It’s during the second world war in Europe. A group of Jews are in a secret workshop making something. (Forged money?) Nazis enter the room looking for Jews, and the Jews greet them with warm kindness. The Nazis seem baffled, assume these people are OK (not Jews), and leave.
This is one of the dreams which are more like a movie and I am an observer more than a participant. The essence of the dream was that the Nazis were looking for jews and other “criminals”, they assumed the group of Jews were OK since they greeted them with such warmth and kindness, so they left.
In my waking life, I am exploring a new layer of this in myself. Whenever something comes up in me that my habitual pattern is to avoid, I instead notice it’s a flavor of the divine and invite the divine – in that form – to notice itself as the divine. Where I previously would “dehumanize” and “criminalize” what came up, I instead greet it more warmly and recognize it as a flavor of the divine.
This has been a process, and when my habits reject an experience it’s typically not very strongly. But it’s something I keep exploring, and have explored in a slightly different way over the last few weeks, so perhaps the dream is reflecting this exploration. And perhaps it’s reminding me that the Nazi-Jew analogy is or was more fitting than I like to admit.
Just so there is less room for misunderstanding: This is about my own internal process, and perhaps the internal process of all of us. It’s not about the waking world, although perhaps the “friendly” tactic could have worked in some situations. It’s not meant to generalize beyond my own inner processes or some rare waking-world situations.
In our waking world, it’s obviously not enough, and sometimes not so appropriate, to treat nazis with kindness. We can have empathy and understanding for anyone, but we also need to take action – and sometimes strong action – to prevent harm.