Exhibit Twenty-Four: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 30 March 2000
'Face Collage'
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?
I feel movement and flow with a sense of leaving the past behind without sadness. I feel an acknowledgement of the past and a readiness for the future. I feel serenity, wisdom and a sense of trust that the partly visible faces of tomorrow will reveal their completed form once the obscuring perceptions of the present fall away. I feel a positive, vibrant and physical energy providing the fuel for an acceleration of the future vision.
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.
Faces in our dreams can symbolise what we face about ourselves. They can represent facets of our conscious and unconscious personalities, attitudes and thoughts. We may come face to face with someone we know from waking life in a dream as we come face to face with aspects of that person within ourselves. When you dream of someone you know, think about their personality and their approach to life. For example, you might come up with "restless and reckless". In this case your dream might be showing you a side of yourself which is restless and reckless, or an aspect of yourself which is the opposite (still and careful?) out of fear of handling a deeper "restless and reckless" nature.
Discovering opposite tendencies within ourselves can be extremely insightful. This is an area of dream interpretation that engenders fear for some: fear of sparking or uncovering schizophrenia or multiple personality disorders. In reality, discovering opposite aspects within yourself through dream work usually leads to greater integration and balance, as extremes are cancelled out in favour of finding common ground, empathy and understanding.
Composite people sometimes appear in our dreams. A person might start out as Uncle Fred and later turn out to be an old school teacher, for example. Or a dream character might have your sister's eyes and your friend's mouth. The symbolism is one of merging characteristics. Again ask yourself about their personalities and approaches to life and look for overlap. What do these two people share in common and what could this be symbolising about you? Or in which ways are these two people opposite, and what can be understood or gained by merging these characteristics?
Hands may symbolise how we are handling a situation, though the trailing of the hand in this picture dream possibly symbolises a supporting connection with the past (like a child holding a parent's hand), as the faces and the legs (did you notice the legs?) move in the opposite direction, towards the forming future.
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!
- Look into both sets of eyes. Do these eyes remind you of anyone? Who?
- If the eyes remind you of anyone, what characteristics do they have?
- If the eyes do not remind you of anyone, simply look into them anew and describe the characteristics that these picture dream people seem to have.
- Take your list from Q1 - Q3. How many of these characteristics overlap and how many are opposites?
- Which situations in your life now bring you face to face with these characteristics?
- In these situations (Q5), what do you see as the challenges?
- Is there a way you can merge the opposites from your list (Q4) to come to a clearer understanding of the challenges of this situation?
- What are you seeing clearly?
- What are you not seeing clearly?
- What new ways of seeing may be emerging for you right now?
- Apply all the above questions to the hair-styles and the mouths of the picture dream faces.
- Which part of your life do you feel the hand is resting in?
- Which part of your life do you feel the legs are moving towards?
- If you could gather together all the white, wispy lines in the picture and form them into a new picture, what would that picture be?
- How does this new picture (Q14) compare to your present goals and direction in life?
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