Let’s focus first on your shoulder and face, the parts of your body highlighted in your dream.
Remember that dreams often work with word play. We ‘shoulder’ responsibility, or ‘carry the weight of the world on our shoulders’. We also ‘give the cold shoulder’ when we want to turn our back on any responsibility for a person or situation. Shoulders in dreams are often about responsibility.
So it’s interesting that you begged someone to take the rat off your shoulder, but no-one would. In other words, the dream suggests that something big has landed on your shoulder and it’s up to you (and no-one else) to take responsibility for it.
The rat was lying against your face. The word play here is perhaps ‘face it’. It’s your responsibility so face it.
Now what could it be? There are several clues in your dream and one or more of these will make sense to you:
Your husband was in the dream. What responsibilities have fallen on you, or what responsibilities have you not wanted to face, as a result of his passing?
The word ‘rat’ and ‘lying’ are close together in your dream. Could your dream be playing on ‘lying rat’, for example? Lying is also ‘ratting’ on someone. Has someone lied to you, or have you lived a lie in some way? Or do you feel that someone has done the dirty on you and left you to face the consequences?
We often lie to ourselves (unconsciously) as a way to avoid an issue. For example, if you have suffered a financial difficulty in the years since your husband died, you might have tried to live up to your previous expectations, to live a lie.
Although the financial situation was just an example, notice that you were in the theatre in your dream. Have you been living a lie in some way, performing or putting on a public face (theatre), an act you can no longer keep up?
In the dream you said you “begged” someone to take the rat off your shoulders. Begging has a financial connotation too.
It’s significant that you mention that the theatre lights were on. When the lights are on we can see what is otherwise in the dark. Your dream may have come at a time where you had been keeping yourself in the dark (lying to yourself) and were finally preparing to ‘face’ the light, no matter how fearful and dreadful.
Visualisation:
Visualise a beautiful silver bird perching on your shoulder. It is light and peaceful, honest and wise. It knows which responsibilities are yours and which are not yours. Visualise its wisdom infusing your body and feel the peace of knowing that you DO know what to do.
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 will ensure 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.
More details on Visualisation as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy” by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 329 – 330.
Jane Teresa Anderson
