More cake without icing?

[Midlander]

  Before I went to bed, I asked to be given a dream that would tell me 'what to do'! This is what happened and it's left me feeling confused and unsatisfied.

In my dream there were 3 people; me, a man in his 70s whom I know and a young girl (early 20s) I don't know.

The girl was confiding in me; telling me she'd met the man of her dreams and she was so happy. The man turned out the be a married man in his 70s whom I would probably characterise as being a good, kind person but who is also rather bound up with getting things 'right' - he likes loads of meetings and organisation. The young girl was naive, bubbly and not particularly bright.

I went along with it; I said I would cook them a meal, which I did and the three of us sat down at the table to eat in her upstairs flat (not a place known to me). However, I decided to call a halt to the situation and challenged the man, saying 'did he not think his place was with his wife (whose name is Mary - might symbolise something?) who is recovering from cancer treatment?' He came to a sudden realisation, agreed with me and left. The young girl followed him downstairs to kiss him goodbye, I began to clear the table and do the washing up.

OK; so if these two other people represent different aspects of me; they might signal that I'm trying to unite a 'boring old guy' and a 'naive, soppy girl' within my personality. Both of these notions I need to stop feeding, clear up and cleanse. Or could they be a reflection of what my working life entails; trying to 'marry' the old and the new, the young and the elderly? Trying to cobble together things that don't belong together and won't work?

But there's more; the old guy is going against his normal behaviour. Also, I'm upstairs in a flat; there's nothing 'beneath' no downstairs/foundations? I'm feeding this inappropriate miss-match and adultery/hypocrisy? The meal also doesn't actually get properly eaten.

Could the 'relationship' I need to cleanse from my life be my work environment/attitude to my work? (Given that the people involved are the kind I have to deal with in my work). Is the coffin and funeral family (in the previous dream) linked to my work? Is this the thing that is dead but not resolved? Is this actually the 'third person' between me and the man in dream b in the previous thread? Although, in the dream he is with someone else and not me. 

[Tony Crisp]

Hi Midlander – This is a difficult one, but it is obviously about relationship that you could recognise would not work.

Maybe there is a clue in the name Mary. The old guy, Joseph married the young girl Mary and couldn’t or didn’t father the child. So she had a virgin birth. But such stories are actually fables, that need to be understood. Joseph worked with wood, the already grown – the intellect. As your dream suggests, more interested in organising and getting things right, all typical of an intellectual approach. Mary, as a young girl represents someone who is not conditioned by pre-conceived ideas. In effect she is a virgin ready to receive something special.

So if we consider that your dream has a little of that in, it certainly doesn’t suggest the old man and the young girl getting together. Also I think you may be looking at this from an intellectually analytical viewpoint. And maybe the young girl has a lot of possibilities that you could mature with some patience. Maybe even to a virgin birth of wonderful new possibilities, when you let go of preconceived ideas.

As I said, this is a difficult one, so what I have said is more of me trusting my feelings than having a clear insight.

Tony

[Midlander]

Thanks Tony; that's very helpful - lots of food for thought. Someone suggested that I let the two characters have a conversation.........later, I realised that I didn't  have a clue how to do that but your comments have made sense of which parts of me they refer to and how they might 'dialogue' or work together and so become integrated.

The intellect has been a big part of my life and work but in the last couple of years, I have started to work in the theatre realm and the need to release the other side of my nature has been part of that process.

[Tony Crisp]

Hi Midlander - There is a small explanation about having a dialogue with different dream characters.

See Peer Dream Group and scroll down ot the heading Have a dialogue between two characters or objects.

I hope this helps, but if not tell me as I always want to improve the site and I will write a longer piece.

Tony

[Midlander]

Thanks Tony - that's really helpful!

[Tony Crisp]

Thanks - And the baby in the example was me.

Tony

[Midlander]

The themes of an old man and wood returned last night. They were part of a series of four dreams that seemed to be two pairs of dreams.

I was in my garage and I caught an old man who had a young boy with him and I challenged the old man and told him that I knew he'd stolen some of my firewood but that, if he chopped up my logs for me, he could keep the wood he'd stolen.

It feels as though this might carry on the dialogue a bit - if the wood is attitudes, beliefs etc that are old and rigid (as your dictionary suggests) and he is re-using them and I am getting him to adapt them ..... or I am going to get rid of them by burning them.......

[Tony Crisp]

Midlander - I don't suppose there is a correct answer or direction we should take - ie the wood and burning. When I have travelled deep in myself I have always found that ultimately we are in a universe that while it  has rules, there is an aspect of it allowing experiment. Also I have never found there is any condemnation except what we put on ourselves through the moral codes we have picked up from our culture.

I had a wonderful example of this when using LifeStream. I had been crushed by a world I had been carrying on my shoulders - dreams use such imagery to illustrate how we feel. Eventually the strength came to me to stand up again, and in doing so managed to lift the world off of my shoulders and swing it away. But then, standing before a Light that was pouring down onto me I realised that my wrists were chained together and I wanted to be free. Now I stood facing the Light, hands together at the level. I felt my wrists were chained, and I held them up to God, the Light, to be freed.

It was then as if God said, “Tony, you hold up your arms to be freed, but you have never been chained - only by yourself.”

Tony

[Midlander]

Thanks Tony - that's beautiful! Itis incredible how the unconscious mind uses these symbols and images to communicate. I have felt for a while that the unconscious is our link with God - the means through which we can communicate with the Divine and that when we are awake, our brain interprets the communications into something that our 5 senses can understand.

[Tony Crisp]

Midlander - I appreciate your being a part of what happens on the site.

I see from what I have written in the last few years, that I gradually realised that God - or as I call it now Life, because people often do not have any background in real religious theory so Life does not hook them into difficult associations - is at the core of our being. I also saw that it is at the core or beginning of the universe, and in fact it is all the same thing. Unfortunately we have been educated to have such a tiny view of what we are.

Tony

[Midlander]

Yes indeed. What is sad, is that choosing to believe ourselves to be smaller and less is often more palatable than reaching our potential which can be scary for some people.

I think it was Jung who said something along the lines of, 'We're all God but we've forgotten and when we die we remember'. Instead of the Divine being a foreign entity that 'does' stuff to us, we have the choice to accept that we are colaborators, co-operators with the Divine and that we can be and do this in the context of a joyful intimacy.

Thank you for allowing me to be part of this site - it is of great interest and blessing to me.

I have now found my dreams taking a similar but different angle. As though I'm searching for the way to move to less icing and more cake.

Last night I dreamt that I was trying to develop tasty and nutritious non alcoholic drinks. I was putting oats into one smoothie, I remember. The mix needed working on. Then I was outside a locked office and found a key - so I let myself in because I knew there was a recipe book inside. I found the book and the recipe I wanted and left the office, locking the door behind me.........I had a brief dilemma as I couldn't remember exactly where I'd found the key, in order to put it back, to hide that I'd been there. I guessed and placed it on a dado rail by the door and next to the photocopier.

oats, keys (sexual images?).......... but also recipes and nutritious drinks to feed me? Doing things in a hidden way? Finding the recipe in an office?

[Midlander]

  A quite bizarre dream about a muslim woman giving me a tiny container and explaining 'it's the ark of the covenant' and asking me to gather some ground spices from my table and fill it with them. This seemed to involve a long and protracted journey around some countryside and outwitting a couple of fundamentalist guerillas by being friendly and sparing with information.  

I would see the woman as someone who is intelligent and informed but constrained (possibly oppressed) by religious convention. The ark of the covenant holds the law; it is holy but not holistic. She asks me to 'spice it up' from my nourishing resources. The task of doing this, is complicated; to achieve it successfully, I must skirt around and outwit the fundamentalists who wish to remain in control.

An inner battle mirrorred in my outer life? Spiritually I am a radical; I tread spiritual landscape that is usually out of bounds to those in the mainstream church. I bring this richness to the table to offer but there will always be those who are threatened by my lack of orthodoxy.

In my inner life, well maybe this battle is about something different from religion; maybe it's about freeing my femininity and womanliness, against the backdrop of an oppressive (male) attitude - that I experience in waking but has in some way occupied a place in my own psyche - an area that I need to acknowledge, befriend and not allow to defeat me in my quest.

Or is that off beam, I wonder? I know these last two dreams are linked because of the themes of secretiveness and breaking rules - going 'out of bounds' in order to find what it is that nourishes me. In the dreams, I am prepared to be secretive, break the law and use trickery. Not traits that comes easily in waking life.

[Christine]

Your interpretations both makes sense to me, especially if you think of the gift the muslim women gave you being "your" ark of the covenant.  I believe, but may be incorrect, that muslim women wear scarves to cover their faces...their faces are secret...so too the tiny container is designed with a lid designed to hide something.

My impression is that your dream is telling you to nourish and protect your own ark of the covenant...make it what nourishes you...not to be concerned with whether it is holy according to someone else's definition and/or whether or not it nourishes or changes others.

I hope you will share if you have a related dream...this ones seems to be lovely and affirming.

[Midlander]

Thanks Christine - it's helpful to see your interpretation; it's hard to get a distance and different perspective on my own dreams. I suspect that there are loads of different angles in there and that all of them are right and bring something to the dream's wisdom - which is exciting.
I had a bizarre dream last night which i need to untangle and get in order - then if there's enough of it I remember, I'll share it in case it is related.

Editing to say that I couldn't remember very much. The only thing I can remember is walking around a town - a sort of western style town in the US; wooden structures and looking to buy a souvenir shirt. I try on a garish shirt with panels of different colour and patterns but I am wearing/buying it to please someone else.

[Midlander]

So, two doves burrowing into the earth together while a gardener is working beside them???
When someone says to the gardener that he needs to be careful of the doves, he says, 'Yes I know - I once cut one in half with my spade because I hadn't seen it.'