Exhibit Thirty Eight: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 31 May 2001. Photo by Ian Ferguson
'Snowy Path'
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 excited by this crisp blank canvass of freshly fallen snow and as mischievous as a child savouring the moment of planting the first footsteps, MY footsteps, all the way along that inviting path and then on into the hidden distance. I feel the pleasure of opportunity and the tingle of serendipity: it has happened to me: I am first here: this is MY moment! I feel teasing and playfully calculating. I can set a trail to create mystery and fun for those who come upon this path after me. I sense the individuality of all the crystals of snow, still separate, light and airy. If I think beyond this moment I feel downhearted and sad that the fluffy snowflakes will be crushed and fused into hard, grey, dangerous, icy solid snow and then melt, after many trampings, into the drudgery of grey sludge. Excited children's voices will soon become begruding complaint. Soon I will feel freezing and I will cry from the cold, but for now I am warm and flushed with the excitement of relishing the moment.
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.
Snow often symbolises cold or frozen emotions since water, in our dreams, generally represents emotions and feelings. If a river, in a dream, turned to ice as snow fell and dusted the landscape, you might question whether a free flowing feeling or sense of movement in life had become frozen and solid. You might question whether a freedom of expression had become stuck and unmoving, or whether greater depths of emotion and feeling had become inaccessible through icing over. In this woodland snow scene you might question whether what is growing within you (the green grass, the plants under the snow) is being deprived of appropriate nourishment, or whether a time for hibernation or conservation of resources - or a time for laying low and staying hidden - is upon you.
At the same time, your conscious and unconscious perceptions of snow are shaped by your experience of it. If you live in a country where three months of deep snow are expected each winter, snow is likely to carry different symbolism for you than for someone who has rarely experienced it. Once again, as always, the emphasis is on looking for personal symbolism, association and feelings as these can override the universal.
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 time of day is it?
- What country is this?
- Do you know this place? (Is it from your present or past?)
- How long has it been snowing?
- Where are you going?
- Where have you come from?
- What difference does the snow make to your journey?
- How are you dressed?
- Are you warm or cold?
- What does the snow add to your experience?
- What experiences are you missing because of the snow?
- Every step you take leaves your footprints in this virgin snow. How do you feel about this?
- Would you feel more comfortable following someone else's footprints?
- If you found unknown footprints, would you follow them or go the other way?
- Whose footprints, if you found them in the snow, would you choose to follow? (Pick someone from waking life.)
- Why?
- Who will follow your footprints?
- Look at your answer to Q7. Does this remind you of a current waking life situation?
- Look at your answers to Q8 and Q9: does your level of comfort relate to how you feel about your answer to Q18?
- Look at your answer to Q11. Does this remind you of a current waking life situation?
- How would the person you named in Q15 handle the situation in Q20?
- If you could write a message in the snow, what would it be?
- Which situation, in your waking life, do you see as cold?
- What have you learned from the situation you identified in Q23?
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