Getting Back to Dreams

Dream work is the other side of astrology. While astrology gives us the blueprint of our soul's purpose, dreams show us how we are living, or not living, out that purpose.

A 60-year old woman had this dream:

I am by the ocean, where a river comes down to flow into it. I look in the river and see a crocodile lurking there. I go into the house my husband and I have near the beach and tell him what I've seen. There are many children there and they all run out to see the crocodile. My husband runs after them to stop them. I follow. My husband is holding the children back from the river, telling them of the dangers. But suddenly the crocodile comes out of the water and grabs my husband. I try to fight it, but I haven't anything to attack it with. I kick it but it still has my husband.

This is certainly a scary dream at first glance. But as we worked on the dream, it became clear that it spoke of a great change in the woman's attitudes about her life.

The river flowing to the ocean is certainly a place of magic and mystery. The joining of the individual waters with the vast ocean of the collective unconscious. This woman, like many other married women, is experiencing a certain freedom now that her children are grown. She is beginning to want to explore parts of herself she hasn't had time for before. But she also has an attitude that is connected with her husband. When her husband is at home, she feels she had to be there with him. And of course, that takes away time from her own interests.

The children in the dream represent new energy and new creativity that wants a place in the woman's life. But they are constricted -- they are with her husband. Now, her husband isn't the bad guy here. He represents her usual way of dealing with life. He represents the old patterns and habits and daily routines of her life.

When the kids hear about the crocodile, they immediately run to see it. This new energy knows that something has to die before something new can be born. While her inner husband tries to defend the children from death, he has to sacrifice himself if they are going to grow and change.The woman's ego in the dream can't stop the death.

This dreams signals a change in the way this woman sees her life. She wants to take time for art classes and other possibilities, but her own habits keep her chained to the house so she can 'be there' for her husband. After our discussion, she realized that she has to take steps now to change her life so that when her husband retires soon, he won't expect her to be there for him all the time. As a matter of fact, if she makes these changes, her husband will also have a more creative environment, because he will have time on his hands to find his own creativity after years of work.

Life is about change. When we dream of the death of someone we love, it doesn't necessarily mean their literal death. If often means the death of an inner energy that needs to be transformed because we are in a different phase of life.

Until next time,

Sweet Dreams!