Wooden Screwdriver

[Mela Cooper]

Hello,

I'm having a hard time interpreting this dream and am really confused at how I woke up from it:

My mentor from many years ago was coming to visit me and I was trying to make sure everything was perfect for his arrival. But when he came, suddenly several people were around also, as if I knew them too. Mentor got out of the car as did other people and he was limping a bit. It seemed like he moved slow. We hugged each other and were so happy to see each other.Our hug, though we were trying to hug each other as firmly as possible, felt like something was in the way that was preventing us from hugging as strong and as freely as we had wanted to. I don't know how this was established but he needed a screwdriver. I went to the basement of my house to get one, but somehow some cats were let out of the house while I was looking for the screwdriver. I yelled for my sister to find the cats and get them inside. I remember feeling like everything was in chaos because I couldn't find the screwdriver, the house was a mess, and, for some reason, cats that were  inside of the house were out and missing. I found a large screwdriver in my basement but Mentor said he needed a large, wooden screwdriver, so we, along with a carload of people piled into a car and went to a hardware store to get a large wooden screwdriver. The hardware store was in a comic book shop but the hardware store inside was closed. I was so frustrated because I wanted to make sure my Mentor had everything he needed. (I didn't know what the wooden screwdriver was for.) He was quiet the whole time but followed me around. He was having some trouble walking and I extended my arm so he could hold on to me as he walked. We went to more places that were confusing and then we all piled in to the car again. I was sitting in the middle or back of the car and Mentor got up from wherever he was sitting to come around to sit where I was in the car. We sat squeezed side by side and I had my mobile phone in my hand. He saw I was discouraged and he tried to get my attention off how I was feeling by asking me something about my phone and pointing to it. He spoke softly and in a very comforting voice. I rested my head on his arm near his shoulder as I let him handle my phone. This felt like such a confusing, chaotic dream but when he was around me he was very soft spoken, calm and kind, as if to say not to worry about making everything perfect for him. I woke up immediately to the feeling of an achy sexual arousal that started to feel almost painful. This disturbed me because there was nothing sexual in this dream that I could see so I didn't understand why would I wake up feeling that way.

Can anyone shed some light or ideas on this, please?
Thank you so much!

[Tony Crisp]

Mela – You Mentor was slightly lame, and lameness if often associated with the ‘wounded healer’ the one who in finding their own wholeness receives a wound that does not heal, and may cause them to be lame in one leg. Paul Levy writing about the Search for Self says: “This process can be so extreme, so radical, that the ego experiences it as death …. This experience is related to the shaman's descent to the underworld as well as the archetypal journey of the wounded healer. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-night-journey-the-search-for-self/

Example: As I walked among them I saw their lined faces, bent backs, and thought/wondered whether this could be healed and released. Now their doctor/priest came to them. A big man who seemed to have a slightly lame right (I think) leg. He had penicillin on his hands - to heal the many sores his people had. He then lay down in the small channel seen in cowsheds to carry of the urine and cow shit. It had been cleaned, but a cow had shit in it slightly. He asked for blankets to lie on. These were brought. He lay down and prayed. This was the inner strength his people needed. I was then in a church. I wept because of the feelings it evoked.

There was something in the way preventing the full hug you expected. It was what was presented in the rest of the dream. Apparently you were trying to make things perfect for him. But your Mentor is himself wounded, and apparently so are you; for your dream dramatises that you live a confusing and chaotic life.

Your Mentor is saying don’t try so hard – maybe use Eliot’s words:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope 
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love 
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith 
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. 
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: 
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. 

The end of your dream and your sexual arousal is explainable. Whenever women and men dream they are sexually aroused. Also during dreaming ones voluntary muscles are paralysed. So ones Conscious Will is shut off while we dream, and another level of will takes over, which I call the Life Will. It is this will that performs all the vital function in your body and your psyche. It is the Life Will that is behind dreams and the actions and movement we make as we dream. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

The wooden screwdriver you can fathom yourself by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson

Tony