Exhibit Twenty-Seven: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 31 July 2000
'Steering Wheel'
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 a sense of absence. The hands stretching over from the passenger side of the car seem capable and I feel the car is not at risk. The missing driver feels male. The woman is keeping things safe in his absence, setting his course, holding the track. He is lost: he doesn't even know that his seat is waiting for him. He knows even less that his future journey has already begun. Unlike the woman, he cannot see in the dark. She is wiser. She is the tracker, the compass, laying the future route in preparation for his awakening.
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.
Cars often symbolise how we progress through life. Work, relationship, parenthood and study are just a few of the many areas of life through which we journey. At various stages we may make smooth progress, be held up, find the going a tough uphill slog or a free-wheeling scary downhill slide. We may encounter obstacles during our waking life journeys, symbolised in our dreams as brick walls, dead ends, floods or slow traffic. Our dream brakes may not work as life seems to run out of control or we may find ourselves being pushed along from behind. We may relate a rusty old heap of a dream car to our feelings about our waking life progress. We may not be able to see where we are going. These car dream analogies reflect our conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings about our waking life journey. Knowing our true feelings can help us to take actions to improve our progress.
The steering wheel generally symbolises our direction and the driver may represent our 'drive' (our motivation) or our control of our situation. Ideally in dreams we should find ourselves in the driving seat, in control of our drive and direction. Although everyone in your dream can be seen as an aspect of yourself, it is important to look at who drives your dream car, where you are sitting and how you feel about this. For example, if you know someone who is a workaholic and they are driving your dream car, then you might like to ask yourself if you are driving your life according to inappropriate work values or addictions. In this situation you might be driving yourself hard in one area of your life to avoid having to look at another. Look at who is in the back seat to see what you leave behind or put to the back of your mind.
Darkness in a dream tends to symbolise the unknown. The drivers' mirror may reflect what is behind you, or in your past. It can also show you what is coming up from the past.
As always with dreams, symbolism is not rigid and depends on the dreamer's own associations and experiences. Use the following questions to get a better feel for car symbolism.
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!
- Is the car moving or standing still?
- If it is moving, is it going forwards or backwards?
- What do you feel is in front of the car?
- What do you feel is behind the car?
- Imagine turning the headlights on. What do you see in front of you now?
- Imagine shining a light behind the car: what do you see now?
- Was the car moving in a different direction before the woman took the wheel?
- Is the woman steering the car towards the left or away from the left?
- What happened (imagine) just before the woman took the wheel?
- Why did the woman take the wheel?
- Does the woman know the driver?
- Who is the driver?
- Where is the driver?
- Would it be best for the woman to sit in the driver's seat?
- Why or why not?
- Who does the car belong to?
- If the car is moving, is the woman finding it easy to drive?
- What is the woman feeling?
- What situation, in your life, does this feeling remind you of?
- In that situation (Q19) who or what is controlling drive and direction?
- Have a look again at your answers to Q3 and Q4. Do these reflect what you feel about the future and past of this situation (Q19)?
- Have a look again at your answers to Q5 and Q6. Do these fully-illuminated views give you a different perspective on your current situation?
- What would you have to do to make driving this car/ locating the driver easier?
- Can you translate this into a possible solution for your current waking life situation?
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