INTERPRETATION
I wonder what kind of greeting cards you were buying. Did they have deep and meaningful messages or were they superficial? What kind of cards do you normally buy and send? What are your thoughts and feelings about sending and receiving greeting cards? Do you value every card you send or receive, or do you sometimes feel a sense of duty behind sending cards on certain dates?
Lynn, from other dreams you’ve posted to the forum, I know you’re an artist. As an artist, how do you feel about greeting cards? How do you feel about doing commercial art such as artwork for greeting cards? How much of your own work is commercial, and how much is personal or for exhibition?
This is an important key to understanding your dream. Right at the end of your dream you have a good laugh at your husband toiling away and tiring from the girlfriend’s superficiality. See the connection? I’ll explain:
Remember, everyone in a dream represents something about you, the dreamer. So your husband who is cheating in the dream is not, of course, your loyal and lovely actual husband, but a symbol of some part of yourself that that is cheating on you – or so it seems. Have you been toiling away over something you see as superficial (and commercial), and are you tiring of it?
When you laugh in a dream it’s usually because you’ve reached a point where you suddenly see the funny side of something you’ve been stressing about in your waking life. A good dream giggle is a sign of a change in the way you see life, a breakthrough, a release of an old pattern or belief.
Of course the ex-girlfriend in your dream also represents something about you. She represents something superficial that has weighed you down, and now, in your dream, you’re seeing the funny side of this. What a release! What a relief! So there’s an end to all that toiling over loads of superficial stuff, hey?
Have you been doing or contemplating doing commercial art that you see as superficial – like greeting cards? Has the work itself weighed you down, or have your inner conflicts about doing art that you judge as superficial weighed you down?
‘Superficial’ is in the eye of the beholder. So is ‘deep and meaningful’. What’s superficial to you may be meaningful to someone else, just as you may see a particular greeting card as superficial and yet that same card, sent to the right person from the right person, might strike a meaningful and perhaps life-changing chord.
A card that you judge as ‘deep and meaningful’ might be too clever, too subtle, for many people, its message lost on delivery.
The same applies to art. Have you been struggling with these kinds of issues? Or have you been working for money (commercial art) instead of for love of art?
Either way, this is your breakthrough dream!
So how does the cheating and the anger work in? Have you felt that you’ve been cheating on yourself, that you’ve betrayed your passion? In the dream, the cheating husband is on the verge of learning his lesson – he’s tiring of toiling over the superficial. Do you feel you’ve been cheating on yourself, cheating on your passion for art by toiling away over what you see as superficial commercial art? Or, perhaps more pertinently, do you feel you’ve been cheating on your passion for art by working hard for what you see as ‘superficial’ money and things? When you describe the ex-girlfriend in the dream as “really superficial”, do you mean that she was interested in ‘superficial’ money and things?
So you might like to explore your feelings and beliefs about superficiality, money and things, as well as about art.
It’s awful to discover, in hindsight, that you’ve worked so hard, seemingly for nothing. It’s normal to feel angry when you realise this. That’s why anger features in your dream. In breaking through the old pattern of toiling for what you see as superficial and commercial, in releasing yourself from ‘cheating on yourself’, you release all the pent-up anger around that and laugh it away. You transform the energy of anger into the energy of laughter. What was heavy becomes light (and what was loads of heavy stuff, in the dream, is suddenly as light as laughter). The drama has dissipated and you are free to be true to yourself (rather than to cheat on yourself AND suffer from your anger about this too).
Notice the repeat of anger in your dream. First you were angry with the clerks then you were angry with the cheating husband. Dreams often feature motifs (repeating themes). A motif is the dream’s way of expressing the same issue in different ways. Do you see a clerking job as superficial and commercial? Have you worked as a clerk to earn money? Did this make you angry? Did it feel like cheating on yourself by toiling hard at something you saw as superficial? This is why your anger spilled over from the clerks to the cheating husband in the dream.
Your brother-in-law and your husband are two brothers. Your dream also featured two greeting cards. And you’ve dreamed for the past two nights of your husband cheating on you. Your dream may have introduced the two for emphasis, but my feeling is that there are two recent instances where you’ve questioned superficiality.
At the start of your dream you’re on a road trip. Interpreted, this refers to a situation where you see yourself as being on a journey, heading somewhere. You stop for lunch. Interpreted, this suggests you’re ready for some rewards or sustenance. But you get distracted by ‘buying’ (into?) something superficial/commercial, or distracted by the question of superficiality/meaningfulness. And you wait and you judge yourself as stupid for not leaving. Can you recognise this pattern in your waking life in the day or two before your dream?
What was the commercial (superficial?) matter that distracted you from your path towards sustenance yet got you nowhere other than waiting and angry and waiting some more? Well, actually it did get you somewhere, as your dream showed. It got you to the point of recognising that you were cheating on yourself, it got you to releasing your anger, and it got you to transforming that anger into laughter, seeing the funny side, rising above it (you were in the room above in the dream). As you saw in the dream, the only reward of cheating yourself is disillusionment down the track, and a final return to your senses and your authenticity.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
You have already transformed your old anger into the lightness of seeing the funny side of your old ways. This process occurred in your dream. You can use dream alchemy to cement this and accelerate all the good outcomes, as well as to bring any further details into consciousness. As you are an artist, create a greeting card on the theme of seeing the funny side of your old drama. Allow your authentic artist to create the card, and then add a personal message inside, addressed to you. Read your message every day for at least a month!
Jane Teresa Anderson
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