Exhibit Eighteen: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 24 September 1999
'Beyond'
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?
At first I feel confused because I’m not sure whether I’m looking
at an artist’s painting or through a frosted glass window.
If this is a piece of art, I drift with the colours and flow with the
surreal, dreamily floating through the changing meanings moving through
the canvass. I feel peacefully receptive to the unfolding patterns and
movements the painting seems to show me, yet also powerfully creative
as I breathe my life into the painting and shape it into being.
If I am looking through frosted glass then I feel restricted, wishing
to break through the glass, breathe fresh air, and see and feel the full,
sharply focussed reality beyond. Yet I also feel and can appreciate the
sense of mystery provided by the interposing glass.
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.
This depends on what you see! Clear glass can symbolise an invisible
barrier (like the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’ perhaps), or even
pain (a visual pun on ‘pane of glass’). As we are frequently
obstructed in life by our own unconscious barriers and limitations to
which we are consciously oblivious, see-through glass is an excellent
symbol. Breaking through glass, in a dream or in life, can accompany personal
breakthroughs. Frosted glass may represent a growing awareness that there
IS a barrier, so that we can acknowledge it at last and then break through
it. The emphasis with frosted glass, perhaps, is on why the vision ahead
is obscured or mystified. This symbolism also presents the idea that in
not seeing a perfectly formed vision, we hold the power to re-envision,
or to change. Perhaps frosted glass throws manifestation and creativity
back in the court of the perceiver or dreamer.
If your impression is that the image beyond involves water, or a waterfall,
then remember that water most commonly symbolises emotions. In this case,
however, might a symbolism of fluidity and change – an ability to
be shaped and re-shaped, like water – be over-riding?
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!
- How does this image make you feel?
- Do you see any glass in this picture?
- What shape does the green form for you?
- What shape does the white form for you?
- Can you reach out and touch that green and white?
- How does this make you feel? (Your answer to Q 5.)
- Where do you feel you are as you look at this image?
- Do any of these feelings remind you of a situation in your life now?
- Which situation is this?
- What can you do, thinking about the picture, to see the green and
white in the way you wish?
- Can you translate your answer to Q10 into the situation you identified
in Q9?
- If so, does this give you any clues as to your next step in the current
situation?
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