Nature 's Way

All aspects of waking life affect dream life, including what we read or watch on television.

The Dream: We are outside. I see, off to the right, waves approaching. “This is the time of the black waves,” I say. The waves are blue toward the edges; their center goes from mid-night blue to black. At first I merely watch these interesting waves; then one very large one breaks over us all, drenching us (in our nice clothes) and lifting us out of our seats, moving us toward the shore. Will we stay safely on the shore or is this a tsunami? I’m not sure.

Interpretation: I had been reading M.Ester Harding’s book Psychic Energy the night before I had this dream. Speaking of nature, Harding says: “She is fecund and cruel. Her law works for the continuation of the race. The young are important as such, for they represent the next generation. Yet if many die, there are always more to replace them. As individuals they are of very little importance in the eyes of Mother Nature, who creates living creatures in great abundance and then destroys them all. For this is nature’s way.”*

In the dream I experience the terror and uncertainty of this grim reality.

*M. Ester Harding, Psychic Energy Its Source and Its Transformation, with a forward by C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series X, First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Edition, 1973:192-193.

The Sea

The Dream: I’m on a beautiful beach in Maui. The waves are delightful and the water temperature perfect. The scene switches and I’m in law enforcement, riding in a van looking for perps. I drive an old battered van, its front window shattered by a bullet, yet I’m full of confidence.

I want to go back to the beach. To get there I have to go through a door, as if the beach is in a room. It’s my last day on Maui, and I want to enjoy it. As I experience the lovely sea I think that now Clark will understand why I like the beaches on the East Coast—the water there is similar, warm and pleasant.

Interpretation: The conflict here seems pretty clear: my sensual pleasure-oriented part versus the rule-following enforcer. The relatively bad shape of the enforcer’s van, and the fact that the window (my point of view) has been shattered, hints that this part of me is losing ground, that in some way how I see things has changed.  And sure enough, I go back to the beach.

To get to the beach I go through a door, symbolizing a transformation and emphasizing that something has changed. I choose enjoyment and the renewal or rebirth that the sea represents. The reference to the East speaks metaphorically of an illumination—the sun rises in the east, the Wise Men came from the East, and so on.  The dream is telling me that not only have I changed, but that I will soon realize it.

Making Waves

Dream image: A low wave.

Interpretation: Water represents the unconscious, so this dream tells me that some unconscious material has come to the surface (consciousness), but not in a way that’s intrusive, scary, or even very noticeable. Looking at past dreams with similar imagery, I contrast this with a series of tsunami dreams I once had. My unconscious doesn’t think it has to shout as loud as it once did to get my attention.