I was visiting my mom at the house where I grew up, only it was different from my real home. Mom was working in the yard, working to manage the land. She landscapes and manages it, maybe I should say manicures it, into submission. There was a side of the house with almost an alley that I had never been down. I walked down it and realized that it opened up to a large field, and that were was a series of these large fields that turned corners and traveled a path between open farm land. I wasn't traveling between crop fields, but open spaces of land with grass, like a plain, and trees, and along the edges of thickets.
I set out to walk to the end of the property, and it was several miles away. There were some farm houses, and from my perspective, they seems to be landlocked, but they had long, winding driveways. I never encountered a road, only this open space land and some trees. I was walking mostly on grass the entire way. When I reached the end, the land came up between two homes, and a woman came out of one home. I watched a mother and daughter walk up to the other home, and knew they maintained a garden on that land. The woman asked me who I was because she knew everyone who belonged on the land and she didn't know me. She said the people who belonged there were so close that they participated together in a blood drive. I told her my relationship to my mom, and immediately I was accepted.
She joined me and started talking to me about the land and about mom. Later, we were joined by another woman from one of the farmhouses I had passed. She also knew mom and told me that she was having financial troubles and I was to keep that information to myself. She was trying to sell some land to turn her situation around. She told me there was something I should see. We walked just off mom's land to a sort of thicket of sycamore trees. They were so tall I had to lay on the ground to take in the height of them! They were about 300 feet high! The second woman had worked to get this piece of land a special designation to preserve those trees for future generations.
The whole time I was walking, I kept thinking that mom will be happy to know how nice the rest of the land is, but that she will overextend herself to control it and manage it so it is as manicured as the rest of her land. I remember that as I was walking out alone, I originally thought that she should fence off her land to protect it, but realized after a while that some of the beauty of the area was from the openness and that fencing it was not only not necessary, but it would diminish the beauty.
The snakes. While I was with mom, I had three separate snake incidents. First, there was a huge snake that turned towards us and I feared we would be bit so I killed it by slicing it with some papers I had in my hand. I picked up the pieces and took the carcass to the trash. Later, there was a garter snake that I saw but was going to ignore until it starting flying through the air and on its second pass, flew right at me. I grabbed it, and pinched it behind the head. I think I decapitated it, or it stranged, because it was dead also. There was a third snake in a pile of dried oak leaves, but I walked in a different direction to avoid it.
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Blogger lost most of this entry. I spent a lot of time interpreting this dream and it is all lost. I'm going to recap what I learned, but the magic of what happened in that time is lost.
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There is a classic Jungian dream where your home is suddenly larger, and it signifies that you have made a leap in your consciousness into a larger world. This is my ancestral home, so I believe it relates to my core, the deepest and oldest part of myself. The fact that it takes place outdoors instead of inside the house indicates that it is part of my instinctual nature. Jung makes a distinction between domestic and wild animals, and I'm drawing the same sort of parallel between indoor spaces and outdoor spaces. The expansion is not part of the person I've learned to be, or that I've been socialized to be. It is within the part of me that came into this world. Could this mean that more of my self is present in my daily life? That would tie in with my latest round of heartbreak and healing, releasing old energy that fit the pattern of disappointment and heart break that allows more of me to be present. I have to believe these things are related.
The fact that the land is cozy, not the desert where I live, means something to me as well. The desert is a great teacher, but she is not a place where you go to refresh and recoup. This land, with the openness and naturalness (not farmed) filled with grass and thickets of trees, this is the kind of land that embraces you and allows you to explore and feel safe. In the desert, you must maintain vigilance at all times.
I walked to the end of the land alone, and then was joined by two other women in my return trip. Women I didn't know. One told me about her financial challenge and her plan to alleviate that. I'm not getting anything about that.
The whole "blood drive" bit is also somewhat confusing. It seems to indicate a blood bond between the people, a family of choice perhaps. The mother and daughter were there to garden, to work the land, to be fruitful. That draws up the image of nurturing and being part of the larger cycle of life.
The large trees could be phallic, but it seems more that they represent the growth of a person. The roots providing the grounding, and the branches showing a reaching towards the heavens and enlightenment. They were extraordinarily tall, and they had just been designated as a trust so they would be saved for future generations.
The snakes are another story. The snakes represent transmutation, and I remember thinking that when they appeared in the dream. Jung also says that snakes represent a conflict between the instinctive nature and inner person. It echoes the outdoor setting for the dream, something about my instincts not being in synch with who I truly am. That is a natural effect of personal growth. The instincts are developed through experience, and they are a bit slower to change because they hang on to past experience. I can't remember ever killing a snake in a dream, or even being attacked by one. I think this image is about fighting my instincts, about not trusting them. There is so much change going on in my life right now that I often observe my instincts and impulsive behavior and hold them before acting. Most times, after a little time passes, the wisdom from within me bubbles to the surface and I realize the folly of the original thought for a course of action. That is being deliberate instead of impulsive.
In summary, I think the images of this dream are talking about the large change taking place in my life. I feel it confirms my own thoughts and awareness that a deep and important change is happening from my core outward. I do see some awkwardness in my daily living and awareness as I try out new behaviors and put myself in new situations. I can't trust my instincts yet, they are tied to old patterns that I'm choosing to change.
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