Exhibit Twenty-One: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 27 January 2000
'Two Doors'
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?
This scene gives me a feeling of similarity yet contrast, as if the closer the two doors are to being similar, the more their differences are marked. I also feel at once at home and yet a stranger: these could be doors from any number of houses I have stayed in back in the UK, so I have a kind of knowing of who might live there and what layout the houses have. Yet at the same time there is an air of mystery and the unknown: until I open the doors and cross the thresholds, I don’t really know anything at all. I feel the familiarity of my personal past, yet also the exclusion from this world I no longer inhabit. Beyond each door, I feel, lay different realities that might have been mine, had I not taken a different path and moved to a different continent. This gives a feeling of parallel paths, perhaps reflected again in the parallel doors.
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.
Doors can symbolise entrances, openings and opportunities. Is it time to open a door to discover new space, new ideas and new room in your life? Passing through a door is also passing across a threshold, so doors can symbolise the opportunity to move beyond previous limitations and thresholds.
Doors can also symbolise what we have shut out: we may have closed a door on our past, or on a previous opportunity or person. There are times for leaving doors closed and there are times for opening them to take a second look, to deal with what has been closed off, or to express grief for what has been locked away.
Doors may also symbolise other people (the entrance into a person’s inner world).
Two (doors) may symbolise choice (which door?) or two equally valid possibilities (why not take BOTH opportunities, or cross two thresholds?). Two can represent opposites or balance. One door is on the left, one on the right. The left side can represent the inner world (the left side of the body is connected to the right side of the brain, which deals with our creativity, intuition, emotion, nurturing, ‘Yin’ qualities). By contrast the door on the right may represent the outer world (as the left brain deals with intellect, rationality, assertiveness, action, ‘Yang’ qualities). In this image, the door on the left has its door handle to the left, while the opposite is true for the red door. This kind of detail would lend weight to the likelihood of Yin and Yang symbolism.
Unless red and yellow have personal meanings for you, red can symbolise physical energy, assertiveness, anger or danger, while yellow can represent consciousness (like sunshine), clarity and intellectual understanding.
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!
- You have just arrived at these doors: where have you come from?
- Where are you going?
- Do you live or work beyond one of these doors? If so, which one? Live or work?
- Do you know anyone who lives or works beyond one of these doors? If so, who and which door?
- Describe the kind of person who would live or work beyond each door.
- Would you like to open either of these doors and enter? If yes, which one(s)? If no, why not?
- If the yellow door had a personality, what would it be?
- If the red door had a personality, what would it be?
- Which door is most like yourself, or least like yourself?
- Thinking about your answers to questions 7 and 8, what does your answer to question 6 suggest to you?
- What might you gain by entering the red door? What might you gain by entering the yellow door?
- What might you gain by NOT entering either door?
- What situation in your life now reminds you of the red door?
- What situation in your life now reminds you of the yellow door?
- Review your answers to all the previous questions in the light of what the red and yellow doors represent to you in your current life situation. What is your next best step in this situation?
|
