Image Sixty-Five: 1st August 2004. Photograph donated by Beth Richardson.
Floating
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 so relaxed, seduced perhaps by the golden glow silk-kissing the surface of the water into believing that I am bobbing about gently at the edge of the sea, the sand beneath the water only a safe finger’s stretch away. Why seduced? Because I also know that I haven’t looked behind me and, in reality, I don’t know how far I’ve floated and how deep the water is below me. Night’s darkness up ahead induces a mild sense of trepidation but then I feel my hand being held and the reassuring calm settling once again in the soothing warmth of the mysterious light.
Your dream feelings correspond with feelings (conscious and unconscious) related to your waking life experiences. Can you identify that waking life parallel? Then move on to consider possible meanings for the symbols in your dream so that you can begin to see the whole picture.
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.
Water often symbolises emotions. Let your feelings about the water in your dream guide you to identify the emotions your dream is addressing.
Is this a river? Is it the river of life, an emotion designed to flow? Is this the edge of the sea? Does the enormity of your unconscious emotions stretch before in great, mysterious depths? Are you playing, like a child, at the water’s edge, feeling safe with what you know and what you can handle and enjoy?
Remember that dreams often use word play. Are those tyres? They may represent tiredness. What tires you and how do you respond? (Two tyres: too tired?) Or are they inner tubes? They may represent your digestive system (your inner tubes) or your inner buoyancy, for example. Think laterally with dream symbols: stretch your brain to match the lateral thinking of your dreams.
The woman and the man are holding hands, suggesting a balance of Yin and Yang. Or does it? Is one comforting or leading the other? What is this reflecting about the Yin-Yang balance in your life right now?
The rock further out into the water may represent solidity (dreams love visual clichés, “as solid as a rock”) or does it appear to loom as a potential obstacle, something to puncture your floating device and sink you? What could that be in your waking life?
The light on the water contrasts with the darkness in the distance. Light in dreams often symbolises your conscious mind (what you are “in the light” about, or enlightened about) whereas darkness in your dream often represents your unconscious mind (what you are consciously “in the dark” about).
What does the body language symbolise? These people are lying back suggesting another dream visual pun. Could this be about being laid back? Or lying?
Talking of back, this dream image shows the backs of the two people, panning to a forward view. What is behind us in dreams generally represents either the past or what is backing us up (supporting us, standing behind us for strength). What is in front of us in dreams may represent what how we see our future – immediate or long-term depending on the distance. Forewarned is forearmed. Changes can be made.
On the other hand, could these people represent an attitude of turning your back on something? As always, there is no one simple dictionary meaning for a symbol, but once you get the feel for how to approach them they begin to speak to you and reveal their meanings.
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!
1. What kind of water is this: river, lake, sea or something else?
2. How deep is the water beneath you?
3. Which character are you, if one of these?
4. Who is the other person, or who are these two people you are watching?
5. What time of day is it?
6. How do you feel about the rock up ahead?
7. How do you feel about the dark?
8. What is the man thinking?
9. What is the woman thinking?
10. What feeling does the man get from holding hands?
11. What feeling does the woman get from holding hands?
12. What is the job of the tyres?
13. How do the tyres help the couple?
14. How might the tyres hinder the couple?
15. What do you sense when you look towards the horizon?
16. Look at your answer to Q6. What current life situation does this remind you of?
17. Look at your answer to Q12. Who or what fulfils this function in your life today?
18. Look at your answer to Q14. What similar hindrances do you fear or foresee in your life today?
19. Look at your answer to Q18. What symbol, in the image, suggests a way to overcome this?
20. Look at your answer to Q5. The time of day may help you to pinpoint the relevant waking life situation: as new as morning, as close to ending as evening or as mystical as night dreaming.
21. What would you like to see on the horizon?
22. What next step can bring this closer?
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