How a Dream Turned into a Painting

Carla: Elaine Drew links one of her paintings directly to a dream. In this post she'll show us the path that took her there.

Elaine Drew: The inspiration for this piece, called Journey was a dream in which I was to about to be sacrificed in a primitive religious rite. (That scene is represented in the 3rd panel of this 4 panel painting.) What, I wondered, was that all about?

Because the dream seemed to embody a spiritual quest of some sort, I organized the artwork along the lines of a medieval predella, a small strip of narrative scenes that appear at the bottom of an altarpiece. This organization reflected my asking myself what was at the bottom of the dream?

This led me to think that consciousness, the great gift that makes us human, might be a double-edged sword. That is the theme of the second panel. Here the figure carries consciousness like both a precious gift and a burden.

So, in the first image we enter life, unconscious, enclosed in a particular culture and point of view. Our first task is to break out of our shells, hit the road, and experience life in all its complexities. As we do this, in the second panel, we attain consciousness, and this includes the awareness of our own mortality. In the third panel we face the threat that this hard earned consciousness will be obliterated.

Wait a minute! I thought. I've been told that dreams come to us to tell us things we don't know. My piece needed a 4th panel, one that would get me past the limits of my current understanding.

It took a while, and some of the false starts most of us are familiar with when we try to solve a problem. Finally, as you can see in the 4th panel, the idea of the renewed self emerges into a built environment. And then the meaning of the piece became clearer to me: while I will probably never understand the mystery of life on earth, I can understand the process of death and resurrection that often plays a part during our lives. We are asked to sacrifice, and at times it feels like too much. Or we find our hopes or ideas dead in the water. But then a kind of natural salvation kicks in. We re-emerge with an expanded consciousness. It engulfs us, and we see the world through it. We are now in the world we built, no longer wandering in a barren wilderness. The sacrifice is behind us.

So, the Journey begins again. The painting is about life, about change, about learning as we go, and about the hope for an ultimate understanding that makes sense of it all.

Looking for a Florentine Cathedral

The Dream: I am wandering around in a vast underground space trying to find the entrance to a particular Florentine Church. Often I am misdirected. I ask people, and they send me to areas of a labyrinthine building that I have already fruitlessly explored. At one point a college friend is with me, very pleased because a man has given her an open bottle of wine with about a third remaining. She happily swills from the bottle. I suggest she's being foolish: who knows what contaminant it might contain?

At one point we're directed into a particular church, and it almost seems almost right, but not quite. The decoration is Florentine; there are very large flowers around the interior. We peek inside another church and see a performance taking place—that's not right either. I feel anxious. I'm going to be late. I hope to get to the right church before time runs out.

Interpretation: Florence is associated with the Renaissance, rebirth. I'm searching at an unconscious (underground) level for my spiritual rebirth. No one can direct me; their suggestions lead to dead ends. I'm running out of time to find my spiritual home, the place where I feel I am expected and have a role to play. The wine offered by a person who has no guidance to give might be dangerous. One part of me wants to enjoy its superficial pleasure, while another is cautious.

The Snake

The Dream: I don't know if this was a dream or if it actually happened. In the middle of the night I heard Clark talking in his sleep.He talked about a snake and something else that I didn't remember afterward. I spoke to him, telling him what he had said. In the morning he didn't remember any of this, and I was left wondering if I had dreamt it.

Interpretation: The snake, as a rebirth symbol, fits into the sequence of dreams from this time that attempts to get me more comfortable with death. I am not ready to embrace the rebirth idea, so I perceive it as coming from outside myself.

Ready to Die

The Dream: The dream was of an image of four squares lined up in a row. I felt that I had achieved what had been necessary, and I was now ready to die.

Interpretation: I felt ready to die in the sense of being “prepared.” I had done the necessary thing and could now move on. When I awakened the dream message left me feeling uneasy until I played with the idea of death in a dream as being the death of no longer needed aspects of the Psyche: in other words, I began to see this death as preliminary to a rebirth. The four squares of the dream remind me of Jung's diagram of the Psyche, with its four functions, and his interpretation of the square as symbolic of a centered Self.

Preparing the Spirit for Rebirth

The Dream: I press a bird against a spinning spindle that pulverizes it. The bird does not resist, but looks at me mournfully. I feel terrible doing this, slowly killing this lovely defenseless creature. When it is pulverized I am to eat the little mortarized bits. I steel myself for this task, and also wonder how I will retrieve the pulverized bird from the wood chips at the bottom of the spindle so I can eat them.

Interpretation: Part of the spiritual journey involves breaking ourselves down in preparation for a new soul (psyche). In this dream the bird represents the soul or spirit. What slowly destroys me is my time on the earth, spinning on its axis like the pulverizing spindle. For me, as for the bird, resistance is futile. My eating the broken down bits symbolizes taking back in the transformed parts of myself, a kind of rebirth.

Happy Solstice

Today ‘s dream is communal: our dream of rebirth on the day of the Sun’s nadir, an event which has been the focus of religious rituals since time immemorial.  I wish you all, whatever your tradition, the joy of a new beginning celebrated in a community of love and peace.

The Symbolic Meaning of Easter

Just as we have personal dreams, religious myths embody group dreams or shared symbolic content, what Jung calls the collective unconscious. Looking at Easter from this point of view, I see a marvelous tangle of meaning: the one I’ll focus on here is how we participate psychically in the myth of resurrection. First there is the sacrificial death, symbolizing the death of my individual, potentially antisocial desires for the greater good of the group. As I contemplate the god dying for the good of the group, I participate by sacrificing some of my selfishness for the good of others.  Once I’ve acknowledged the “bad” parts of myself, symbolized by the god going down into hell, I’m ready for resurrection as  purified and perfected (or at least somewhat improved) member of society.

At its most primitive level, this yearly resurrection coincides with the rebirth of nature in the northern hemisphere. Ancient fertility rites lie not too deeply below the many-layered observance. Participating in the fertility of nature gives me food, or sustenance, and, with our own propagation, carries the life force forward. At the spiritual level, the myth celebrates our human attainment of consciousness: we have transcended our animal nature and been reborn into a higher, godlike, level of awareness.

The Bear Cave

The situation in the previous post helps to explain this dream.

Dream image: A hibernating bear.

Interpretation: Here’s a good example of the many possibilities a dream image can represent. Am I as grouchy as a bear? Or are my complaints and negative thoughts sleeping, waiting to emerge? Perhaps I can’t bear it.

The Great Bear is an ancient symbol for rebirth. The dream is a double pun: Acknowledging my repressed complaints will enable me to be reborn into a happier reality.

A New Space

The Dream: We are moving into a new place, and Clark and I discuss whether or not it needs painting. He’s concerned we’ll have to get the place back to its pristine condition before we move out (it’s a rental). I mention we’ll have to do the same with the place we’re currently renting. I tell him I’ll paint the new place in light colors so it will be easy to restore.

Interpretation: In light of the previous dream, populated with dead friends, I think this dream attempts to make me comfortable with my friends' deaths and, in addition, my own mortality. Moving to a new place can be looked at in a couple of ways (at least). It's a metaphor for dealing with an issue: people often say they're "moving on" after they have resolved a trauma. In another sense, the moves from place to place, in rented homes, reflect the impermanence of the body.  Making the new place “easy to restore” symbolizes my hope for rebirth.

The Distracting Child

In dreams, references to lower levels or the left usually refer to unconscious elements, and the kitchen is a place where transformation takes place.  The divine child represents rebirth.

The Dream: A young child, about three, is fretful and we don’t know how to amuse her. I don’t have any toys for her. It occurs to me I could give her a very simple recipe to follow and she could make some food. This would occupy her and leave me free to concentrate on other work, such as cooking the rest of the dinner. I make a work station for her on the kitchen table—at a lower level, to my left.

Interpretation: A part of me that I wasn’t aware of is kicking up a fuss and demands my attention. The dream ego finds a useful job for her and brings her closer (integrating her) while at the same time pushing her back down into the unconscious (I put her on a lower level and to my left). That the dream ego is “cooking the rest of the dinner” implies a mixing and blending of ingredients and a magical or alchemical (as Jung might put it) transformation.