Exhibit Twenty-Three: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 30 March 2000
'Colour Me In'
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?
A sense of calm and stillness reaches out to me from the layered depths beneath the bridge. I am drawn into the light phosphorescing from the pale green water, feeling close to a dawning, a new and easy-breathing revelation. The proximity of this luminescence to the softly distanced blue-pink-purple evokes a floating impression of Monet's water lilies, a merging of water, land and sky with no need for defining boundaries. I feel the stretch of the timeless now held in the curved span, yet the infinity of movement shifting in the kaleidoscopic focal depths of the ever-changing colours.
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.
While many dreams play out their dramas against worldly backdrops, some of the most evocative are more surreal in their vivid yet impressionist mix of scenery and experience. Such dreams can come up at times when the sleeping mind is hard-pressed to find existing memory props and patterns to express the dreamer's emerging experience. Life, as we understand it consciously and unconsciously, is reflected in our dreams. As personal experience shifts us into new ground, into new perspectives, new ways of piecing together the mish-mash of sensory input from the world around us, our inner painter works the dream canvass to express and capture the view.
Vivid colours can underline new perspectives. Colours which stand out can symbolise areas of your life under focus, or areas which need attention. While some colours do carry similar meaning for many people, personal symbolism can be more important in interpreting a colourful dream. For example, pale green can symbolise new growth (personal, psychological, emotional, relationship), but if your childhood bedroom was painted this colour then it may come up in your dreams to symbolise childhood.
The line in the picture may be a bridge. Bridges in dreams often come up at transitional times in life when the dreamer is moving from one way of life or way of understanding, to a new position. Bridges frequently come up to symbolise changes such as puberty, leaving home, marriage, divorce, menopause, career changes, older age and so on. Our dreams may reflect 'bridging a gap' as we suddenly make connections between two life experiences. Cliches such as 'It's all water under the bridge' may also be script-written into our dreams as simple metaphors for our life situation and feelings.
The line in the picture dream may be simply a curved line. Dreams coming up at life changing times often employ the symbolism of curved or straight lines to reflect our thinking and feeling styles. Typically a dream may be remarkable for all the curves (rounded walls, circular buildings, curved pathways, flowing clothes with wavy patterns) or for all the straight lines (square or rectangular buildings, grid-line mapped cities, square-framed pictures, straight-line clothing, checked or lined patterns). Curves tend to symbolise right brain thinking or Yin, or 'inner world' qualities. By contrast straight lines tend to symbolise our left brain thinking, Yang, or 'outer world' qualities.
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!
- Which colour stands out most?
- What feeling does this colour give you?
- Which colour did you notice last?
- What feeling does that colour give you?
- Are these feelings (Q2 & Q4) contrasting feelings, or feelings associated with an issue in your life now?
- Which issue?
- What is the curved line?
- If the curved line is a bridge, where, in the picture, do you see yourself?
- Is there another place (from Q8), in the picture, that you would prefer to be?
- If so (Q9), then what is the best way of getting there, in the picture?
- If this curved line is a bridge, which direction do you see the bridge beckoning in the picture?
- Was your answer (Q11) given in terms of colour (e.g. from green to yellow), of sides (e.g. from right to left), or height (e.g. from the lower end to the higher level), or lateral (e.g. from under the bridge to over it)?
- What do your answers to Q11 and Q12 reveal about your current life situation?
- If the line is simply a curve: what are the curves in your life now?
- In which areas of your life do you think/see in curves, and in which do you think/see in straight lines?
- Which changes or transitions are prominent in your life now and how does the picture dream help you to see new ways of travelling the change?
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