Exhibit Thirty Seven: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 31 May 2001. Photo by Michael Collins
'Turtle'
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 the invigorating cool air around my face in contrast to the warm, silky clinging of the water's meniscus resisting my emergence. It surprises me to realise that my experience is that of the turtle, not of the onlooker! I feel the sharpness of contrast between my two worlds: my safe, nurturing and visibly polluted water world and my brisk, challenging, exciting, risky airy world. Here, with most of my body submerged, I experience the freedom of swimming and somersaulting. I feel as pliable emotionally as my shell is wetly soft and I feel the pleasure of mastery, knowing that I can twist and turn with perfectly crafted webbed toes. Out there, where I blink my eyes to focus for predators, where I smell the excitement of danger, I feel an insistent instinctual calling to climb the beach and lay my eggs. I want to bask here in the comfort of mastery yet I feel the adrenalin rush of knowing that I have to do what I was built to do, no matter how the sun may threaten to burn and the sand may strain my legs. I feel impending completion but, right now, I feel inclined to linger while I check you out and wonder if you are friend or foe.
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.
Animals in our dreams often symbolise our instincts. How you, as an individual, think and feel about an animal strongly shapes its symbolism. For any animal, ask yourself, "Which three words would I choose to describe the personality of this animal?" Also ask, "What is this animal's approach to life?" Take your answers to these questions, (for example, "I see a turtle as ambivalent, cautious and curious and I see a turtle's approach to life as one dominated by fear or predators"), and apply these same descriptions to your dream. Following this example, question whether the turtle in your dream represents a fear and an instinctual response of ambivalence and caution to whatever beckons your curiosity.
While your personal feelings and associations are most important, there are general responses to each species that tend to come up for many people. In this way, a generalised universal symbolism may hold. Reptiles have relatively primitive, highly instinctual brains compared to more recently evolved animals. Reptiles sometimes appear in dreams to symbolise the basic brain functions such as breathing, keeping hormones in balance and so on. They are cold-blooded and we imagine their skins to be dry and rough, lending an air of emotional dryness and lack of feeling.
The turtle has a shell to protect its vulnerable softness and can also retract its neck into the shell. As such it may symbolise a tendency to protect or armour or defend ourselves, or to 'pull our head in' and 'hold back' through fear of vulnerability. The turtle faces huge risk at birth when it struggles against waiting predators as it runs across long stretches of sand to reach the safety of the water. In this way it may symbolise struggle and overcoming risks.
Different cultures have their own waking-life myths and legends that can influence our personal symbolism. For example, a Native Indian legend has it that the earth is built on the back of a turtle. For them, the turtle IS all that is.
Also consider - if this image were a freeze frame from your dream - the symbolism of coming eye-to-eye with another being. Often in dreams, when we see eye-to-eye, we are really seeing I-to-I: we are coming face to face with ourselves. In this case, what qualities might the turtle represent that you are finally facing, eye to eye? If eyes are the windows to the soul, which part of your soul might these eyes show?
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!
- How old is this turtle?
- Is it male or female, adult or child?
- Imagine holding the turtle's hand/foot: How does this make you feel?
- How deep is the water?
- How cold or warm is the water?
- How clear or polluted is the water?
- What does the turtle protect beneath its shell?
- Who else shares the secrets of what is beneath the shell?
- How far away is the turtle's home?
- Who waits for the turtle at home?
- What does the turtle wish for?
- What has the turtle achieved for itself so far?
- What does the turtle feel about the water?
- What does the turtle feel about the land?
- What is the turtle looking at?
- If the turtle is looking at you: at which part of your body?
- If the turtle is looking into your eyes, what, of yourself, is it seeing?
- What feeling do you get as you look into the turtle's eyes?
- If the turtle could speak, what would it say to you?
- Look at your answer to Q1. If your answer is less than your present age: What was happening for you this many years ago? What was happening for you when you were this age? If your answer is greater than your present age, think back to that year (e.g. 55 years old, think 1955) or to that house number (did you live at a number 55?) and consider what was happening for you back then. Or is someone you know this age, in which case the turtle could represent their beliefs? Or is the age so old that the turtle symbolises an ancient wisdom or an ancient tradition?
- Look at your answer to Q13. Do these feelings remind you of a current waking life situation? If so, which?
- Look at your answer to Q14. Do these feelings remind you of a current waking life situation? If so, which?
- Considering your wishes and feelings …. What are you 'looking at' in your waking life?
- What message would you like to give the turtle?
- How can you apply your answer to Q24 to your waking life?
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