Am I Dark?

The Dream: A woman, a teacher, lives nearby. She has an Irish/German/American face, but dark coloring. She is looking into her family history and says that her ancestors come from Nom, a country she has been unable to locate on a map.

I go home and look at a map and, to my surprise and delight, very quickly discover that the province of Nom is inside Egypt. I go to her place and bang excitedly on the door. (Her house is a white stationary trailer.) She answers, and I enter the narrow building. “I've found Nom,” I say. “It's in Egypt.”

I either think or say, “That explains why you are so dark.”

Interpretation: This woman has something to teach me. Nom in French means name. This--plus the woman's mixed ancestry, her family history research, and her inability to locate her family's geographical origin--tells me that this dream is dealing with where I fit into the human family. Where do I come from? And beyond that, what does it mean to be human?

The dream tells me that the “dark” aspects I carry within (and that are clearly visible to all) are ancient (like Egypt) and very rich (like the Pharaohs). If I disavow these parts of myself I'm left with a life that is white and narrow, like the woman's trailer home. This is another way of saying that my self-understanding doesn't own up to the complexity of the human psyche and experience. At the same time, while accepting my atavistic human traits is an important step in developing the sort of human being that doesn't wallow in self-righteousness, it's not an excuse or justification for bad behavior.

More Protected Than Necessary

The Dream: I'm in a foreign land. A Chinese woman is in charge: she's the dictator. A group of us sit in an informal semicircle on the ground in front of her. I see that others are expected to show ID cards in the shape of credit cards when she calls on them. They are dispatched according to her wishes. When my turn comes I have my identity card in my hand. I'm ready. I feel proud of myself for this preparedness. When she sees from my card that I'm an American I'm dealt with lightly. She suggests a couple of museums I “should” see.

I have a large bag. I open it and see the two raincoats I had bought earlier for a very good price, this being China. The coats come out, and so does a brown liquid. One of the coats was supposed to be the traditional raincoat tan, and the other, brown. The attempt to dye one brown has not been successful, but neither has it damaged either coat. “What,” I wonder, “am I supposed to do with two identical coats?” I decide to give one to Barbara. It occurs to me that Barbara might not want one of these, she can be very particular at times. Then what? I'm not sure. I go I search of the museums the authority recommended, but there are so many that I don't think I'll be able to locate these particular two. I would like to see them.

Interpretation: Dreams are usually triggered by something from the day or two before the dream, and it's sometimes helpful to figure out what. In this dream, the search for the museums was sparked by a television news segment on Burma that showed very large, deserted public buildings. Getting a pass for being an American echoed a story I'd heard the night before from a Jeopardy contestant who was traveling in a foreign country when he missed the last train of the day and the waiting room closed. He resorted to sleeping in the hallway.  A cop came along and said, “Oh, I thought you were a bum; but I see you're an American.”

For its own reasons, the dream generator put these things together. Why? An inner authority figure (the Chinese dictator) who knows who I am (she's seen my ID card) tells me to look at some old stuff (go to some museums). My protective gear (raincoats) is not what I expected, and I find I have more than I need. It protects me from water signaling that it's there to shield me from emotion--tears, grief. My inner artist (Barbara) is likely to spurn this protection, and that makes me uneasy. I haven't yet brought to consciousness the particular old stuff I'm meant to see—unless it my dawning realization of how many people were good to me, and how irretrievably lost to me they are.

A Different Kind of War

The Dream: There are two opposing armies: on one side, the Americans; on the other, the Koreans. I’m on the American side. We’re behind a high stone wall. We shoot over the wall, and then duck to keep from getting shot. The other side doesn’t have a wall, yet we never hit any of them. I think we should call in a helicopter to shell them from above since we are getting nowhere with our current method. The general tells me we won’t do that because we actually don’t want to hurt anybody.

Interpretation: I see this dream as an almost humorous image of my internal battle. On the one side is my current concept of myself (a “me” rican); on the other side, an important part of myself (a “core” ean) that I haven’t yet accepted.  The dream ego (me) has insulated itself behind a stone wall and fights it out with this unacceptable part of myself. I get impatient and want to destroy it from above, indicating it’s my intellect at war with my instinctive, more primitive nature. The general, who represents my greater, more integrated awareness—what Jung calls the Self—counsels patience. The dream tells me that there is a better way than destroying a part of myself to resolve my internal conflict.