The Paw of Condolence

This dream springs from the same  space in the unconscious that creates religion. Do our loved ones go to “another place” when they die? This dream says yes. Whether or not that's right in any objective sense is unknown and unknowable; nevertheless, it is consoling.
The Dream: I am a young teenager, staying at the seaside with my family. I look out from the screened porch, on the second story of the old-fashioned beach house. I see my younger brother Greg out in the ocean, clinging to a railing. I call to him, “Stay there! I'm coming!” I quickly change into a swimsuit and run downstairs and into the sea.

By the time I reach the railing he's gone. I search frantically, unable to find him, then head back to the beach house for some help. I go upstairs and find my sister in law, who is about my age. As we start to head down the stairs, two pet lions are ascending, obscured by a cat flap. I hear the first one before I see him. He says, “He's gone to another place.” I'm frightened when I hear this, thinking it confirms my fear that my brother is dead. I'm also surprised that the lion has spoken. The lion emerges through the cat door and repeats, “He's gone to another place.” He looks at me empathetically, as if he is sorry for my loss. He holds out a paw, gently, claws retracted, to shake hands.

I look out at the sea, its waves forming a beautiful pattern, white caps going on and on in v-shape formations. It's beautiful but hazardous. I don't think Greg could have survived its power.

My sister in law and I go to the deep beach, filled with tourists sunbathing and swimming. We search and search, to no avail. How will I tell Mother? I wonder, feeling her grief as I think about it. How will I tell my other brother? The words I choose echo the ones he used to tell me about Greg's death when it happened several years ago: “The worst thing you can imagine has happened.”

Interpretation: I had this dream near the anniversary of the deaths of both my brother and my mother. Two feelings are intertwined, grief with the hope inherent in the lion's godlike message. In one of C.S. Lewis' famous books, the lion represented Christ as the symbolic sacrifice that defeats death.  For me, the lion symbolizes the inevitable sad way of things in the natural world. He tells me that Greg has gone to another place. By stepping outside his own natural role as a mute and savage beast, the empathetic lion implies that there's something we don't know. As I experience the fearsome beauty of the sea, I know that this mysterious life force is incomprehensible. Yet there is solace in realizing the possibility of a dimension beyond those I know: this other place the lion speaks of.

A Challenging Fight

The Dream: I'm a man on a spaceship shaped like a long and narrow oval. I'm on the deck reestablishing its hexagon shapes; they've been covered with snow.

Even though I'm in outer space I am gliding over a dark sea. I wear no special outer space gear. I realize I've passed an island full of exotic beasts, but I'm so preoccupied with inscribing my hexagons, so narrowly focused, that I'm missing the marvelous sights of this amazing journey. I'm aware of the contradiction of being in space and on the sea; I don't understand it.

Later I'm in the lower portion of the ship when a fire breaks out. Someone's wife, perhaps mine, had left paper plates on deck. I wonder if these might have triggered the blaze. I'm the captain, so I rush upstairs to lead the crew in the effort to extinguish the blaze. We all realize we're fighting for our lives, and this is very energizing and motivating.

Interpretation: This dream was triggered by news about the birth of the cosmos, dark matter (the dark sea), and dark energy. Is my narrow focus causing me to miss the wonders of the universe? Domesticity (the wife's paper plates) create a blaze. Am I angry about its demands? The dream points out that I need a challenge that I feel is crucially important (leading others in a life or death struggle) to be energized and motivated. Yet it is the feminine that releases the captain from his narrow focus, if we assume that the wife's paper plates did indeed create the blaze. He won't be re-instating hexagons when he's fighting for his life. On the other hand, he won't be looking at the marvels of the universe either.

So--is there something that the life and death struggle distracts from? Is it not so important in and of itself, but rather as a way of not seeing something? What about the exotic beasts? In the dream they are something like gargoyles, ugly and fascinating at the same time. Why do gargoyles appeal? They have the undeniable intrigue of something atavistic, something scary that can't hurt us. Something that holds primitive antisocial tendencies, but also symbolically protects us, just as they protected medieval churches.

Interesting to note that it is when I (the captain) go "under" (into the unconscious) that the blaze breaks out.

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: Coming Up

In Elizabeth's dream a lot has come up; let's take a look at it.

The Dream: I was in a large house (not my own, but I felt comfortable there), on a lake or sea (I'm not sure which-but it was large, calm, but vast). I was with several couples, whom I knew in the dream and felt at ease with but can't put names on most after awakening. I was there with a young, prepubescent boy, and in the dream I felt obligation to have an intimate/sexual relationship of sorts with this boy. I felt it was not right, and I remember thinking it would have to wait until he had matured, if ever. This young boy brought me a condom, the condom was different than one I'd ever seen, it was large and reusable, similar in ways to a female condom. I felt absolute in my decision to not be with him when he asked how it worked, even though I myself was unsure. I took the condom and walked out onto the deck, and hid it under a computer desk there. The group was outside quickly after, and a few of them were going out on the water to go fishing. The next thing I remember in the dream is a woman "swimming" back towards the dock (this woman I believed to be a very good friend's mother, someone I've known for 16 years-extremely wealthy family, I feel close to them, but distant in some ways as I've gotten older). Except, she wasn't exactly swimming, she was kind of shooting through the water at warp speed and popped up at the deck I was standing on. Following behind her were thousands or more fish, dead fish, floating on the top of the water and drawn to the deck almost as if by a magnet attached to this woman. I asked how they had fished, and somehow (I don't remember who told me or if I just knew) understood that they had used a method of fishing that was controversial, possibly illegal. It was a weapon that exploded under water but sent out shrapnel to catch all the fish in a several mile radius.

The next thing I remember in the dream was a barge of junk that had been uprooted from the deep sea in the fishing process. At the top of the clump of objects floating in the water were several old, classic cars. As the barge of junk approached the deck, everything was becoming coated in this whiteness. Almost like spray foam that insulates windows, but it was covering everything. As I noticed this whiteness covering the barge of things, I was walking across it. It had formed a sort of large boat. As I was walking across it, I met my father (my waking life father), and we were looking at the old cars, walking from each one to another. I remember thinking I'd like to preserve one for him, possibly with paper-mache. As I walked back onto the deck, I approached a man from the group holding a paper. I asked what it was, and he told me it was a map that he'd commissioned to be made, but it was a secret. He showed me the map, and explained that there were 3 hidden rooms under the sea, and he'd had enough information to work with a mapmaker to find the coordinates. The map had to be a secret, because he would have been in trouble with everyone else if they'd known he'd done this. Suddenly, the man was no longer there and I was holding the map. As I noticed all the other people around, I quickly went to hide the map under the same computer desk on the deck as before, except it was also now covered in the white foam like the barge of sea junk. I hid the map next to the condom I'd earlier hid there. And that is when I remember awaking in my bed, and I grabbed the journal feeling an urgent need to write it down, that there was significance to it. When I re-read what I'd written, I only remembered half, and I barely remember writing it. It felt as though I was in a half-waking space...

Carla's thoughts: As usual with guest dreams, I will think about Elizabeth's dream as if it were my own and hope that it will inspire her to look at the images carefully to ferret out their meaning for her. Only the dreamer can figure out what her dream means, and that's because the images in a dream can mean completely different things to different people. I'm afraid there's no getting around the hard work of figuring out your own dreams.

In my version of Elizabeth's dream, the house represents my Self, the totality of who I am. While I am comfortable in this Self, I don't feel it belongs to me. In other words, I have yet to get in touch with my authentic core. This dream is placing me on course to make that discovery.

The sea is a birth metaphor: my rebirth will take place here. However, as with most of the images in this dream, the sea has contradictory meanings. Yes, it is the place of my rebirth, but it is also the place that obscures the feelings and experiences that make that rebirth a difficult one.

The young boy represents a part of myself that I'm deeply ambivalent about. I feel obligated to integrate, or unite with (have sex with) this aspect of myself, but at the same time this assimilation is distasteful to me (I don't feel it's the right thing to do), and I'm not ready for it (he's not mature.) A condom is something that prevents the union of sperm and egg, and here it symbolizes the barrier to finding out what my union with this young part of myself would bring to fruition. I temporarily avoid the problem by going outside (At least I'm in the process of airing the issue) and placing the impediment (the condom) in my subconscious (under the computer, or thinking function).

The other people in this dream represent various aspects of myself. At times they are the parts that hold the views of a disapproving society, but some are ready to fish around for what's going on in my depths. A pivotal role is played by the woman who swims back to the dock. With her the ambivalence surfaces again: she is someone I am both close to and distant from. This tells me that the information she symbolizes is getting close to consciousness even though I might want to keep it at a distance. Her wealth symbolizes the immensity of my potential.

This process is moving too quickly for my comfort. (She shoots through the water.) She comes from below the surface, and what she brings up is scary and distasteful. Water represents the flow of emotion, and dead fish, according to Tony Crisp, can symbolize the “ non-expression of basic urges.” The magnetic quality of this woman emphasizes the duality of attraction and repulsion, the same ambivalence that we saw earlier with my feelings about my potential sexual union with the young boy. Again I see that something isn't right: the fish (the basic instincts) have been caught in a way that is not only controversial but possibly illegal.

What was murky is bubbling up into enlightenment (the foam with its white color). The underwater explosion that results in foamy whiteness is also evocative of a male orgasm. Cars represent our “drives.” The classic cars take me back to the past, perhaps to a time of my life when one of those drives, the one that results in a male orgasm, would have seemed to me an overwhelming thing that covers (obscures?) everything. I meet my father (the holder of the society's values) and we walk around looking at the cars (drives). Why do I want to give him a paper mache car? Am I trying to make sex drives less substantial, transforming them from the steel of a classic car to the kind of paper children use in craft projects? This hints that the child part of myself does not want to accept adult sexuality. Or perhaps it doesn't want to accept its own (the child's) awareness of that sexuality.

Then I meet the man with the secret map. He is the part of me that is sorting out these old secrets of my Psyche. There are 3 hidden rooms under the sea (in my unconscious). Again we have the unacceptable, the thing I think I'm not supposed to acknowledge. (The mapmaker would be in trouble if it were known he was giving me the route to this secret world.) The map, now covered in the white foam, is stored next to the condom. The various things that I've deemed unacceptable have been dredged up from my depths and are now in one place. I can take them out and look at them when I am ready to: I'm the one who's put them here. These things, hidden right under the computer desk (consciousness) are now very close to the surface. At some point I'll be comfortable taking them out into the fresh air of the deck.

Guest Dreamer: Zebra Run and Flow

Guest dreamer Openfoot has contributed today's magical dream. You can read more of his dreams and check out his artwork here.
Openfoot's Dream: I stand on Yorkshire cliffs high above the sea. A large fishing boat is just leaving the bay. Under the surface of the bay a huge grey cloud can be seen clearly revealing that the shoal of fish the boat has been targeting is still there. Now I'm flying and moving towards the shoal, at first flying over it but then diving underwater. Here great shapes appear, the shadows of Orca, Killer Whales. I watch them lunge through the shoal and then on to pursue individual fish. Now, and to my great surprise, a herd of underwater zebra "gallop", with little apparent effort, through water as they too pursue the small fish. This herd of "sea horses" are amazing.

Now standing at a lakeside, the zebra emerge from its still waters. In my position at right angles to the galloping herd I watch them move along the shore. I am in wonder. This is remarkable. They seem to have brought the water of the lake with them. As they begin to enter open woodland the "water" of the lake fills all the air and space. It's mostly invisible but you get the odd shimmer to indicate its presence. The movements of the zebra herd, although now very free, seem just as if they were still running under the sea.

The rest of my family arrive and I urge them to watch this wondrous scene. I continue to express my amazement and delight. The zebra seem to be having great fun as they duck under branches and leap over bramble patches, demonstrating great grace and agility.

Carla's thoughts: Tony Crisp says that “deeply unconscious processes are often depicted by fish” and that fishing can symbolize “a receptive state of consciousness which allows the deep insights or processes to become known.”

If this were my dream, it would be about my movement toward a more expansive, intuitive understanding of my place in the world and a more joyful experience of life. Life abounds in my dream, but in the beginning I am looking down on it from a lofty cliff; I'm far above the sea. So I go “fishing” for something else. A bay is more constricted than the sea, and as I leave this more confined space I see a huge gray cloud, representing a shoal of fish. As I progress through my dream, I notice the proportion of gray to black and white reverses. At this early point, my quest lacks clarity, and so it appears huge and gray. The resolution I experience in the dream will be symbolized by the proportion of black, white and gray in the dream animals.

I'm in pursuit, and what I'm after is the resolution of a conflict I'm feeling between my personal and my group identity. Can I be my true self in a group? Fish in a shoal band together, but do not coordinate their movements as do those in a school. I am sociable, but not immersed in the herd. I investigate this community from above and below: I fly above it; I dive beneath it. As I watch, the shadowy Orca, another great gray shape, goes after “individual” fish. Being an individual is clearly a scary and vulnerable thing to be. But wait! Something is coming into focus for me: the Orca is mostly a black and white creature, with only a small gray area over its dorsal fin. My confusion (the gray area) has shrunk. With the appearance of the zebra I have resolved my conflict: these creatures have no gray areas at all. I am free to be me!

The zebra leave the sea; as they come out of the water I gallop toward a rebirth. I am at right angles to them (I see them correctly, from the right angle or viewpoint). Magical and mysterious and wonderful imagery tells me that I have had an epiphany. The zebra have brought the water of the lake (the mists of the mythical Avalon) with them. Their shimmer is my enlightenment. I watch in wonder, sharing the moment with those dearest to me. I am in sync both with my family (the community of man) and with my natural and unique self.

Beached and Yoked

The Dream: An artist acquaintance is a yoga teacher. She’s teaching at the beach and having some difficulty getting the class together.

Interpretation: Whoever we dream of represents some aspect of ourselves. I associate this particular artist with someone who has managed to be successful in the very demanding fine art arena. In my dream she stands for the part of me that would like to achieve this. I see from the dream that I don’t yet have a “following.” I am stranded (beached) and yoked (yoga) by the choices I've made. At the same time I can see that I’m in a beautiful place, doing something I love.

The Old Man and the Sea

The Dream: On a cliff overlooking the sea an old man, who doesn’t walk well, is trying to catch a young girl of about seven. It looks as if he will: she is running in his direction, and he’s ready to catch her, running toward her in his wobbly way. All at once she veers inland. Happily, without a care in the world--running for the pure joy of it--she evades him completely.

Interpretation: Old age and infirmity is out to get me. I manage to elude it, at least for the time being.

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.

Things are Not What They Seem

The Dream: I am a young woman. A boyfriend takes me to visit his family home, which is near the sea. The homes in his town look a little down in the mouth, with laundry hung in very small front yards no bigger than their driveways. Piles of debris await collection. I am not impressed.

Later I realize that the people here treat their very shallow fronts as backs; they are not concerned about how they look or the social and community face they present. They care about the private back gardens—not visible from the street—where they spend their time. These are large and green and face the sea.

Interpretation: This dream puts everything on its head, turns expectations upside down. What would normally be private (the laundry) is hung out for all to see. The dirty linens are washed in public. Trash is left out in piles. I am not “keeping up a front,” and my dream ego disapproves.

 As the dream progresses, I learn that this is not a bad thing, even if it flies in the face of social expectations. The front, after all, is shallow. The real life of the family (my inner life) takes places facing the sea (the unconscious). In that place the garden prospers.

Swift Descent

Jung tells us that we’ll hear from the unconscious when we are getting a little too big for our britches. That seems to be the case in this dream.

The Dream: In turn, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles descend a tall ladder coming down from a pier into the ocean, part of an obligatory royal appearance. Each falls off and tumbles into the sea, then scrambles back up without assistance, bereft of royal dignity. No one lifts a finger to help, which surprises me. The event is being filmed; it’s a royal publicity piece. I realize that the public will never see these “outtakes.”

Interpretation: Moi?

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.