Exhibit Twelve: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 29 March 1999
'The Shadow'
~ kindly donated by the artist,
Lyndall White. View other samples of her work here
Feeling
The Picture
Your feeling reactions to a dream are keys to its interpretation. These are my feelings. If this were a scene in your dream or life, how would you feel about being there?
At first I feel that this person or energy is
'barred' from uniting with me in some way, held back by the two bars which I see forming a
cross. He is not attached to the cross: he is fully extended and feeling good and
stretching himself against the two bars. Yet at the same time it is as if he is standing
at a window, unable to bend and slip under the bars to join me because he prefers the
feeling of a full body stretch.
At this point I realise he doesn't want to
contort himself to come in: it is for me to slip under the bars and go out to meet him.
Outside I too can feel fully stretched, feel my energy tingling from finger tips to toe
tips, feel a sense of balance in my body (two matching, mirrored halves as shown now, in
my new view, by the bisecting bars), and feel 'on top of the world' as in the picture. All
the colour - and what halos of brilliant colour they are - are mine when I choose to move
through the barred window and out into the expansiveness of a more extended way of being.
And yet at the same time I already know this feeling - I have already been this being and
it is time to be so again.
The cross has moved, in my feeling analysis of
this picture, from barring the entity from merging with me and bringing me light, to being
the obstacle of my window frame which I need simply to open to merge into a more vibrant
light.
It is not he who must move in, but I who must move out. I am
therefore required to make a very small move in return for a great extension of my being.
The Symbols
Symbols in your dreams often relate to your personal memories and associations, so always consider those first. Then let your mind play with other, more general possibilities. They will not all apply! Just open your mind and notice where the symbol seems to fit and make sense of the rest of your dream.
Other people, known or unknown to us in waking
life, symbolise aspects of ourselves in our dreams. We can ask ourselves simple questions
about our feeling reactions to these characters to determine which aspects of ourselves
they represent. My feeling about this picture was that a union between this aspect and
myself would be beneficial. This makes the dream picture, for me, one of potential
integration whereby I will reach out (extend) and integrate with an aspect of myself which
I have disowned or 'put outside of myself' for some reason which the whole dream would
reveal. Your feeling reaction, in the picture or in a full dream, will help shed light on
the meaning of such figures to you.
Dreams love playing visual puns, so seeing
someone 'on top of the world' is a fairly straightforward symbol of a great,
all-encompassing feeling.
The nakedness of the figure (I didn't notice this
when I wrote my feeling reaction!) symbolises a lack of protective layers, or pretence, or
need to project a different personality. This is the naked truth: this is honesty. In a
dream where you find yourself naked and don't like it, the symbolism relates to a feeling
of vulnerability about your true self, a fear of showing yourself as you truly are, a need
for protection or protective layers - or even for pretence.
The even-sidedness of this figure symbolises
balance. Another symbol of balance in this picture is the roundness of the earth and the
halos set against the straight lines of the cross and the spread-eagled arms and legs of
the entity. The dark sky symbolises, perhaps, the unknown. Will the vibrant colours soon
light up the dark? Is a new enlightenment just a step away?
If you see the bars as a cross they may symbolise
sacrifice (biblical cross) or anger (feeling 'cross') or focus (crossbar). This is a
perfect example of the importance of considering a dreamer's personal feeling reactions
and associations to an image in a dream rather than heading straight for a dream
dictionary.
Lyndall, the artist, named her picture 'The
Shadow' in reference to the shadow side of the self: aspects we disown or dissociate from
the personality we choose to show the world. The shadow is often depicted as a dark figure
which hides our 'dark' side. How beautifully this naked, vibrant entity here illustrates
our common human tendency to disown some of our greatest characteristics!
The Questions
Here are some questions the dreamer of such a dream picture might ask to work towards a complete understanding of the dream.
Try these yourself: just give your 'gut reaction' answers to the questions - your answers will surprise you in the insights they deliver. The key thing to remember is, "Don't THINK about your answers - give quick gut reaction replies". Your unconscious will deliver.
If this process can work powerfully for this image, consider how infinitely more powerful the insights are when the image comes from one of your own dreams - direct from your unconscious!
* What is this person thinking?
* How does this person's body feel?
* What will I feel like if this person touches me?
* In which ways is this person totally unlike me?
* Why am I unlike this person?
* How would my life and relationships change if I were more like this person?
* What is the bar/cross made from?
* How does this material make me feel?
* Why is this material-feeling barring me from merging with this person/entity?
* Whose world is this person standing on?
* If that world had a personality, what would it be?
* Would I like to live in that world?
* How would I feel standing on top of that world?
* What do purple and pink mean to me? What feelings do they bring up?
* Which situation in my life does all this remind me of?
'The Shadow' ~ kindly donated by the artist,
Lyndall White. View other samples of her work here
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