INTERPRETATION
Congratulations, Chloe. Our dreams reflect how we process our experiences of the last 24-48 hours, so they help us to understand how we perceive the world and how we respond to it. As our perceptions change and as our responses change, our dreams change. Sometimes it’s the old dream themes that change, sometimes the symbols transform.
Your old recurring dreams featured fearsome dogs that kept holding you back or restricting you in some way. When these dreams were interpreted, you saw how much your fears had been holding you back and restricting you.
Animals in dreams often represent our instincts, and when you worked with your old recurring dog dreams you understood that your instincts, based on fear, were to hold back on expressing yourself.
These interpretations rang true for you. You could see how they related to your life. The dreams helped you to trace the origins of these fears, to see why you held back. It made sense to you. The past made sense of your present situation. And you decided it was time to stop the past from affecting your present. You decided to face the old fears, see them for what they were, and use this new personal insight to change the way you see and respond to the world.
And you did this. You transformed your old instinctive, restrictive fears into a powerful energy you could use to express yourself rather than restrict yourself.
And what did you express? What did you communicate?
Whatever you expressed, and whatever you are expressing now instead of restricting, is based on wisdom you acquired through working with these dreams. When you face a fear, you learn something about yourself – acquire wisdom – and grow from the process.
This is why the dog in your new dream is like a wise old man. You have transformed the old fearful, restrictive instinct into wise understanding, so your dream symbol for fearful, restrictive instinct has transformed into wise understanding.
Why old? We associate old with wisdom. Wisdom is a result of accumulated experience. The dog may also have been old to represent, quite literally, the ‘old’ dream dog taking on a different form – from instinct-form to a more conscious (man) wisdom-form.
Of course he was talking to you! He was expressing himself, communicating! Your old dreams were about your fears of expressing yourself, so now that these fears have been transformed, that wise expression is flowing!
So why was he wrapped up in a covering and lying down? The interpretation depends on the feeling you got about this in the dream. For example, did you feel he was sick, dying of old age, or just having a rest? Or perhaps you got the feeling he was waking up from a good night’s sleep, or from a dream of fearful dogs, and was now reporting on the wisdom he had gained from his dream.
Dreams use word play, so it’s most likely that your dream was playing “it’s a wrap”. You have transformed the fear through a conscious awakening – woken up (become conscious) to what the fear was all about. The unconscious side was an instinctive fear. That instinctive fear was a cover for something. By facing the fear, you uncovered it enough to see it for what it was. You brought that into consciousness and the light of consciousness transformed the experience that you had kept under cover into wisdom and expression. Yes, I think your dream dog had just woken up!
Perhaps now you can remove the rest of the covering, and let that wisdom express itself more fully – not just in words, but also in body and action. Is it time to walk your talk? Or run it?
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Dialogue
Discover more and uncover your best solution by doing a Dream Alchemy dialogue between the wise dog-man and you:
You: “What’s it like to speak like a man?”
Wise dog-man: “… let wise dog-man reply here ”
You: “... you reply here”
Wise dog-man: “… continue in this way”
How to do this
Give yourself no longer than 20 minutes. When you do this exercise do NOT think! Don’t plan ahead. Just let whatever happens happen. Let the two entities speak to each other on paper using whatever words come up. It’s a bit like writing a film script or play – but without the brain being involved.
How does this work?
By not thinking, by keeping the words flowing, you are letting your right brain and unconscious mind do most of the work. They created the original dream so they know what this symbol means for you. They will reveal. You will be surprised.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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