OVERVIEW INTERPRETATION
Hi Firefly,
Although your dream has a previous life theme, I see it as symbolic of your life situation today.
At the beginning of your dream you climbed a high mountain and got to the top. Various mountain climbs and subsequent falls occurred before you started to climb the highest peak of all, expecting to find more valleys and mountains but, to your surprise, you found an easier path – the sandy road – which led you to an insightful place. By the end of your dream you recognised a fear: that you were afraid of heights because of all the hard climbs in your past that seemed only to lead to falls.
When you look back at your life so far, can you identify the hard climbs and the falls? What peaks have you worked hard to reach? These climbs may include: working to pass exams with high marks, reaching a higher level in your career, working hard to achieve new ground in a relationship, saving enough money to buy something you set your heart on and so on. The falls may include: a feeling of let-down or depression after achieving something, a let-down following any feeling of being on a ‘high’, financial debt after investing in an achievement, not being able to get the job you want after qualifying with flying honours, achieving a new calm in a relationship only to lose ground again and so on.
There are clues as to these climbs in your dream. At the start of your dream you mention that the earth was extremely unsettled. All things in a dream reflect yourself, your beliefs and your experiences. The earth is your grounding, or your physical being. Have you been feeling “extremely unsettled” recently? In the same paragraph you mention that you were always looking for new, better places to establish home. Has this been the story of your life so far: feeling unsettled and always searching for a more stable, established feeling?
The mountains were made of volcanic rock. Volcanic rock is the result of spewing fire, molten rock – a picture of anger. The rock was also red, a colour often associated with anger. You feel unsettled because your foundation is one of old anger. You walk up these once-angry rocks to achieve the peaks. Has anger motivated you to achieve or overcome in some area of your life? If so, it is likely that once you reach those peaks you feel a let-down because although you have achieved something you have not healed the anger – it still seethes, even at a very deep, perhaps unconscious level – so you never feel calm enough to rest there (establish a home).
You were wearing a dress your mother-in-law had given you. How does anger, feeling unsettled or needing to achieve resonate with your mother-in-law? How have these factors shaped her life? Where are the similarities between you and where are the differences?
You also described the rock as cinder rock. Is there a resonance here with Cinderella?
Midway through the dream you have fallen and can’t breathe. In dreams where we can’t breathe there is often a waking life situation where we feel emotionally suffocated. Can you relate to this? Have repeated attempts to drive yourself higher only to fall left you feeling as if all the breath has left your body?
In the dream you let something go – you die. Death in a dream is often about letting go. To let something change in our lives (for the better) we need an attitude or belief to die (the death in the dream) so that a new attitude or belief can be born.
You did this and you welcomed the change from anger to “peaceful”. It’s interesting that you felt peaceful as this is quite the opposite to angry which seems to endorse the symbolism of the volcanic rocks.
So, you begin to climb again (rebirth) only this time determined to “push on or be stuck forever”. In other words, you are no longer prepared to go round the same stuck cycle. You’re still walking on angry volcanic ground, you’re still aiming for the highest peak and, when you get to the top you’re still expecting to find more valleys and mountains, so what’s changed? Only your determination to break the cycle, and it pays off. Instead of more hard climbing or cycles of highs and lows you see a new path, a new and easier way forward.
You began to reap the rewards of the new path, the gold. This is symbolic of a change of belief: rewards (physical, mental and emotional) can be gained by taking a different approach, by not expecting everything to be so hard, by not taking the ‘angry’ road. It’s interesting that you pile all this gold into a front pocket, creating, I imagine, a pregnant-looking (“bulging”) bump. What creativity – what potential for birth!
About five sports cars led you to your next discovery. What happened when you were five, or five years ago, or five months ago? Or have you had five jobs, five relationships … think around ‘five’ and see what comes up and how it relates to the emerging themes of your dream. See where these lead you, just as the sports cars in the dream point you in the right direction.
The sports cars lead you to an archaeological dig, just as your ponderings on the significance of five should lead you back to dig up your past in this life. Sometimes, in dreams, we perceive a previous life when we are revisiting an earlier part of our current life that is just so different from where we’re at now. It’s even a cliché of modern conversation, when we refer to career changes for example and we say, “In my previous life I was a police officer”.
The digging up of your past – digging into that angry rock of your foundation – brings up tears and grief. This is good. You are releasing sadness that you repressed over an experience in your past. At the time you pushed sadness deep inside and covered it with anger. That became your foundation. There are the covers in your dream – see? The blankets you made are symbolically the cover-ups, the comforters to hide behind, the means of ‘blanking out’ your more vulnerable feelings and replacing them with harder ones of anger.
It’s interesting that the blankets were cashmere. I see “mere cash”. Is this a belittling of money, or a feeling of lack of money? Or is ‘cash’ symbolising personal value, and ‘cashmere’ a mere kind of personal value? Or is it bringing up a question of financial values? Was the sad/angry experience based on money? Did you decide at that point that money was only money (merely cash)?
Does your dream easier path reflect a new belief, that it is okay to have money and rewards, in contrast to a previous belief that money was an evil? Did you choose a poor, hard working, Cinderella type of existence because of this sad/angry experience and have you now released it?
In your dream, you cried most when you saw your blanket and then you “calmed down”. Calm: the anger had gone. The man showed you what the world looked like now. The man most likely represents your Yang – your beliefs about the outer world, especially the world of work. After the dig and the insightful revelations and release of grief he (you) has a different perspective in the world. Wow!
And so we arrive at the end of your dream where you tell your mother-in-law about your fear of heights. Your mother-in-law represents some of those fears, and she agrees with you that you had a fear of the highs because you had believed they would ultimately be unfulfilling. They would only lead to the lows and to a need for change (death). But you’ve overcome that fear now, haven’t you? And you’ve overcome the need to achieve those highs the hard way, haven’t you?
You will find it helpful to read ‘Was that a past life?’ in Dream Alchemy, pages 194-99, and ‘On the cliff edge or falling’ in Dream Alchemy, pages 238-44.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Affirmation:
Here’s an affirmation using your dream symbols:
“My pocket is bulging with gold. I am calm. The path is easy.
How to use your affirmation/ and how often:
Say your affirmation out loud and with feeling 30 times a day for the first week. From the second week say your affirmation out loud and with feeling once in the morning and once before you go to sleep for three more weeks.
How does this work?
This works by communicating directly with your unconscious mind using its own language, to transform the belief your dream is revealing.
More details on Affirmation as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy”, by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 331-333.
Jane Teresa Anderson
You can consult with Jane Teresa or her Dream Team and receive your interpretation by email within five working days.
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