Free to Be Me

The Dream: I look out my window. There is a birdhouse full of beautiful birds very close. I enjoy seeing their colors and I want to entice them into a cage I've prepared for them, in the house. After making an attempt I have second thoughts. The birds should be free. I can see them well enough where they are. I decide it would be wrong to cage them and I no longer try.

A little later I see a duck with it face pressed to the screen, wanting to come in. A duck was never in my plans. I don't want him. I feel a little sorry for the creature and its strong wish to enter.

Interpretation: The dream was triggered by something I was reading last night about Daffy Duck and its creator, Chuck Jones. He mentioned his first experience of Daffy. When he was 6 years old he wanted all his birthday cake for himself and was taught the meaning of the word “selfish.” The conflicted feelings he experienced became the cornerstone for building Daffy. Earlier in the day I had been thinking of my own childhood / young adult selfishness, so it's no surprise that Daffy turned up. In the dream I move from being the selfish child who wants what it sees (the beautiful birds) with no thought for their well-being, to an adult who understands that what she wants may not be good for others. Yet Daffy is pressing his nose to the glass and wants to come in. Perhaps the dream is telling me that it's okay to accept the small selfish part that's still there. I also need to be free: free to be me, warts and all.

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.

Can I Tame the Lion?

The Dream: I'm in a maze of cages, like the ones you might see in an old-fashioned zoo, with a lion tamer and his lions. The cages connect to each other, and from where I am all I can see are the bars of the cages and the cement floor. The atmosphere is dim.

I am supposed to learn how to tame a lion. I am uneasy and not at all sure that this is something I want to do. The lion tamer demonstrates how he can put his head into the lion's mouth and emerge safely. I'm not convinced I can succeed at this.

Interpretation: Feeling closed in and with limited vision (the light is dim; I see only bars and cement), I am given a task that I feel unprepared to perform successfully. Thinking about what the lion's open mouth suggests to me, I come up with my father's anger (the growling lion) and the gaping jaws of death. These two forces might have seemed like the same thing to me as a child. One part of me is now strong enough to overcome these fears (tame the lion). Another part still quakes in her boots.

The Old King

The Dream: I am walking with an entourage. One member is a very old king. He is very small, and lives in a trailing can-like contraption made of rusted metal. I am his successor, and I walk along side him, stooping to chat. I feel I must be respectful, even though his powers are waning. As we go through the streets he often stops to chat with the commoners in an easy and affable way. Clearly they love him, and I admire the way he handles this part of his job.

Interpretation: The entourage represents the larger community I live in. The king represents the patriarchal values of my childhood. Jung would call him a symbol of the collective conscious, in other words, a society’s values. At this point in my life, I’ve outgrown many of these values, so the king appears very small in the dream. His can-like contraption tells me that I’ve canned a lot of what I learned from him. It also hints that some of what I learned was ridiculous. Yet the symbol represents a paradox: on the one hand, to can something means to relinquish it, get rid of it; we shut someone up by saying, “Can it.” On the other, canning is a method of preservation. So in some ways I respect, while I simultaneously relinquish, the old patriarchal values. I feel the power of his beliefs diminish, and at the same time I see their positive aspects.

Mother’s Birdcage Hairdo

One of the most difficult things we do as humans is to try to come to terms with the loss of our loved ones. The grieving process goes on for years, as the next couple of dreams demonstrate.

The Dream: My mother has had her hair done by my hairdresser. It’s something like my style but with an extra feature: a configuration of hair that resembles a birdcage coming up from her scalp. I’m trying to reassure her that she looks good with this “updated” hairdo, but neither of us is convinced.

Interpretation: If hair represents our thoughts, having my mother’s hair done by my hairdresser reflects my wish to make her think as I do. But since she died some years ago, the unconscious lets me know this isn’t possible. Her hair instead becomes a birdcage. Birds represent the spirit; her thoughts, or my thoughts about her, have formed a place where her spirit can dwell (the hair twisted into a birdcage). I am not ready to release her from this earthly life, so I don’t care for her updated hairdo, but I try to accept it for both of us by telling her, however unconvincingly, that it looks good on her.

Head in a Lantern

The Dream: A friend has put her mother’s or aunt’s head in a lantern. She has also put my mother’s head in one. I am worried that my mother will starve. She will get no food in this odd cage. A part of me wants her to die so I’ll be “finished” with her; yet another part is concerned and guilt-ridden. After a while I think that she won’t starve to death; she’ll die of insulin shock before that happens. In fact, she might be dead already. I am very worried about her suffering, so her death would be a relief.

Interpretation: My mother died about five years before I had this dream, which sums up all the confused and tortured feelings that centered on my relationship with her. As a child I idolized her. When I was 17 she became diabetic, and I was in terror of her dying. Over the years, every time I saw her I thought might be the last. I saw her suffer through innumerable insulin shocks as well as cancer and heart disease. As anyone with an ill family member knows, all share the pain. In a very real way her death (at 85 in spite of everything!) was a release. Years later, as this dream shows, the unconscious is trying to come to terms with these feelings.

Besides my relief at an impossible situation being resolved, the dream gives me a glimpse of a kind of immortality. Important people in our lives don't die, but live on in us.  Mother's cage resembles a birdcage, and birds signify the spirit. That Mother’s cage is a lantern tells me her spirit still lights my way.