OVERVIEW INTERPRETATION
Hi Stephen,
The sea or ocean often represents your unconscious mind, so it is wonderful when the dream tide goes out allowing you to glimpse into depths of yourself that would normally be inaccessible. You see undulating sand flats. As dreams can express themselves using word play I wonder if you were feeling flat at the time of this dream and being privileged to look below the surface to find out why.
You find the tidal pool, a deeper part that is remaining unexposed. Could this hold a clue?
The pool feels enclosed, suggesting there is a part of your being that is in hiding, walled up, even during periods of maximum exposure – or perhaps more so when you feel exposed publicly. Echoing the enclosed feeling of the pool room two teenagers are cramped and stuck. Did you feel cramped, restricted or stuck when you were a teenager? Alternatively, the teenagers may represent a teen number of years ago (13- 19 years ago). Were you stuck or restricted in some way back then?
The cause of the restriction is the giant octopus. We all know the octopus has eight arms, so my first thought is to ask what happened to you when you were eight. If an octopus grabbed you it would hold you tightly in its tentacle arms, restricting you, so again your dream seems to be emphasising restriction. What restrictions did you experience when you were eight?
At the end of your dream you restrict the octopus when you catch it and discover the line is held all the way back to someone in a shop. Holding, restricting. You have trapped the octopus at this own game, restricting the restrictor, trapping the trapper, you baited an octopus with its own kind.
The bait was larger than you would have liked, just as you are now larger than you were at age eight. Is this a case of becoming what you once feared? Do you now trap yourself or those around you because of your experiences back then? Do you feel flat because you have cramped your opportunities and freedom of expression?
Animals in dreams tend to symbolise our animal instincts or energies. When you think of an octopus, what energy springs to mind? How would you describe the personality of an octopus? How does an octopus, in your view, approach life? What challenges does an octopus encounter and what kind of survival instincts does it need to overcome these? Where, in your life, do octopus energies and instincts play a role?
Was the octopus happy in the pool trapping other people, or was it trapped just as much as the boys were? How do you deal with the challenge of an octopus: catch it at its own game or free it and, in so doing, free yourself?
You will find it helpful to read ‘The awesome wild animal’ in Dream Alchemy, pages 150-6 and ‘Trapped and under attack’ in Dream Alchemy, pages 231-7.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Visualisation:
Visualise the tide coming back in allowing the octopus to free itself from the deep pool and swim out into the ocean. At the same time visualise the boys swimming towards the shore, laughing and having fun. In this visualisation the boys are in no danger at all. The octopus is friendly and excited about the opportunities for acrobatic self-expression he will meet in the expansive ocean. While doing this visualisation, summon up a feeling of joyful expansion within yourself. Perhaps visualise yourself doing cartwheels on the sand!
How often to do this:
Do this visualisation 20 times a day for a week, ten times a day for the second week and twice a day for the next month.
How does this work?
This practice will ensure that change occurs for you in the best possible way – a positive healing transformation. Your dream expressed your waking life situation using dream language – the language of your unconscious mind. By reliving the dream with changes, or by transforming one of the dream symbols (or by reliving and intensifying the dream in the case of a dream with a positive ending) you are using vision and feeling to reprogram your unconscious beliefs.
More details on Visualisation as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy”, by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 329 – 330.
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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