Exhibit Sixteen: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 27 July 1999
'Babe in Hands'
Feeling
The Picture
Your feeling reactions to a dream are keys to its interpretation. These are my feelings. If this were a scene in your dream or life, how would you feel about being there?
I feel the precious purity of
newborn life and the prayerful exhilaration of cradling an entire person who is drawing
the first promising and trusting breaths of new life. Mostly I feel the strong sense of
trust, of the baby who trusts the hands that cradle him and the father who accepts the
life entrusted into his hands. I feel the baby relaxing and giving his weight to the
father who accepts the responsibility and enters into the promise of a lifetime of flow:
giving and receiving, receiving and giving. A gift in his hands. The gift of hands.
The Symbols
Symbols in your dreams often relate to your personal memories and associations, so always consider those first. Then let your mind play with other, more general possibilities. They will not all apply! Just open your mind and notice where the symbol seems to fit and make sense of the rest of your dream.
A baby, in a dream, can symbolise new life of any
kind: a new project, new job, new idea, new attitude or new direction. The dream baby may,
at other times, symbolise your own baby-self: the part of yourself that recalls being a
baby, that is still dealing with some of the emotions and issues of babyhood, or needing
to be ‘babied’, for example. Common baby dreams include not being able to feed a
baby (not nurturing your baby-self or the new directions/projects in your life), losing
the baby (losing touch with what was new in your life or with what needs your care and
attention) and being pregnant (with a new idea, plan, opportunity or attitude). Dreams of
birth frequently symbolise ‘birth of the new’ which usually precedes ‘death
of the old’ (endings or completions in our lives). If you could stand back and read
the Dream Journal of Your Life (!), you would probably see cycles of birth and death
dreams as you journeyed through the many endings and beginnings which mark the personal
milestones of a life well-travelled!
Hands may symbolise how we ‘handle’
things, how we give (often symbolised by the right hand) and how we receive (frequently
the left hand). Hands can symbolise what we ‘hold’ in our lives or within
ourselves. Above all, hands most commonly symbolise our creativity as they are, for most
people, the tools we use to express ourselves in physical form. This ‘freeze
frame’ dream image captures the experienced hands of the parent (all he has created
until now, including, perhaps, the baby) in the same moment as the tiny hands of the
newborn, full of creative potential and a lifetime of self-expression to come. The
baby’s hands are wide open and ready, while the father’s hands are fully
occupied in cradling the child. Yet the beauty is that the father symbolically holds total
new life in his hands: each person here has unlimited creative potential – each has
new life ahead. We are never too old for new life and new beginnings. The dream symbolism
of ‘birth of the new’ reflects the flow of life, as opposed to the ‘holding
on’ to old inappropriate values and ways of being. The emotions surrounding these
dreams reflect the dreamer’s unconscious thoughts and conflicts about moving on to
the new.
The Questions
Here are some questions the dreamer of such a dream picture might ask to work towards a complete understanding of the dream.
Try these yourself: just give your 'gut reaction' answers to the questions - your answers will surprise you in the insights they deliver. The key thing to remember is, "Don't THINK about your answers - give quick gut reaction replies". Your unconscious will deliver.
If this process can work powerfully for this image, consider how infinitely more powerful the insights are when the image comes from one of your own dreams - direct from your unconscious!
1. Is the baby a boy or a girl?
2. How old is the baby?
3. Who is holding the child?
4. What have the adult’s hands created in the past?
5. What is today’s task for these adult hands?
6. What is the future of the adult’s hands? What will they
create next?
7. What do the baby’s hands wish to create during the
lifetime ahead?
8. A baby boy may symbolise what is new in your ‘outer’
world (Yang world). A baby girl may symbolise what is new in your ‘inner’ world
(Yin world). Which aspect of yourself is this freeze-frame dream image resonating with:
your Yang (if you saw the baby as male) or your Yin?
9. What was the last ‘new birth’, symbolically, that you
experienced?
10. What is the next ‘new birth’ that you would like to
create?
11. Contemplate the prospect of ‘doing’ your answer to Q10.
What feelings does this give you?
12. Which of these feelings are obstacles to creating this new birth?
13. What steps would you need to take to remove the obstacles that give
you these feelings?
14. What steps would you need to take to reinforce the GOOD feelings you
associate with ‘doing’ your answer to Q10.
15. Give your Q10 ‘new birth’ a name, as if it were a baby.
16. Can you give this baby life now?
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