The Dream: I press a bird against a spinning spindle that pulverizes it. The bird does not resist, but looks at me mournfully. I feel terrible doing this, slowly killing this lovely defenseless creature. When it is pulverized I am to eat the little mortarized bits. I steel myself for this task, and also wonder how I will retrieve the pulverized bird from the wood chips at the bottom of the spindle so I can eat them.
Interpretation: Part of the spiritual journey involves breaking ourselves down in preparation for a new soul (psyche). In this dream the bird represents the soul or spirit. What slowly destroys me is my time on the earth, spinning on its axis like the pulverizing spindle. For me, as for the bird, resistance is futile. My eating the broken down bits symbolizes taking back in the transformed parts of myself, a kind of rebirth.
Dear Clara, Well, from my perspective, there is not much of the everyday or outer life in this dream. Here we have a symbolic dream with a capital “S”. It is many years since I gave Jung a close reading but if my memory serves me well even he granted that some dreams could be “very mysterious”; but that if we carried such a dream about with us, meditated on it, and turned it over and over in our mind something would nearly always come of it. The implication being that we do not always need to understand the dream immediately but that if we give it the attention its deserves, if we make space for it, it will, with its own living intelligence bring about the transformation that will rebalance our psyche or spirit.
ReplyDeleteAs usual taking your dream as my own I would view it this way: I note that that my conscious awareness (the bird), that with which I navigate, explore and make contact with the outer world is here directed inward toward the centre, toward the unconscious (the black spinning spindle). Its black nature indicates that it is unknown, uncharted territory. However, I am aware that its nature is dynamic (its spins) and not fixed. With courage and determination I persist in directing my conscious focus upon it. I press on. The dynamic contact between the conscious and unconscious is highly charged; it produces friction and can be uncomfortable and painful. It throws up a variety of psychic fragments and phenomena, including my dreams, and I realise that I must work with these if I am to play my (ego) part in helping to bring about the transformation that is underway. However, I am unsure as to whether I can discriminate between the fragments that will aid transformation and those that will not. I gather my strength to continue. I know from the experience of others, those that have gone before that if I can “sit with it”, if I can persevere with faith, the contact with unconscious will develop into a permanent living bridge allowing a major rebalancing and reorientation of my psyche/spirit. A new aspect of my spiritual life will open up, not after my physical death, but right here, right now.
With good faith and best wishes
Thank you, Openfoot. I think you got a lot more out of this dream than I did, and I thank you for your very profound interpretation. I now realize that I was so put off by the idea of hurting an innocent animal that I couldn't spend time with the dream. But with your insight I can now relax and stay with this dream for a while, as you suggest, and let it do its work. Perhaps I'm on the cusp of something.
ReplyDeleteI would have found this dream very painful.
ReplyDeleteI also found it painful, Firequeen--and uncomfortable as well.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there is a myth behind this dreams like this. I ask because quite a while ago I had a dream of a red and a green snake which were alive and well at the beginning of the dream, but were dead and had been baked into a sort of pie at the end of the dream, their green & red fragments placed in a pattern in the pie. This pie was presented to me to eat at the end of the dream. I, too, was horrified that someone had killed these snakes and I could not eat them. Perhaps it's a dissolution phase of the alchemical process, where things are dissolved or broken down before they take on their new form....I sense disintegration/reintegration in this dream. I associate the spinning spindle with a weaving, and weaving with the spider, and the spider who weaved the world into existence. Great comments on this dream! Emily
ReplyDeleteEmily, the parallels between our dreams are interesting. Perhaps we are dealing with some sort of archetypal image here. Eating is certainly a symbol of taking something in and, in the process, taking in its qualities. In my version of your dream the colors red and green represent opposites I need to resolve: their conflict is creating a dead zone in my psyche. That these colors are attached to a primitive animal like a snake tells me that the issue is at an elemental level: very basic. I don't want to take in (eat) the transformation represented by the new pattern the snakes have made once they are baked (processed) into the pie (I).
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, Carla and Emily, I saw Paddy Doherty on youtube describing how he ate part of his beloved son after the son died. This appeared to be a purely spontaneous act on his part, I don't think it was part of his culture at all (I'm sure not) and it must have been a primeval instinct that compelled him. He was quite open about it and not ashamed or disgusted - the way he put it - "I wanted part of my son inside me. Now he is always with me". Quite a bit of synchronicity too, as I saw this by accident and in between reading Carla's interpretation and then seeing Emily's this morning.
ReplyDeleteI just can't wrap my head around that one, Firequeen! Emily
ReplyDeleteNot so sure about Doherty now! Just read yesterday what he said about his fighting days - how he would bite off noses and ears of his opponents AND THEN SWALLOW THEM - so they could not get them stitched back on. I think this man has a major problem with eating flesh!
ReplyDeleteWhile there may be some archetypal motivation lurking in the depth's of Doherty's psyche it is clearly one that we, as civilized people, should leave behind.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Openfoot for such a valuable interpretation of your dream, Carla, because I too found it so painful to read that I couldn't even try to figure it out but everything Openfoot writes makes so much sense in a Jungian way, and I can certainly identify with the feeling of the "spinning world of material reality" breaking apart my soul and spirit. It sounds very much like a Native American story I've read somewhere - both your dove dream and the snake dream - very much the same theme. I'll try and find it - it may even be in one of Jung's books.
ReplyDeleteA potent dream and not as scary as it seems on the surface, but a powerful message to you.