Exhibit Forty-Six: Selected from Michael's Dream Sight Gallery, 1st April 2002. Photo by Michael Collins
'Bones'
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 contrast between the dainty footprints of a light-footed bird and the heavy environmental footprint of the whalebones bleaching in the sun many decades after the end of whaling in this place. The light bird prints will be gone with the next snow or the thawing.
I feel the contrast between the vitality of the bird that left these prints and the long-dead whale.
I feel disturbed by the red substance strewn behind the whalebones. Is this blood or seaweed?
Today and yesterday. Light and heavy. Transient and long-lasting. Alive and dead. Yet I feel, through all this, elated by the signs of the new light life that walks across the aftermath of a crueler time. We learn from the past. New life takes shape. All is forgiven.
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.
Bones last longest after death. In life all the soft parts of the body hang from the bones. The bones give shape to the body and help it to move. Bones often symbolise your core beliefs - the beliefs upon which you build and hang your understanding of the world. Core beliefs can be the hardest to change, just as bones are the hardest part of the body. Our solid beliefs often outlive us, carried forward by society, laws, churches, institutions, buildings, books and so on. What core beliefs will remain after you have passed on?
Bones may symbolise evidence of the past, the 'bones of the matter'. They may paint a dream cliché such as "make no bones about it" or "don't point the bone at me".
Snow can symbolise frozen or cold emotions (since water in dreams usually represents emotions). It may symbolise purity (pure white untouched snow) - or, in this case, less pure snow, touched by bird footprints perhaps echoing the violation of the whale's purity of being. Your personal associations to snow may determine its meaning in your dream. If you revere snow as beautiful it may symbolise beauty. If you enjoy playing in snow it may symbolise play. If you live in a country where snow traps you or hinders your travel, it may symbolise trapping or slowing progress in your dreams.
Footprints are impressions in the snow, sand or earth. Alongside the obvious symbolism of footprints consider dream footprints as being about impressions.
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!
- What season is this?
- How long have these whalebones been here?
- How did they get here?
- How did you get here?
- Where have you come from?
- Why are you here?
- Where does the bird live?
- Where was the bird going?
- What was the bird thinking as it stepped over the frozen snow?
- Why has this one patch of snow not thawed?
- What is the red substance in this image?
- How did the red substance get there?
- Does the red substance relate more to the whale, the bird, to you or to none of these?
- How would you feel if you were asked to add your footprint to this patch of snow?
- What would you like to inscribe into the snow?
- What would you like to inscribe into the whalebone?
- Having read Q16 would you like to change what you would inscribe into the snow? If so, what would you now prefer to inscribe?
- What would you name this place?
- What are the whalebones in your life?
- What is the frozen patch of snow in your life?
- What are the bird footprints in your life?
- Look at your answer to Q20. If this situation could be thawed, how would you feel about this and what would change in your life now?
- In retrospect, as you leave this place, do you see a purpose in your visit?
- As you leave this place, do you have a new mission? If so, what?
- What first step could you now take towards fulfilling this mission?
|
