INTERPRETATION
Your dream was interrupted, but there is still enough here to offer an interpretation, and to give some tips about how to work with an unfinished dream.
You titled your dream Elephant Temple, so we know that the large room felt like a temple, a spiritual place. When you entered this room, in your dream, you entered a spiritual place, a place of meditation and contemplation within yourself. No wonder you have continued to think about this dream during the day. You began a spiritual contemplation in the dream state, and, perhaps because the dream was interrupted, you have continued to be partly in that space all day.
The start of a dream states the situation your dream was processing. Your situation is an urban environment, pictured in black and white – without colour. An urban environment is man-made. The one you describe also seems devoid of nature as well as devoid of colour. This suggests you were preoccupied with non-spiritual, non-emotional matters at the time of this dream. You were preoccupied with the ‘black and white’ of material or working life, drained of colour, emotion and spirituality. Have you been feeling disconnected from things emotional and spiritual? Have you been missing a sense of nature and colour?
You also saw this urban world as dark. Have you been missing the light side of life, missing levity and happiness? Have you been finding it difficult to ‘see the light’ – to see your way, to see things clearly, to feel a sense of meaning and purpose?
Have you found it difficult to escape this? Have you felt a need to search for more meaning and colour, but found yourself constantly encouraged to become more deeply enmeshed in the material or working world?
Everyone in a dream represents something about you, the dreamer. The people following you, urging you to join them, represent an inner struggle you are going through. On the one hand you have this urge to ‘join’ with them, and on the other hand you have this urge to get away, to retreat into your private spiritual place.
Dreams reflect what was happening in your waking life in the 24-48 hours before the dream. What inner conflict were you struggling with during those two days? What urge to conform (join) was following or haunting you, leaving you with an equal urge to get away?
The wonderful thing here is that you make a decision. You overcome the battle of the urges, and make a “conscious decision” not to conform. You state this so clearly in the dream that it sounds like a turning point. You make a clear and deliberate decision to put yourself in a “space” that you have been in before, and you make this decision NOT out of fear or intimidation, but out of awareness.
You use the word “space” in the dream, even though that space turns out to be a room – more than a room, in fact, a temple! When we describe or write about our dreams, the words we use are very revealing. Your unconscious mind creates a dream, so when you set about describing that dream you are describing symbols and stories created by your unconscious mind. In describing or writing about a dream you are wandering around in unconscious territory, and so it should be no surprise that your unconscious mind writes a few clues into your dream report!
You say you went down into “a dark space”, by choice, knowing – because you had been to this place before – that it was, in fact, a calm temple. Think back – when did you last enter a “dark space” in your life, a space and a place where things felt dark, unknown? Did you work through dark feelings or through the unknown, and did you gain spiritual insight and a sense of calm from this experience? Your dream suggests that you did. And your dream suggests you are now ready to put yourself through some dark unknown again because you know, from experience, that spiritual insight and calm will result.
Rather than let yourself be unconsciously pulled along in a world of conformity, you are ready to take a conscious step towards enlightenment and calm.
The fact that you say “I wasn’t frightened or intimidated” (to conform) suggests that this has not always been the case. In the past, fear and intimidation kept you conforming to a ‘black and white’ colourless way of life. But no longer! Now you choose the deeper, darker, perhaps for many people more scary, route to light.
What do elephants mean to you? Are you aware of elephants as a spiritual symbol, particularly in Asia? Do they represent spirituality for you? Or do they represent something big and solid?
Buildings in dreams tend to represent your mind, and the basement or dark area beneath a house often represents your unconscious mind, the part of your mind that, like an elephant, “never forgets”. There’s a paradox to contemplate! Your unconscious mind stores all memories, even though your conscious mind forgets them. Perhaps your dream elephants also represent your unconscious mind – all those memories, stored out of conscious sight.
The spiritual space was muted in colour. The black and white was beginning to dissipate. Colour was breaking through, in a calm and peaceful way to begin with. Perhaps those colours would have intensified had the dream continued.
You could also see particles floating through the air. There must have been strong light down there, because it takes a strong light, shining though air, to see floating particles!
So we know that you not only found silence and calm; you also found light in place of dark. It was a temple, a place to find light.
You continued to contemplate your dream during the day. Did you begin to see the light? This is a time to remember, from your past experiences, the power of allowing yourself to consciously explore the darkness of your unconscious, to find the light.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Dialogue
Discover more light and insight by doing a Dream Alchemy dialogue with one of the elephant statues:
You: “Hello elephant! Remember me?”
Elephant: “… reply in here ”
You: “...let the elephant reply here”
Elephant: “… continue in this way”
How to do this
Give yourself no longer than 20 minutes. When you do this exercise do NOT think! Don’t plan ahead. Just let whatever happens happen. Let the two entities speak to each other on paper using whatever words come up. It’s a bit like writing a film script or play – but without the brain being involved.
How does this work?
By not thinking, by keeping the words flowing, you are letting your right brain and unconscious mind do most of the work. They created the original dream so they know what the elephant symbol means for you. They will reveal. You will be surprised.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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