The Donkey Virus

Working With Beliefs In The Dreamstate

by Emmy van Swaaij

Gert-Jan had just left for a fresh work day and I was fretting: Shall I get dressed now? Shall I stay in bed a bit longer? Oh it’s probably disappointing for Gert-Jan that I didn’t have breakfast with him this morning, and now I think of it… Geez I’m so lazy! My eyelids however were telling me a totally different story: “Please Em, a little bit more sleep would do us a lot of good!”.

“Yeah, right!” I replied, “And then I’ll get nothing done on time, and the test! The Math test! (notice the capital there) What about that?! I have no discipline whatsoever… (BEEEEEP lots of negative self talk here, hurtful for the eyes and heart, especially my own.)”

Of course, my eyelids won the discussion. They laughed at my proposal to jog, and my legs did the same. “That can wait” they said, “You can run after you’ve slept a bit more.” I said to myself that I would sleep in till 10, no later and so negotiated a bit with the two voices inside me.

At 9:59 I woke up naturally (I hadn’t set an alarm clock) remembering the dream I just had. This dream presented me with such valuable insight that I’m glad I chose to listen to my body’s protest and not to that other voice that was tucked in with feelings of artificial guilt.

The Donkey Virus!

I’m seated behind a computer in the living room at my parents’ house. It’s an Apple computer, such a very expensive big-screened one that my parents don’t own in the waking state ‐they have a PC. I installed a “succeed for your math test! Practice program” and chat with Jen and Ellen about dreams I just had.

Then while I’m chatting with both Jen and Ellen a huge donkey appears on my screen, covering the whole screen.

It’s an animated donkey like you would expect in those very noisy children’s cartoons they show at cartoon network for instance. It wears a hat (don’t you just adore the humor in the dream state!) and I can’t use any chat program any longer whatsoever. It’s a virus that was attached to that free practice program I had downloaded.

I start fretting: dang it! Now I can’t have a conversation with Ellen and Jen and the computer is probably ruined! It’s my parents’ computer! What will they say?!

Meanwhile the donkey keeps running on the screen and I feel so dumb for having installed that program. I know that there are many people who have made a similar mistake but I feel so stupid to have done the same thing. My mom enters the room and I tell her feeling utterly embarrassed that I installed that program and now yes, there is this virus running crazy.

I realize that I have a laptop, a smaller version of this computer, that I could use and be ‘safe’ to work with some things, but I can’t ignore this situation. It has to be solved as well. It would be a good temporary solution, but this problem needs to be fixed.

The donkey keeps running around and making horrible sounds, singing songs to stress how dumb I was to install this. He also states the thing: If I don’t remove the program in some days, it will be there forever, but “Haha!”, it shouts, “You don’t know how to do that, well do you?!”

I realize that I might have to get some help from an outside office, feel embarrassed to have to contact them, but then I see that I can delete the program. It takes effort, but I can do it myself. As I try to select the programs and hit delete I have trouble seeing them clearly. I hit delete (after searching for them for a long time, all the time that donkey would run around on the screen, making it even more difficult to see clearly. Then I start to worry: “What if I think I deleted them, but they are still running in the background somewhere…”

What I like so much about this dream is its clarity and also the sense of humor! A virus is not dangerous as long as you don’t activate it. Of course this virus in the dream relates to my beliefs attached to maths and my capacities of passing that test or not. You would only download such a program to practice your maths with that title: “Be sure you pass this test” when inwardly you are convinced you are not able to do so.

I was fretting like crazy the last couple of days, so much so that I was in tears about the whole thing. The dream points out that even in a stable system (Apple) it can happen that you “activate” programs (beliefs) that are not so healthy for you. The separated computer, the laptop represents an alternate self, a self that is more flexible and portable.

The Apple in the dream was a home-computer.  This I think connects to physical life. It is that part of me that is physical at the moment. My consciousness does not only reside in the Apple at my parents place, this physical life, but also outside of it. Portions of my consciousness work outside that framework.

The donkey is an excellent representation of how I view myself (the stereotypical donkey-with-hat picture), as “Dumb with maths”. By focusing and letting representation/manifestation of that belief get all my attention, I can’t work around it and de-activate it (this is a better word for it than delete, you don’t delete beliefs, you just deactivate them). The manifestation of that belief blurs my sight quite literally.

At the end of the dream I fret that I have not really found the root of the problem yet, that donkey was jumping around like crazy and I had so much trouble focusing that I’m not sure if I tackled the problem.

The advice of the dream is: Don’t focus on the donkey. Also it says to me: Ok, you might not be able to de-activate that belief in time, before that big test on Monday, but choose to use a different computer altogether (that flexible laptop) to make the test. Choose a totally different approach and don’t buy into easy-fixes (as the program in the dream was, help me quick!) but be gentle to yourself. Later on you can try to de-activate that virus, asking advice from others who worked through similar issues and most of all: Don’t be ashamed that you activated it.

The Donkey just upsets me way too much at this moment.  It will press all my buttons and make me blurry and unable to work with the computer at all. (So this “fear of not passing that math-test” really makes it difficult for me to focus on things I do cherish and find important, as the conversations with Ellen and Jen)

I studied yesterday for the test using a new approach, carefully beginning right at the beginning of maths and was able to use that “other” computer that didn’t have the Donkey in it in the first place. It’s not a quick fix.  It takes a lot of time, beginning with math problems I can handle, building confidence there and then slowly working towards more difficult issues that are more easily solved because I gave myself the time to learn the basics.

My approach before this change was: try and understand those difficult problems, demanding from myself to get it in one try, re-activating: See!? How dumb you are!

So I’m glad I was able to change that!