Whenever things get rocky in my life I tend to have extremely vivid nightmares. Things are rocky now but last night I had the most amazingly relaxing and beautiful dream.
I was walking under a huge flowering tree, like an old living oak only covered in different sorts of flowers in bloom. They were all in their fullest lush bloom, opening up. There were classic roses, little camellia-like tea roses and big four-leaf ones that were slightly squarish. They were also different colours: pink, red and burgundy.
The entire scene was infused with a white glow. Everything was so vivid. I could see the dew on the petals and knew how very soft they would be if I rubbed them between my fingertips.
There was also a girl there with me. She was beautiful and playful. I was trying to brush her aside. She was trying to have a heavy serious conversation with me and I was just too enraptured by the beauty around me. I gently pushed her away: No, no, nothing serious now. Enjoy the beauty.
There are many ways to ways to communicate the same message and perhaps, for once, your dreaming mind chose a gentler method. How beautiful!
Even though the essence of your dream is one of serene enjoy-the-moment beauty, an opposite is still hinted: the heavy, serious conversation that seems at odds with the flowery moment.
Looking for opposites in a dream can be the doorway to its interpretation.
When an issue is causing conflict (when things are rocky, perhaps) the issue is often represented in a dream by its opposite poles. Identify those opposites to name that issue.
In your own words, the opposites in this dream are:
“Enjoy the beauty” versus “nothing serious now”.
This is repeated in your description of the girl herself:
She is “beautiful and playful” versus “heavy and serious”.
You also focus on the word “now”:
“Nothing serious now”, suggesting that being serious at another time might be okay.
This leads to another pair of opposites:
Now (present moment) versus Future/ Past
Your roses and camellias were round flowers, whereas the four-leaf ones were squarish, so you have:
Round versus square
Square, or four-sided (four leaves) often symbolises the logical, linear thinking, or practical mechanist thinking, or the qualities of the left brain.
Round often symbolises the more holistic, creative, intuition of the right brain.
So what does your dream reveal?
The one tree is possibly your self, or it may represent your life and the ways it can shelter you and provide for you. Your dream suggests more than one area of your self or life is in full bloom (different flowers) and this is perhaps a time for you to stop and recognise this – to pause in the moment, reflect on your accomplishments and potential.
Despite your feelings of rockiness, what new, softness is emerging into full bloom in your life?
Are you usually serious? In your seriousness do you tend to overlook the beauty of each moment? Do you tend to overlook your own softness or accomplishments?
Or do you tend to push away serious issues?
The girl’s serious message may be one you need to pay attention to, but your dream does remind you that there are times to ‘smell the roses’ and times to attend to more practical matters.
Life works best when it is in balance, when you express and pay attention to the soft and the hard, the light and the serious, the playfulness and the work, the right and the left brain, the holistic and mechanistic approach, intuition and logic, the spiritual and the worldly.
Difficulties arise when we spend too long in one extreme. Practise balance.
Bodywork:
Join a Yoga class and practise yoga two or three times a week (perhaps once in class and twice at home) for at least several months. Yoga is all about mental and spiritual balance achieved through working with the body and the mind. The physical co-ordination and balancing exercises help activate both the right and left brain. It is spiritual and worldly.
How to do this:
Repetition is good. Notice any feelings this bodywork brings up for you, name the feelings then let them go. Focus on feeling the positive emotion you choose for yourself as you achieve your goal.
How does this work?
Your muscles hold emotions, memories and beliefs (think of hunched shoulders, a ‘sick stomach’ and frown-lines.) In bodywork dream alchemy practice you are releasing emotions, memories and beliefs from the parts of your body that are associated with your dream symbolism. By focussing on new, positive feelings you are reprogramming your unconscious mind by communicating with it through your physical body.
More details on Bodywork as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy” by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 335-6.
Jane Teresa Anderson
