The Fox's Secret

The previous two entries both involved religious themes and the appearance of divine figures.  I’ve decided to stick with that theme tonight and post a dream that I had in the spring of 2002.   It’s a dream that had major ramifications for my waking as well as my sleeping life.  But I’ll say more about that in the next entry.  As usual, I prefer to post the dream narrative itself, leave it open to the reader’s interpretation, and only then post my own.

One night I got home at four in the morning, having been out drinking again. The first part of the night was filled with those bouts of drunken sleep from which you remember absolutely nothing. When I woke up the first time, it was probably around 9 in the morning. The bedroom window was open slightly, enough to see that it was a very overcast day. There was a gentle rain falling. I can still hear the sound of the rain today. When I went back to sleep, I had a dream that forever changed me, in what ways I’m still not sure. Read more »

As you might already know, I’m a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at UCSB.  In many ways, I ended up here as a result of two dreams–the first one I described here.  The second dream is one I’m sure to blog about in the near future.  It seemed appropriate, therefore, to utilize those dreams in my academic work.  After all, it is my belief that our dreams can help us understand and illustrate in a narrative way the religious and philosophical truths that we are wrestling with while awake.

With that in mind, I have decided to post here on the site, in its entirety, an academic paper I wrote in which I used my dream about rebelling against God at the end of the world to explore the idea of “conscience” as it can be found in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, as well as in the theology of Augustine.

What follows is not light reading.  But I think you’ll enjoy it, especially if any of those figures are of interest to you.  You’ll also learn a few more biographical details about The Fox Foot, including why he still fears putting cottage cheese and peaches into the same bowl.

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