: You need to remember. You must have tormented someone. Someone hated you intensely. You laughed at that person and stole their happiness.
John: No, never…oh, wait…
John flashes back to his elementary school days
(John is laughing at his friend Luke, making fun of him. Everyone around them is laughing too. In his desire to be popular, John gets into a routine of teasing Luke, and always in the same way. Luke laughs at first, but soon enough he seems bothered, and he asks John to stop. John ignores his pleas and escalates his bullying. He starts to steal from Luke. Snacks, notebooks, pens, and so forth. When Luke begs for them back, John reaches out as if to return them, but trips Luke, making him fall into a patch of cactus where he gets badly scratched. Then John laughs with his other friends over Luke’s predicament.)
John Madam’s room
(The sound of the bamboo tube fountain. John is wordlessly going down memory lane. He’s there for quite a while without getting in touch with his emotions. But something dark and gloomy grows inside him.)
**
John: Okay, if you want to call that bullying, I suppose you could say I bullied Luke. But you know what, he was laughing too. Yes, he was at first, and everyone around us laughed too. Hey, it’s my fond memory from elementary school. Everyone had a good time, and I got to be the popular kid. That’s about all I can remember…
Madam: So that’s what happened. You were a stupid monkey then. And, even today you still have that monkey brain.
John: Okay, so maybe I did something similar with Kane. Whenever I teased him, the girls around us laughed. That made me happy, so I teased him even more. But to sue me for harassment now? If he didn’t like it, he should’ve said so then. Luke could’ve said something too. We were friends.
Madam: Just a while ago, you were talking about how miserable you feel in your life right now. Can you see that you’re experiencing the same pain that Luke did back then?
John: What? Like Luke? Hardly. I’m hurting a lot more.
Madam: No, it’s the same.
(Madam stands up and walks to the console. She picks up an orange from a large plate and puts it on a much smaller plate.)
See here. This large plate is your brain today. This small one is your brain when you were a child. This orange is an emotional storm. The orange from your childhood looks small to you today. But for you as a child, the orange was enormous, enough to make you want to die. Therefore, it would have to be something sufficiently big for you to experience the same effect today.
(When the lamp is turned on, the shadow of the orange grows and fills the entire large plate.)
John: Madam, I don’t understand. Please teach me. I get that the torment I dished out as a child is on par with the suffering I’m experiencing today. But what does the past have to do with what I’m going through now?
Madam: (She silently stands up and goes toward the balcony. She gazes at a butterfly flying in the yard.) Look, a butterfly. (She points it out to John.)
The butterfly has given me an opportune example for you. Pay attention as I explain. I will speak slowly so listen well. You do dream, don’t you?
John: Yes, I do, but I don’t remember them.
Madam: In the East, there’s a fable about a butterfly’s dream. It goes like this. A man dreams he is a butterfly.
(Images of China. A butterfly is flying. It’s attacked by a falcon and dies, falling. Then the butterfly transforms into a human.)
He thought he died as a butterfly, but realized that he’d become human. And then he wonders if he is a human being or a butterfly? Of course, we are human beings. We’re not going to turn into butterflies. But in our heart, we are always envisioning something. The more you identify with that image, the more you become that image.
John: When you say a dream, you’re talking about what happens during REM sleep, right? I learned about that in a psychology class in college. We only dream about half the time we’re asleep.
Madam: No, that’s a misunderstanding. Maybe the word ‘dream’ isn’t right. Dreams are part of a deep, conscious activity. Even while you’re sleeping, your consciousness remains active. It’s perpetually moving, like fish in the sea.
The difference between what psychologists call a dream and what I call a dream is…. for example, let’s say you’re drawing. You’re about three years old.
(The scene shifts. A typical family table. A three-year-old child is drawing lines on plain white paper. His mother is next to him watching.)
Mother: What are you drawing?
Child: (laughing) well….(keeps drawing. Gradually the lines connect and a shape emerges.)
Mother: Oh, I get it. A house?
Child: Yes!
(Back to the present.)
Madam: You don’t call the act dreaming if there’s no meaning to it. And even if you don’t remember, they feed into your future dreams. I label those precursors dreams as well. That’s why even if you think all you did was draw lines, in time those lines overlap and coalesce into something meaningful.
No conscious activity is so useless that it doesn’t create a dream. That’s why we see them as a house or a person even though they’re nothing more than a collection of lines. Eventually, as meaning expands and emotions are added, the dream creates a story.
Many characters appear in a dream. There are monsters, ghost-like machines, animals. You might dream about someone making you cry or chasing you. Those are all activities of your consciousness.
(Madam returns to the back of the room. When she opens the sliding door with a remote control, a screen appears. John is surprised to see something hi-tech in the room. The screen displays a graphic with lines and circles overlapping to form various shapes—a person, a monster.)
Madam: You can become anything in a dream. You can be a monster. You can be a mother. You can become Kane, or Luke. You are everyone. You play all the roles. When you wake up, the role that you played most frequently becomes the real “self” that you recognize. The people around you embody all the other roles. This is the world you inhabit.
John: I don’t get what you’re saying. (Breaks out in a cold sweat)
(Madam opens the sliding door and goes into the next room. Then stands with her back against the calligraphy, “A man is a mirror.”)
Madam: What ‘a man is a mirror’ means is that your life is the manifestation of your deep consciousness.
John: Hmm, I get it and don’t get it.
[To be continued]
