broken artifact

[Dreamtime]

Hi Tony,
This is another recent dream I have been exploring but I'm stuck on the artifact symbolism part of the dream and how the artifact changed while being shown.

In the dream I was told that there were 4 telephone messages left for me and that a woman had called. Then I was speaking to this friendly lady named Mary about a job offer and some other information (I don't know any actually Marys nor did I recognize her in the dream but I did recently submit a job application). While on the phone with Mary I was outside and I recall I could hear her voice on the phone but also nearby and I looked up and I could see her sitting inside the house by an open window talking to me on the phone. Then this friend, Leah, (who seems directly tied to the feminine conditioning of my persona) arrived to ask me about this museum artifact and what to do because it had been broken. I looked at it and it was a long row of conch sea shells that were attached to one another in a line. One of the shells had been damaged. Then when I looked again the artifact had changed physical form and it was a whale statue made of glass that had sand inside and it had been broken so that all the sand was released. I recommended sending $500 to have it repaired at the museum where it was from. I also recalled in the dream how during my travels I have seen artifacts that were broken and hadn't lost their value - even though I knew that this piece was from more recent times rather than ancient. ~DT

[Tony Crisp]

Dreamtime – Telephone messages from Mary is almost definitely your intuition communicating with you. Telephones are always a way of commutating indirectly and so often represent intuition. Also the name Mary has often been described as ‘stella maris’ – star of the sea – which links the conch shells. So that part of the dream suggests you have had important communications from within. Them the dream begins to describe what the messages are.

Mary and Leah are two sides of the same coin, and are about your deepest aspects of womanhood. Which are shown as conch shells linked together with one damaged.

I guess you know that Life began in the seas and at first was single celled creatures, but after immense passage of time and tremendous Earth changes became man celled creatures. The conch shell in Eastern cultures represents life as it has come out of life-giving waters. So it is an expression of Life itself, shaped with immense art and beauty, and as a shell is the imprint or beauty of a life that has left it ‘shell’ behind and travelled through many lives leaving its shells behind. So it may be a wonderful picture of the many lives that you, still living in a shell, has left as imprints on Life’s memory.

The shifting of the form of the artefact is simple as far as dreams are concerned. You shifted from Mary to Leah to the conch shells – all shifts to show you different sides or aspects of the one theme the dream is showing you. It is like someone telling you not in words but in imagery and drama. So if it were in words it would have had to use different sentences to describe what is being shown you.

The conch shell sequence was showing a break and so is the piece about the whale – all about something your past that was hurt and needs attention. So a whale is a massive Life process that lives in us unconsciously but can come to the surface – and often links with the search for the deeps in you. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-night-journey-the-search-for-self/

So it seems important that you meet the whale half way and help in the mending of a past experience. So try being the whale. As I explained to a friend recently you do not even have to have a clear image of the whale, simple think of it as seen in your dream and then watch any thoughts or feeling that might arise – as if listening for a quiet voice – but give it a minute or so.

Tony

[Dreamtime]

Thanks Tony,
I understood the intuitive communication with Mary as such and I also see the two sides of the same coin that you mentioned regarding the two dream women - Mary and Leah. I have been hearing my intuition with much greater clarity and it's showing up more directly in my dreams in ways that confirm inner guidance I'm already aware of in my waking life or else it's the inner mirror of it perhaps...again two sides of the same coin it seems. The dreams seem to help confirm what I clearly sense and yet still catch myself questioning and doubting because it's so different from my usual or familiar ways. It's all in flux so to speak, but trust is growing. The other night I had another telephone call similar to Mary only with a favorite male spiritual teacher who was guiding and supporting me with how to be more active, effective and conscious in the world.

I was reading your book about the Time of the Quickening before your reply and there was a reference to shells that really opened up awareness of the dream. In the dream the shells had very beautiful, natural details on the outside as the conch shells in Eastern cultures you mentioned and I feel that it's very much about the damage to my sense of connection with life based on past experiences that I didn't understand or didn't have the ability to meet or integrate/heal. In another sense these experiences did break my shell and now everything is completely changing.

I'm working with the image of the whale as you suggested and what I most clearly feel is this sense of the sand draining out and it reminds me of the sands of time somehow, or as if the whale where like an egg timer that was broken and the sand spilled out onto the ground. There's this sense of confusion over how to get it back in or if it's even possible to get it back into the whale/timer after what has happened. A sense of the inability to go back because the changes can't be undone but it's actually a very wonderful change regardless of how it may seem. It's sort of how life can seem to fall apart or time can seem to run out even though really something new is actually taking shape, yet from a singular or individual view this can't necessarily be seen or recognized. I will continue to explore this. Thanks again for your insights!    ~DT