Guest Dreamer: Well Armed

Guest dreamer Openfoot has contributed today's dream. You can read more of his dreams and see how he illustrates them by going to his interesting website here.
The Dream: I'm working in a trench. I've clearly been engaged on a plumbing job. I've also put in some electrical cabling and perhaps some fibre-optics too. It's all infrastructure work. I look up to see a group of friends arriving. They look surprised and I immediately know, without previously having been aware of the relevant facts, what they are surprised about. As if in answer to their questioning looks I shout out "Yes! My arms are fine! Look they work well! Just see all this work I've been doing! And look at the scars! They are well healed and translucent!" I show my friends my forearms. Just below each elbow a clean scar about 0.5 mm wide and slightly raised can clearly be seen. Each scar completely circles its respective forearm. Its obvious, I've had a forearm transplant on both my arms and things have worked out well.

Carla's thoughts: If this were my dream I'd think that something in the preceding couple of days has triggered my defenses. By paying attention to my dreams and feelings I've been plumbing my own depths, and my unconscious has brought my adaptations to the fore. My new awareness is around something I've been reluctant to change: I've dug in; I'm entrenched in my position. I've defended my vulnerabilities by building up my infrastructure with cabling and fibre-optics: this hints that I've been remote (both communicate over a distance) and protective (both, especially fibre optics, are encased).

My friends (other parts of my psyche) are surprised over my re-arming, but I explain that the work I've been doing has healed old wounds. The scars are there—but I've been healed and I am beginning to have some clarity (the wound is translucent) about a past difficulty. My dream forewarns me about my forearming and tells me that I am now sufficiently strong. All is well; I am now safe to back off from my entrenched position.

Dancing with Baryshnikov

The night before having this dream I asked my dream generator to give me the dream I need, and this is what I got.

The Dream: He isn’t doing his famous leaps or anything outstanding. It is more a sort of walking, a dancer sort of walking, where the trick is not to look like a dancer. At first I’m disappointed; I want drama. I want to see the impossible. “This looks so natural,” I think.

Baryshnikov chooses me as a partner. My job is to anchor him. I stand in the center as he dances around me, holding my hand. I use my arm muscles to steady him and, while it takes some effort on my part, I think he is being careful not to tax my strength. I could handle more force, I think. I could do more.

Interpretation: In the dream, my first reaction is disappointment in the dancer’s (my inner artist’s) performance. I’m an on-looker at this point, wanting to see the leaps of “White Nights” or “Turning Point.” Is he getting old? I wonder. (Am I?) Then I come to see his natural-appearing movement as the artistry it is: the confidence to appear to be doing nothing—but just try it!

When I “help” he is considerate, but I realize I could do more: as could he! I’m left wondering what’s the right amount of effort, the right amount of display? What’s the relationship between effort and performance? Is my dream telling me to simplify? In other words, not to push it?
 

Guest Dreamer: First Encounter

Today’s Guest Dreamer is Arcadian, who recounts a powerful dream he had as a youth.

The Dream: I had a truly bizarre dream once and I'm baffled as to its meaning. When I was a youngster I dreamed I was in a treasure room and there were valuables of every kind piled up in a pyramid-shaped stack. As I stood and admired the wonder of it all, the most beautiful blond-haired girl, robed in splendor, appeared--standing at the very top and glaring at me.

I told her how amazing the pile was. She lifted an arm and pointed a finger at me, out of which shot a bright beam and I feared for my life. Before the beam reached me I felt myself moving at lightning speed and the next thing I knew I could feel myself returning to my body.

Interpretation: Arcadian has asked me to interpret his dream. As my regular readers know (sorry for being repetitious, regular readers), I follow the guidelines of projective dream groups when I comment on someone else’s dream. In other words, I take on the dream as if it were my own, and tell you what it would mean to me if I had dreamed it. This may or may not be relevant to Arcadian; but perhaps it will spur him to think of his dream in a new light. And of course I hope he will leave us his thoughts after he has read what I’ve written.

In my version of Arcadian’s dream, I feel that I am encountering the figure Carl Jung called the Anima, which represents my soul. First I see a great treasure stacked into the form of a pyramid. The treasure represents spiritual enlightenment, much as the gold on an icon represents divine radiance.  Pyramids (like church steeples) are symbolic mountains, and many religious traditions associate gods or divine wisdom with mountain tops: for example, Zeus and the Greek gods lived on Mount Olympus, and Moses went up a mountain to receive the 10 Commandments. My own personal spiritual truth is embodied in my soul, represented by a beautiful blond-haired girl, robed as a goddess would be, in splendor.

She glares at me, challenging me. I tell her I am amazed by the treasure she seems to guard. I am young, and not ready to grapple with the intensity of my own spiritual truth. Her light (revelation or truth) is too bright for me. I return to the more earthly, material state of my body. But I know from this encounter that my soul is a beautiful and fierce thing, and when the time is right for me to see her again I will not be frightened.

Here is how Jung describes his first encounter with his own Anima: “I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I leaped up a wall of doubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myself from my fearful soul.” *
* C.G. Jung, The Red Book Liber Novus, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani, (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 235.