In this
guest dream, Firequeen faces grief at the loss of her husband. Death appears as
a swift raptor, a cheetah that cheats her of her beloved. The dream triggers a
powerful transformation: By facing her pain in the dream, healing can begin.
Firequeen’s
Dream: Weird dream last night. I was standing in my house with Wolfram, it was
not this house but the room we were in was this one (office). We were standing
at the window and we saw a flying dinosaur - about the size of a pelican - the
name given me in the dream was velociraptor, but I just looked that up and it
doesn't have wings. This had a big head and a very long sharp beak. Wolfram was
intrigued with it and began making faces at it and waving his arms to annoy it
(he was like that) and it turned and flew towards us. This did not make him
give up. It flew straight at the window and its beak pierced the glass, making
a hole. It made about three of these holes. Then it saw a small bird sitting on
a bush and it speared the poor bird with its beak. Then it sat back on its
haunches - it had turned into a cheetah-like creature and was holding the bird
in its paws and had a grinning mouth full of teeth. It seemed able to change
back and forth between these two creatures at will. I felt it was extremely
dangerous and could get in the house through the holes it had made, so I
persuaded Wolfram we should leave the room and shut the room door behind us.
Then we
went to the door of the house and I saw the house was in a field with open
space around. People were coming towards the house and I was supposed to have
made food for them, but hadn't. Then Libby came and she was carrying trays of
beautiful food and cakes, which she had made for us and the people. There was
more but I only remember fragments - Adrian, a friend I haven't seen for a long
time, was holding a pane of glass and saying he was going to repair the
window. I felt I had to warn all these
people about the velociraptor, but I could not get them to listen. I kept
lining them up outside the house and saying they had to listen to me before
they went in. But they were too busy talking to each other. If any of them did
listen, they dismissed it as imagination.
Firequeen’s afterthought: Some days afterwards, I was
thinking about this dream, and how Wolfram is so often with me in dreams, and I
felt sure that he is always there, even when I don’t know it, and then I
received the message that this is so, and it is because we are now merged. We
don’t have to wait until after my death. And maybe this was why he ‘wasn’t
there’ on the holiday this year, when he had been so vividly present the year before
- because he had been present in me.
Carla’s interpretation:
The dreamer has shared some facts from her life that I take into account as I
interpret her dream as if it were my own. I am standing in my house (my self)
with my husband Wolfram, who in waking life died unexpectedly in 2006. We are
in the office, which is the dream’s way of telling me that I have some work to
do. The window I look through represents my view of things, and the creature
that I see tells me what I need to work on. I see a dinosaur, which has mythic
elements for me, reminding me of a fairytale dragon (something to be
conquered), but this dinosaur is very particular—it’s a velociraptor, a word
that literally means swift seizer. My husband was swiftly seized by death, and
the dream is helping me deal with my feelings around this tragedy. The dinosaur
breaks the glass: my husband’s death has been a shattering experience. My soul
(the bird) is held in this fearsome event, and I feel cheated (the Cheetah). I
have tried not to look at this painful reality. (I persuade Wolfram we should
leave the room and shut the door behind us.)
Yet having
experienced the pain and fear of my loss in the dream space, I begin to heal. I
go to the door (a threshold, the demarcation between one state and another),
leaving the painful part of my inner world to enter the open space of a field. My
world view is opening up. Because of my suffering I hadn’t been able to
nourish my friendships (make food for my friends), but my friend Libby (the
part of me that is now ready to interact and give to others) has provided
enough for all. The Adrian part of me (a part that has been
gone for a while) will repair my shattered heart (the glass pane “pain”).
My dream
shows me how I have progressed through my grief, but also warns me not to
forget the life lessons I have learned, even though there are parts of me that
don’t want to know as well as people in waking life who refuse to accept the difficulty of dealing with death (the people who ignore my warnings about the swift
seizer). As I can see from my thoughts a few days later, my spiritual beliefs were
activated by the dream and console me with the realization that my love and I
have merged: he lives on through me—in real time. Wolfram is not lost to me.
This dream had been a complete mystery to me. When Carla told me she had posted it, I thought, how exciting! But I was unprepared for the profound effect her interpretation was to have on me. It was like a rock collector who comes upon a fossil accretion - first it is a sealed, round entity, giving nothing away. When he cracks it open, all sorts of mysteries are revealed.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I had no idea that this dream was dealing with the physical death of my husband, which I had indeed sealed off. I was blown away by Carla’s description of the velociraptor as swift seizer. Wolfram was taken suddenly, without warning. But it puzzled me why such a primitive creature should appear in my dream - I have no history of interest in dinosaurs, or dragons. I think now it signified the deep primeval quality of our love - which for all I know has stretched back to the dawn of time - in various incarnations.
The three piercings of the window I see now as the three years of pain I endured when he left me, followed by his death - the spearing of the bird which Carla identifies as my soul. And the cheetah has cheated me of his presence. Although parted, we were working on getting back together, and we were almost there. I think of the office (which Carla sees as ‘work to be done’) as our enclosed space where we shared our thoughts and information, and it could be operating now as a ‘communications centre’ between this world and the next.
I was also puzzled as to why (in the dream) I thought shutting the door on the room would prevent the veliciraptor getting into the house - and yet opened the back door. Conscious thought says it could have flown around the house, but in the dream this did not appear to be a problem. As Carla says, these are two parts of the whole, and not connected. My loss of Wolfram is sealed and confined to that one room, while the opening of the door on the sunny field represents my wish to continue living in the light.
At the news of his death - which came by telephone - he had gone the previous year to make a fresh start in Killarney, where I had visited him some months before - I felt a giant clamp descend from the sky, it went down through my head and straight to my gut, where it firmly clamped everything up tight. I never expressed pain or grief - I had grieved enough during those three painful years. And at his funeral in that wonderful Irish town, packed with friends he had made during his short time there, everyone came up to me and said, “Your husband told me that his one regret in life was leaving you, and that all he wanted was for you to be together again”. So in his death I received great healing, and I had already learnt to live without him.
The two people in the dream - Libby is a symbol of the Earth Mother - she lives on a boat with her partner and seven children, and is a supremely happy Being - she lifts my spirits every time I see her. Adrian is part of my pagan heritage - I have known him from a young man, and initiated him in the craft. Libby came to feed and nurture my wounded spirit, and Adrian came to ‘heal the pain’ - he carried the pane of glass to mend the window. In the real world, he was a help to me after the death, as he asked me to help him with some work which occupied me at a crucial time.
I can’t thank Carla enough for cracking open the secrets of this dream. I was deeply, profoundly moved on reading what she had written, and tears were in my eyes as I wrote her a preliminary note of thanks. It has taken me all this time to collect my thoughts enough to write a coherent response. She is a truly remarkable woman.
Firequeen, 30 Jan 2012
Thank you, Firequeen, for sharing this beautiful dream with us, and for your comments. They round out and enrich our understanding. Only the dreamer can truly know the meaning of her dream--those of us who try to help are merely offering up possibilities.
ReplyDeleteThis will be healing for anyone who has lost someone close to them. Thank you Carla for the beautiful interpretation and thank you Firequeen for your bravery in dealing with this issue head-on. You are a strong and noble woman.
ReplyDelete