What have I Locked Away?

The Dream: I’m in a house which is empty of furnishings, as if we’re just moving in. A man is helping, a swarthy Middle Eastern type. I can’t tell if he is a nice guy—which he appears to be—or a terrorist who has infiltrated. He shows a card with a string of numbers at the top. The only numbers I remember are the 0 and the 20, at the beginning. I think this is some sort of a code: either for a locker or something else. Is this a code he will slip to a compatriot, some sort of secret message? Or is it the number for a locker combination? Will they put bombs in the locker?

Interpretation: I’ve come to a new stage of life (moving into a new house). Here I meet a part of myself that is foreign to me (Middle Eastern). In fact, this part of me is so unfamiliar I don’t even know if he’s good or bad. He is connected to an experience I had at age 20 (the numbers on the card). That experience is a code for something that created a psychic explosion.

At the age of 20 I had just graduated university and left home to live in Manhattan (the new house). Being my own person and seeing such a different life from the one I had experienced growing up in the South expanded my mind to the point it could be thought of as a type of explosion. What might the experience be a code for? Freedom! The dream is reminding me that it’s important to hang on to the essential part of myself that I discovered in my early adulthood.

They Sing, I Dance

Jung tells us that the 2nd half of life—in his day after 35—is devoted to the spiritual task of coming to terms with our mortality.

The Dream: Old ladies are singing, taking turns. They are on a stage grouped around a small table upstage left. Three are at the table at a time; others come from the wings (stage right) to replace them and take their turn. Meanwhile I am dancing in front of them in the empty space downstage. My friend Alice is in the audience, amazed that I can dance. It feels almost like flying.

Interpretation: The old ladies are reminiscent of a Greek chorus, their presence a leitmotif on the cycle of life and death as they replace one another at the table. But what about the number 3? It overcomes duality (such as life and death; night and day; good and bad); the 3-woman chorus is hinting that there are possibilities I don’t grasp. After all, the women come from the “wings,” a word associated with divinity: the bird is symbolic of the soul. I dance, with such energy that I practically fly, expressing the unfathomable energy of the cosmos. But here’s the conundrum of dreams: Do I dance with life or do I dance with death?