Pomona is Stepped On

The Dream: Someone has changed Pomona, one of my paintings that depicts the goddess of the fruits of the orchard. Five different shoes have been superimposed in the area between her navel and her breasts in a circular, asymmetrical arrangement. Pomona herself has been “pushed back;” blurred until she's a ghost of her former self, and I almost can't make out who she is. In fact, she takes on the name of another goddess from a different painting: Taera, who represents the earth.

We can't see the goddess clearly, but we do clearly see the shoes! I begin to like this alternative rendition of the painting; I think it's more contemporary and mysterious.

Clark and I go down a very steep sand dune to to the sea, and I'm not sure I'll be able  to climb back up. Clark tells me this is the “easy” way. On an adjoining sand dune I see a large menagerie of animals: emu, wolf, raccoon, and many others, charging up the hill. Nature has been restored, and I feel that the animals will not threaten us if they are given their own space.

Interpretation: Pomona is the goddess who represents nature's bounty, and Taera represents the earth. Both the earth and its bounty have been stepped on and obscured by our consumerist culture. I am so used to this that I can no longer see the goddesses who represent our crucial relationship with the environment. I have come to like and accept things the way they are.

I get to the sea (the unconscious) where I see things as they should be. The animals have an uphill battle, but they prevail and nature is restored. The dream tells me that it is important to honor the processes of the planet and get our priorities in order. Only then can we live in harmony with nature (the animals).

Guest Dreamer: A Walk on the Wild Side

Today's guest dreamer's emotions evolve as she processes her life experiences.Thanks, Firequeen, for this very rich dream.

The Dream: I dreamed I was walking in the woods in weather like today, cold, snow on the ground, bare branches. I was walking my dog, but not the dog I have now, nor was it Benji, my last dog. A largish dog. At the same time as I was dreaming the dream, I was also watching from the other side of the canal, and narrating what was going on. The dog kept disappearing for long periods of time, as Lola does when she goes off hunting, but now I had another explanation of where the dog was. He was walking with another person, but this was not someone living on the earth today, she was from the other side. Although she looked exactly as she would in life, I knew she was not living now. I saw her at a great distance, in the other part of the wood, but she was able to communicate her thoughts to me. She said that she returned here to walk with this dog, which had been her dog in another life. She came to these woods because it was a place that made her feel happy, and it did not mean that she was returning to where she walked her dog in life, she chose this place because it was special, and that other people came here to do the same. Sometimes I saw that she brought another dog with her, which had also been her dog, and she walked the two of them together. I seemed to wake two or three times during the dream, then continue dreaming it, but I think this was also part of the dream. Telling it, there does not seem much to it, but waking with the full memory of it, I felt very happy. It had such a happy atmosphere. Perhaps it is the feeling of life continuing, with dogs (!) that is so nice!

Carla, just remembered that the ghost woman in the dream also told me that other souls also returned to walk their dogs in this place.

Interpretation: The first image I'm going to look at is that of the woods. In my version of Firequeen's dream it evokes a magical place, something like the enchanted forest of legend and fairy tale. This is a place where we expect to see a transformation.  In the beginning of the dream the spot I'm in is cold and barren; this tells me I'm feeling alienated. The large dog I am walking represents my feelings. The dog disappears: this is the central problem I'm facing in this dream—my disconnect from my emotions. In order to look at them, I split into a narrator, the one who watches, and another person, my shadow, who acts. The canal is the watery divide between what I'm conscious of and the unconscious. Being man made, it is an artificial divide; this tells me I'm capable of changing it. As I watch, in the guise of the narrator, I learn: the canal symbolically changes from a dividing line into a conduit that flows toward healing and integration.

Who is the person I observe? As someone no longer living I could call her a ghost. In dreams ghosts sometimes represent things that haunt us—for example, things from the past that have left residues of guilt or regret. Another word for a ghost is a shadow, and, in my dream, she is the shadow of the self I used to be. This earlier self was in touch with her instincts and feelings (the dog, her inner animal). She was happy in the woods, a place of nature. As I visit this earlier version of myself I also visit the people she interacted with, people who are no longer with me (the other souls who come here). They can return to this place in my heart where we can be together. Communing with those I've lost--and, more important, with parts of myself I feared were lost-- in this place of magic and enchantment nourishes my soul. My unhappy feelings are transformed into feelings of the continuity of life. The forest that had seemed barren and desolate, I now realize, was only waiting for the right moment to spring to life. As it does I, too, am renewed. 

Only the White Silhouette Remains

Jung says that dreams show us the way forward; they sometimes deal with emotional pain, expressing it through symbols. These sorts of dreams help us, over time, to accept what we must.

The Dream: There is an icy river: big chunks of ice and snow predominate, but the river flows, nonetheless. A woman falls in and is carried downstream. She is near the edge of the river, and I try to pull her out but she keeps eluding me, moving downstream. At last I succeed. She is like a paper cut-out doll: a white silhouette that looks like a 1950s fashionable woman, complete with the broad-brimmed hat of the era. Only the silhouette remains, but it is her.

Interpretation: The icy river symbolizes my emotions, frozen in their inability to come to terms with my mother’s death. The fashionable woman in the water (my mother) is in danger, and I desperately would like to save her but it’s difficult. Finally I think I’ve succeeded, only to discover that she is not a real person, only the ghost (white silhouette) that exists in my mind.