The Messenger

One reason it's a good idea to illustrate your dreams is that the illustration itself will elaborate on your unconscious process. Don't think about the illustration too much as you do it; follow the dictates of your unconscious. Once you've created your illustration--a doodle, a mandala, a collage, whatever you feel like--look at the shapes and colors for more information. 

The Dream: I am in a Victorian house, standing in its large, high-ceiling entry. The bell rings, and through the door's frosted glass I see a messenger holding a fat manila envelope. I open the door to take it. I think he's going to leave, but instead he pounds on the door, cracking it, and then extends one hand through the hole he's made. At first I think he's about to give me “the finger.” Instead, he grabs me, forcing himself in. As he attacks me I scream for Clark. I know he's not in the house, but I'm hoping that if the intruder thinks he is he will be frightened off. I awaken in terror.

Interpretation: This dreadful dream ushered in my birthday. I'm being giving a message in a very forceful way. Will I get it? The frosted glass hints at my lack of clarity. The “finger” reminded me of these lines from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

My conscious awareness, here represented by Clark, is not at home. The dream is pointing to something deeply unsettling that's important for me to grasp. The timing, on my birthday eve, tells me this issue is a matter of “life or death”-- metaphorically—for me: I must come to terms with my mortality. The colors I unconsciously chose to illustrate the dream tell me where I am in my acceptance of my inevitable death. I'm in a gray and black space (not happy with the idea), but the messenger and his space are green, the color of growth. At some point I'll be able to accept my part in the cycle of life.

A Failed Artist

The Dream: I'm with my mother and two friends. We start to head up to my walk-up apartment. As we are climbing the stairs I say to my mother, “I guess you're wondering why I always live in a 5th floor walk-up?” I mean this as a joke on the effort the stairs require, but it's not actually a negative to me. “Not at all,” says my mother. “It's because you are a failed artist.”

I'm stung by this, but don't feel I can deny the truth of it. I would have preferred she acknowledge the accomplishment of what I've achieved—a certain level of skill, undeniably--than to focus on my utter lack of commercial success. Then too, I don't think commercial success is what I'm after. Nevertheless, I see the career building strategies of a successful artist friend in a new light. It least she isn't seen as a failure.

Mother collapses onto the floor, and I'm afraid the effort of climbing the stairs has given her a heart attack. I bend over her, very concerned, but not ready to call the paramedics: her color looks good and I think she'll snap out of it. I feel, once the crisis has past, that I owe my friends an explanation. “I've been through this so many times before,” I say.

My friends give me gifts. One is a fused glass piece, a tube sprouting a plant. It's roots are in the tube; an exotic flower drapes out.

Interpretation: Ha! My conundrum in a nutshell: one part of me, the internalized critical mother, wants to know why I'm not a commercial success. In our culture money equals value, and if you can't show a profit you and your product must be worthless. Another part, the one that is happy to live on a higher level and doesn't mind the difficulty that entails, sees my art making as a spiritual practice and has no interest in monetizing it, only wants a bit of recognition for what she's accomplished. My critical mother collapses from the effort of the ascent, but I know she'll revive. After all, I've been through this many times.

The friends, protectors of my calling, give me a work of art: nature transformed into a glass object that could last--or might just as easily break.

The Rescued Baby

The Dream: I'm on an escalator, of the sort that is stacked one on top of the next like a stairwell in a very tall building. I am with my mother. The feeling of the place is something like a combination of a department store and the stairwell of the Brooklyn apartment my mother grew up in.

I am unaware that I have a baby until it jumps across the stair rail, heading for a steep and deadly fall, down so many stories that I can't see the bottom. I think my reaction time will be too slow to save her—but even as I have this thought I've reached out my hand and grabbed her by the legs, bringing her back to safety. She's about 7 inches tall, tiny and more like a doll than a baby. I'm very relieved to have saved her; I holler her name in relief and vexation.

Interpretation: My husband Clark and I have been listening to a philosophy course on “the meaning of life.” The course insists that “spontaneity” is essential to a meaningful life (probably because most philosophers so lack the quality). The dream deals with the age (7) at which my own spontaneity was curtailed by coming up against the requirements of my 2nd grade teacher that I sit down and—more important—shut up. Having lost my battle with the establishment I reformed and by the third grade had become a model student.

The little figure who is ready to jump to her doom (my spontaneous self) is rescued by the part of me who doesn’t think she has it in her (doubts her reaction time will be fast enough). The truly spontaneous part acts even before the thought is finished—so this dream might point to a positive development: that adult spontaneity—strong, purposefully doing the right thing—can rescue the child spontaneity that lacks judgment and foresight. Mother lurks in the background but plays no other role.

Three Faces of Eve

The Dream: Yoko Ono, it turns out, is responsible for starting the civil rights movement in America. She is on a visit, walking down a flight of stairs, the crowd pressing in from all sides—photographers, newsmen, and so on. Despite all the attention she realizes that no one takes her seriously because she is Japanese. So she starts the movement to change this.

Interpretation:Two streams of thought in waking life came together in this dream. The first was influenced by a book, Margaret Atwood's “The Flood.” The women in the book cope with the world in different ways. The three lead characters, Toby, Ren and Amanda, are typically underestimated. Each has a different strategy for survival, and each demonstrates a kind of archetypal woman. Toby is the sexless, healing, capable mother. Ren, a dancer and sex worker, kind and uncalculating, is sweet and easily led but loyal and fearless when necessary. Amanda is tough, worldly, and all calculation. These women are more capable than anyone realizes, and they survive by helping each other.

The second stream of influence was a philosophy lecture series on “The Meaning of Life.” The lectures presented many points of view; the one on Gandhi emphasized his insistence that we must act to right wrongs, as Yoko does in the dream. Yet her high-minded response to her personal dilemma is overlaid with a kind of typically female pique: No one is taking me seriously! As the feminists used to say, “The personal is political.”

Guest Dreamer: I Can Bear It

Today’s guest dreamer is David Ward-Nanney whose recently released novel, Powder Dreams, uses dream analysis as a narrative device. David has given us his own interpretation of the dream’s meaning. Before I read it, I’ll react to his dream as if it were one of mine in the hope that it might provide an insight he hasn’t already thought of. As always, the dreamer gets the last word, and if we differ, his interpretation is the correct one.

The Dream: The house is an entirely open plan with lots of space and floor-to-ceiling windows. The windows allow plenty of natural light throughout. I am on the first floor in front of a staircase that leads to the second floor. To my left I see an unidentifiable woman and man, both about my age and socioeconomic level. I know instinctively that the man is a friend and the woman is a beloved. I go up the stairs and remember something that makes me go back downstairs. The man and the woman are gone and I see through the back window why. There is a giant grizzly bear on his hind legs looking into the house from outside. My first thought is thank God the others got away safely. I try to make my escape upstairs but the bear is now inside the house and grabs my ankles, preventing me from going up. He says, “Hold on. Not so fast.” He lets go and I immediately make a dash for the front door. I make it through the door and onto the front porch when he again grabs me by the ankles and drags me back in. This time he says, “You can’t get away and there’s no need to.” While I am frightened I am also cognizant that this bear does not necessarily want to eat me.

Carla: The house represents me; its spaciousness and large windows tell me that I am an open person with a good relationship to the world outside my window; light can come in, and I can see out. The woman and man who rather closely resemble me represent the rational and spiritual aspects of my inner self. I am at peace with these: the man is a friend and the woman beloved. But when I go “downstairs,” leaving the safety of my intellect and higher consciousness, they disappear.

Why do I go downstairs (into my unconscious)? Because there’s something I need to remember, or get in touch with, that’s important for my health and wholeness. Once there I find my supporting friends gone, and I must face a frightening and deadly beast (my own emotions, passions, my inner “animal”) without their help. I don’t realize it at the time, but it’s necessary for my conscious, rational, “higher” part to disappear temporarily; it would only hinder the integration about to take place. However, knowing that my civilized self is in a safe place reassures me, giving me courage for what’s to come.

The dream’s revelation comes during my terrifying confrontation with the bear when he says to me, “You can’t get away and there’s no need to.” Once I realize that I can’t escape my inner animal—and, more important--there’s no need to, I have made a stride toward accepting this essential part of myself. I am still afraid, but I now know that I will not be consumed (eaten) by my feelings and passions.

David’s Interpretation: Grizzly bears are fierce hunters and gatherers and are thus able to not only survive but thrive in a global environment that has marked the polar bear for extinction. The bear is an emblem or symbol of the warrior caste. This fierce side of me is repeatedly baring its ugly head, but the dream is telling me that caution not terror is the right approach and that I cannot escape it. The bear definitely scares off both the anima and friend archetypes, leaving me to deal with him alone.

The Intruder: the Dead Bolt

This post marks the 300th to this blog. It seems fitting that today's dream deals with some very basic stuff: the archetypal images of mother, life, and death.

The Dream: I am in the parlor of my grandmother’s railroad apartment in Brooklyn. I notice the door that leads to the stairwell is not shut properly. As I notice, someone in the hall shuts the door; I think it’s a helpful neighbor. I go to secure the door by turning the deadbolt lock when the person outside pushes on the door, attempting to get in. I push back and manage to bolt the door. I awaken in terror.

Interpretation: I had this dream shortly after Mother’s Day. The most remarkable thing about it is how frightened I felt when I awakened. My grandfather died when my mother was very young, leaving my foreign-born grandmother to support three children. She avoided remarrying because she had been mistreated by a step-parent and didn't want to risk that possibility for her own children. My mother was born in the apartment. So for me the place symbolizes these two gentle and loving souls, mother and grandmother, the unsung heroes of my life. Both are deceased. My distress is brought on by realizing my mothers have been lost (railroaded) to death (the dead bolt). And, of course, I will be as well.

At first the outside presence seems benign; my first impression is that it is helpful, and there is a helpful aspect to death once the losses of old age become apparent. But still, for me, terrifying.

The Tree House

The Dream: I am with three people: a young dark-haired Frenchman, a girl of about 8 to 10, and Aunt Peggy. I know an English pub nearby that has a tree-house over a stream, and I want to show it to the young man who doubts it exists. I find the place. The tree-house has changed a lot since I last saw it. The structure looks far more planned and sturdy, as if lawyers had warned the owner about getting rid of potential hazards. It has lost a lot of its charm, but at least it's still there. It has an unusual staircase, very narrow at the bottom as if to make it impossible for an adult to gain access. I wonder if I can squeeze myself into the narrow stairwell and if I do, whether or not it will be possible to get down again. Then I notice there are some wider stairs on the other side that I could use. Nevertheless I squeeze myself into the narrow staircase and go up to the house over the stream. The four of us are at the top, wandering around. All enjoy it, but I feel it’s become too industrial, not like the more human and haphazard children’s structures of my youth. This place--too sturdy, over planned, mechanical—has lost its soul and poetry.

Interpretation: This dream reinforces what the previous dream was driving at: I’ve lost some valuable part of myself that is connected to childhood. I’ve become too rigid (the structure looks planned and sturdy).  This elevated trait of childhood (represented by the tree house) still brings pleasure, but is in danger of being changed to the point of its annihilation. The dream is pointing out the danger (losing soul and poetry) of being too careful.

What's Bugging Me?

The Dream: A stepped garden leads to my apartment. Some others from the complex are with me; they get to their apartment by first entering mine and then going up some stairs to the right. The space opening to my apartment is separated from the vestibule by a counter covered with decorative plants. My companions, on entering the vestibule, survey my apartment and remark on its attractiveness. The woman says she wishes hers were as lovely. I think her place probably has the exact same layout as mine, and it’s a question of what one does with it.

As they are admiring my place, which does look beautiful, I notice bugs coming out of the pots on the counter. This is distressing and I wonder what caused them to appear. Did I leave some food around? I’m hoping my “guests” won’t notice as I search for the cause. At first I notice that one pot in particular, the one to the far right, has lots of small creatures emerging. But then I notice all do.

Interpretation: The stepped garden represents my personal growth.  My feelings of isolation (apart-ment complex) and I (the dream ego) encounter one another in this dream.  I begin to realize we live in the same space (her place has the same layout as mine). I see that my complex splits off from our common domain (the entry way) and go upstairs to its usual habitation, the intellect (on a higher level, to the right). I am happy with my beautiful apartment until I notice all is not right: something unpleasant and distressing emerges. The bugs represent something I don’t want to accept and can’t control (the fly in the ointment). I need to figure out where they fit in.

Not A Black Hole

The Dream: I’m cleaning the kitchen floor. I notice how much cleaner it is where I’ve mopped so I keep going, even though we have company. As I work across the floor a hole opens up in the middle of the room: a dark, earth-colored, earth-sided hole which descends to depths unknown.

I am alarmed and point this out to Clark. He reassures me that this is nothing to worry about, but I’m concerned that I could have fallen in at any time. He knew the hole was there all along but was not alarmed. He says that it wouldn’t be so disastrous if I did fall in, that it really isn’t so deep. “There’s a spiral staircase and an area with light,” he says. “It’s not a black hole.” I don’t buy it, although I do have a glimpse of what he’s talking about for a moment. Later I notice he’s put a table over the area.

Interpretation: Kitchens in dreams are often places where transformation takes place. I’m busy with a mundane task, cleaning the floor, when it seems I ought to be enjoying my guests. My task is interrupted by an unexpected event: a hole in the floor. On the one hand, this hole smacks of the grave, with its earth color and its scary descent to the unknown. On the other hand, Clark, who represents my other half, is very comfortable with what seems to me a major problem. Clark tells me there is something to be gained from descending into this unknown world; he tells me this is where I’ll find light (spiritual illumination). The spiral staircase he mentions evokes our nightly descent into the unconscious.
Something about this realm frightens me, although I have an inkling that what he says might be true. He does not insist, but “tables” the discussion. The hole (whole) remains, even if covered, awaiting the moment I’m brave enough to explore it.

Difficulties of Leadership

The Dream: We are going up a mountain in a rural setting; the landscape is fresh and beautiful, damp and fragrant like a primeval forest. I am on horseback, leading an expedition. My horse pulls some colorful, old-fashioned vehicles that look like circus cars. I am concerned that the cars might fall off the side of the mountain when I go around its sharp curves.

We get to a black tunnel which we must transgress before getting to the top, our destination. I see nothing in the pitch black. My left eye feels clogged: I can’t keep it open.  I am very sleepy. In order not to lose my followers over the edge I try to stick to what I “feel” is the inside track.

Touch, not Sight

The Dream: Coming down a steep staircase I close my eyes and run my hands along the surrounding walls, which function as a banister might. I navigate by touch, not sight. I feel that Clark is guiding me, and I can just about conquer my fear by not looking.

Interpretation: In order to experience the deeper levels of my psyche (get to the bottom of the staircase) I must rely on feeling (touch) not intellect (sight). Here Clark represents what Jung calls my animus, the part of a woman that copes with the outside (male-dominated) world. I'm up against the wall, so to speak. Will I get past the ban(ister)?

Down the Steep Stairs

Although no man is an island, sometimes it feels that way. Dreams can help us find, and understand, our niche.

The Dream: I live in an apartment in a city, and I’m preparing to go to a zumba class. I’m looking through a box in the closet and find a second pair of zumba shoes that I had forgotten I have. I decide to wear these, along with a two-layer aerobic outfit. I know I"ll be too hot dressed this way; nevertheless I put on the layers. The layer closest to my body is a turtle-neck jumpsuit; over this, a decorative lace dress. Though I like my high-heel zumba shoes better, I want to wear the newly discovered low-heels.

As I exit the apartment building there's an unexpected hurdle. I am on the fourth or fifth floor, and the only way to street level is down a very steep and precarious staircase. It’s made of broken

The Wailing Wall

The Dream: I look at the wall between the stairs and the guest room, and it is water stained. There is a leak coming from the guest room wall, and it has spread to a large area. I wonder why we didn’t notice it earlier. I talk to Clark about fixing it, and I am concerned that he will put it off and it will get worse. I think, “This is a disaster.”

Interpretation: My mother’s furniture is in the guest room. Something leaking from that room is contaminating, ruining my house (self). At first I thought this symbolized my mother’s influence over me, but Clark pointed out the symbolism of the Wailing Wall and suggested the image symbolized my inexpressible grief at her death.

The Mural

You might have heard that Freud organized our minds into id, ego, and superego; and Jung organized our minds into three levels as well: unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. This dream seems to confirm the theoretical concept that our minds have these “levels” of consciousness.

The Dream: There is a stairwell going up, on the right. Just to its left is an elevator, but I discover there is no way for me to access it. However, by going around a central structure and up a stair or two I find another way. I think it’s too bad we didn’t know about this elevator sooner, since we have spent so much effort trudging up the stairs.

When we reach the top floor the walls are covered with enchanting Klee-like biomorphic forms, in beautiful colors. The design forms an all-over pattern. I get the impression that I am in a Disney space.

Interpretation: The stairwell going up indicates that previously unconscious material is “rising” to a conscious level. This is emphasized by the fact that the stairwell is on the right. Symbolically, right equals conscious; left equals unconscious. To the left is an elevator: the quicker way to go up and down, but associated with the unconscious here—and you’ll notice there is no way for me to access it. But wait! I find a way. I go around a central structure (the controlling ego) and up a stair or two, telling me I have become a little more conscious, probably the result of my conscientious dream journal. I grouse a little that it’s taken so much tedious work to get as far as I have.

Then I take the elevator and am rewarded by a beautiful mural. This higher level is a place of art and imagination (as Disney likes to tell us about itself). But there’s a little warning here, too. Disney is fun and imaginative—but lacks a certain depth. As for the mural: have I hit a wall?

Playing in the Pool

“Father” appears again in this dream, cutting short a playful splash in the unconscious.
The Dream: I’m playing in the pool with some kids. We are all young girls. The setting is the pool of the house I live in. We are playing with the water in such a way that we’ve sent up a spray of water in a rectangular shape. Then we notice that “dad” is spying on us, looking out from the upstairs bedroom window. We’ve made too much noise and awakened him.

Interpretation: Playing in a pool (the unconscious) with some kids. That I’m dealing with children—as opposed to adults—tells me the psychic elements that have been activated are connected to a part of me that’s not fully formed. There’s a playful element: I’m splashing about in this unconscious material, perhaps not taking it as seriously as I should. To create a safe zone these children send up what Jung calls a temenos with their rectangular spray of water. A temenos, often represented by a square, is a sacred place where transformation can occur. This splashing about in the unconscious displeases the “father,” representative of a rigid kind of thinking and morality, who awakens.