Compassion

As if to form a counterpoint to the previous two “laughing” dreams, last night's was horrific.

The Dream: My best friend from high school is going to be tortured and killed. She will have her skin removed and then be executed. I am distraught and hope that she will be killed before she is flayed; thinking of this procedure has made me hysterical with anguish.

After a while she returns. She has obviously been hurt, tortured, beaten, but she's alive and has her skin. It seems her ordeal is over. I am afraid she's going to tell me about her experience, and I don't want to know: it's too upsetting.

Interpretation: A friend from the past is having her skin removed; the friend is from my vulnerable teenage, high school years. One of the triggers was someone else's dream that I had read the night before that featured underwear falling down. Both the skin being removed and the underwear falling down represent an exposure. At the same time, I was reading Elaine Pagel's book on the gospel of Thomas (a name similar to my friend's last name). Pagels lists the tortures and ignominious deaths meted out to Christians.

This distressing dream tells me something I had not realized: that my distancing myself from the suffering of others (not exposing myself to it) comes from my reaction to their pain and, at a deeper level, to my own. I turn away; I try to ignore it—because it is so fundamentally upsetting. Just as my friend has survived the dream ordeal,  I can survive becoming aware of  painful events that occurred long ago. And once I can accept that, I will be a more compassionate person.

A Pox on Both Your Houses

The Dream: Two women are going to be executed. The action takes place in a small town. The townspeople are required to carry out the execution. The action centers on the drugstore, where the druggist, a man, is in a separate cubicle searching for the means to carry out the execution order. He finds two garrotes made of shiny thin black plastic and realizes that this is the instrument that will be used. He is nervous and drops them on the floor, then picks them up and puts them on the counter. Next question? Who will be the executioner?

Interpretation: The two women signal an internal conflict. The small town tells me that the conflict has to do with my relationship to a group: I feel strangled (the garrote) by the society I’m in. The druggist represents the part of me that wants to deaden my awareness of this problem (he dispenses drugs); the cubicle (box) he’s in echoes my isolation. He discovers a way to get rid of the conflict—by choking it off (the two garrotes). But since they are made of plastic (phony) we can guess he might not be successful with this approach. That he has discovered this drastic solution floors him (he drops the garrotes on the floor). In the end he has provided the means where it counts (the counter); but he isn’t ready to do the deed. 

A Work of Art

Have you ever had a dream that feels like a revelation? This is the first dream that I remember—not the first dream I ever had, but the first one to stay with me for the rest of my life.

The Dream: I am being led off to my execution. As they lead me away, a group of soldiers in khaki uniforms are chanting, “It’s important you enjoy what you’re doing. It’s important you enjoy what you’re doing.”
We come to the place of execution, a large chopping block covered with a black and white grid. I have the realization that when my head is chopped off, my red blood flowing over the black and white grid will create a work of art.

Interpretation: This dream came to me in my young adulthood: I had graduated university and was living on my own in a big city, working for a corporation and wondering what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was attracted to the arts but had not made the leap. In the dream, the forces of constraint and propriety and doing the practical thing are leading me off to my doom. They are also telling me what I need to do to survive: I need to enjoy what I’m doing. Life is not infinite. They tell me that easing up on my overly intellectual tendency (losing my head) and combining discipline and precision (the grid) with passion (the blood) will create a beautiful life: a work of art.

This short dream has also been interpreted by the well-known dream worker Jane Teresa Anderson in The Dream Show