Exhibit Thirty Four: Acquired by the Dream Gallery 31 January 2001. Photo by Michael Collins
'Plant & Barbed Wire'
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 honeyed taste of the seedling inspired by the amber glow that throws the plant into close focus. I feel the life force growing the plant, unfolding leaves without rush in the stillness of time, fulfilling its destiny, becoming a giant, strong tree. The sweetness of honey counterpoises the strength of time-solid amber. I feel the tightness of the wire, its lack of life, yesterday's man-made strength, tomorrow's rusty demise. I touch the question: which has greater strength? And I feel the answer.
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.
Plants can symbolise what is growing in our lives. The state of health of the plant, its age, its shape, the life factors around it may all reflect the processes affecting our own growth. As a living thing, a plant may symbolise the life force within us, while our feelings about the plant reflect how we feel about our own life force. The age of the plant may represent how recent the growth in question is. A dream plant may take a certain shape as an expression of the shape of our inner growth.
Leaves may also be dream picture puns. What are you leaving behind? Who is leaving? Who is turning a new leaf? Who is taking a leaf from someone else's book?
A fence may symbolise a boundary or a limit. Sometimes we need boundaries, or we need to feel safe within a boundary, or to feel safe because we are outside the boundary leaving something threatening inside it. Sometimes we need to be free of boundaries, to extend beyond them or break them, to face and deal with threats or to undo restraint.
Barbed wire in a dream may symbolise barbed comments, or a feeling of having hackles raised, or of protecting or being protected in a defensive (de-fence-if?) way.
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!
- If the golden, soft-focussed background had a sound, what would it be? What can you hear?
- Now imagine that sound has a message. Perhaps you hear words or perhaps you sense a feeling. What is that message?
- Reach out and touch the wire. How does this contact make you feel?
- Where do the two ends of the wire lead?
- Does the wire enclose a space? If it does, what is the size and shape of the space?
- Is the plant inside or outside the enclosed space?
- Reach out and touch the plant. How does this contact make you feel?
- How old is this plant?
- How long has the wire been there?
- Now take the wire out of the picture and reach out and touch the plant again. How does this new contact feel?
- If the plant were a situation or a feeling in your life now, what would it be?
- If the wire were a situation or a feeling in your life now, what would it be?
- Are the situations in Q11 and Q12 related?
- What insight have you gained through answering these questions about the life situation you have identified?
- Do you wish to change the picture in any way?
- How does this change make you feel?
- How would you relate this change to your life situation?
- Does your answer to Q17 help you to understand your situation more clearly?
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