I was going into the city to get some jewellery altered for a friend. I took my younger brother along with me.
After I had finished my errand I was gathering up my bags to leave. I had The Australian newspaper under my arm and had finished reading it so I put it down on a table. My brother wanted to go to a particular area of the shopping centre but I had just read in the newspaper that it had been shut down. So I asked him if he wanted to have a look at where I worked in the city.
Before we left, the actor Ted Danson handed me back my newspaper and told me I'd left it behind. So I was still stuck with this paper to carry.
So we began walking to my work, situated in a not so nice part of the city. We were stepping over homeless people and old men sleeping in the gutters.
As were walking along I found a bin to put my newspaper in, but it was too full, so I put it in another bin further up ahead.
We finally reached the arcade where my work was and it had been blocked off. Police were everywhere and I saw a naked dead body being lifted into a police van.
I called out to my brother and at this point of the dream he had turned into my boyfriend. We went inside to find out what was going on and I spotted an acquaintance over to the side, standing outside my work. I ran up to her and asked her what was going on. She asked me if I had written a news story on something and I said 'no' and asked her again what was going on. She said she would rather not talk about it.
Then we heard a police loudspeaker yelling to everyone around us to "check your bowels!" So we all checked our bowels and I asked my boyfriend why we had to do this. He said he had just been talking to someone and apparently there was this gang of Chinese men going around attacking people and forcing them to have anal intercourse with them. When they attacked them the person would get a disease that would kill them.
I panicked and asked a policeman if he would escort us back to the train station safely. He said that he couldn't but we should walk back along the Brisbane River and take a train that was further down. We thought this was a good option so we gave the policeman our phone number at home so he could see if we got home safely.
We began walking and I pointed out to my boyfriend that there were pools of blood all over the ground where we were going. My boyfriend exclaimed that there was a Chinese man up ahead and we started running back to the police. The man began chasing us and I told my boyfriend not to let go of my hand. We got back to the police and that girl I was talking to earlier on, had disappeared. I was feeling terrified. I woke up in tears.
Note:
I am a first year journalism student at QUT university. For the last three days I have bought the newspapers and read them on the train to uni or work. (I work in the city part time).
I had recently been reading The Australian outside my work one day when I saw a homeless man on a bench. I had never seen one before and I remember he really smelt. Also I had read an article in the paper about homeless people in Brisbane.
This dream is about your resistance to some of the changes you are experiencing, and the fears behind this resistance. Once you understand those fears – with the help of this interpretation and the dream alchemy practice – you will be able to make positive choices and flow with these.
At the beginning of the dream you are getting some jewellery altered for a friend. If it was the type of jewellery that warranted altering, it must have been valuable jewellery. It represents your past values that you are now altering. You say in your notes that you are a first year university student encountering homeless people for the first time, so it’s not surprising that your values are being challenged and altered.
What is the personality of the friend you were altering the jewellery for? She represents the part of your personality that is altering values. Your younger brother probably represents the old family values.
The opening of a dream usually states the theme to be addressed, so this is it: altering your values. The rest of the dream looks at your conflicts and progress with this.
Next you discover that a shopping area has been shut down and suggest, instead, that you show your brother where you work in the city. This means some of your choices (represented by shops – places you choose what to buy) are now shut down as a result of the recent changes in your values.
What does the actor Ted Danson mean to you? What do you most associate him with? Which three words would you choose to describe his personality? In the dream, Ted stops you from leaving The Australian newspaper behind. You described this as being “still stuck” with this paper to carry. This is your first resistance, in the dream, to flowing with the new changes you are experiencing. Ted represents a part of you that is resisting the changes, that is ‘still stuck’ with something you ‘can’t leave behind’. Let’s look at this some more.
You mention in your notes that you were reading The Australian when you saw a homeless person for the first time, and you had also read an article about homeless people in this paper. Is this new change in your life – this new experience of homeless people – something you want to ‘leave behind’, but can’t? Is it something that’s ‘still stuck’ with you? Are you ‘stuck’ with carrying this ‘issue’ of homeless people and how you really felt about it when confronted by your first one?
In your notes you mention that the homeless person you saw smelt. Did this bring the reality of homelessness to you? Did you choose journalism as a career to cover subjects such as homelessness and then find the reality more confronting than you had anticipated? Or had you not considered homelessness at all until recently? Either way, the subject is one that has ‘stuck’ with you and is causing you some level of resistance to flowing with your new experiences. How has this recent experience affected your old values? Do you feel you’re altering your values in a positive way or are you altering your values in response to fear of such experiences as the reality of homelessness?
Next in the dream you confront the homeless issue more closely, stepping through them. Bins were too full, so you were still ‘stuck’, unable to dispose of this matter, until eventually you do, and that’s the point where you reach your place of work in the dream.
Now you find there’s a crisis at work in the dream. Well, of course there is! This represents the crisis you find yourself in about how to respond to your experiences and how these are affecting your values. You’re feeling ‘blocked’ in your current life, especially about the way you earn your money (represented by your city workplace in the dream).
The dead body is naked, exposed. This crisis has exposed something you have ‘killed off’ in your life. Your acquaintance would ‘rather not talk about it’ and this is followed by hearing a ‘loudspeaker’. These are opposites: not talking and loud speaking. When you identify a pair of opposites in a dream, they define an issue that is causing you conflict. Your conflict is over how much to speak out – part of you would rather not talk about something, and part of you wants to alert everyone loud and clear. (Everyone in a dream represents an aspect of yourself.) In the dream you had also chosen not to talk about something because you said you hadn’t written the news article.
Is this a value you have ‘killed off’ and you’re reluctant to talk about, even though it is obviously now exposed? Are you fearful that you’ll lose more of your old values? Journalism is all about talking and exposing in a very loudspeaker way. You can’t do journalism if you’d rather not talk about it! So on one hand this is about looking at your values as a journalist – will you write to expose issues such as homelessness, or to expose people’s private lives, or to avoid exposure of either kind by writing safe articles where you don’t really have to talk about anything confronting? These are huge questions to ask yourself at this stage in your career, and your answers depend on the values you set for yourself.
You woke from this dream terrified of being attacked and contaminated and you discovered that the girl who ‘would rather not talk’ had disappeared – presumably attacked and contaminated. As a journalist, not talking is not really an option, is it? What is it you would rather not talk about, and how can you overcome this?
This dream is likely not only to be about your professional life, but also about your personal life. In your personal life, what is it you would rather not talk about, yet what is it you would like to loud-speak about to guard against further attack? How have your values been altered, and how much ‘say’ have you had in this process?
In your dream you checked your bowels. A major theme in your dream was being shut down (shopping area), blocked (work place), stuck with (newspaper), left behind (paper), too full (bins overflowing with rubbish), not letting go (boyfriend’s hand) – all of which can also be applied to being constipated. Your dream suggests you were emotionally constipated, fearful of flowing with the changes you were experiencing, and as the physical body often follows the emotional dis-ease, it’s possible you were physically constipated too.
Resisting the flow, emotionally and perhaps physically, fearful of the changes you were experiencing, your values conflicted, altering according to your experiences - it’s time to set your values in alignment with your best intentions, not in alignment with your fears. It’s time to stop holding back for fear of attack, and instead flow in alignment with your highest values.
Consult me confidentially about your dream.
