Dreams and Their Meanings

A Greek concept: we hurtle through life with our backs to the future, able to see only what is past, never what is to come.

~ ~ ~

I’ve always been fascinated by dreams and despite their fragmented nature, believed they have meaning. They seem enigmatic, and I wanted to understand my dreams. Why do they come in weird, seemingly disconnected imagery, for lack of a better phrase? Do some of them truly have meaning, beyond simply your unconscious organizing and clearing out the experiences of the day? I wondered why some stayed with me, felt important while most I never, or only vaguely, recall after waking.

I thought there must be a reason for that and I was excited to learn that Carl Jung had developed his own interpretation of dreams, and the archetypes he discovered that helped him to understand them in his own work. I’ve read much of what he wrote on dream interpretation but claim no special expertise in understanding them, nor training in a college-level course, if such a thing exists.

I just wanted to understand my own and whether they had something to teach me. When in university, I especially enjoyed studying his thoughts on the subject and how closely Jung’s archetypes meshed with those discussed by Joseph Campbell in his book Myth and Mythology. Campbell has multiple books published but, to date, I’ve only had time to study one.

That book holds a prominent place on my bookshelf, as do Jung’s works. Admittedly, Carl Jung’s writings require more focus to grasp and are more for study than pleasure reading, as opposed to Joseph Campbell’s easier to read explanations and clean prose. But I’ve found both to be of great help in my own life.

The dreams discussed here are my own from more than thirty years ago, in the ‘old days’ when I had to go to a public library and check physical books, which shows the staying power some dreams possess, especially ones with deep emotional ties. The list of archetypes below is far from comprehensive, and each can have different meanings for different people, but it’s a list of those I’ve encountered and what they mean to me.

These archetypes and the meanings I gleaned from them have been a great help in understanding my dreams. With a multitude of meanings, they can mean something completely different to each person.

I will present each dream (names changed, of course), followed by what I think it was trying to tell me.

First, the archetypes

1. House- Your physical body. It usually is not your real ‘house’, your house in waking life, but if in the dream you know it to be your house, then it’s your body.

2. Car- the way you navigate life. If you dream of being in your car, the dream is trying to convey a message about how you are living your life.

3. Kitchen- the place where knowledge is prepared to be consumed, to take in.

4. Eating- the consumption of or taking in new knowledge.

5. Tree- Mortality, your life in this world. Usually, but not always, negative connotations.

6. Flying- a desire to rise above the struggles of life, to escape it all.

7. Blanket- your covering, that which protects you from the dangers of the physical world.

8. Buffalo/Bull- strength, virility, usually masculine. The ability within you to overcome a hurdle, to conquer a crisis.

9. Earth/soil- the ground beneath your feet; it can both support you and bury you.

10. Water- Life, love, the unconscious, that which sustains the life of the ego. Can also reflect the collective unconscious.

11. Snake- the knowledge of this world and of good and evil.

12. Walking with A Woman, a familiar stranger- daena, imago anima, the mirror of our earthly likeness, your own faith, she is created out of our good deeds and good thoughts in life. Your Guardian Angel. In life she guides you, comforts you, and inspires you. In death, she walks with you across the bridge and judges you.

13. Shadow- this one is difficult to describe, usually a feeling rather than person or physical object, often seen in conjunction with your daena, sensed in the background but not seen.

14. Library- a place where knowledge is stored and readily available for any seeker.

15. New Growth or Greening Grass- Renewal, the beginning of a new season; positive.

16. Electricity- the power of this world, can be positive or negative, depending on the dream.

As I said, I am not a psychologist and others might assign different meanings to the archetypes listed above. I am just offering my method of interpreting meanings found in dream imagery of my dreams. It will not be the same for everyone.

The first three occurred on different nights but I think they are better served if treated as one.

Dream fragment:

My son and I are setting up his trainset on a layout we built that has a mountain, town, and small river. He points to the little stream that runs through the layout. “Dad, the stream is leaking out.”

I take a quick look at it. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “There’s only a small leak.”

Dream fragment-

The model water tower from my son’s train layout is set on a chair. He comes into the room and, without noticing, sits on the water tower, collapsing it. The water gushes out, runs onto the floor. We examined the tower; it didn’t seem to be broken, just disassembled.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “It can be easily put back together.”

Dream fragment-

Driving my truck, Matt was riding in the passenger seat. I drink from a glass of water, and some splashes onto the floor. Matt makes a move to dry it and I tell him not to worry.

“It’s only a small spill.” Then the glass slips from my hand spilling all the water onto the floor, but I’m still unconcerned.

***

These intense dreams came to me over the course of a few months at a time when my loved one was seriously ill. In the first two I saw the repeated leakage of water as part of my life seeping away, but reparable.

The third implied the inevitable loss of a part of my life but I still did not see it as final. I believed then that the future, that Fate, is not set in stone, but in water, and the course of water could be changed. I still believe that.

***

Dream fragment-

Matt stands outside of a rough-looking roadhouse, next to a black motorcycle. He’s about to go inside and I try to stop him.

“Matt, don’t go into that place.”

“I… I don’t know how not to.”

“Then look for a way. There’s a way, you just have to find it.”

“But you can find it for me.”

“No, I can’t do it for you. You have to do it yourself,” and as I speak, I feel myself being drawn away from him. “I’m having my own problems with the power of this world.” I sense a presence and I’m rising, like the Greeks, rising backwards into the air. I look behind and see steel towers, high voltage transmission lines. I try to escape, to go around them but like a moth caught by the light of a flame I bump against the wires, then again, and again, and…

***

The rough-looking roadhouse, black motorcycle… not the kind of place Matt would go into. Not that he did not drink, we both did. But at bars or night clubs in the city, not at a poorly lit roadhouse on a dark, deserted stretch of highway; if the motorcycle was any indication, it was a biker’s club. I could tell he was trying to not go into that place but could not stop himself and had turned to me for help. I had always been able to help him before.

But I could not help, this time.

*****

Dream fragment -

Riding in the passenger seat of my old Chevrolet, Matt driving. In the dream, the windshield is gone, and the wind presses me back. We’re going so fast that I can’t really see the road, just a blur of gray sweeping beneath us. Then there’s no top on the car, no roof; it has been torn off the car by our great speed. I tell Matt that we are going too fast, we must slow down, or we will be killed.

“You think this is fast?” he asks. “This is nothing,” and he begins to laugh maniacally as the car accelerates. I clench the dashboard, knuckles white from strain, Matt still laughs, and I when I look to the side, I no longer see the road as gray clouds stream past at an incomprehensible rate…

***

The car in the dream was mine, in real life, but in the dream, Matt was driving so it was his car. And my fear wasn’t for myself or the car but for the way time in his life seemed to be moving progressively faster. And I still had not found a way to help him.

*****

Dream fragment -

I am walking a graveled path, sunlight flashing through the branches that overhang it. I knew the place, had been there often in waking life. It was a path alongside the river for walking, hiking, and biking. I realized where I was going.

And why.

When I came upon the spot, I stepped off the path, into a cool, shaded opening where tangled wild grape vines hung from the trees and then I walked through the tall, yellow wildflowers that grew on the riverside, then followed the dirt path. I’d been to that place often. Where that spit of land ended there was an island across a narrow branch of the river. Two huge, fallen tree trunks crossed the water, having washed up there years before. I climbed over them, jumped onto the dry, dusty ground of the island, and walked between young saplings and brush toward the center of the island. A woman stood beside the oldest and tallest tree there. I stopped, looked toward the top of the tree, where some of the bark was missing, but the sky was too bright, and I had to lower my gaze. The woman stood there; her raven hair reached past her waist and no emotion showed on her face. She wasn’t the woman I sometimes recognized in other dreams, but I knew why I had come to her. This woman held great wisdom, knew things, knew all that can be known of the world, but she wasn’t a witch or anything like that. In my mind, she was a ‘holder of knowledge’. The tall staff in her hand looked as though it could’ve been picked up anywhere from among the broken saplings and tree branches the river delivered to the edge of the island with every heavy rain and left to be bleached by the sun.

She knew why I had come and with a glance at me, she cast her staff to the ground. It became a snake and went straight to the base of the old tree, then climbed to the top faster than seemed possible. I knew it was looking for the knowledge I so hoped to find. I looked toward the top of the tree and the snake was there, head erect as it looked around. I knew it searched the cardinal points and everywhere between, then looked at me, its eyes milky white. It was blind. Because the knowledge I sought was not in the world, our physical realm, and so it was blind. The knowledge I had come for did not exist. I looked back at the woman, her face still devoid of expression, as the snake came back and became her staff again.

*****

I knew from that dream that there was no help in the physical realm to be found. No answers from medical science.

No magical cure when we needed it most.

Matt passed just a few months later. Those dreams had helped me to be ready to accept the end when it came.

It was a closed-casket service because the cancer had so ravaged his body. Neither his parents nor I wanted others to see him that way. Matt would not want anyone’s last memory of him to be that near-skeletal body. I attended the service at the funeral parlor but did not go to the cemetery. I could not bring myself to do that. I just wasn’t ready to see him interred.

Although he regularly read the Bible, Matt wasn’t particularly religious, yet he was the kindest, most spiritual person I had ever known. And remains so to this day.

Matt was the kind of man whom Jesus would’ve called “a true Israelite, one in whom there is no guile.”

~ ~ ~

I hesitated to write this and more so to publish it, to put so much of my life in front of strangers but decided that if any of it might help others, the way those dreams helped me accept what was coming, it’s what Matt would expect of me. And I sincerely hope his story can bring some measure of peace, no matter how small, to someone who reads it.

*******

This story was originally posted on Medium.

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