Exhibit Forty-Eight: 1st June 2002. Photo by Michael Collins
'Looking'
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 associate with the penguin, feeling energised by the cold air into a state of high expectation as if I am a coiled spring, balancing on the tiptoes of my webbed feet. I feel tuned into the excitement, the knowledge that something is about to happen. I feel ultra-vigilant, poised, ready to leap. The moment is ...
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.
Animals often represent your own instincts and energies. Your dream symbols can be highly personal, depending on your own notions of - for example - how a penguin lives its life. What instincts do you imagine or know a penguin to have? If you had to summon up the energy of a penguin in a word, what would that word be?
Birds usually fly and so, as symbols, they often represent mastery of the mind (air) or the ability to look at your life from the vantage point of great height to see it clearly and in perspective. They can also represent the soul - that feeling of flying, freedom from the body.
But, penguins can't fly. They have vestigal wings that are used for swimming in water (emotions, feelings) rather than for flying in air (mind).
Snow can symbolise what is frozen within you or within your life. Snow is frozen water and, since water generally symbolises emotions, snow tends to symbolise frozen emotions.
This bird is looking at something. Follow the eyes or any other direction-pointer in a dream to discover what is being drawn to your attention.
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 of the year is this?
- How does the penguin feel?
- What is the penguin thinking?
- What is the penguin waiting for?
- What is the penguin looking at?
- What age is the penguin?
- What sex is the penguin?
- How does this penguin feel treated by the penguin community?
- What role does the penguin play in the penguin community?
- What role does the penguin play in the wider animal and plant community?
- How does the penguin feel about wings that cannot fly?
- How does the penguin feel about birds that cannot swim?
- What motivates this penguin?
- What does this penguin fear?
- What can this penguin teach the community?
- What can this penguin learn from the community?
- What does this penguin see ahead for itself?
- Look at your answer to Q 11. What situation in your life now does this apply to?
- Look at your answer to Q 12. What situation in your life now does this apply to?
- In your life now, is there a situation where you have felt that you have wings but cannot fly? If so, which?
- Look at your answer to Q 8. Where in your life now do you feel this?
- Look at your answers to Q 20 and 21. What can you learn about these by thinking about the energy of a penguin?
- Look at your answer to Q 1. It is likely that the season you chose relates to your situation now. For example, if you chose spring it may well be that you are birthing a new approach, or if you chose winter you may well be hibernating a new approach, staying in comfort zone or in a state of pre-action contemplation.
- Look at your answer to Q 6. What happened to you this long ago (in years or months), or when you were this age? Look for something that relates to what you have learned about yourself through answering all of these questions.
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