OVERVIEW INTERPRETATION
Hi Chris,
How many people reading this thought of the Monty Python dead parrot sketch?
The meaning of a dream symbol often depends on the dreamer’s experiences and personal associations.
In your dream, Chris, you noticed one of the dead parrots was twitching, so the apparently dead parrot was not so dead after all. If you are familiar with Monty Python you’ll remember that the sketch featured an unhappy customer who had bought a parrot only to discover that it was dead. The customer returns to the shop to confront the salesman who refuses to agree that the parrot is dead. Can you see how this could fit with your dream?
So, if the sketch is within your memory, Chris, your dream could be using the dead parrot symbol to question whether or not something in your life has ended or still has some life in it. Or had you felt that you’d been sold a ‘dead parrot’ (in a certain situation) and then seem some possibilities in the situation after all?
If you are not familiar with the sketch then it’s important to work out what the parrots mean in your dream. What springs to mind when you think of parrots?
For example:
They are colourful; they sometimes copy speech and can sound like irritating broken records; they are sometimes locked up in cages … what else? Where are these themes familiar in your life? As I am writing this with the doors open onto the garden, dozens of parrots are singing in the trees. If you are Australian, could the parrot represent home, especially as you mention travel in your dream. Are you an Australian travelling overseas?
Looking for opposites in your dream, one possibility is the contrast between the colourful (only green?) birds and the white houses. Could this dream suggest you are feeling a lack of colour in your life, feeling that colour has died .. and yet..
You revived the parrot by keeping it close to your body, in contrast with in the back seat. What have you put ‘behind’ you (back seat), or killed off (dead parrots) by not nurturing them? What do you need to pay CLOSE attention to in order to revive something you feel has been lost?
Another opposite in your dream is the thought of the lice (‘dirty’) and the all-white houses (pure and clean?).
What, in your current situation or in your recent past, have you pushed away for fear of feeling contaminated (lice)? Have you avoided some of the more colourful aspects of life in a search for purity, or for fear of risk?
The two parrots feel like a relationship to me, or two abandoned relationships, or two abandoned projects. Take the clue from the fact that the parrots were identical. Have you had a run of two relationships with similar issues, or just been through the same argument twice, for example?
Consider the question: “How many dead parrots does it take before I embrace the risk of living?” (In the dream you said, “the life of the bird was worth the risk”.)
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Dialogue:
Your dialogue is between the dead parrot you have revived and yourself. Start with you saying, “What’s it like to be a parrot?” and see what the revived parrot automatically answers. Keep it going for 20 minutes.
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.
More details on Dialogue as a Dream Alchemy Practice in: “Dream Alchemy”, by Jane Teresa Anderson, pages 321-4 and 333.
Jane Teresa Anderson
You can consult with Jane Teresa or her Dream Team and receive your interpretation by email within five working days.
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