Issue 73, September 2004
Treacle Walking (A Revisit)
©Jane Teresa Anderson, September 2004
Sometimes things seem to move very slowly, and then - suddenly - everything changes. The universe shifts into fast-forward and all our Christmas's come at once. Has this ever happened to you?
No? Ah, well, perhaps this little treacly story will help speed up all the good things you've been waiting for.
Instead of writing a new article, as I usually do, I thought it would be interesting to revisit an old one at this time of speedy change in our Dream Forum world.
I wrote TREACLE WALKING exactly four years ago this month. Here it is:
Issue 24, Jane's Dream Sight, August 2000:
I call it Treacle Walking. It's the dream walk you do where everything seems normal but the air is as thick as treacle. Everyone else seems to be getting around at normal speed, while you force your body forward, slowly, if at all, cutting through the sticky resistance. Have you ever had that dream?
This old dream of years past once more threw its thick, impenetrable cloak of tough stuff across my dream path recently. Only this time, I wasn't alone. And this time we were Treacle Running in no-go slow mo. "It's great exercise," the old man motioned to me in echoing delay, matching his every strain with mine. I looked down at my strong, perfectly toned dream legs and had to agree. When the going gets stuffed, the tough get going. For a while, at least. It was time to freeze-frame the dream (as if it could get any slower) and re-run the drama towards a more successful outcome. There's only so much Treacle Running a person can do regardless of the exercise value. When the going gets tough, the tough get stuffed.
This type of dream will often come up when you feel you are meeting resistance in some area of your waking life. A variation on this dream theme is to find yourself running late for a plane, bus, boat, exam or meeting. The running may seem normal, but the number of obstacles and delays multiply beyond any hope of reaching your dream target on time or comfortably. What should be easy progress, in your mind, seems unnecessarily complicated and delayed. Life seems to sting and hamper you, instead of flow and fulfil.
I've always wondered why I called this Treacle Running as a child. We didn't eat treacle, but we did always have a tin of Golden Syrup on the tea table. The green and gold tin used to fascinate me because I couldn't fully work out the meaning of the picture on the back. I remember it as a lion surrounded by bees and wording to the effect, "From strength comes forth sweetness." Or was it, "From sweetness comes forth strength"? I had a vague idea about the connection between strength and sweetness when mixed with bee stings. Bees can sting you but if you're brave little child you can have some of their honey on your bread.
This symbolism has been recently reinforced as medical research has shown that honey applied to cuts speeds healing. So we can now lick our wounds with our honeyed tongues and bring forth the sweetness of healing the pain of adversity. We acquire the strength of the golden lion through the pain of the tough stuff in life, reaping sweet rewards from our labours and discovering the secrets of healing within. Perhaps that's where the notion of Treacle Running came from. Life's tough resistances build inner and outer strengths that ultimately heal our pain. Away with Treacle Running. In hindsight I re-name it Honey Running: sweetness and strength all built into one symbol.
My childhood translation was 'From adversity comes forth healing'. But that word 'forth' was not one our family uttered. What did it mean? And what was it doing on our humble, matter-of-fact, Golden Syrup tin?
But I diverge - which is what we all do when faced with getting to the end of a task. The clock is ticking, the Dream Sight article is due and my best solution is to hesitate, to throw a new thought, a diversion, an obstacle onto my path. It's a perfect delay, a great resistance to creating the final paragraph of this piece. A full circle to the dream theme, for when we think we meet resistance in our waking life, when we think we can name and point our finger at the source of that resistance, we are usually facing the divergent path. We are usually wrong. We are usually avoiding the final paragraph, the drawing together of the understanding, the learning of the lesson, the point of the tough exercise. Our resistance comes from nowhere and no-one else but within.
We, consciously but mostly unconsciously, perfect the art of throwing obstacles in our path. We hesitate to conclude and so we meet our own resistance. In dreams, in Honey Running, we meet multiplied air resistance. Air, in dreams, often symbolises the mind, our unseen conscious and unconscious thoughts. In such dreams we are forced to realise that it is our own unseen, unrecognised thoughts which form the resistance we meet. The task is to discover the obstacle thinking and to remove it to free our paths from ourselves.
After my recent Honey Running dream I spent some time, awake, envisaging an easier run. I peered into the thick air and saw it swirling with unseen stickiness. I mentally thinned it. I emotionally summoned up the elation of running free without resistance. Over and over I practised reversing the difficulties of my dream. That night I received my honeyed reward. I dreamed I ran uphill, through deep sand, in conditions that would normally have bogged me down. It was free, smooth, energy-less and jubilant, not to mention blissfully uphill.
On waking I knew from my dream success that my way forth was as clear and easy as I was willing to let it be. A week of waking life tough stuff awaited me as my obstacles were no longer invisible. I could now see my own resistances spread across my waking life path. I had the job of identifying them and removing them, letting them go. A week of dreams helped me to zoom my focus in on my hesitations and also gave me tips as to how to deal with them practically. One by one each resistance that had manifested in my waking life began to disappear. As I got tough, the stuff got going.
The wise old man from my dream was right. It was well worth the exercise.
Jane Teresa Anderson
(Article originally published August 2000)
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