DreamTime - Well you obviously have associations of your own, and if you wish you could try ‘being’ the Cheshire Cat. Seeing that all images of our dreams are productions of our self, in being an object or person we are tuning into aspects of oneself usually unconscious. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson and
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/But I had an insight into the meaning of the Cat as Lewis Carroll may have seen it; considering that the story shows him smoking pot and eating magic mushrooms. So I quote an entry from my journal - November 1992.
“The more one sought an answer, the less likely one was to find one. All effort dropped away and I existed in a simple state of being, of clear existence, for hours. My ego seemed to melt, yet it was still there, it hadn’t been destroyed or overcome, or denied. It had simply dropped like effort from the limbs when we sleep. (Was using the Enlightenment Intensive method)
In this state I had a wonderful sense that I had been let into the Garden of Eden again. Everybody was always in the Garden but they cannot see it because they have lost their innocence. They have covered up their perception of it with too many thoughts, opinions, struggles, attitudes, fears, dreams and hopes. I could see that we play thoughts and attitudes like records, and these were not ourselves. I knew myself as the empty awareness of existence. It was heaven, it was peace, it was beyond any effort.
"In this state I had a wonderful sense that I had been let into the Garden of Eden again. Everybody was always in the Garden but they cannot see it because they have lost their innocence. They have covered up their perception of it with too many thoughts, opinions, struggles, attitudes, fears, dreams and hopes. I could see that we play thoughts and attitudes like records, and these were not ourselves. I knew myself as the empty awareness of existence. It was heaven, it was peace, it was beyond any effort.
"At one point I suddenly realised the meaning of the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland. I was touching the radiance, the self existent gentle joy of existence, and my ego was not there. It had melted, disappeared. And this was what I saw had happened to the Cheshire Cat. All that was left was the smile, hanging in emptiness. That was how I felt, like a smile hanging in space.”
It is the disappearance of the face, the ego, or at least what one thinks of as one’ self or personality, that is the key to it. Hanging in emptiness.
Tony