Butterflies

The Dream: The manzinita bush in the back garden is covered with butterfly cocoons and emerging butterflies. I look at them analytically to figure out what kind of butterflies they are. I’m a little worried about the fact that they are so plentiful.

Interpretation: Traditionally butterflies have been a symbol of transformation: the soul emerging from the body as the butterfly emerges from the cocoon. I try to understand this wonder with my intellect (analytically). When I can’t, I become uncomfortable. The unconscious is pointing out that I cannot understand everything using reason and logic. 

The Lampshade

Have you ever had a dream that interpreted itself for you? I haven’t had many, but this one did.

The Dream: A lampshade features prominently. It is colorful, made of translucent geometric forms in shades of yellow, green and orange. The dream explains its own symbolism: it tells me that the lampshade’s significance is that it both conceals and reveals illumination.

Circles in a Square

Jung tells us that a circle in our dreams symbolizes our psyche. What we see in the circle reflects our many complex and interacting facets. A square, he says, symbolizes the temenos, a safe and sacred place where transformation can take place.

The Dream:  A visual image of circles within a square.

Interpretation: I’m working to balance my new center.   

Animal Instinct

      
When your dreams reward you with an encouraging symbol on one night, you can be pretty sure they’ll throw you a challenge the next.

The Dream: I’m running around a group of buildings at a campground. The buildings form a rectangle surrounded by a covered porch with a wood floor. A tribe of nearby apes seems very human in its social organization and behavior, but nevertheless its proximity is frightening. I am both intrigued by and leery of the apes.

Interpretation: A couple of symbols stand out here. Jung talks about the temenos, which is a contained space in which transformation can take place. In this dream I’m not inside the space, but running around its perimeter. Now that I’ve made peace with my inner child, my next challenge is to integrate my inner ape: my natural, impulsive, and uncivilized inclinations.

This doesn’t mean that these inclinations should lead me or be given free reign—on the contrary. It means I need to be aware that I have these inclinations. I’m probably on my way toward accepting this part of myself, even though I’m frightened, since one of my reactions to the apes (to be intrigued) is not wholly negative.

Only the White Silhouette Remains

Jung says that dreams show us the way forward; they sometimes deal with emotional pain, expressing it through symbols. These sorts of dreams help us, over time, to accept what we must.

The Dream: There is an icy river: big chunks of ice and snow predominate, but the river flows, nonetheless. A woman falls in and is carried downstream. She is near the edge of the river, and I try to pull her out but she keeps eluding me, moving downstream. At last I succeed. She is like a paper cut-out doll: a white silhouette that looks like a 1950s fashionable woman, complete with the broad-brimmed hat of the era. Only the silhouette remains, but it is her.

Interpretation: The icy river symbolizes my emotions, frozen in their inability to come to terms with my mother’s death. The fashionable woman in the water (my mother) is in danger, and I desperately would like to save her but it’s difficult. Finally I think I’ve succeeded, only to discover that she is not a real person, only the ghost (white silhouette) that exists in my mind.

Jumping into Shallow Water

As you work to understand dream messages, it’s important to learn to unravel their symbolic language. For example water, according to Carl Jung--a pioneer in the study of dream material--symbolizes the Unconscious.

The Dream: I’m on a high wooden walkway, on something that resembles scaffolding. It’s part of some new construction. There is water below. Voices urge me to jump. I am leery of doing so; I know the water is shallow. Nevertheless I do jump and am surprised to find I land on my feet in the water, unharmed.

Interpretation: Scaffolding is put around buildings that are under construction or being repaired. In the world of dream symbols, a building often represents the dreamer’s Psyche. In the real world being urged to jump into shallow water from a height would be a very bad thing, but in the dream world it might be a hint that the dreamer need not be afraid of exploring her Unconscious. She takes the plunge and emerges unharmed.