There is No Safe Way

The Dream: Clark and I go into a Safeway grocery store. Clark decides he will shoplift the day’s groceries. I’m very uncomfortable with this idea, but he’s determined. The next thing I know he’s disappeared, and I’m afraid he’s done the deed. I don’t see how he can possibly get away with it: there are security cameras everywhere.

The next time I see Clark he is in the hallway near the employee lounge area, using push pins to post clues about how he managed to shoplift right under the store’s surveillance cameras. He’s feeling very smug and clever but I explain that his prints will be all over the push-pins, and he’ll be caught. He finally agrees and removes the clues.

We leave the store and go to the parking lot. I drive. Police question us, and I explain that Clark is the most honest person I’ve ever met. They don’t pursue their inquiries, and I drive off after having a little difficulty starting the car. As I drive down a hill I notice flooding near the bottom, getting progressively deeper. Clark criticizes my driving, and I turn the car around and head for higher ground. There’s a round-about at the top of the hill, put in place to make the turn easier for boats.  A boat on a trailer goes down the hill as we go up.

In the next scene we are in a cave. The earthen walls are rich red sienna, and so is the calf-deep mud we are wading in. This is unpleasant, but soon gets much worse as I fall into a hole I hadn’t seen under the mud. Submerged up to my chin, I holler for Clark; I expect him to rescue me. He ignores me. I have an expensive camera with me, and I’m sure it’s been ruined. I extricate myself, unaided, from the hole, and my new concern is for the camera. I hear a story about a man whose camera suffered similar abuse: he gave it away, thinking it was broken. The new recipients were two young boys and, to my surprise, they were able to make good use of it.

Interpretation: In this dream my psyche is looking for safety (the Safeway) and is reduced to stealing to get it, clearly not feeling entitled to have what it so desperately wants (food, sustenance). And what is it facing that has caused such alarm? The recent death of two close friends has forced me to face my fears about my own death. I realize I can’t get away with cheating death, as I explain to Clark (my other half) who thinks he can. (He is  planning to steal food, that is, life).

The flooding is unconscious material forcing itself upon me. I head for high ground, trying to get away, but the dream tells me I’m going in circles (the round-about). I escape the flood, only to be submerged in mud: the red clay symbolizes my mortal flesh, my earthly existence. I call for help from my animus, the part of me that deals with life in a rational, practical way—this part can’t help here. The camera represents my eye (I); that it’s expensive says I value the self I have created, and I fear its ruin (death). The camera records my experience and might be a way of leaving, or bequeathing, something of myself. In the dream the camera evolves from something that watches and judges (the store’s surveillance camera) to something valuable to me that will inevitably be ruined (my camera in the muddy cavern) until it is given to two young boys who make good use of it. The dream tells me that the job of my life at this point is to prepare a gift for others and to believe they will find it useful, whatever my doubts.

Guest Dreamer: Thirsty

Can dreams predict the future? Isabel brings us a dream that seems to foretell a brother’s illness.

The Dream: I am in the parking lot of a grocery store and I notice that I am feeling abnormally thirsty. I walk up to the front of the store and realize that there is a huge bucket filled with Arrowhead water bottles. I quickly grab as many as I can and begin gulping them down one after another. I can't stop drinking and just keep becoming thirstier. All of a sudden I find myself no longer at the grocery store but instead in front of my science teacher's classroom at my old middle school. To my surprise, I see another bucket filled with water bottles and I immediately start drinking until all the water bottles are gone and I finally feel satisfied.

Isabel’s comments: When I woke up I thought nothing of the dream, and didn't think of it until about two weeks later when my brother was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. My family and I were in his hospital room while a nurse was talking to us about the disease. She said that one of the main symptoms is being really thirsty all the time. At that point I thought immediately of my dream and told my family about it saying that I must either be psychic or have Diabetes myself. They were amazed that my dream occurred before all of this had happened and my dad suggested I tell my Aunty Emily [a frequent commenter on this blog] since she is in a dream group. I told her today and she started to think about the significance of the fact that the water bottles were Arrowhead and said that we should try breaking the word down into two parts. When I did that I thought of how an arrow points so maybe it was pointing towards the water and the fact that water takes care of your health.

Carla’s comments: In past times people believed that dreams could indeed foretell the future—but they also believed the earth was flat and a lot of other nonsense.* Nevertheless, there might be some ways in which a dream can give you information about the future by cluing you in to things that are subliminal—in other words, things that are below your threshold of awareness. We all observe many things without being aware that we are observing them.

Carla’s  projection: I may have noticed, in waking life, that my brother was excessively thirsty, yet been unaware of my own observation. At a deeper level I knew this was important, so my dream brought this to my attention.

Some people report that they became aware of an impending disease as the result of a dream. Many of our physical processes are completely unconscious: how, for example, do we regulate a baby’s growth in utero or decide when to get a fever? This unconscious physical activity can pop up in our dreams to alert us to a problem.  Might I have diabetes myself, as I wondered when I remembered my dream after hearing of my brother’s diagnosis? Since diabetes has a genetic link that is a possibility, and I will be sure to be tested.

In the clever way of dreams, my dream has some interesting word play. When it opens, I’m in the parking lot of a grocery store. In other words, I am parked (or stopped) in a place of growth (a gro cery). There is something I must stop and look at before I can proceed. The arrowheads are pointing out that the problem is connected to my thirst. I am near my science class. The word “science” comes from the present participle of the Latin word scire, meaning “to know”. Where do we learn things? In class. So—to sum it up so far: I can’t go anywhere until I learn the thing that is being pointed out to me. The reference to middle school refers to my being in the middle of something; in this case, in the middle of a family crisis. Once I  learn the necessary thing, my thirst (for the right information) will be satisfied.

* As if to give me a little slapdown for that remark, after I wrote it I had a dream with a silly little "precognitive" element. I dreamed my mother-in-law was looking for a new bed. Talking to my sister-in-law the next day I told her the dream and she said--guess what? A new bed had just arrived for her mother.