Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel?

This dream seems to say, "Hang in there! It will be okay."
The Dream: I'm driving through a long tunnel that turns out to be an enclosed bridge. Frosted glass windows, simple and contemporary in design, light its interior. I think the enclosure is never going to end, and then it does, opening through an arch onto a rural scene.

Interpretation: The tunnel evokes a birth canal, and the fact that it's a bridge reinforces the idea that I'm moving from one state of being to another. The frosted glass implies that while something is being illuminated, giving me a new understanding, what it is isn't perfectly clear at the moment. That the style of the window is contemporary tells me that what is happening now is instrumental in the transition, rather than something from the past. The passage seems to take a long time (I think it's never going to end), but the result, when it comes, is natural (the rural scene).

Guest Dreamer: No Longer Intractable

James is re-evaluating concepts that were inculcated in his youth. His grandparents represent the values he has lived with; as dream figures they now give him “permission” to allow his self-concept  to become more relevant in today's world.
The Dream: I found myself in a rural area, next to river. My great granddad was there. He called me over to look at a tractor he had there. He let me drive it towards a vast area of farmland beyond an iron gate. The gate and the fence it was in, was made from heavy cast iron. Strangely, the tractor had controls on it to make it narrower and shorter, in order to fit through this gate. I tried to operate the controls I thought would do this. Instead, the vehicle broke into two parts. The part I was riding in continued towards the open gate, out of control, and clanged into the top of the gate and came to a halt. Great granddad came and sorted it all out, he wasn't angry, mildly amused maybe.

Next, we are both riding in the tractor, with a ploughing device attached to the front. We were ploughing up rows of various vegetables. I asked him why we were doing this, the vegetables looked perfectly fine and salable to me. He said they were from "old seed" and were no longer any good to him, so he wanted them ploughed up and destroyed, readying the ground for a new planting. Great grandma was there briefly at the end of this section of the dream, asking us if we wanted dinner etc.

Next, we drove the tractor onwards towards a large grand red sandstone building, apparently in the middle of the ploughed field. Inside were lots of different farmers selling and weighing vegetables on large industrial scales. In the large open are of the building were various sealed doors, and no one knew what was in these sealed rooms. I didn't feel this dream was in the present day, 50 years ago maybe.

Carla's thoughts: I'll respond to James' dream as if it were my own. The rural setting, with its river, represents my perception of the natural order of things. In the dream my great grandfather works on two levels: like a father figure in a dream, he is the holder of society's patriarchal expectations with its rules and roles; at the same time, he is a kindly person who loves me. A tractor is a very masculine piece of machinery: it is something I use to do my work in the world. (I'm ploughing through it.) When my grandfather lets me drive he tells me he expects me to perform the masculine role, and he implies that he is sure that I can. Nearby I see the vast field I must plough (a big job ahead of me). The size of the task overwhelms me, and my access to the job is blocked (gated and fenced). The blocks ahead of me are sturdy and inflexible (cast iron), emphasizing the difficulty I have in breaching them. Even so, the tool I'll use to do the job (the tractor: my capability) has an unexpected built-in flexibility that enables me to go forward.

When the dream reveals this flexibility I face an inner conflict. My vehicle, the way I get somewhere, splits in two. I feel out of control and I'm momentarily stopped by the gate. The holder of my inner masculine force, my great grandfather, comes to the rescue. He understands the difficulty, and his acceptance allows me to lighten up on myself, to realize that the world of work is a difficulty that men have faced since time began. Together we begin to destroy old and childish concepts of masculinity I've held without being aware of them, the old seed that no longer serves me. Once we have prepared the ground for its new planting (once I've updated the old, ingrained concepts I've been carrying around) the feminine force rewards me (great grandmother offers us food, sustenance). A vision of plenty appears in the form of many farmers having so much food they need industrial (work, again!) scales to weigh it. My inner masculine and feminine (the part that deals with the world and the part that holds my soul) have a better relationship. The sealed rooms tell me that I have still more hidden potential, capabilities that no one knows. Perhaps a future dream will reveal some of these.

Death of the Attached Baby

The Dream: I am in a dune-like area. The sea is implied, but not seen. There is a modern road through the dunes, with a sidewalk and the sort of empty bus stop often seen in the suburbs. I wander here for a while, waiting for one of my husband’s colleagues. He works at a nearby high-tech scientific installation which will soon be dismissing its employees for the day.

It’s 5:00 o’clock, and the lab workers file out of the simple, modern building, about seven stories tall. I am with a woman who has just had a baby. She resembles an artist friend. She is obviously thrilled with her baby, and at first all seems okay; but it soon becomes clear that the baby is still physically attached to her mother—through the mother’s hand. They share capillaries. Then the shocker: we realize the baby has died.

Some medical technicians come and take the baby away. They wrap the baby in newspaper secured with twine; they throw her off a dump truck into a garbage bin. I am appalled. Why wasn’t the baby returned to the family for a respectful and loving funeral?

Back to the mother: She is now attended by her sister, a plain-looking German woman with short cropped strawberry blond hair. The sister is very upset and doesn’t feel the mother is adequately distraught. I know the mother is upset, but in a less effusive way than her sister. I put my arm around the German woman and walk her a few steps away, trying both to comfort her and to keep her from making a bad situation worse.

Interpretation: In the beginning of the dream I am in an intuitive, unconscious state (the sea, the dunes). But progress soon asserts itself in the form of a road, sidewalk, bus stop, and high-tech laboratory. This symbolically plots my early life, my personal progress between the ages of five and seven, which are the two numbers in the dream. During this time I moved from the idyll of a happy 5-year-old child living in a beautiful rural setting to the challenge of starting school and being subjected to the discipline and socialization that entails. At this age we still hold our mother’s hand. That the baby is not completely detached from the mother reflects the wrench that I felt on starting this new phase of life.

Then the dream veers into the present. How do I know? The mother resembles one of my current artist friends: this tells me the issue here is not entirely in the past. The baby, representing my authentic artist self at a critical juncture of my life (between 5 and 7), is carted away by technicians (the school system) and dumped. The dead baby’s crude disposal reminds me of a scene from the movie Amadeus. When Mozart dies he is given a pauper’s burial. The reusable casket opens at one end like a dump truck and his unsheltered body thuds into an open pit, a common grave. How could my baby artist expect any better?

The mother (my adult artist, the compromiser) accepts the death of her own potential with an equanimity that baffles her sister, the German woman, whose geographical proximity to the home of the Austrian Mozart tells me her opinion is important. But in my role as Dream Ego, I try my best to shut her up and keep her from making waves.

Yet again, the voice that seems most difficult in my dream is the one I need to listen to.