Hanging on for Dear Life

If a chat with a friend influences your dream, try to figure out what part of you she represents.
The Dream: I'm walking along the edge of a rocky path overlooking a deep abyss. I lose my footing in the loose rocks and dangle above the bottom of a deep pit.

Interpretation: In this nightmare there was no one around to help. The rocky path indicates that I'm struggling with something. I lose my footing: clearly I'm off-balance. If this were someone else's dream I would think they were depressed, and yet I'm not aware of feeling unhappy. A severely troubled friend had told me about a similar dream the day before; does she represent the troubled part of me? Some part of me identifies with her depression very strongly, and my unconscious is telling me it's time to become aware of that, and to take a look at the issues that might have created the pit I'm in danger of falling into.

Struggling Against the Current

The Dream: I'm in a small boat by myself on very rough water, but near a seaside resort. I work to get back to to this inviting shore, but am swept along the coast to a different spot. I look for a place to put the boat back in so I can try again. I think that a particular spot will work once I get past the breakers, but Clark points out the breakers are caused by submerged rocks. I see my plan won't work and walk along the shore, pulling my boat, looking for a safe place in put in, although I know even if I'm successful it will be very difficult, with the wind and current against me, to get back to the sunny shore.

Interpretation: The sunny shore represents a time of protected childhood with loving parents, a time when they were alive. The playful resort shore is a reminder of happy family times playing in the surf with my brother and mother nearby. I can 't go back; I'm struggling to get there but it's impossible. I'm also struggling against the tide of my own overwhelming emotions in the face of the reality of this loss, and the ultimate loss of all.

I face these feelings in the dream, and the practical part of me, my Animus in the form of Clark, discourages my attempt to return to the past by pointing out that it won't work. The dream tells me to accept the reality I can't change.

I've Stuck My Foot In

Dream Image: I see feet and legs, truncated below the knee, standing in a shallow, rocky stream bed. These partial limbs do not look gruesome in any way even though they represent things that have been thrown away. Water rushes by.

Interpretation: The rushing water represents my unconscious. A rocky road (the rocky stream bed) is a difficult part of my life journey. My feet, normally the part of my body that grounds me, have been detached and are now useless (trash, something that has been thrown away): I am attempting to throw away my difficulties. The dream warns me that I won't be a complete person unless I face them; they are part and parcel of the flow of life.

Alchemy

This dream is about transformation. Since we're all in the process of psychic transformation all the time, it's not surprising that it shows up regularly in our dreams.

The Dream: I am taking cooking oil to a recycle center that utilizes only food waste. To get to the center I have to walk down into a gulley, its slope covered with the kind of loose rocks used to control weeds and erosion. Once I get down, a helpful and friendly—in a professional way--man directs us to the proper drop off site. I take the oil to an underpass and see that it is recycled into beautiful carved kitchen cabinet doors. I am very impressed with this operation and plan to come again.

In another area waste is recycled into jewels. This work is so interesting to me that I would like to be a part of it. I hope to be hired. The man in charge of the jewels is leaving; as they look for a replacement for him I hope I will be considered for the post, but I think that is unlikely since I have no experience. However, his assistant is promoted and I am taken on to learn the craft.

Interpretation: In mythology oil is a gift fit for the gods. The used, depleted oils in this dream (my feelings about my own potential) are transformed into ornamental cabinet doors. These in turn protect the treasures of the kitchen (an area where ingredients are transformed into something that sustains us). There's something circular here: the oil goes from kitchen waste to a beautiful and useful part of the kitchen. But to turn this particular dross into gold I must first climb down the sides of the gulley covered with loose rocks. The dream tells me that I am feeling used up, wasted—but that if I can negotiate the slippery slope, where I might literally lose my footing, I will get to a place (my center) where I might become energized for the better.

The second paragraph of the dream reiterates the same theme, this time upping the ante by changing waste into jewels.

The Incubi

Sometimes you’ll find that a dream invites you to revisit parts of yourself you once rejected.

The Dream: We are hunting for snails, which we are going to eat. We pull them out of a messy, amorphous background and put them in a red pail containing rocks. The snails climb up the pail, and I snatch them and throw them back down. They disgust me. They have soft shells which I am afraid of crushing. It occurs to me that we are not planning on cooking them, so how revolting will it be to eat them while they are crawling around on the plate?

I go over to a boarded up and rotten structure, looking for a trash area. I crank off the feeble and rotting wooden lid and see what I at first believe to be a pile of murdered babies. They are frozen. Their bodies look something like plucked turkeys; something about their faces looks girl-like, but they have no features. They look like flesh colored mummies, getting bird-like toward the bottom. Clark spots them and hollers, “Carla!” in shock, also thinking they are murdered babies.

Interpretation: At some very young age I made the determination that parts of me were disgusting. These undeveloped selves (babies) have been stored and frozen, apparently “murdered.” As an adult I might judge these incubi less harshly; my dream invites me to integrate them.

The Dumb Blonde

This dream has mythological roots echoing back to Venus emerging from the sea.

The Dream: A blonde woman has a partner who’s like an evil magician. I come across the two of them at the shore, in the water near some rocks. Her partner is trying to get her to stay under water for longer and longer periods of time. She doesn’t like this and finally gets out and walks away from him. I wonder if her partner had been trying to get her to kill herself.

I am pregnant.

Interpretation: The dumb blonde, the one who could not speak, refuses to exist solely in the unconscious, here symbolized—as it often is—by the sea. She walks out of the water, and a new potential life is conceived.

A Plane in a Cave

The Freudians would have a field day with this imagery, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed to me that the dream was about the immortal soul. (An appropriate post for Sunday, no? Unconsciously selected, of course.)

The Dream: I am in a very large cave, made of a reddish stone. It reminds me of the caves in the Dordogne. I see people looking expectant, as if an event is about to take place.  To my surprise I spot an airplane perched among the cave’s rocky outcrops, very neatly wedged into a series of rocks near the top. Did it crash there, I wonder? Yet it looks unscathed. The airplane’s crew are getting ready to do something, we know not what. A little house is set into the rock next to the plane. Some crew members will sleep in the plane, others in the house; they seem to be sorting out the arrangements. I see welcoming lights shining from the windows of the house set in stone, and I am interested to see that it’s used. I had often wondered about its purpose. I spend most of the time in the dream wondering how the plane got in, and how it can possibly get out.

Interpretation: The cave is associated with the Lascaux caves of the Dordogne, a famous repository of Paleolithic art. This tie-in to ancient man implies the dream harkens back to my earliest experience of consciousness. How early? The reddish color of the cave suggests the womb. The “expectant” people include my mother, who awaits my birth. Airplanes are symbolic of our aspirations, and this airplane is my immortal soul. Its location, high above the cave’s floor, is another hint that the dream is dealing with the holy; gods often dwell on mountain tops. How did spirit (the plane) come to be lodged in matter (the inside of the earth, a cave)? How precarious it looks, and yet it’s neatly wedged and seems stable. Some aspects of the soul (the crew) remain in their natural setting (the plane). Others will dwell in the earthly rock house, at least until it’s time to depart. I ponder this wonder: how did the soul get here, and how will it leave?

The Two Stags

In this dream my husband represents what Jung calls the Animus, a woman’s inner man.

The Dream: Clark is on a large rock. Two stags wearing goggles approach him. They become threatening. I am afraid he will be gored or fall off the rock, which is about one story above ground. Instead he jumps to a nearby taller platform, making himself very tall and frightening the stags away. It later turns out they are dying. They were wounded, which is why they attacked.

Interpretation: Clark, my Animus, gives me the strength to withstand domination by societal patriarchy, symbolized by the stags. The dream offers some insight into the reason males attack: it comes from their vulnerability.