You know the saying, ‘It’s like trying to put a square peg in a round hole’? In your dream, you’re trying to put the mixture for a round crème caramel into an oval shaped container. And it’s not working out right!
In your waking life, where do you feel like you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? It will be a situation in your life that doesn’t seem to be working out for you. Somehow, in your waking life, you can’t get the right balance (or mixture) to create the result you’re trying to achieve.
In the dream, did you set out to make something different – an oval crème caramel? Or would you have preferred to make a round crème caramel but were stuck with oval dishes? This is an important question. The interpretation depends on your answer. Let’s consider each of these:
If you had set out to make an oval crème caramel, ask yourself where, in your waking life, you have set out to achieve something different from the norm. Your dream suggests you are encountering difficulties in achieving this so far, and gives you clues as to what you can do to get better results.
If you would have preferred to make a round crème caramel but were stuck with oval dishes, ask yourself where, in your waking life, you are being challenged by unusual or compromising circumstances. Your dream suggests why you are experiencing this and what you can do to get better results.
The first thing that goes wrong for you is that you can’t seem to get the level right. First the mixture puffed up over the top (the level was too high, in fact it was ‘over the top’). Then, when you attempted to address this, the level fell well below the top. What does this mean?
When interpreting a dream, always look for opposites. They are present in most dreams and they help define the issue the dream is addressing. Here your opposites are over-the-top and under-the-top – too high and too low. Your issue is about getting the level of something right, trying to find the balance between too high (over the top) and too low (falling well below the top). I’m getting the feeling of performance – with you tending to over-perform (go over the top) sometimes, and under-perform (fall well below the mark) at other times. Is this your issue?
Or do the high and low refer to mood? Are there times when you tend to be high, exuberant in an over-the-top way, and then other times when you ‘fall well below’ into a bit of a depression or low energy level?
Crème caramel is made predominantly from sugar. Sugar can give you a blood sugar high followed by a blood sugar low, and your dream certainly references not being able to get the right sugar which was a factor contributing to getting the crème caramel to turn out right. There’s even the brulee – the burned sugar effect. Do your blood sugar levels fluctuate between extremes, leaving you feeling burnt out?
An oval shape could be seen as a flat circle, suggesting a lack of bounce, a feeling of swinging mood leaving you feeling flat from time to time.
I seem to be offering a number of alternatives here, but my feeling is that these are all correct and all related, so keep reading!
The first thing that went wrong in your dream was that the mixture ‘puffed up’ over the top. Dreams often use visuals to spell out clichés. To be puffed up is to be proud, or perhaps to have an inflated ego. At this point it’s important to remember that dreams reflect YOUR feelings, beliefs and perspectives – they don’t pronounce or judge. In this example, your dream cannot inform you that you are too proud, or too puffed up with an inflated ego. What your dream does is suggest that YOU have issues with pride and inflated ego – or with their opposites, humility and low ego.
Where, in your life, have you been struggling with a sense of pride or ego? Where have you been trying to get ‘the level’ right, between what you see as too proud or too full of yourself, and what you see as too humble, too lacking in ego? Something that should be so easy to achieve has become difficult and frustrating due to these compounding issues.
None of the sugar in your dream was sweet enough. It was either mixed with salt, or flour – either way, less sweet than you needed. Where, in your life, are things not as ‘sweet’ as you need them to be? Are you finding it difficult to add sweetness (love, kindness?) into what you are trying to achieve? Do you feel you are losing a sweet edge?
Your dream suggests you are feeling compromised in what you are trying to achieve. You may be trying to stand out and be different (if, in the dream, you wanted to create an oval crème caramel) or you may be in pursuit of perfection (if, in the dream, you wanted to create the perfect round crème caramel), but either way, you’re hampered by your struggle to get the mix or level right.
It’s time to take a good look at your feelings about pride and humility, and about ego. It’s time to find a level at which you can allow yourself to be the very best that you can be (we are all meant to shine) without stumbling over issues of pride and ego.
It’s also time to make sure you let the right level of sweetness into your life – in how you communicate and show your feelings, for example, as well as in balancing your sugar intake to counter mood swings.
Lastly, I’m intrigued by the title of your dream, as the title we select usually provides an interpretation clue. (Your unconscious mind influences your choice of title, often keying in to the most important factor.) So, what do you feel is ‘undeniable’ in your life? Are you undeniably talented? Do you see yourself as undeniably proud, undeniably ‘over-the-top’, undeniably the crème-de-la-crème? And is it really, really hard to deny sugar – causing mood swings? What is it that you feel no-one can deny? What is it time for you to admit?
Consult me confidentially about your dream.
Visualisation:
Visualise making the crème caramel, in the same setting as the dream – same location, same helper and so on. Only this time, in your visualisation, when you pour in the custard mixture, see it stay at the correct level. It neither puffs up, nor falls below the level. It’s just right. If, in your dream, you had wanted to make oval crème caramels, visualise this in your dream alchemy practice. If, in your dream, you had wanted to make round desserts but were compromised by only having oval dishes, visualise the oval dishes morphing into round ones before you pour in your custard mixture. Continue with your visualisation in this way, correcting the ingredients, correcting the dream version into a version that produces wonderful crème caramels, very easily. Replace the dream sense of frustration with a visualisation sense of ease and achievement.
How often to do this:
Do this visualisation 20 times a day for a week, ten times a day for the second week and twice a day for the next month.
How does this work?
This practice ensures that change occurs for you in the best possible way – a positive healing transformation. Your dream expressed your waking life situation using dream language – the language of your unconscious mind. By reliving the dream with changes, or by transforming one of the dream symbols (or by reliving and intensifying the dream in the case of a dream with a positive ending) you are using vision and feeling to reprogram your unconscious beliefs.
Jane Teresa Anderson
