I brought this dream to Lorenzo to get his take on it:
“I was with some people, looking at a creature that was something like a snail but wasn’t a snail. It was very beautiful and didn’t have a shell, but had a large, flowing, white membrane spreading out behind it, sort of in the shape of lacey butterfly wings. This membrane was extremely sensitive. A little boy in the group reached out and touched the membrane, damaging it and causing the creature much pain. I felt sorry for the creature and tried to show the boy how to handle one properly.
“I showed him my pet snail and went to pick it up by the shell, but it was sticking to the table a bit, and when I squeezed the shell, the snail, who had been completely inside the shell, came out and showed his face. I pulled harder, wresting him from the table, and doing the same harm to him that I was trying to teach the boy not to do. I realized what I had done and felt bad about it.
“Then, I wanted to feed it some bread crumbs, so I set it down while I went to get the bread. I quickly got the bread and then put the snail on my hand and the crumbs in a line on my wrist. The snail started to eat the bread crumbs and crawled under the sleeve of my blouse. I didn’t want it there, so I lifted my sleeve, picked up the snail, and set it down on a table.
“As soon as I turned my back on it, it scuttled away very quickly (very unlike a snail) and went down a set of wooden stairs. As it went down, it seemed to transfer into a little Yorkshire puppy.”
Lorenzo leaned back and asked me, “How do you feel about snails?”
“I don’t know. They’re kind of cute, I guess.”
I remembered a snail that I had studied in a biology lab. Poor thing had walked right into a glass loupe with one of its eyes and recoiled in pain. I’d felt responsible for that, because I had left the loupe there.
“Most people don’t think they’re cute,” said Lorenzo. “How does a snail move?”
“Very slowly.”
“And what does it leave behind it?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t think of the word for slime.
“It’s a baboso!” he said (a slug… also the word for somebody who drools a lot). “It’s disgusting… like a cucaracha!”
I smiled. “Ah, well, you see… I used to have a pet cockroach.” I told Lorenzo the story of my pet cucaracha in Mexico.
“And did he betray you?” Lorenzo asked.
“Betray me?” I searched my brain. “Not unless you count reproduction as a betrayal.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I let it stay living there on the sink, because he was too fast for me to catch and put outside anyway, and I could see the fear in his eyes, so I didn’t want to keep frightening him so. For the longest time, that was the only roach in my house, but after awhile, I suddenly became overrun with them, and though it really hurt me to do it, I had to put out traps and kill them. I still feel bad about that.”
Lorenzo was unimpressed. “I’m sure that’s exactly what the cucaracha was counting on.”
“Oh, come on…”
“A! What did you feel for that cucaracha?”
“Well, I felt sorry for it.”
“A! And did he use it to his advantage?”
“Well, not intentionally, I’m sure…”
“A! Let me tell you something about cucarachas. It is in their nature to multiply and to take over whatever space they are allowed to inhabit. And that cucaracha invaded your home, and you let him multiply and build up his forces there. But that cucaracha did not belong in your home.”
“Well, he was just trying to survive, just like you and me. I don’t like to kill animals, because I don’t believe that my life is any more valuable than theirs.”
“I’m not saying that you have to kill them, but put them in their place. Your place is in your home. His place is not in your home. But you let him stay there, because you felt pity for him and he took advantage of that and betrayed you, because that is the nature of a cucaracha. No. Each one in his place.”
“Do you really believe that a species has a certain collective nature or characteristic like treachery?”
“Absolutely. Think about it. What is the nature of a snake?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is a snake capable of showing affection?”
“Maybe to other snakes…”
“Not even. A snake will take every advantage to attack. You can never trust them. You cannot turn your back on them for a minute.”
I sat for a minute, trying to absorb all of this. Then,
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. And I told him about the Tamera community that I blogged about in Living With Rats and Snakes. (skim this, or the following won’t make much sense). This is a story that usually receives a favorable reaction.
Lorenzo listened carefully, a look of indignation slowly spreading across his face.
“How convenient,” he said after I’d finished. “How very convenient that they sent them to a temple.”
“Why?”
“Do you know that the Mayans also kept snakes in a temple? And worshipped them? And made blood sacrifices to them? Human sacrifices!” His eyes flashed.
“Well, I’m sure that the members of the Tamera community are not making blood sacrifices. There whole purpose for existence is to promote world peace.”
“But they are going to the temple every day and bringing them food…,”
“I don’t think they’re bringing them food. Just visiting with them.”
“And what will happen if they stop visiting them? Will the rats and snakes start inhabiting their living space again?”
I was beginning to see where Lorenzo was going with this. He was saying that the community was obligated to continue visiting the temple, so they were, in effect, bound to the wishes of the rats and snakes…
“But still…,” I implored, “it’s certainly not their intention.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. But that is the effect.”
“Well, but what about the rats? People have pet rats.”
“Yes, they do.”
“And they’re very intelligent.”
“And what do they use their intelligence for?”
He had me stumped there.
“To build armies!”
I thought of the movie “Ben” and gave an inward chuckle. (oh great, now I won’t be able to get that song out of my head).
“Well, I just don’t believe that all rats are out to take over the world. Or all cockroaches, for that matter. They have the same motivation that we have… survival. And why shouldn’t they? Do we have any more right to inhabit this planet than they do?”
“Number one,” said Lorenzo, “They certainly have a right to exist. But in… their… place. Not in the house and definitely not in the temple!”
“Well now, wait a minute. Those rats and snakes were living in that house long before the Tamera community decided to take up residence there.”
“And who was living there before the rats and snakes?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who built that house? Was it the rats and snakes?”
“Uh…,”
“A! Everything in its place. Number two… don’t think about this so literally. Think, not about the animals themselves, but what they represent. Think about your experience with the cucaracha. You felt pity for the cucaracha, and it took advantage of your pity to sire a dynasty. Have you ever felt pity for a human being only to have them take advantage of your pity and use it against you?”
“I certainly have. In fact, that’s a major issue in my life.” I told him about my most recent experience with that… my boyfriend in Thailand who had lied to me about his marital status and about having had a vasectomy (I think you can all see the corollary to the cockroach motif). I’d found out about his marriage on the last day of my six week trip through Thailand with this man and a bunch of other villagers from the temple. And how do you suppose I found out? He took me home to meet her! By that time, I’d already committed to coming back to the village the following year to teach English, and I couldn’t gracefully back out of it. And he’d acted like he thought it was perfectly normal to have a couple of wives. I did some research on the internet when I got home and found out that polygamy is not rare in Thailand, even if it’s no longer illegal.
During the intervening months, he wrote me a couple of love letters. In the second one, he asked me to bring him and his son some sweaters, because it gets cold in northern Thailand during the winter (when I would be arriving). That set up some red flags for me, because I’d been involved in some economically unequal relationships before, and it had always turned into them thinking of me as Sugar Mama with a capital S. But, I thought…
“I can do that. It’s not so much. But I won’t just get sweaters for him and his son. I’ll get one for his wife, too. And for lots of other villagers as well.” So, I went to the second hand shop and got about 20 nice sweaters, enough to fill a suitcase, and I distributed them to people more or less on a first come, first serve basis, except for the ones I’d reserved for my “boyfriend,” let’s call him Gor, and his family.
Soon after, Gor started talking about how he needed to go to the doctor, because he had a bad heart, and asking me to give him the money. I refused to do it. I didn’t want to get in that position of feeling financially responsible for him like I had for others, most notably, my last boyfriend in Mexico. That experience had really made me resistant. But Gor kept talking about his bad heart, and saying things like he didn’t believe I loved him, because if I loved him, I would want to help him. I resented his tactics, but they were starting to work on me. I had a talk with the monk about Gor’s health situation, and it turned out that he really did have a bad heart and some other serious health problems.
The amount of money that he was asking for wasn’t much, so I thought to myself that I often donated money to charities that helped people I would never meet. Why wouldn’t I want to help someone that I knew? So, I found a way to sneak the money to him (our relationship still being a huge secret).
The next day, Gor wasn’t at the temple, so I assumed that he’d gone to the doctor, but when I asked him about it the next time I saw him, he told me that he’d lost the money before he had a chance to go to the doctor. It seems that, that very same night, on his way home, he stopped in at a house where some friends were gambling. Of course, he assured me, he didn’t go to gamble. He just went “to watch”. But just then, the police came and dragged him away for gambling, and the monk had to come get him, and he had to pay a fine in the same amount as I had given him for his doctor’s visit.
Of course, I didn’t believe for one minute that he had gone “just to watch,” and I thought, “Okay, that’s it. No more money for Gor.”
But after a while, his health seemed to deteriorate, and he started being more insistent about getting more money from me… almost aggressive, as if it were something that I owed him.
“Yes, isn’t it always like that?” Lorenzo said. “They are always so humble at first. It causes them so much shame to ask you for money.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “but then it becomes easier and easier for them to ask, until they finally reach the point where they consider it their due.”
In the meantime, I knew that the monk had paid for his last doctor’s visit, and I made a point of finding out how much it cost. It turned out to be half of what Gor had asked me for. I asked Gor why he had asked for the higher amount.
“Puut len,” he replied (I was just kidding). That had become his standard answer for everything… like why he lied to me about his marital status… and I was not amused. Still, I decided to give him one more chance (I know, stupid, stupid me), and I gave him enough for the doctor’s visit.
“But you have to go to the doctor this time.” Of course, he promised that he would.
About a week later, I asked him if he had gone to the doctor.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any money.”
“What happened to the money that I gave you?”
He explained that one of his wife’s relatives had gotten married, and they had had to buy a gift. I was furious!
“I gave you that money to go to the doctor!”
He couldn’t understand what I was upset about. In his eyes, I gave him the money because he needed it, and he needed to get a wedding gift, so that was what he used it for.
“You have to give a gift. It’s expected.”
“And what would you have done if you didn’t have the money that I gave you?”
“We would have had to stay home. You don’t know what it’s like…,” Yadda, yadda, yadda..
“And the thing of it was,” I told Lorenzo, “He got to the point where he seemed to think that I owed him this money. And anything I had, he wanted… even my tennis shoes. And I tried to explain to him that if I gave him my shoes, then I wouldn’t have any shoes for myself. And if I gave him all my money, I wouldn’t have any for myself. That it might seem to him that I had a lot, but I had to think about my future. I have to support myself when I’m too old to work. I don’t have a family that will take care of me like he does. And he sure wouldn’t be there for me if I were the one in need.”
“You can say that again,” snorted Lorenzo. “That cucaracha would just let you die.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Yes! That is exactly what would happen. He even said it. When I asked him what I was supposed to do if I got sick and didn’t have enough money to take care of myself because I had given it all to him, and he said, ‘you’ll just have to die.’”
“You see?” said Lorenzo. “It’s all well and good to feel pity for someone, but you can’t do it blindly, without considering the karmic cause that put them in that situation in the first place, because true to their nature, they will take advantage of you.”
“Yes.” I was beginning to see very clearly what he was talking about. I told him about a conversation that I had had with my neighbor in Mexico between my two trips to Thailand. This woman was a sort of a spiritual guide for me. She practiced Reiki and helped me a lot with dream interpretation. I had mentioned to her that Gor had a problem with his eyesight. It seemed that he had cataracts or something. I knew that he hadn’t had them operated on because of a lack of funds, and I told her that I was considering offering to pay for the operation if he wanted it, because I was sure that the cost would be negligible for me.
“Did he ask you to help him?” she had asked me. He hadn’t.
“When you think about it,” she’d said, “It’s really kind of arrogant to swoop in and try to fix someone’s problems without them asking you to. It’s a way of not honoring their decisions. On some level, whether in this life or before, he made a decision to suffer in this way. It’s something that he needs to work out.”
I had never thought about it that way before. But that’s why, when Gor finally did start asking, I thought it would be okay to help. But he really did take advantage (there’s a lot more, but this is not the time to go into it).
“And remember your dream,” said Lorenzo. “Remember how the creature ran away the minute you turned your back on it, and then it turned into something else [a dog]. This dream is trying to tell you that things are not always as they seem.”
Indeed. Lots to think about… the most important question being… how do you find the balance between compassion and idiocy? How can I be a loving, caring person without setting myself up to be taken advantage of? Lorenzo had said that he didn’t believe that Christ had ever really said that we should turn the other cheek if someone does us harm, and I don’t think that most people practice that anyway, but I guess I’ve had that as my ideal (the concept is not unique to Christianity). But it hasn’t served me well, and what’s more, it hasn’t been of much use to the people I’ve “helped” either.
So, just when you think you’ve reached the end of the story, I have to tell you that I believe that dreams and their interpretations have many layers, and this is one layer of interpretation. Another layer of interpretation has occurred to me, just since I’ve been home. It couldn’t have occurred to me before, because it’s based on something that happened to me later in Turkey. I’ll share that story and the second layer of this dream, when we get there. Stay tuned.
