INTERPRETATION
Everything you were once sure of has changed. Everything you once had faith in is now under scrutiny. You are no longer sure about what to believe. You’re not even sure about the past anymore. Were things how they seemed to be, back then? Or are you beginning to look back and question your memory of your relationship and how things were?
Your dream reflects all of this and more, so let’s start with interpreting the dream and then move on to look at how to move forward from here.
Giving a dream a title is powerful, because it’s often a clue to the interpretation. (Tip: Don’t think too hard about a title for a dream. Pick whatever comes to mind first, as this will provide the best clue.)
Your title includes the word ‘unsure’, so your dream explores feelings of uncertainty that are coming up for you. Your title also includes the word ‘church’, and church is all about faith, so right from your title we know your dream is about what you have faith in, or what you don’t have faith in – what you’re sure about, or what you’re not sure about.
It’s not necessarily about religious faith. The church is just a symbol. It’s about faith in general – what you are, or are not sure about.
Your husband, sister, the pregnancy – all these are symbols too, and each of these bring up feelings of being unsure:
In the dream, you’re unsure about what is happening, or about what has happened. You’re unsure about the relationship between your husband and your sister. Your husband is unsure about whether your sister is pregnant. Your sister is unsure about telling the truth (she stammers). Perhaps your sister is unsure about why she said she was pregnant when she wasn’t – unsure about why she lied. In the dream you’re not even sure that you can trust what anyone tells you any more. Things that seem to be true (the pregnancy) turn out not to be true – or are they? - and you’re mad about this!
Note that feeling of madness, or anger. It was strong enough to wake you up. This anger is real. You got in touch with it during the dream and, as the dream shows, it’s triggered by a feeling of being lied to or being betrayed after offering genuine support.
In your notes, you say you’ve been separated for four months. Looking back, do you feel now that things you were once sure about have changed? Are you mad or angry about this? Do you feel deceived – betrayed by everything you gave your support to? Are you beginning to confront this now? Are you beginning to ‘get it all out in the open’, to bare the truth, in the same way that you all left the church and went outside into the open to talk?
In dreams, when you move from inside a building to outside, it can represent getting something out into the open – acknowledging it, admitting it. It was only when you were outside, in the dream, that the confrontation occurred and you realized you’d been deceived – and that’s when your anger came up and out into the open. It’s time for you to acknowledge, now, your anger about feeling deceived or betrayed, as well as being a time for you to acknowledge that you did, indeed, feel deceived or betrayed.
There’s no preacher in this dream church. No one’s preaching, no one’s offering you any truths, no one’s telling you what to be sure about, or even what to do. Instead, all eyes are on you three. The focus is on you. It’s up to you to decide what’s true and what’s not true, what to be sure about and what to be unsure about, to bring your feelings into the open and confront them.
Did you ever feel your husband had a preaching attitude? Did he preach to you about what you should or shouldn’t do? Or did he accuse you of preaching, of taking the high ground, of telling people how they should think, or what they should do? Who was the preacher? Was preaching rights and wrongs an issue in your relationship?
You say in your notes that your husband left because he said you had a lot to work on. Was he preaching to you about what you needed (in his opinion) to work on?
In your dream your husband stood to one side of the pulpit, suggesting you associate him with a preaching, perhaps even a righteous attitude. Of course, this also the place where you stand when you get married, so the dream may have been taking you back to review that time too.
Your sister was “further back” in the dream, behind you. What is behind you can represent what is in your past. You had to turn around to look at her, suggesting you were turning around to look at your past. She was 14 in the dream. Look back 14 years in your own life – what was happening for you back then? (Alternatively, since your sister is now four years older than she seemed in the dream, look back four years in your own life – what was happening for you back then?)
What plans did you have for your life fourteen (or four) years ago? These plans are represented by the pregnancy – something new you were planning to develop and deliver. Who wanted you to abort those plans?
Do you now wonder about those plans you had fourteen or four years ago? Did they come to nothing? Or did you never really pursue them, perhaps just talking about them (“only said that”) rather than doing anything about them? Did you live a lie, back then, in a way? Did you give your support, instead, to something that never eventuated, and do you now feel betrayed by this? Are you mad about that wasted time, now that you look back those fourteen or four years?
This is a time of change for you, a time for you to question the past, and to question the beliefs you had back then, because it’s only by questioning that you can build new faith. Most of all, this is a time for you to make new plans, not just to talk about them this time (or to pretend you will do them) but to grow them through to full term and deliver them to the world. And it’s a time to make sure those plans are YOUR plans, not someone else’s plans for you according to their opinion of what you should or shouldn’t do.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Buy a little notebook. This is going to be your ‘truth’ diary for one month. Each day, write a confession or ‘truth’ in it. No-one is going to read this diary apart from you, and at the end of the month you can tear it up and throw it away. Begin each truth or confession with, “Looking back now, I have to confess that ….” As you trust this exercise and flow with it, you will begin to build a new sense of confidence, a new faith in yourself, and a new positive and uplifting way to look at life that will take you forward.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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