Sisi – Well, you are obviously lost in many images – feeling states or even attitudes. This was made plain in the end by your confusion on meeting the crossroads. In case you didn’t read it, crossroads indicate that you may be confronting a time of decision in your life. This may be caused by a convergence of events, different desires or interests, and the need to choose a direction. The crossroads often appears in dreams when there is a turning point in life, a time of change, taking another direction in life. Or it may represent a sense of indecision, a fear of not doing the right thing. Cross-roads often have a certain amount of anxiety or vulnerability involved, as with crossing a road.
But the snake is often completely misjudged, for in dreams we are operating in a very ancient part of our consciousness, so ancient it sees things in symbolical ways. It is after all a process of Life, which is what gives you life, and is very ancient.
Don’t forget though that whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen, so that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so, all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. In the early days of moving pictures, a film was shown of a train coming fast toward them; the viewers all fled in terror, fearing the train would crush them. That is exactly the same response if you are terrified of any thing you dream of. So the snake can never hurt you, but it seems you carry some of your old ideas picked up from everyday life, which led to your being cautious.
The snake represents the very basic level of your own awareness and energy. Basically the brain is separated into two halves, generally called the left and right hemispheres. But it is now understood that our brain developed its sections over the long span of evolutionary history. Because of this it has, within and also separate from the two hemispheres, a number of levels. As our present brain evolved it developed four separate ‘brains’ or levels, each with its own memory, motor and other functions (David J Mahoney, 1991). Each new level, as it developed, elaborated on and extended the function of the preceding levels. So, from the spinal cord the hindbrain and midbrain developed. The first level of brain that developed beyond the spinal cord has been called the Reptilian Brain. This is because what we carry within our human brain is still found in reptiles. This ‘brain’ often encompasses several parts of the physical brain.
The neurologist Paul MacLean gave a definition of these physiological and psychological facts of our brain in 1990. He said that these levels of the brain work like “three interconnected biological computers, [each] with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.
Prior to MacLean’s findings it was assumed that the highest level of the brain, the human brain, the neocortex, dominated the other, lower levels. MacLean, and since him others (Earl K. Miller), have found this is not so. In fact Miller was recently able to demonstrate that the older brain learns fast, and it gradually ‘trains’ the prefrontal cortex.
So you your reptilian urges are hungry, perhaps because you have kept them locked up/repressed feeling that they are dangerous. See
https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/brain-levels-and-dreams/#reptilebrain The cat part of you may represent your female sexuality, if so the snake within us would obviously try to incorporate/swallow the cats, because the reptile in us is the basic sexual energy. But it has been left to run wild and it can be so much more. To sum up, our body is your experience of Life itself. Life is the Mystery, and you are partaking of it. We are seeds of that Mystery, but are still growing in our understanding or awareness of what we are. The basic level of our awareness is our basic instincts – the reptilian. Older cultures knew this and gave it various names, kundalini the snake, chi the life force, Shakti the primordial creative cosmic energy, the dragon and many other names.
In many cultures, including the Christian, they say there are seven levels of our being – in the Christian they are the seven churches, in Judaism it is represented by the seven candles, but often it is shown as a snake with seven heads. It is expressed as energy, which if only allowed expression at the lowest level may never open up the other dimensions of our possibilities; for at the base is infinite potential.
The orange colour links with what was said above, for orange is a blend of red and yellow, and as such refines the basic instinctual energy or red with the life giving yellow. So it is often used to indicate refined or transformed sexuality or urges, and perhaps greater wisdom. Its link with fruits such as oranges and apricots also might link it with fruitfulness. It therefore suggests health and energy along with a calm mind, also with warmth and easy feelings. So the snake has much to give you.
But you constantly look to others in your dream, yet you have an enormous wisdom within you. You stand at the crossroad of Life, which offers you chpice, so you can live a better life direction. No plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To explore it see
https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson -
https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/intuition-many-ways/ -
https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ Tony
Poll