Guest Dreamer: Caged and Constricted

Guest Dreamer: Weird dream last night with a very strange man in it. He was taciturn, tall, of sallow complexion and said very little. I had apparently met him a couple of times but not got to know anything about him. Now he was coming to my house. He said, "I have a car but I don't like to take it anywhere". However, it appeared he was prepared to drive this to my house.

Then it seemed I was in his car and so was my daughter Diana, and she was grown up, not a little child as she so often is in dreams. We were driving to his house. I heard her saying, "Mum, there is a poster flapping about on the front of the car, about something that happened in 1931!" Then I opened my eyes, which I did not know were shut, and looked out along the bonnet, which was green and of a long, rectangular shape. I realized this was a vintage car, so I told Diana that the poster was meant to convey that the car was authentic. The bonnet was made of loose plates of metal that were not firmly attached, and were rattling and flapping about.

At the house it got even weirder. This house was built to his own design and we were walking down a narrow corridor which had cages built into the wall, floor to ceiling and stretching out either side. The cages were full of little animals, mice, hamsters, even some small cats, and there was mechanical apparatus - like toys and railways, connecting the cages and the animals were going on rides round and round. They were all silent, but had bright eyes and looked healthy. They were all dressed in exquisite small garments in bright colors - they even had hats and bonnets - all neat, clean and well washed. Since there were so many, I thought he must spend a great part of every day washing, ironing and dressing these creatures in clean clothes. I got the impression he was looking for a woman to do this for him, and then Diana told me, "He says he is into submissive sex, he wants a woman who will give up her free will and do whatever he says." I found this oddly fascinating - that was the end of the dream!

Carla's thoughts: This dream has some similar elements to a dream that Firequeen posted on this blog some time ago: Previous Dream  If it were my dream, I would first look at the similarities and differences between the two dreams. In the first dream I find the man very attractive; in this dream he's sallow and uncommunicative. In the first dream he has presented me with an exciting red car that he offers to teach me to drive, and in this one he doesn't even like to drive his own. If, as in the last dream, he represents the part of me that works and engages with the larger world (my animus), I'm fed up with that world at the moment! However, in this dream I think he represents something else.

My (inner) child and I leave the place where I live (my customary way of looking at things) and join this rather unattractive fellow en route to his house. The dream mentions the year 1931, so I need to puzzle out what that particular number means to me. Did something significant for my life happen that year? If not, I need to look at the number in a different way—for example, was my 1st, 9th, 3rd, or 19th year important in some way that influences me now? (The dreamer will have to mine her own associations to figure out what the number means to her.) Excavating its significance may be difficult for me, because it is something I have shut my eyes to without even realizing it. But they are open now.

The long rectangular shape of the bonnet makes me think of a coffin, but the fact that it is green, the color of new life, implies that the part of me that has died will be replaced with something new and vital. Vintage evokes something that has improved with age (my understanding, perhaps?), and once I become aware of this in the dream I know that my dream (the car, the vehicle) will take me to an authentic insight. The hard things I've had on my plate (the metal plates) are not firmly attached to my journey, and after they rattle and flap around for a while I expect they will shake loose.

Nevertheless, I still have this house—the one I don't inhabit—to contend with. My journey has lead me here, so what will I discover? The house was designed by someone else. The corridor is narrow, implying that the vision of my life as seen in this house not of my making is constricted. My animals, that is, my instincts and life force, have been caged. This confinement of the vital part of me goes back to childhood, to the time of toys and little trains. And trained I was: to be neat and tidy and clean. How much time have I spent since then trying to make my animal presentable (acceptable)? The rules of society are attached to the “father” archetype, and my inner child (my daughter) knows this. She points out that “the man” is looking for submission: Be a good little girl and don't make a mess! At this point in my life I am fascinated to discover the unconscious forces that have shaped my life and behavior.

Guest Dreamer: The Flying Dinosaur

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.