INTERPRETATION
How you progress in your dreams is a reflection of how you are progressing in your waking life. At the start of your dream you were progressing very confidently and feeling at one with the energy carrying you along. You weren’t resisting the progress, you weren’t controlled by it, it was neither too fast nor too slow for you. You felt in balance, as one. You were in perfect stride with your confidence, and always “just ahead” of the kids you work with.
This reference to the kids you work with suggests this dream is about your progress at work but it probably applies to other areas of your life too. It suggests you stay just ahead of where you need to be, perhaps setting the pace, perhaps simply keeping just one step ahead without galloping further than you need to. Clearly you reached a point where you felt confident and at one with your work, and perhaps your life, at the time of this dream.
However, as soon as you had achieved (crested that hill) and arrived (at the shopping arcade) and come back to earth after the vigorous effort and exhilaration (sat on the floor – grounded, back to earth), you felt deflated. Yes, it was the horse that deflated, but since everything in a dream represents something about the dreamer, this deflated feeling was yours. You may or may not have been aware of it at the time of the dream: a dream reveals your unconscious feelings as well as your conscious ones.
Is this a pattern for you: a feeling of deflation, a let-down, immediately following an achievement? Do you work vigorously, accept the challenge, stay just ahead, confidently at one with the pace, perhaps take risks (bareback), feeling in the flow, running on instinct, at one with nature, but, as soon as you’ve achieved and you move into a more structured environment (shops) where you need to get back down to earth (floor) and review things (look through the box) and make choices (shop), deflation hits?
The box is a man-made, calculated, structured thing, like the shopping arcade. It’s down to earth in a practical, calculated, purpose-orientated way. The horse is nature-made, at one with nature (flowing rather than structured). It’s more instinctive. While riding the horse you worked with your instincts to achieve. Exhausted, finding yourself back in the man-made, structured world of thinking, reviewing, practicalities and choice, your instincts collapsed.
Animals in dreams often represent your instincts. What instincts do horses have? You describe the horse as strong and lively, and you felt confident riding it, even bareback. This suggests you see a horse as instinctively confident, strong, energised, at one with its journey. Horses often represent passion in a dream – if you’re in tune with your passion, you are confident of your direction, strong, energised and in the flow. This suggests you have identified your passion and you flow with it, but once your passion delivers the results you were seeking, your passion collapses and you feel deflated. Do you feel the passion in the journey, but lose touch with it once you get to the destination?
You solve this problem of deflation in the dream by replenishing the horse with water. Water in dreams often represents emotions, so here you acknowledge deflation and take an action to reinvigorate yourself by getting in touch with your emotions again. Do you find structured thinking (shop in dream) leaves you emotionally dry? Does your passion deflate in the face of structured thinking? You can’t have passion without emotion. When you lose touch with your passion, get yourself out of dry, structured thinking and inject some emotion. Get back out into the field (your field of work?), into the place where you are more in tune with your instincts – nourish yourself (grass and hay in dream) and, just as in the dream, all will be well.
Obviously there are times where you will need to apply yourself in more structured environments, to think, review, choose, structure and plan following an achievement, and your dream gives you the key as to how to do this – get in touch with your emotions, remember your passion, even if you can’t feel it at the time.
If this ‘achievement – deflation – achievement –deflation’ cycle is a pattern for you, it’s good to know this. You can either accept it and work round it (as suggested above) or you can decide to welcome the deflation periods as times to step back and take a more objective view before jumping back into the flow again. The power of dream interpretation is self-knowledge. What you do with that knowledge is your choice.
You asked why we travel by different methods in our dreams, and what these different means of travelling represent. Now that you’ve read your interpretation, you’ll see why your dream chose a horse to represent how you were ‘travelling’ through life at the time of your dream. The horse was the perfect metaphor for you.
Why not a car? You might answer, “I can be closer to nature on a horse.”
Why not a bike? You might answer, “I can be faster on a horse. I can move over rough terrain, not be restricted to man-made paths.”
Why not a plane?” You might answer, “I can smell the wind, pick up nature’s clues on a horse.”
Asking yourself questions about your dream and then answering those questions quickly (on instinct) is very enlightening. This is the power of the dialogue form of dream alchemy practice, which I’ve suggested for you below. In dialogue you not only get to question an element in your dream, but that element gets a chance to question you back, and since all elements in a dream are different elements of you, that’s pretty cool! Those elements of which you are less conscious help you to question the nature of the self that you regard as YOU! Self knowledge is power – the power to change that self!
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Dialogue
Discover more by doing a Dream Alchemy dialogue with the horse from your dream.
You: “Why did you choose me as a travelling companion?”
Horse: “… reply in here ”
You: “… reply in here ”
And so on.
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 these symbols mean for you. They will reveal. You will be surprised.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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