Plate

You can have plates showing diagrams or photos, or a condensing plate for research or revealing, a license plate; a breast plate; plate glass, a brass plate or a collection plate or even gold plating. So it is important to define what sort of plate it is. If possible look up what the plate refers to like eating – photos and gold.

To offer or serve up something. A way of presenting things in a clean and attractive way. Sometimes a special way of doing things, as with great or inherited plates. So a way of giving oneself to a person you like, honour or love.

In having a lot on ones plate, it means a lot to cope with or deal with, or get through. The plate with food on it can depict what is in front of you in life; what you have received or earned from life, what is yours.

A simple empty plate it is about receptivity, a condition that is ready to receive or be used to receive something. In general a plate connects with a major human instinct – to eat. But what is on the plate and the circumstances around the dreamed of plate indicates your relationship with food and social settings.

May also symbolise needs, hungers, and appetites. At one time the plate was a symbol of status, when only the rich afforded china or silver.  

If food on plate: What one has a sense of ownership about; what one has received or hopes to receive from others, or from ones own efforts; what you have created or ‘cooked up’ for yourself and now face.

Communal plate: What is available to you but you may have to compete for or share – in work, relationship, life.

Empty plate: Ones needs; appetites; receptivity; perhaps status, as in the past only the rich had plates.

 Example: I noticed that the brain was only an end organ, like a condensing plate, upon which memory and awareness played. The mind, I saw, was not in the brain, the brain was in the mind, like a radio in the play of signals.

Example: As I am jogging, I see a group of people, mostly men, all in a bunch, talking. They have plates that are valuable and are sales men or business men. I have a stack of 6-8 china plates myself, but I’m just carrying them, I’m not trying to sell them. They are looking for the rich old man to do business with.  

Here is a woman dreamer who is walking in the business world and summing it up.  

 Example: “I am at a wedding at which we are being served a celebratory Chicken Lunch. Whilst my back is turned for a moment one of the other guests on the table who is female but whom I do not know removes my plate and substitutes it with a plate of food which doesn’t contain chicken. When I challenge this, I am told that there is no more. At this I rather petulantly decide to leave the wedding.” Brian Y.    

Brian uses a plate of food to represent the good things he feels are rightfully his in life; but his negative emotions in a relationship with a female rob him of this.

Idioms: Handed to one on a plate; on ones plate; clean ones plate; a full plate; plate is full; on a silver platter; step up to the plate. See: food.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do I have on my plate – food, work to do, a mess to clean up?

What do I hope for, my hopes and plans or my ability to receive?

What needs, hungers or appetites am I aware of?

See Active Imagination – Dreams are Like a Computer Game – Life Changes – Core